Leo opened his eyes. He had gone through all of the leaves that the plant had in this time. The plant was now completely bare and looked like it was going to die, but he had made so much progress that he thought it was worth it.
In the two weeks, he had successfully gotten to the Peak-Stage of the 2nd Circle. All he needed to do was break through to the 3rd Circle. This would also make him one of the most powerful people in Solhaven. Obviously, all of this was because of the tome, but he still felt a great sense of pride because of this. Especially because he was only a 14-year-old orphan.
He stretched a little and went out of his room for the first time. He expelled all the dirt on his body by releasing magic from all of his pores just a little. It was a little trick he learned once he gained decent control over the magic. He decided to check up on Daphne for the first time.
He got close to her door and immediately sensed that she was in their training. She was still in the Peak-Stage of the 1st Circle so he guessed that she was still consolidating her base. That was what he was planning on doing too for the entirety of the next two weeks.
All of the magic he had absorbed sat in the magic cloud in his mind, but he wanted to make it more stable before starting to break through. He was hoping to do this by actually using his magic in battle against Magical Beasts.
Before doing that though, he felt a need to check his proficiency levels in the training room and improve on them a little. He wanted to increase his proficiency for the Beast Wave since his Shadow Step would be the most useful skill to master if he wanted to stay sneaky.
When he entered the room and opened the book, however, he saw a change. Earlier he could only train in 3 spells. He didn’t find that odd since it would be hard to master many skills if he had to divide his time among all of them. But now he suddenly had access to one more skill.
[Flame Barrage]
[Unleashes a rapid succession of fireballs toward targets. Upon impact, the fireballs explode, engulfing enemies in scorching flames.]
This was essentially a more advanced version of Flame Burst. It was exactly like that, except it was multiple of them at the same time. This meant that he could attack multiple enemies at the same time. This might not help him in the trip to the center of the forest, but if he was fighting against the Beast Wave it would be a very powerful spell.
He touched it to see what the spell looked like. He saw the demonstration the silhouette gave him. The silhouette split the magic stream right in its palm and made 5 balls of concentrated fire at the same time. It then sent all of them forward at the same time. All of them landed on the ground around 30 meters away and exploded into a huge explosion. All of the explosions were next to each other so they combined in effect.
He smiled and was eager to try it. The environment quickly changed into something suitable to learn the spell. It was the same room as the one for him to learn Flame Burst. He quickly tried splitting the magic stream the same way as the silhouette.
When he did try to do that initially, he failed. He lost control of the magic and it quickly merged back into a single stream. He realized that he had to start with only two streams instead of 5 like the silhouette. This was a lot easier and he succeeded fairly quickly.
His proficiency in the Flame Burst translated quickly to the Flame Barrage. He started off with Novice proficiency but it became Intermediate proficiency very quickly. It took him only a few hours to reach that stage. After doing that, he decided to stop. He was completely exhausted after training for an hour. He needed to take a break to continue.
While the spell was very powerful, it was also very taxing. The amount of magic he needed to use almost quadrupled even when he only made two other balls of fire. However, he realized that another way to use the spell was to fling the balls at the same target instead of spreading them out.
When he did that, the target was met with a blast that was so much more powerful than before and concentrated too. The spell was more useful to him like that, but it would remain a last resort because of how much magic he would have to use for that.
Now that he was a Peak-Stage 2nd Circle Mage, all of his spells got a lot stronger than before. He was able to exert almost three times as much power compared to before. This meant that he could stay in the shadow world for longer – almost a minute before being forced out.
The shadow world wasn’t invincible. He wasn’t completely hidden when he was there. If someone was strong enough, they would be able to detect him. However, because they never expected the shadows to have a person in them, they wouldn’t be on guard.
He would be safe near an Aura Knight, even a 4th Circle one. However, if he did that near a 3rd Circle Mage or higher, he would be caught. This was because mages had higher levels of perception than Aura Knights.
After practicing his Shadow Step for a little while, he decided it was time for him to finally go out and face off against Magical Beasts. He was cooped up in his house for far too long. It was already a month since the year had started and he had been in his house more than he had been out of it. He was starting to seem like a shut-in.
The next day, he got out to go to the forest. Before going, he first went to the inn again. It had been two weeks so he wanted to hear about any changes in the situation in the forest. He walked to the inn he normally went to and walked in.
Immediately, he noticed a difference compared to the last time he entered. There were fewer people than normal and they were also less lively. He didn’t have his cloak on yet so he decided to meet up with Miller to talk to him.
Miller was serving customers like normal. He saw Leo when he turned around. His eyes brightened immediately when he saw him.
“Leo! I am so glad to see you. I haven’t seen you for so long that I feared the worst had happened.” He said.
Immediately Leo realized how bad the situation was.