Lucas woke up to the early birds singing their songs. A clear blue sky was a welcoming sight. Without any worries, Lucas could wake up and check his progress. The ground he laid on was hard and filled with cracks as if all the water had evaporated. His little experiment left a circle of pure death and decay.
"Not the most secret or hidden technique, but better than nothing. We could do this again, but I can tell we would need something big and filled with life force if we want any progress with our core."
While this thought was somewhat correct, the moment he would reach Rank 1, the technique would become useless, but that wasn't something Lucas realized. To reach it, he knew from his studies that he needed to circulate energy into his core.
The more he did so, the more runes would appear on his core. When the runes formed a circle, he would achieve Rank 1, what happened after that, he had no clue. For now, all he needed was a large amount of energy.
'We could just get a few humans you know? Or beast from the area, they should be filled with energy.'
'And then incite a manhunt against us? Needless slaughter doesn't give us anything but a bad reputation.'
'Like I care about reputation.'
'You might not, but I do. We could use the core from Venion, most of the magicules inside are gone, but the core itself should be useful in some manner.'
'Don't even bother, do you think we can simply absorb a core from an entire Rank above us? We don't even have the very first rune on our core, and you want to absorb a complete one? Idiot!'
Lucas sighed, he needed more information, but where would he find that? A school? A new mentor? A library? All of those things could only be found in a city or town, thus he needed to move.
He had Venion's core in his backpack, it looked like a small marble that had an ice blue color after washing it. With the technique he learned from the books, he could probably form all the runes that were needed, but he didn't know what would happen when the circle completes.
Besides the fact that he would achieve the next Rank, he had no idea how that transformation transpired. Would he go unconscious? Would he face a certain trail? Or would his core overload from the energy and explode?
Part of him was too pessimistic to think nothing strange would happen. 'Being completely prepared for anything is the absolute best way to succeed in everything. Don't take random risks, I will only accept calculated risks if you're so desperate.'
But to do this he needed to travel to a populated place first. 'For now, the best option would be to scour the towns in Frigus. They allow dark magic, more than the Holy Kingdom.'
'I don't think it will last long. We need to hurry up, there won't be any kind of investigation for now. Except if someone comes to deliver a letter or any kind of invitation they would notice. Let's just hope we have enough time to move.'
Hunting animals along the way and fishing were his main sources of nutrition. Eating grass or worms like he would do to survive wasn't necessary anymore. He wasn't the strongest out there, but he was capable enough to handle a few monsters by himself, especially if he was prepared, so a few bunny rabbits weren't that much of a problem, besides finding them of course.
Reading the books over again, he reviewed his current state and goal.
In order to reach the next rank, he needed to form the runes of the first circle on his core, 15 in total. In order to form a rune, he needed either a big chunk of energy that could immediately form a rune, or he could do it gradually. Simply absorbing the energy in the air and circulating it in his core was beneficial.
The second approach took a lot longer but was also a lot safer. With the first tactic, he would have to be careful not to absorb too much energy and overload his own core. Luckily, it wasn't necessary to meditate to circulate the energy inside his core. So he could do so while walking, so Lucas enjoyed the fact he could do multiple things at once.
There were multiple ways to circulate the magicules in the core, but Lucas knew only one that the book provided. The book about magical principles was extremely helpful for him, it explained how everything worked, how he could improve, and what to avoid.
'The author had to be a genius to explain even complicated things so easily. I wonder if he signed it somewhere, if he made multiple books, we would have an immediate goal.'
"Signed S.R."
'There we go, thank you S, you helped us in ways you couldn't even imagine.'
Making his way to the first city or town he could find, he circulated his core whenever he possibly could. Doing it too much would give his core a "cramp", hurting him whenever he would use his core. But that didn't stop him, he kept going even if it hurt, because he could see that it had better effects when it started to hurt.
The pain wasn't crippling, but it certainly was annoying. But even that wasn't enough for Lucas, he wanted more. His body was already suffering from straining his core, yet it couldn't satisfy him. His mind wasn't occupied with something, he could talk to himself, but that would be boring, and it didn't take too long before all his books were read.
Yet there wasn't a single practice on how to improve his mental sphere in the book about magical principles, which mostly focused on the use of magicules and their explanation. The mind sphere was nowhere to be found, so he had to try to create his own training method.
At first, he started to think hard about a lot of different things, going as deep as possible into a certain subject to try and strain his mind.
That didn't give him any kind of result, his mental sphere was a lot stronger than a normal mind, so mental exhaustion was harder to reach except if he used his willpower for something, but that wasn't training. That merely sucked the energy out of it, it didn't improve anything.
Then it occurred to him, 'What if we both think of things at the same time as we did with the memories back when we encountered the Aruna Bat?'
Still with the mindset of before, he wanted to try his previous exercise but with two subjects at the same time. That didn't work in the slightest, his mind became fuzzy, and he started to get a headache.
That sign of pain was something that Lucas interpreted positively. He believed that through the pain you could grow, so he kept going. Every time his mind was cleared he made it fuzzy again, he wanted to get a headache, because he could see that he could hold on a little longer or the headache wasn't as bad after a while.
Nothing changed visually, the sphere stayed the same, but he could focus longer on two subjects at the same time, so it was good enough.
During his travel he kept forcing himself to train to be occupied with something, his body and mind were starting to get really exhausted from all the stress put on them. Even a good night's rest didn't fix anything, but that didn't stop Lucas, he simply kept going, kept moving forward.
Eventually, he could see signs of human civilization in the distance.