The reason he didn't want to bring Daphne was that the possibility that he would encounter a 2nd Circle Magical Beast was fairly high. Since he was going to venture into the forest, it would be better if he was alone so that he could use his mage powers. With Daphne, he would be handicapped since he would be limited to using his aura which he wasn't used to.
He walked to the forest. On the way, he dropped by the inn again to see if there were any changes. With the Blacktooth Gang gone for only ten days, he didn't expect much change. But to his surprise, the outside was completely cleaned up.
The damage that the Blacktooth Gang members had made initially was all gone and the decorations had increased. It seemed that with the loan cleared, Miller didn't have to pay exorbitant amounts of money as interest. With that money being left over, he could use it for the inn unlike before.
Leo entered the inn and saw that the customers were a lot more lively than before. There were more people there as well. He immediately saw Miller at the counter, taking the money from the customers. He looked a lot brighter than before. He smiled and took a table in the corner and pulled up his cloak. He didn't come here to talk to them, but it was nice to know they were in a good place.
He listened in to the conversations while sipping on a non-alcoholic beer. After an hour, he paid for his drink and left the inn. He learned that the forest was more restless than he expected. The entirety of the Outer Forest was infested with 1st Circle and 2nd Circle Magical Beasts.
The only reason no one showed fear was that they trusted the magistrate who took care of the problem the previous time too. Apparently, the reason he acted so slowly was that he was only appointed after the problem started.
He prepared himself for the influx of Magical Beasts and walked to the forest. Since he now had aura, he no longer needed Body Strengthening Magic. No matter how strong he was, it wouldn't be giving him more physical strength than actual aura. With aura, he would be twice as strong as with just Body Strengthening Magic. There was also the fact that he had more aura than normal Aura Knights. This also let him reduce his dependency on magic.
As he was walking to the forest, he practiced coating his blade with aura. As he got closer to the forest, he started putting more attention to his surroundings. This was the first time he was coming back to the forest after he broke through to become a 2nd Star Mage. He was now armed with his improved senses and would be able to sense any close by Magical Beasts.
As he got closer to the Outer Forest, he sensed Pseudo-1st Circle Magical Beasts in the outskirts. He ignored them and walked into the Outer Forest. He got his dagger ready and looked for his initial prey.
He found a victim very quickly. It was a Flickertail Snake, a weak Early-Stage 1st Circle Magical Beast. It noticed Leo walking towards it and started fleeing away instead of attacking him. It was on the bottom of the food chain and was more accustomed to running instead of fighting back.
Leo didn't want to let his prey go so easily and Shadow Stepped to stop the snake. He quickly got in front of it and slashed it with his blade that was coated with the aura. Unlike what it was supposed to do, the blade only barely left behind a trail of darkness and struck the snake.
The blade struck it and injured it heavily, but it didn't release a burst of energy. He wasn't able to transfer his aura in time to do that. The snake was pushed back and he tried slashing it again. It resulted in the same slash that didn't give any burst.
He sighed and went to the dead snake and took out the Beast Core. Then he went to his next victim. He was going to keep practicing his slash on live targets since he wouldn't be wasting time. Instead of wasting his aura on a tree, he could kill Magical Beasts and gain Beast Cores in the process.
For the rest of the day, he only looked for weak 1st Circle Magical Beasts that he could easily kill with his aura. He avoided any monsters stronger than that because he didn't want to spend his time on them. By the end of the day, he was able to kill 8 Magical Beasts before deciding that it was time to head back. In total, he obtained 9 1st Circle Beast Cores.
He also made some progress with his Twilight Veil Slash. From making no explosion at contact, he started to make a minor eruption of aura once his dagger contacted the Magical Beast. It didn't deal a lot of damage, but it was good progress.
He went back home and immediately checked to see if the Beast Cores would have any effect on the plant. He took all of them into his mind and threw them onto his plant. They crumbled into dust and covered the plant. The plant absorbed all of the dust and grew almost 10 centimeters. With that growth, he could see that a leaf was threatening to sprout, but it would still take more cores for the plant to grow another leaf.
However, it still meant that the plant would keep growing leaves. The new leaf was growing in the same place as the one he plucked out though, so he would need to make the plant grow more if he wanted to see whether it could grow more than 5 leaves.
After watering his tree with Beast Cores, he went back to practicing magic. Even though he was sure that the plant would grow more leaves, he didn't start using the leaves yet. He wanted to use them only after he was done with training in aura. He was planning on focusing solely on magic for a period of time.
This meant that he would gather enough Beast Cores and grow enough leaves so that he could spend an entire week just training his magic continuously. He was also very doubtful about his timeline. He thought that the Beast Wave would happen in less than a month. But at the rate at which he saw the expansion in the forest, it might take longer.
He wasn't sure if that was a good thing though. That meant that the Magical Beast in charge was not just a 3rd Circle Purple Moon Wolf but something stronger. This would be dangerous for Solhaven. However, that also meant that his original estimate of two months would be more apt and he would have enough time to grow stronger.
This didn't mean that he was decreasing his training intensity. He had to be prepared for either of his predictions. He went to sleep for just 3 hours after finishing his magic training and got up the next day to go to the forest. He couldn't afford time for something as mundane as sleep.
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