Lucas went through numerous movement exercise drills under Perci’s guidance. While doing this, Perci had him trying to tap into the power of his aura circle. The goal was to have Lucas develop the ability to circulate aura subconsciously through his body.

  Perci also tried teaching him how to use weapons and hand to hand combat. Since Lucas was a diligent and patient student, Perci had a specific method of teaching him.

  Perci had him perform the moves in slow motion, keeping them in perfect form. Lucas would repeat every move, speeding up as he got used to it, and restart if he made a mistake. A normal person would have already lost patience and demanded a different method of training, but Lucas showed off his tenacity and did the training for hours... days... weeks... and finally, a month.

  “Well done,” Perci praised as Lucas panted on the ground, covered in sweat.

  During the past month, they focused entirely on training. Only allowing a few hours for Lucas to fill his quota on repairs and orders for the company and then resuming his training. That didn’t mean he shut himself off from the world, he still had free time after his training.

  “What now?” Lucas asked.

  “You rest,” Perci answered. “Since you already grasped circulating aura, we will wait for your attribute to take form.”

  “My what?” Lucas raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s similar to augmenter mages,” Perci replied. “Your first circle would manifest an attribute that enhances you physically or grants you a supernatural ability.”

  Lucas raised an eyebrow. “How is that different from a mana circle?” Lucas asked.

  “Mana circles do not contain attributes and mages can simply learn any spell they want,” Perci explained. “As for Aura circles, you can only use the attribute you manifest and the attributes you imprint in your other circles.”

  Lucas tilted his head in confusion.

  “For mages, circles are like magazines for guns, while for aura users, circles are like carrying different weapons,” Perci simplified.

  Lucas nodded in understanding. “So... if I increase my circles, I’ll gain another ability?”

  “Only if you successfully imprint one,” Perci answered. “You’ve already seen me use the attribute you’ll develop.”

  “Speed?”

  Perci did his equivalent of a nod. “If you continue doing my training and create your second circle, you’ll develop my attribute,” Perci revealed.

  “Your attribute?” Lucas raised an eyebrow.

  “Have you not seen the golem use it before?” Perci pointed out.

  Lucas recalled when Percival the golem would use aura. At first, Lucas simply thought it was an ability that the monster lord had. But after training to use aura himself, he found out that the monster lord’s power came from aura itself.

  Percival’s aura took the form of a raging purple flame that empowered all its attacks. If that was the attribute Perci was talking about, then Lucas could think of a lot of applications it could have form him.

  “My primary attribute when I was still alive was destruction. Anything I infused my aura with had their destructive potential enhanced,” Perci explained. “A good attribute to support your own.”

  “I agree.”

  “Now rest and allow your aura to settle,” Perci said before leaving through a window.

  Lucas got up from the ground and grabbed his stuff. He headed back to his office to grab a few stuffs before heading home for the day.

  Considering he was already exhausted from training. The last thing he wanted was for someone he wasn’t closed with to stop him along the way.

  “Lucas Atican.”

  Lucas’s eye twitched he saw two young mages approaching him. “I was promised I won’t see either of you again,” Lucas got straight to the point.

  “Ah yes,” Jasmine Taruma spoke. “I simply wanted to apologize for what happened. I know it’s too late for it, but I still wanted to apologize,” she bowed.

  “And I apologize for bothering you about the incident,” Alliah Slywood bowed as well.

  “Fine,” that was the only thing Lucas said before he began walking away.

  Jasmine Taruma looked up. “Is that it?” she asked, almost annoyed.

  Lucas stopped. “What did you expect?” he turned, and he was annoyed.

  Alliah cringed, already knowing where this is going if they continued. “We’ll leave. Sorry for bothering you,” Alliah tried pulling Jasmine away, but she shrugged her off.

  “We apologized to you and all you say is fine?” Jasmine walked towards Lucas, making Alliah sigh.

  “Like I said what did you expect? I’d jump with joy?” Lucas didn’t back down, catching Jasmine by surprise. “I said fine, and we’re done.”

  Lucas turned away from them and walked away. To him, it wouldn’t have made a difference if they never showed their faces to him again. All he cared about is to live in peace and be strong enough to keep it that way.

  Leona was currently on a mission in the forest to gather information on a newly discovered mana vein. Normally, they would have sent one of Lucas’s golems for scouting missions, but this mission was to be done as confidential as possible. If they sent a golem, the footage of the mission would pass through several hands and could potentially be leaked to their enemies, so Leona had to bring her own team to directly investigate.

  Leona raised an arm, signaling her team to stop. She clenched her fist, and they immediately raised their weapons in preparation for a fight. One of Leona’s drones came out of her mana pocket and shot at a tree.

  A moment later, a body fell from the tree. The person was wearing an all-black suit and a dog mask. “Come out you mutts,” Leona said as her golem drones took to the sky.

  Now that they were exposed, the dog-masked pursuers began their assault. They shot out from the shadows with daggers in hand. They targeted Leona’s team, but Leona wasted no time giving them cover fire the moment she noticed their intentions.

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  Despite it still being dawn, the assailants managed to hide in the shadows using shadow magic. “Keep your distance and shoot them dead!” Leona’s drones rained attacks from the sky.

  Leona kept her focus on covering for her team, so she failed to notice when a hand grabbed her leg from her own shadow and tossed her off a cliff. Leona immediately activated her flight magic, but one of the assailants dove after her and managed to stab their dagger onto her side.

  “Motherfucker!” Leona enhanced her fists with magic swung at the assailant's head, smashing it upon impact. Despite getting the attacker off her, Leona couldn’t fly back as her felt her mana being disturbed.

  Without her flight magic, Leona helplessly fell.

  Lucas raised an eyebrow as Althea rushed into his office. “I need your help!”

  Althea explained the news she just received as she was Leona’s emergency contact, she was notified by the military that Leona had been declared “missing in action” after they failed to get in contact with her during a mission.

  This also prompted Althea to reveal that she was actually in a romantic relationship with Leona.

  “How can I help?”

  “I need your golems,” Althea answered.

  Althea began explaining that Leona went on a mission near the edge of the sector. Although the details of the mission were confidential, the location was still accessible to the public. It was only a question if they were strong enough to handle the danger.

  “Let’s go rescue her.”

  “Are you sure you want to come?” Lucas asked as he got off Althea’s car. “This won’t be a walk in the park.”

  “I’m no damsel,” Althea said as she got off the car dressed in hiking gear. “And we’re not going to war. We’re just going to look for Leona.”

  Lucas just nodded, seeing as there was no point arguing with Althea. The area they were entering was considered a danger zone and a neutral area between sectors that was outside the protective walls of the city.

  “How did you know Leona was here?” Lucas asked as they entered the forest.

  Four golems guarded the two of them. The same four golems that Lucas had during the dimensional rift incident, the two that had shields and the two that had guns. Lucas also brought Gun slinger, Percival, and Ragnar, but kept them hidden for later.

  “One of her soldiers told me about it. They didn’t go into detail about the mission, only that they were forced to retreat after losing her in a conflict.”

  “Sounds like there’ll be a fight,” Lucas commented as he materialized an Iris: Oracle to do some scouting. Lucas smiled. “And you said we weren’t going to war.”

  Althea gave him a flat look as they continued through the forest. The only thing they had were the coordinates of the last location the team with Leona. Lucas would have sent his scout ahead, but he needed intel on their surroundings first since they didn’t have a map of the area.

  It wasn’t because they couldn’t get one, but mostly because the terrain would constantly change due to monsters, dungeons, and phenomenon caused by mana.

  Once they were far away from the wall, the monsters began showing themselves. The area was a class 3 danger zone, meaning there were monsters here that were strong enough to be a threat to a city, so once they noticed the monsters, Lucas called out Percival just to be safe.

  “I should work on a warding artifact,” Lucas made a mental note as his golems killed a bunch of weak monsters.

  “It’ll just make things worse,” Althea mentioned. “Leona once told me that warding artifacts only worked on monsters with low intelligence and only acted on instinct. But it would lure powerful and intelligent monster instead,” she explained.

  Lucas took note of that.

  Althea sighed. “I actually met Leona when she visited my family for military business,” Althea began telling their story. “She stayed there for two weeks, and I was tasked with tending to her. We grew close.”

  Lucas noticed Althea was starting to get tearful and wordlessly offered her some tissues as she continued her story.

  “At some point, we grew close enough that we started meeting even after she was done with her business with my family. Eventually, we fell in love,” Althea continued with her story as Lucas’s golems cleared the way for them. “When my family found out after a couple of years, they didn’t approve of it, so I left my family and became independent.”

  Althea proceeded to tell more stories about her relationship with Leona, while Lucas silently listened. Lucas may have lacked experience with relationships, but even he could tell that Althea loved Leona very much.

  After about three hours and a couple stories about how much of a picky eater Leona was, they finally arrived at the coordinates provided to them. It had been around 28 hours since they lost contact with Leona.

  Enough time that if she was unconscious, she should have already woken up and contacted the military. As there’s no contact, it meant either her communication device was destroyed, or... she’s dead.

  Lucas did his best to not even consider the latter option as they began searching the area. Althea constantly called out Leona’s name, while Lucas investigated the area. There were clear signs of a fight, and judging by the aftermath, it was quite the fierce fight.

  Eventually, his investigation led him to a cliff. The area below was covered in fog, completely hiding what was underneath. “Oracle,” Lucas sent the golem to investigate.

  If Leona was in the surrounding area, then the only place she could have ended up in was down there. Lucas had seen her use flight magic, so if she was down there, that meant she couldn’t use spells.

  “Have you found her?” Althea asked.

  “Not yet, but I sent a golem do-” Lucas stopped when he felt the connection his golem got severed. “There’s something down there.”

  Leona opened her eyes and found herself laying on the ground with half her body submerged in some sort of green liquid.

  The entire surrounding was foggy, so the only thing that was visible to her was the glowing green liquid surrounding her on the floor.

  Forcing herself up, she felt a stinging pain on her side. Glancing to where she was stabbed, she noticed that the wound was somehow partially healed. That wasn’t possible unless the green liquid somehow had healing properties.

  It didn’t take long for Leona to actually find the reason her wound suddenly healed. The fog shifted as an angel-like creature wearing golden armor with white accents hovered past her. Despite its two pairs of wings flapping, the fog barely moved. A fact that Leona was actually thankful to since it prevented the creature from seeing her on the ground.

  Leona couldn’t feel any mana coming from the creature. Instead, she could see the glow of holy magic or divine power coming from it, which likely healed her wound through simple exposure. Leona tried activating her flight magic, but it seemed she was still under the effects of what was preventing her from using magic.

  Either way, Leona doubted she could beat this creature. She tried crawling away, trying to get away from the creature. She crawled towards the direction where the creature came from since it had the lowest possibility of running into it again. But what she found made her eyes widened. On the ground was fragments of a golem that had a very recognizable building style.

  Either the military requested his assistance, or Althea did. The answer to her question came shortly after.

  “Leona!” Althea’s voice came from a distance.

  Leona’s eyes widened in panic as something shot over at a terrifying speed. “NO!”

  The angel rushed towards Althea with Leona forced to watch and couldn’t anything. She thought she would be forced to watch the love of her life die right in front of her, but a familiar black knight intercepted the angel, blocking its two golden short swords with its great sword.

  With the sound of thunder and a flash of lightning, another golem appeared out of nowhere and struck with its lightning infused claws. The angel was sent flying across the foggy terrain as Leona felt herself get lifted off the ground. To her surprise, Lucas Atican had picked her up.

  “Let’s go!” Lucas yelled to Althea as his golems kept the angel busy.

  The angel soured through the fog, moving completely out of sight from them. Thankfully, Lucas’s golem could keep up. Before the angel could strike them, one of Lucas’s golems would intercept the angel just in time. Still, the anxiety of an unseen enemy nearly striking them and the feeling of the shockwaves of their clash, constantly reminded Leona of how helpless she was at this moment.

  Leona heard the faint sound of something charging up before another attack was intercepted by the beast golem, but this time, the force of the clash blew them away. Lucas managed to stay standing, but Althea fell to the ground, soaking her clothes.

  “Gun slinger,” Lucas yelled out as he tossed Leona.

  Leona felt herself get caught by metallic hands. Lucas proceeded to grab Althea by the collar of her shirt and tossed her to the golem as well.

  “Get them out of here!” Lucas ordered.

  “What!?” Althea exclaimed as the golem began running away.

  What they saw next was the fog turning into a massive tornado.