Days passed and Noah's journey became dull.
He spent most of his time awake training while he marched only during the afternoons.
He liked this kind of life though, his strength was increasing steadily and having escaped from the clutches of the family left him with a sense of freedom.
The only problem remained his blood companion.
Since he only traveled under the daylight his chances to encounter a rank 3 darkness beast were low.
However, that didn't mean that there was a scarcity of magical beasts.
Noah was standing on one of the branches of the trees around him.
He was slowly eating a meal while watching the battle below him.
Two peak rank 3 beasts were fighting to the death on the ground, probably they were deciding to which one that territory belonged to.
One was a black bear-type beast of which Noah didn't know the name while the other one was a Thunder wolf.
The wolf used its speed and ranged attacks to continuously hurt the opponent but the vitality of the bear was immense, it endured every lightning bolt that arrived at him.
'The bear is probably an earth element magical beast, its defenses are awesome. If it catches the wolf once, the battle will be over.'
Everything happened as Noah predicted.
The Thunder wolf went too close to the bear that abruptly jumped toward it.
Its four meters frame stomped the wolf reducing its body into a pulp of flesh and blood.
'Wolf-type magical beasts are generally stronger in packs while the bear is a solitary being. It was stupid to fight it one versus one.'
He shook his head and resumed its trip.
More days passed but of the darkness-type magical beasts, there were no traces.
The shape of a mountain became visible as he neared Ebonrest city.
'That's Shelfan Mountain, maybe I've been too paranoid in speeding for two weeks straight. Not even a month has passed but I'm already here.'
He didn't want to return to the human society so soon.
'I guess I'll slow down a bit more. I don't want to stay in the open for more than necessary.'
The more time he spent among other people the more it was possible that someone discovered him.
After all, the events in the separate dimension were still recent, it was better to hide for the time being.
'I need to explore during the night, my strength is increasing too much for Assea to continue to be useful.'
Even against Lena, the only usage that his blood companion had was to gain time to let Noah fight versus fewer people at the same time.
'In the academy, the cultivators will all be disgustingly rich or highly talented, I can't go unprepared.'
He started that night with his research.
He stopped his meditation during the darkest hour and explored his surroundings.
Many different magical beasts were hunting during the night, the environment of the forest was radically diverse.
Owl-types, snake-types, spider-types, the beasts of the night were all running around searching for a prey.
Noah joined them, his eyes shone in the darkness giving him a perfect vision and he felt that his senses were sharper.
'It seems that since the darkness element is more abundant now, even my condition has become more focused.'
However, that night of exploration was unsuccessful.
Noah didn't mind too much and just repeated his research the following night.
A week passed like this and Noah still hadn't found any clue of his target.
On the seventh night, he was jumping from branch to branch paying attention to his surroundings.
He was about to stop his hunt and find a place to rest when a figure flew at high speed near him.
Noah's hand shot rapidly and grabbed the little beast.
It was a bat-type magical beast, its strength was in the middle tier of rank 1 but when Noah inspected it he felt a familiar energy coming from it.
'Darkness element!'
The bat was struggling to escape his grip but Noah just stared at it.
Then, he opened his hand and the bat immediately flew away.
Noah followed it till the beast entered a small hole in the ground.
He neared the hole and sent his mental energy inside to have an idea of its structure.
The cavity seemed to lead to an underground cavern and he sensed the presence of many life forms coming from it.
'I finally found something.'
He chose to rest near the entrance for one day in order to gather more information.
During the day, the entrance was silent and other magical beasts simply passed over it.
However, at night, some bats would come out of it and return with little victims.
When Noah saw a rank 2 bat bringing back another rank 2 magical beast, he knew what was happening.
'They are gathering food for the leader.'
He unconsciously smiled and prepared to enter the cavern during the daylight.
He speculated that these kinds of beasts rested during that time so it was the best moment to explore the cave.
The afternoon came and he directly jumped in the entrance.
He fell for about three meters before touching the ground.
In front of him, a long corridor stretched in the distance.
Noah walked along it and noticed many other holes that led to the surface.
'The number of bats that I saw was probably just a part of the swarm. That's good, it means that there is a high chance to meet their rank 3 version.'
He advanced for a few hundred meters and the first living beings began to appear.
They were mostly bat-type magical beasts but there were also few spider-type and rodent-type.
The ranks of the latter were quite low, it was obvious that a bat pack ruled that underground area.
He then reached what seemed the central point of the cavern as a wide room expanded in front of him.
The ground was empty, but on the ceiling, there were hundreds of bat-type magical beasts sleeping hanging upside down on their lower claws.
In the middle of the pack, three big figures were visible.
They had two pairs of wings and one of them was slightly bigger than the other two.
Noah could not help but smile brightly.
'Found you.'
