Chapter 31: Growing Strong Chapter 31: Growing Strong Sera just lowered her head. She knew if James became a knight, Zerek wouldn’t waste a single moment to get rid of him, but she could not allow him to go into the obvious death trap. Sera’s eyes filled with dread. She wanted to beg him not to go, but the words died in her throat. And before she could speak— "May I say something?" Leo’s calm voice cut through the tension like a knife. Both James and Sera turned to see Leo approaching them. Then he began. "If you will allow it, I will come with you to the hunt," Leo spoke, directly looking James in his eyes. "No," James said flatly. "You just awakened, and treants are not something you can deal with. I will handle it myself." Then Leo responded with a reason. "Trust me, if you give me some time, then I will surely grow strong enough to fight alongside you. And I even need to repay the favour for all this time you protected Lily." "What if you don’t reach the desired strength?" James asked. "Then I will follow you without your knowledge." He said it as a matter of fact. James chuckled at his answer and gave a nod. "Fine, but do your best to grow strong in this short time. I will go on the 13th day of the given week." He said with a snort. Sera had a complicated expression on her face seeing Leo helping them. To be honest, she was relieved that a trustworthy person was going to be with James in the quest, but the dangers were more severe; she could only pray for them to be successful. James and Sera decided to close the restaurant from now on. So, Leo and Lily had their breakfast and were now walking together in the marketplace. "So, what should we do now?" Lily asked. "You should probably get registered in the Beast Hall," Leo said after thinking for a while. Though it was rare, some people managed to awaken their talent in the wild due to natural causes, so there is a provision in Beast Hall for them to get registered. Though to prevent the crowd of disillusioned people who think they have awakened, the fees were high. 1 silver coin. Since there was no way to check the type of talent an individual had, the Hall asked the applicants to tame a Beast in their supervision, or bring out the already tamed beast. Then they would proceed to check for the mana signature of the individual for any criminal records or the making of any new false ID. With everything checked, they would see their soul rank and the strength of the Beast; after that, assign them their titles. This was exactly what happened with Lily. "Ohhh... You managed to tame a spirit-type beast, and to top it off with a rare rank soul, Lucky." The examiner complimented Lily while conducting the tests. The reason he said her lucky was that spirit-type beasts helped an individual to gather more mana in their body. And having more mana meant unrestrained use of skill, which gave an edge to a person locked in a fight. After everything was done, Lily received the copper badge that signified her being a knight, along with the 5 silver monthly stipend. "Now what will you be doing?" Lily asked "Me? I will go on a hunt of wild beasts... I need to to strong enough by the time James calls me for his quest." Lily nodded. "Then I will also start to train and get used to this new strength." She said and brought out Arnold’s sword. Unlike Leo’s system, which made it so he could use all the strength points he had without training, other people needed to train so they could properly control and use their strength. "But I will do my best so I can grow enough by the time we need to go with master James. I don’t want you to be alone facing danger when there’s a possibility of ambush." Lily made her statement, leaving no point of argument. "Fine, but I will personally see you are strong enough," Leo said, flicking her forehead. Lily gave a cute pout, then muttered. "I won’t be able to be with you for a while, right?" Leo turned and faced her. "I mean, we have plenty of time later." "I want to continue where we left off earlier..." Her cheeks started turning red. Suddenly, Leo formed a serious expression, then said in a deep voice. "I can hear them." "What?" Lily got confused. "I can hear the wild beasts calling me, bye. See you later," With that, Leo darted straight in the direction of the city gates. "LEO! Hmph, bastard." But her lips curled as she started walking towards the restaurant. "I will see where you run tonight." --- rustle rustle A grey wolf came into view, but it had a terrified expression on its face as it ran frantically, whimpering. At once, a figure appeared from the darkness of the bush and bit over its neck, ripping its throat away, killing it instantly as it convulsed in the ground gurgling. Direwolf(mid 1-star) Killed - 4 xp Level 9 - 796/818 "Good job, Shyra," A voice came as Leo’s silhouette appeared beside the wolf. He quickly crouched down and extracted the mana crystal, putting it in a pouch that was already full. He looked down, and 2 more such pouches were hanging. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮 "Looks like this is it, huh?" He muttered. He had been on the hunt since the morning after running away from Lily. The most beasts he found were low to mid 1-star rank, with some rare being high 1-star rank beasts. He purposefully took only the core and mana crystal that he found, not the bodies. "Ahh man, I really need some inventory type shit, I am running at a loss, those corpses could have been sold for a nice price," he said with a grimace. He also discovered that the cores of lower or equal rank to Shyra were being digested by her immediately. He saw her extracting the core from the wolf’s body and crunching on it. Immediately, the next moment, Shyra lunged and bit him hard on the arm. "AHHH!" He screamed. but then— Chain Bond - 100% -> Blood Bond - 1% Status update!