If he separated the forest into 4 rings, outer, middle, inner and core, then he was currently in the middle, which was good for him.
"I will work my way in from here and leave the outer layer for now. If someone enters the forest and immediately sees that it is practically barren then that will set off some red flags."
"I still don't know entirely where I am, nor do I know the strength of those who might be around me."
Thankfully for him the beasts seemed extremely territorial, so for the entirety of the middle ring he didn't encounter any more of them, but as he started to move further inwards that was going to change.
After a little bit of harvesting in the inner layer he was spotted by a large panther like beast that camouflage perfectly with its surroundings, if he didn't have mana sense on all the time then he would have no idea that it was there. Even his sixth sense was fooled, which further strengthened his distrust of it.
Thankfully, however, this green panther wasn't anywhere as strong as Laura had been, not even anywhere close to the pseudo-swamp tyrant. Killing it was easy, he almost didn't bother to collect its body but figured that it didn't hurt to have.
After asking a few brief questions he discovered that she and her mate originally lived in the very core of the forest and could practically be considered the kings of it. The only thing that could rival them was a golden flame war elephant, and while its bloodline wasn't anywhere near as pure as theirs were, it was much older and more powerful, being practically on the verge of transformation.
When she was preparing to give birth she moved away from the core, as the golden flame war elephant would not give up this golden opportunity to get rid of its major competitor, and the pseudo swamp tyrant had probably sensed this, following it from the inner ring to take advantage.
Unfortunately for it, it had run into him before it could squad wipe the family of pseudo behemoths.
This meant that there was a much more powerful being lurking in the depths of the forest, the swamp tyrant was pretty much the pinnacle of the power in the inner layer and the power spike between living in the inner layer and the core was like night and day.
This was done by the golden flame war elephant himself, any beast that had the potential to get powerful enough to rival it was brutally crushed under his massive feet and immense weight. The only beasts that had escaped this fate were the two newcomers at the time, the two behemoths.
Laura had a relatively pure blood line compared to the other behemoth which led to her being more powerful than the other. If she was allowed to grow to full maturity then the golden flame war elephant could only count his days.
Such a vindictive and powerful beast would be a deterrent for most, but for now it was exactly what he needed.
With his goal of recreating the ancient behemoth physique he would have to recreate and combine the physiques of its offspring. The behemoth was one of them, the true dragon another, along with the ancient war elephant.
Besides these there are the diamond wasp, the true phoenix, the leviathan whale, devouring tortoise, divine stag and lastly the swarm queen.
If he wanted to combine these physiques properly then he would need to source the weaker 'body' form from these beasts directly, or from their offspring, and then cultivate them to maturity.
The heart blood of the golden flame war elephant could help in this, but he wouldn't be able to get it directly from it. Unlike the pseudo behemoths that were not much different from the true behemoth where their bloodline just wasn't as strong, the golden flame war elephant didn't come directly from the ancient war elephant.
In fact calling it a war elephant was already a stretch as its bloodline was so impure that it wasn't even born with the ancient war elephant physique that even branch descendants had.
One might look at its name and think that maybe part of its bloodline came from the true phoenix, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
In the times that the original ancient behemoth was alive there were many more beasts roaming the new world, it was referred to as the mother of all beasts because of how strong it was; any and all of its direct offspring were so powerful that it wouldn't be entirely wrong to call all the others mere animals.
The golden flame war elephant was a descendant of one of the children of an ancient war elephant that mated with one of these lower tier beasts on a whim. That child was extremely powerful at the time, almost on par with the other descendants of the ancient war elephant, but after the billions of years of reproduction with 'lower' beasts, its bloodline was thinned to the point of near non existence, leading to the golden flame war elephant that was ruling over the forest.
Its heart blood will help form the ancient war elephant body, after refinement of course, but that alone wasn't going to be enough.
"That being said, I still have the heart blood of the male pseudo behemoth. After refinement it should just barely be enough to form the behemoth body."
If that beast was actually the husband of Laura then he wouldn't have done this, but now that he knew that he was just a convenient mate he had no more qualms. If he didn't use it, it would just sit in his soul sea, doing absolutely nothing.
He stopped weaving mana threads and took out the metal vial that he stored the heart blood in. He was weaving non stop so he could make proper cloth now, but he was still struggling to form this cloth into wearable clothes. He also had to figure out a way to transform mana into actual string, or else if he ran out of mana then his clothes would suddenly disappear.
Not a likely thing to happen but certainly not impossible.
There were many steps to creating the behemoth body that he wanted, and the first part was to purify and then refine the heart blood, turning it into blood essence.
Refining it was easy, but purification was much more difficult. It required many rare and not so rare but still valuable herbs, thankfully he had ransacked almost half of the forest at this point so after quickly checking over what he needed he had more than enough.
He sat down and pulled out the pill furnace that he made a few days earlier and put the heart blood in with a very specific amount of the herbs that he needed. Itroth had done this multiple times, so while he was clumsy he had no doubt that he could properly purify it.
Plus if he managed to do it properly then he could purify Laura and her children's bloodline. Unlike refining, purification can happen even if the beast is alive.
"If I had the divine devouring body then I could just eat all of these and let my body do the hard part, with my talent helping I could form any of the bodies that I want. But I would need both the devouring tortoise physique as well as the divine stag physique to form it."
In Itroth's life he was born with the devouring body, which he cultivated into the devouring physique, and luckily for him the lord of the forest that he grew up in had a relatively pure bloodline from the divine stag.
He had neither so until he found the descendants of these two beasts and harvested their heart blood he had to purify it this way.
The purification process was relatively simple, but extremely time intensive. It was mid day when he started and now that it was half way done it had just switched over to night.
He wasn't wasting his time however, he cultivated the hundred flowers cultivation method the entire time as well as continued to practice mana weaving.
"This is really going to take a long time, but I can't really complain."
Even after cultivating it for hours on end he finally reached 1% completion, where 1% of the rest of his body could handle mana the same way his circulatory system could, and his progress had already slowed down significantly.
He was still faster than Itroth though, it had taken him a week to reach this point, but that was understandable. He was constantly innovating while he was cultivating so his progress was naturally slowed down, but even if he had to start over from scratch he still wouldn't be as fast as Ray.
He didn't have Ray's talent which indirectly made it easier for him to cultivate and increase his strength.
It was only after a few hours after day time that the heart blood was finally purified, it went from a whole vial to barely a drop as the impurities were removed, so he could start to refine it.
Holding the drop on his finger tip, he started the refining process. This was not only mana intensive, but the control one needed to have was extreme.
Simply shoving mana into it with no regards would not only be a waste of both mana and the refining target, but the time and effort to source the target as well.
He didn't have to worry about either of those so he quickly refined it into blood essence.