He immediately went to his mind and looked at the plant to see what happened to the core. The core was completely gone and the plant had grown an entire foot. It grew multiple branches and leaves, looking like a properly fed plant now.
He smiled. This growth was what he was hoping for because of the core and he got it. The leaves were worth a lot more than any normal 4th Circle Beast Core would sell for. It would accelerate his growth a lot more.
He went back to the world and opened his eyes. Now that he knew that the Beast Core did what it was supposed to do, he went back to practicing. He still had to perfect his techniques and spells. Only then could he increase his power properly.
He maintained a strict routine that didn't give him any time to venture outside. He would only rotate the spells and train in them until he could no longer train because he depleted all his magic. When that happened, he would take a leaf and use it to gather magic. Then he would go back.
Slowly, he got so used to this cycle that he fell into a trance. He didn't even need food anymore after his breakthrough, so the trance persisted. With no one there to look after him and check on him, he kept going.
Eventually, two months shot by.
Leo opened his eyes and a huge wave of fatigue shook him to his core. He took a deep breath and fell back into his bed. He closed his eyes and immediately went to sleep.
When he opened his eyes, two days had passed. He stood up slowly and started stretching his body. He yawned and looked around. There was a layer of dust on everything around him. Because there wasn't any activity in the house, the place was starting to look abandoned.
He walked into the living room which was in a similar state. He sighed and released his magic all over the house to push the dust away. He was using a similar trick to how he cleaned himself, but this required much more magic. However, now that he was a 3rd Circle Mage, it was easier for him to do it.
He sat on the couch and looked at the progress he made. All of his spells grew greatly. The progress he had made in the past two months was going to help him greatly.
The spell that saw the most growth was the Shadowbind Bolt. Its proficiency increased from Novice to Intermediate. It was on the cusp of increasing to Advanced Proficiency. With this increased proficiency, he would be able to easily bind most of the mages and Aura Knights that were around his strength for around 5 seconds.
This might not seem like a lot, but it was a lot of time for someone as strong as him. If he was attacking a Magical Beast with a team, then binding the beast for 5 seconds would let them get close and deal as much damage they could in 5 seconds without worrying about getting injured. And in 5 seconds they could do a lot. Even his own strongest spell - the Soul Fire Burst would take 4 seconds to cast.
As for the progress in the Soul Fire Burst, he was able to get it to Intermediate Proficiency. This increased the amount of damage it dead as well as the range. He could now attack enemies more than 50 meters away with his Soul Fire Burst. If it was any other light attack spell, then it would reach larger distances though.
The final spell, The Intermediate Arcane Shield also reached Intermediate Proficiency. It enhanced his defenses greatly.
One other improvement to his arsenal was the Flame Barrage. He had trained that spell as well, bringing it up to Expert Proficiency. The only other 2nd Star Spell that he kept training was the Shadow Step. This was because of how useful the spell was for running away.
In the Shadow Step, he successfully finished mastering the spell. His proficiency reached Mastery and he could use the spell with ease. He could Shadow Step 100 meters at a time in a matter of seconds. It used a significant amount of Magical Energy when he did that, but it didn't matter with his increased capacity.
Finally, Valkyr's Deception also had some progress. On paper, it was the least progress out of all the spells. He was only able to barely get it to around Novice Proficiency. He knew this because he put proficiency categories on it himself.
He would consider it Intermediate Proficiency if he was able to make sure that someone that was the same level as him wouldn't be able to see through the spell. He wasn't there yet though. Even someone who was a minor stage or two less than him would be able to know that the object was tampered with.
However, progress was progress. At least he was able to make the first step to subtly hiding that he was actually using magic to alter the appearance of the object. He also made some progress in changing his own appearance.
After getting familiar with altering objects, he tried changing the structure of his face and had some success. The only problem was that if he didn't have a reference and tried to freestyle the appearance, the outcome was monstrous.
His minor training in increasing his magic capacity was very minor, even though he used the leaves of the Elderwood Tree. He didn't increase his strength too much, but he was able to consolidate himself into the Early Stage of the 3rd Star. He started forming his fourth cloud too, but there was a long way to go before he even reached the Intermediate Stage.
However, with the number of leaves he was using, he had cleared almost 60 leaves even though he had only been training in magic once in two days. This was because the speed at which he was able to absorb magic increased by more than 4 times.
Even though the leaf only attracted magic to it, because he absorbed the magic so quickly, the leaf was drained of energy too, making it wither quickly. He used two leaves every time he trained, making their consumption higher than it was supposed to be.
With all these improvements, he expected that his total strength doubled at least. Each spell that he used had increased in power by a lot, and if used in combinations, they would be a lot more effective. The Soul Fire Burst would be able to deal twice as much damage as before while the Shadow Step was around 1.5 times faster than when he was only in expert proficiency.
He decided to go out to the forest and try hunting some Magical Beasts to test out exactly how much he increased in total strength as well as recover some of the leaves that he had used. He could also test new combinations of spells and learn how to use them in battle. He was only planning on attacking 2nd Circle Magical Beasts though.
He didn't think it was safe to go after 3rd Circle Magical Beasts yet since he was only an Early Stage 3rd Circle Mage.
