As the three companions began their journey, they planned everything they would need for it as they walked on a dirt road surrounded by grasslands.

"I don't know about you, but I'm almost coinless," Travis said.

"Me too. I spent most of my savings on renting the books and the lab." Marianne confessed.

"Well, we are going to need to find a way to get an income while we travel," Nathan said.

"Maybe we could sell some weapons. I'm sure the big shots from any faction would pay great sums for a few of them." Travis suggested.

"I mean, yes, they will pay it. But the problem is that they will study them until they manage to replicate, and at that point, our investigation wouldn't be our anymore." Nathan said.

"Well, it makes sense if you look at it like that. Do you have any better ideas?" Travis asked as he looked at his companions.

"If we are going to travel across Orixe, our best bet would be to become hunters and sell the resources we get from magical beasts to the highest bidder," Marianne suggested.

"Not a bad plan at all. It would give us an excuse to visit regions and search for magical beasts with new runes." Nathan said.

"Also, we can reduce expenses by eating from what we hunt and camping around, so even if we don't manage to get a lot of money from hunting, I believe we can travel without much of a problem," Travis said.

After clarifying how they would finance their trip, the three cultivators continued their journey.

The path until the Guburgs' territory was long. Too long to be made in a day or two. Because of this, they continued their experiments whenever they camped to rest.

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Each one decided to focus on a different area.

Nathan began to study how each rune interacted with the other and which were the best distributions. Not only that, but he also studied how each element reacted after passing through the three runes at the same time.

Like that, he manages to create weapons capable of creating barriers capable of blocking even their most powerful attacks.

On the other hand, Travis was doing his best to create a manasteel needle. Even though this may sound completely unrelated, the truth is that it could make their runes much more useful.

That was because they discovered that the rune's size, even though

Its power would partially decrease, but that decrease would not be proportional to the size reduction.

That meant that two runes would gather the energy around them faster than a single rune that covered the same area.

Because of this, by using a mana-steel needle, they would create thinner lines, which would allow them to reduce the size of the runes compared to when they used their fingers.

As for Marianne, her investigation focused on what happened when you inscribed runes on specific materials with specific energy types. After all, if you used fire-energy to inscribe on a piece of wood, the material would burn and be damaged, which would cause the draw to deteriorate. But if you used lightning-energy on an iron ingot, you would need much less energy than in other materials.

Learning which types of energy work best with each material will be beneficial in the long run because it will allow them to reduce energy and material waste.

After waking up in the morning, they would continue their experiments, and after having lunch, they would continue their journey until an hour before sunset.

For the first few days after setting up camp, Marianne would tend to Travis' corrupted arm with her life-energy, but after a few days, Travis decided that he would heal himself after learning how to use life-energy.

At first, Marianne tried to convince him that it was not a good idea, but after a whole day of trying, she had to give up.

Each day, after setting up their camp, they would have dinner while they discussed what should be their priorities and next steps on the journey. After that, one would stay awake during the first watch while his companions slept for a few hours before one woke up.

But one of them was doing something else while being on watch.

After making sure that his companions were sleeping, Travis took off the bandages on his right arm, and with a mana-steel needle, he began to draw runes on his corrupted arm.