"It's just us three now, Talon. Just like how we started." Liam's gaze swept over the sleeping fox in his hand as he absent-mindedly muttered.
Screee… Screee… The huge bird flapped its metallic wings and craned its neck up to agree with him.
But Liam chuckled. That statement was wrong. He looked at the howler demon staring at him sitting beside him. The creature made him uncomfortable when he stared too long into its eyes. It was as if he was looking into bottomless nothingness.
Liam banged his forehead with his palm and snapped himself out of the trance. He stopped staring at the demon and instead looked over at the vast endless horizon.
That was right. They were crossing the kingdom boundary for the first time. This path was covered with powerful creatures so he had to be careful.
Liam had chosen to do this through the western boundary of the Kingdom as the barbarians were the easiest to handle in his opinion.
The northern and the southern terrain were extremely unfavorable and he also did not know what creatures dwelled there. From what he knew from his previous life, there were several level 100 beasts in the region.
He did not know more specifics than that but he knew that a Level 100 beast should not be underestimated. In his last life, a couple of guilds had tried to raid these beasts but they were wiped out instantly.
The amount of mana these creatures commanded was on a completely different level. Their strength, power, and attacks could not be compared to the lower-level players.
So Liam as well did not dare take that route. As it was he did not know how much more time he had left in the tutorial. With everything going on in the real world and in the game world, all he might have is a couple of weeks or so.
Hence, this last stretch of tutorial time had to be used very carefully. He did not want to take risks and he did not want to focus on unimportant things.
Past the land of barbarians were the elven kingdoms and his goal was to reach there.
As the afternoon sun dipped lower and lower, the blanket of night spread all around. Talon arrived at the border of the Kingdom, near the necromancer's hideout where Liam had previously spent a lot of his time combing through the place.
"Drop me here, big guy." Liam patted the bird. Talon bobbed his head and then elegantly glided down to land on a clear patch of grassland, one of the few in the densely packed forest.
"From here on out, I think it's best if I leave by myself. Take care. Return back to the guild residence and help others if they need you."
Screee. Screee. Talon rubbed his head against Liam, gave a glance at the fox in his hand, and then once again soared into the sky.
Though traveling by air would reduce the overall time taken, it was far too risky and would make them vulnerable to ambushes, so Liam decided to send Talon back and continue the rest of the way by foot.
But of course, he was not traveling alone. He immediately waved his hand, summoning the small army of soul minions.
Liam gazed at the bunch and they were leveling up quite nicely. Even the rabbits and chickens were around Level 30 at the moment.
But it was nowhere enough.
"I need to give you guys more attention," Liam muttered to himself. After the fight with the tower master, he had already decided to pay his class a lot more focus and time.
Each of his soul minions was technically a treasure that he could take from the game and use in the real world. Every single one of them could be forged into strong warriors.
So now that he obtained the mana core he wanted, this was the most important thing he had to do. "Let's clear all the mobs on the way. Don't leave anything out." Liam commanded.
The group moved through the forest taking down all the smaller mobs. With Crawford taking charge, they were progressing a lot faster than usual. They even went out of the way to clear some of the mobs.
With Liam at the center of the circle, the group of soul minions spread themselves along the radius and took out all the opponents they met.
Liam as well enjoyed the constant influx of experience points.
At first, it was less efficient for him to share his experience points with these many followers but now that everyone was almost pulling their weight, he was starting to see the results.
It was still not as effective as when he would have hunted down these mobs by himself. However, he now had the free time to focus on other things.
After the PVP tower incident, not only had he gained insight into controlling soul and soul fragments better but he also had obtained a few insights into the soul forging process itself.
Liam whistled and called back two of the soul minions, two chickens. The birds immediately jogged over to him tirelessly. Their soul bodies were as pristinely clean as ever and their eyes lacked any emotion. They simply waited for Liam's command.
However, unexpectedly Liam did not say anything. Instead, he condensed the two into their respective soul beads, and with each of his hands, he controlled each of the beads.
Liam closed his eyes and completely focused on these two small beads.
Soul bead was nothing but extremely concentrated soul energy. So he could feel the opposing and attracting forces within the beads which held together the entire soul.
He could very clearly feel it.
Forging souls like this without allowing them to dissipate was against the natural order. So they were constantly trying to burst open and attain that equilibrium.
Liam had worked so hard to forge them with mana precisely because of this very reason.
Now even if he tinkered with them a little, this delicate balance would break open and the entire soul would collapse and dissipate.
However, at the moment Liam planned to do exactly that. He wanted to burst open these two soul beads.
