Leon inched forward.
That was the truth behind the covert moves in the open out in the wild.
There weren't any fancy techniques that could help him. And while constructing a formation that would disturb the flow of light around him would be a breeze, it would be a red flag for anyone with any level of mana sense.
'Old methods tend to be reliable,' Leon thought, infinitely slow at his crawl.
Entire minutes would pass before he would move a few inches forward. And yet, Leon kept pressing on. And soon enough, he crawled close enough to the camp to hear the voices coming out from it.
"...believe it..." a voice came out. "You have luck both in cards and with the girls," a tone of disgust filled the voice. "Just which god's balls did you rub to get so fucking lucky?!"
The conversation wasn't of any importance. Just a banter between friends who most likely were letting the time pass by playing cards.
'They are out in the middle of nowhere, clearly doing something they don't want others to see,' Leon thought while pulling his eyebrows together.
This kind of conversation would be perfectly normal for people just camping out in the wild. Yet, once the details of the entire picture were accounted for, those words all stood like a sore thumb.
'This doesn't make any sense,' Leon summed up in his thoughts all the while he continued to crawl through the ground like some sort of a worm.
And to be honest, his rate of progress wasn't all that faster than that of an earthworm.
"Me rubbing balls of some gods?" a new voice replied to the banter. "It's lady fortune that rubs mine!"
Leon rolled his eyes.
If the first bit of conversation he got to hear got him baffled, the reply to it confirmed the situation for him.
'This camp is meticulously set up, making it hard to notice even when staring right at it. Their tracks all around the clearing are neatly covered. In fact, it was easier for me to spot the tracks of them covering their tracks rather than their tracks themselves.'
Leon took a deep breath to calm himself down. He then held it back in his lungs as he was now getting too close to the tents to carelessly let his breathing run amok.
'But no matter how little sense it makes, for them not to put out any guards and then talk like that...' Leon gritted his teeth.
He hated things that didn't make sense. But between ignoring something just because he hated it and accepting the reality before his eyes and ears, he didn't hesitate.
'They are just a bunch of amateurs,' he summarized.
"Fuck it!" a curse came out from the tent to Leon's right, followed by the sound of something soft slapping something hard. "I'm not playing with you anymore, you cheating fuck!"
The explosion of the sound allowed Leon to leap forward entire two inches in a single instant, with the loud voice covering the noise he made while doing so.
"Do we have anything better to do in this shithole than cards?" the second voice quickly lectured the first one. "If not for that wannabe hero, this matter would be long dealt with..."
Leon froze.
He then, ever so slowly, breathed out a sigh.
'What's with this cliche of stumbling upon vital information right as I get close enough to their camp?' he asked himself. 'Am I in some sort of cliche story written by a first grader?'
"If I knew Natalye could keep all of them alive for so long..." a new, feminine this time, voice entered the discussion. "I would've killed her right then and there rather than pretending to form a team with her!"
Leon slowly lowered his eyelids to close his eyes. A strange feeling revolted in his stomach.
'Gods of this world, master of this simulation, or the author of this novel...' Leon thought, making sure to inhale as slowly as humanly possible before taking equally as long to exhale. 'Can't you try a little harder?!'
"Even with her strength, she will be unable to keep all of those people alive for long. And if she leaves to look for us, the monsters will quickly jump on the opportunity to kill them all," the first of the voices replied.
Leon then heard a short, rustling short, that he instantly pictured as the owner of the voice shrugging his shoulders.
'Well, whoever is responsible for this mission being so convenient, I learned two important things so I can't complain much,' Leon thought.
He had some doubts about the girl's true allegiances when he first met her. But hearing how the people that appeared to be the teammates she claimed to be waiting for actively badmouth her like that and plan for her downfall...
'So her name is Natalye...' Leon then thought, allowing Alice's face to the surface before his eyes once again.
Then, for the third and last time, he took his time to breathe in and out.
'Should I kill them all?' he then thought, considering his options.
After defeating and feeding on the beast in the forest, Leon couldn't help but get curious about whether he could replicate the method to steal mana from human beings too.
And as if lady fortune was actually licking his balls, he just found the perfect opportunity to do so.
Even after creating eleven drops of true blood from the mana he absorbed from the monster... Leon was still far away from recovering his full strength.
'And seeing how abundant in mana this world is, I shouldn't limit myself to the bare minimum either,' he thought.
No matter how hard he tried to push those bloodthirsty thoughts aside, every aspect of the situation made it more and more tempting and almost obvious as a choice.
'If that girl finds out I killed them before finding out about their true goal...' A single thought appeared in Leon's head that reconsider his options.
And then, he couldn't help himself but let his lips form a snickerish smile.
'Like we would ever meet again.' The bloodmancer nearly failed to hold back a chuckle. 'A hopeless romantic, am I not?'
Leon's mental struggle came to an end. And so, he changed his position on the ground a tiny little bit before starting to slowly raise up.
Leon's entire self then screamed out in alert.
His body tensed up. His mind instantly turned into a high-processing mode, analyzing every last bit of what he could perceive. Leon's mana stalled in his flesh, ready to burst at a moment's notice.
And then, the bloodmancer slowly lowered himself down to the ground, not daring to move even an inch.
His instincts screamed out in his mind like an orchestra.
Only for a person clad in a grey, spotted cloak to emerge from the woods on the other side of the camp.