Leon jumped to his feet, throwing both Claire and Sophia to the ground. They had been touching his back to check if he was okay, but he hadn’t noticed until his shoulders had connected with their faces. Now he was the one who needed to check on them. They were both rolling around in a flattened patch of red grass, clutching their faces as they groaned in pain. He didn’t spare them a second thought. Not because he was cruel, but because something was crawling around inside his arm.

He gripped onto his forearm and looked for an entry point. Whatever it was, it had to crawl in from somewhere. Leon turned his arm over again and again, running his hand along the grey skin to find an anomaly on his palm; anything out of the norm. Instead, he found nothing. There was no odd mark, red bump, or blood anywhere.

Leon paused for a moment before he pulled out his belt and wrapped it around his elbow, keeping it tight by pulling on it with his teeth. His blood stopped flowing. The pressure built up, but it did nothing to stop whatever had crawled inside his flesh. It wiggled through his veins, pushing and bulging out as it rose higher up his arm. The pressure increased with every inch it moved, and it felt as if his veins would suddenly burst.

Finally, it reached the belt. The creature pressed against the cutoff and easily flowed through. Leon felt his heart sink when the sensation disappeared entirely. Focusing on his arm, he let out a shaking breath. He had been mistaken all along. A stream of power merged into his blood, diffusing into his flesh and bones. A constant flow that, with each passing second, made him feel just a tiny bit stronger.

Leon opened his aura sight and confirmed his guess. The red mist was being drawn towards him, circling around his left arm in a steadily growing whirlpool. The pressure wasn’t a living entity, it was the natural aura of the blood forest crawling through his veins. His arm was absorbing the aura in the air and filtering it into his own body.

“Hey!” Claire shouted, shoving him so hard that he tripped and fell onto his knees, creating his own section of flattened grass. “What the hell was that about?”

Leon pushed himself off the ground. Turning around, he winced at what he saw. Sophia was unharmed if a little dirty. As for Claire… Leon understood why she was so upset. Her nose was dripping blood and her eye was slowly turning darker. He must’ve also elbowed her in the eye.

“Shit, I’m really sorry,” Leon said, pulling off his backpack. “Here, I have a Bloodroot elixir with your name on it. A tiny sip and just a few drops on your eye and you’ll be healthier than you were yesterday.”

Leon held out the water bottle full of bloody liquid, but Claire didn’t take it. She stared at the arm holding the bottle.

His left arm.

“What the hell?” Leon dropped the bottle and stepped back, holding his arm away as if he could somehow detach it. “How did this happen?”

“Well, you see,” Claire sniffed, blood dripping down her chin. “If you think about moving your arm it usually does whatever you want it to. Very complex interactions going on here. Stop me if you get confused, ‘kay?”

Leon apologised again for elbowing her in the face and grabbed the Bloodroot elixir. It only took a few drops for the injuries to disappear, but she claimed to be feeling some phantom pain still. He couldn’t do anything about that so he apologised again.

Once they were done, he managed to organise some of his thoughts and ideas.

“Could you please explain what that whole thing was about?” Sophia said, smiling up at him. Unlike her sister, she seemed glad about his recovery, and now that he thought about it, he was too.

Leon did his best to relay what he thought happened. His guess may not be correct but the results spoke for themselves, the most obvious being that his arm was moving again. It was also constantly absorbing the potent blood aura surrounding him. He could think of no other reason for its sudden recovery besides entering the Central Plane and absorbing its dense aura, triggering something within his arm.

It did, however, raise many new questions. When he first awakened, his arm expelled the demonic corruption in the form of that acidic black blood, losing its hostility but also its ability to move. Now it was absorbing blood aura and moving again, meaning one of two things: the corrupted blood was regenerating, meaning he would transform into a demon in the coming weeks or months. Or it was creating something new to replace the corruption.

A type of blood that was his own, perhaps?

The idea that his arm may attempt to corrupt him again was horrifying. Luckily, there was nothing to suggest it would happen right away so Leon continued with his explanation. He would just have to keep an eye out in case any early warning signs popped up. Then again, who was to say he could do anything to stop it once the change began?

“You thought something was crawling inside your arm?” Claire said, exasperated.

“Well, there technically was. I originally thought it was a worm or something but I was wrong. It was the feeling of blood aura stabbing into my skin and crawling through my veins. At least I assume the mist is blood aura, seeing as it’s red and my body can absorb it.”

Claire sighed, shaking her head. “What do you want to do? Stay here and soak up more power or go back and keep looking for an exit.”

“Let’s stay here!” Sophia said, jumping up and down on the spot. “Maybe when you absorb enough blood aura you’ll transform into a demon lord!”

“You want me to become a demon?”

“N-no, it’s just that something awesome might happen and, uh-”

“Hush, child. I wasn’t asking you in the first place,” Claire said, turning back to Leon. “Ignore her, she’s been getting into anime lately.”

Sophia blushed.

“No need to feel embarrassed,” Leon said, hoping to make her feel better. “I like anime as well.”

“But to answer your question, Claire, I think we should go back for now. We still need to explore the perimeter and make sure an exit isn’t there before we move through the Central Plane. As for my absorbing the blood aura… When we travel to the mountain, we’ll try walking along the middle and if something happens, I can dive over the line into the gold forest.”

Reaching an agreement, they turned back to the barrier and started walking. Sophia didn’t follow at first, mumbling something that only Claire seemed to hear. She went bright red and whispered harshly back to her little sister, but Leon didn’t hear any part of the conversation.

“What was that? Is something wrong?”

“N-Nothing!”

They continued to whisper fight so Leon broke away from them so that they had privacy. He hopped over to the golden forest and made sure that he wasn’t absorbing the yellow aura. Once it was confirmed that he couldn’t, they went back to the outer realms where the flow of power was cut off. The slight increase in strength didn’t fade away, but the feeling of constantly growing in power was now gone, making him feel like he was making a stupid decision not to soak up more power.

Over the next two hours, they explored another thirteen realms until they came across part of a house. A lounge room to be exact. It was propped up by a huge stone fireplace, the low wooden ceiling resting on it and two other thick logs on either side.

There was no furniture besides a few rotting piles of fabric and wood.

They quickly set up camp, leaving Sophia to butcher the squirrel and cook it. Leon had sniped one out of a tree with a well-placed Qi Bullet about twenty minutes ago, meaning it was fresh and full of meat. It was a little smaller than the one that had attacked her the day before but still enough to feed their little party of three for one night. Sadly, it didn’t have one of those rocks in it.

Since she couldn’t cultivate yet, Sophia was more than happy to help out. Especially when her food was much better than her sisters. Apparently, Sophia loved to bake and often cooked back at their family home, even doing a lot of experimental things she saw professional chefs do online.

Leon could also cook, but he would much rather do alchemy and cultivate. He nabbed the five herbs that shone in his aura sight before leaving. He was excited to see if he could do anything with them, but that part of the night would not come until he exhausted his Qi supply. Time was of the essence. If they had the misfortune of running into the paramilitary group led by Tyler, Leon wanted enough power to run away without having to dig a bullet out of his shoulder once he escaped.

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Leon quickly burned some sticks and paper in the fireplace, building it up over the next twenty minutes. Once a log caught, he sat beside Claire and meditated. He had been cycling his excess Qi all day, the mention of which surprised Claire quite a bit. She called him a freak under her breath, but he heard every word with his enhanced senses. The method wasn’t complicated. All you had to do was move your Qi as you breathed, only you did it while standing up instead of sitting and meditating.

Simple process for a simple act. In order to advance his cultivation, all Leon needed to do was expose his body to Qi. The act was so easy that any fool could do it. The reason why Claire wasn’t passively cultivating was that she was subconsciously holding her Qi in her dantian. Any other person, however, would allow their Qi to go wherever their breathing pushed it.

At least that was what Claire said the others were doing. She had originally considered it a sign of poor control and low talent, but now she knew the truth of the matter. The regular folk were actually cultivating without even realising it, allowing their excess Qi to push them further. The only reason Claire was ahead of them was due to her talent. If she wasn’t so efficient at cycling while she meditated then someone would’ve quickly overtaken her lead.

But Leon didn’t want to rely solely on talent. He was blessed with several advantages and needed to leverage every one of them if he wanted to live through this ordeal. He couldn’t help recalling the mountains as they pulsed with power. There was more to gain there, and he would have to bend those advantages to his will if he wanted to reap the most of anyone in this place.

Leon focused on the tiniest bone in his body. The first minor breakthrough of middle Foundation Forging would be achieved when the bones were fully nourished by Qi. Unlike the previous stage, he could now focus on individual body parts to compartmentalise his progress. There was no obvious change in any part of his body aside from his toes, each one partially refined. It made sense that the bigger the bone, the harder it was to enhance.

But on second look, he actually did have bones that were already refined after a single day of passive cultivation. Inside his ears were several small bones, each one smaller than the ones found in his toes by a large margin. The rest of his body was, of course, barely altered by what little progress he made today. The bones in his ears were minuscule, making them an excellent marker for what a bone enhanced by regular cultivation looked like.

He could try something new if he used his ear bones as a reference point.

Focusing on the largest bone in his body, Leon began to condense Qi around his femur; the only bone in his thigh. He wrapped it in a thick layer of Qi and, with the weight of his mind, condensed the mist around the bone in question.

He started very slowly, barely touching it with his will before a sudden lance of agony pierced into his brain. Leon blanked out for a moment, opening his eyes to find himself staring up at the wooden ceiling. Sophia was looking at him out of the corner of her eye, her hand not moving as she was halfway through chopping up some herbs. He must’ve been out for only a few seconds if she hadn’t come to check on him yet.

Leon said he was fine and sat up before focusing on his thigh again. It wasn’t broken or even fractured, but on a closer look, it appeared that the surface was bruised. Not a terrible injury, by all means. His legs would feel tender for a few days and that would be all. It wouldn’t be the best feeling while he walked so he took a small sip of his latest Bloodroot Extract.

Ignoring the pool of warmth in his stomach, Leon dismissed the crazy idea. He had originally thought of a safer method, but thanks to some knowledge of human anatomy, he had decided to try and stress his bones to toughen them up. That was how weightlifting worked. Pick up a heavy enough object and your bones would react to the strain, thickening up just a little so that they didn’t break next time.

Wrapping his bones in condensed Qi was a bit nuts, but Leon had succeeded before by doing weird stuff like that. Better to try and fail than never try at all. After all, they did say that the master has failed more times than the student has even tried.

Returning back to his original plan, Leon drew out a flow of Qi and condensed it on the fly instead of condensing it on the bone. It was difficult but would hopefully be worth it. The stream shrunk down, shrinking to the maximum density he could manage the moment before it reached his left femur. It shrouded the bone like a glowing nebula of stars.

His femur popped and crackled, the marrow within boiling from the mist that flowed into it. His Qi supply had been above ninety-five percent, but now it began to decline. He watched a thin stream leak out of his dantian. It was a small amount, barely twice that of what he passively regenerated, but over the next few hours it would slowly dry up.

Leon soon fell into a comfortable rhythm. The peace allowed his mind to drift, inevitably returning to the mountains. His every cell craved the power flowing out of that place. He wanted to learn what the source was, and more importantly, he wanted to claim it for himself.

That was likely impossible, and just standing up there may instantly kill him since he couldn’t even look at the mountains without almost fainting, but Leon had to try. If the scraps he’d stolen from the edge of the pocket world had changed him so much, what would the direct source do? His back was straighter, he was less exhausted at the end of the day, and his body had become a bit lighter. Hell, he felt better in every way, and that was from a minute in the farthest corner of the Central Plane.

Just standing on that peak for less than ten seconds would evolve him into some kind of higher being.

What would happen if he lived on that mountain for months or even years? Would he reach the very pinnacle of his body’s potential? If Leon wanted to get out of this pocket world, he needed the power to survive being shot at the very least. If he got lucky and made it out before he encountered Tyler, he would still need strength to survive the monsters that now roamed the earth. Finding his friends and family in the chaos outside could take years, and that was if he found them at all.

But why bother with luck when you can take matters into your own hands?

Leon would still go even if they found an exit before-

Qi began to pool around his femur, the substance refusing to enter. Or better yet, it appeared that his thigh bone was saturated and couldn’t accept more. Surely it wasn’t finished already? Leon struggled to comprehend why it was no longer being improved. He stared at the mist lingering around the bone, watching it do nothing regardless of how long he kept it cloaked in his power.

Focusing on the bones in his ears, Leon sensed that the marrow was heavy with Qi and that the bone itself was different, almost like it was more… solid. Leon didn’t have a word for the sensation but that was simply how his mind’s eye perceived it.

His femur was quite different to its counterparts in his ears. The bone was like a solid piece of steel while his marrow had become thicker than mercury. Both his ears and femur had been improved, but it was like hanging a finger painting next to Michelangelo's David and expecting people not to notice. The difference was night and day, especially when he considered how quickly he had progressed.

Compared to passively cycling while he walked, cultivating with compressed Qi was nearly twice as efficient. His bones were like entirely different organs now. He would have to redo his ears and refine them with condensed Qi, but when he excitedly began to draw out another stream of Qi, Sophia shouted out behind him.

“Dinner is ready!” She smiled, handing him a bowl of rich, fatty broth.

Leon ate like a king and swiftly got back to cultivating. With a full stomach, he nourished his other femur with normal Qi. It took much longer than he expected. According to Sophia, he had been cultivating for two hours before dinner. Now, when his other thigh bone was unable to absorb any more of his Qi, Leon discovered that he had spent almost four hours to fully refine the bone.

At the very least, his new method was twice as fast. Sadly, he could not easily test the results of his experiment. While his left femur appeared to be far superior to the right, the only way to prove that was to put the hypothesis to the test.

The only problem was that bones were… Well, they synthesised blood and kept the body from becoming a gelatinous blob, and that was about it. There were very few ways to test an upgrade besides inflicting damage or bleeding himself dry, and the only one he could come up with was very painful.

But first, he needed to learn the skill Claire had mentioned to make things easier.