Leon had never seen a real rocket before. He had always seen videos of fireworks built like rockets, and documentaries of rockets launching into orbit, but this was something else.
A human sized missile was currently speeding straight at him with a burning red head. He was surprised, but for some reason, his surprise felt a little bit muted. As if his emotions were suppressed. He simply raised a hand and focused on a new skill he had only just gotten.
<Apprentice Gravity Magic>!
A dark purple layer of mana wrapped around Leon’s body, extending forward by about a meter or so. Everything within that meter of space was pushed down to the ground, and the same thing happened to Harry when he breached that space.
“Argh!” Harry struck the ground head first, completely confused. He had not expected the gravity of the darkened space to have been warped, or else he would have been able to defend against it better.
“Take it easy, you don’t want to worsen your injuries.” Leon told the man.
“My injuries do not matter! Get away from my family!” Harry growled angrily as he tried to stand up, his bones straining under the weight of the gravity domain. Even Leon was beginning to feel a bit winded. Using such an obscure magic type was extremely draining on his mana, as Gravity magic was not as simple as something like wind magic.
“Harry, it’s fine! We are okay!” William quickly reached the edge of the dark area that pressed down his brother. He looked up at Leon, and Leon nodded before retracting the gravity mana. William went to his brother’s side and helped him up.
“What did you say? This monster is on our side?” Harry raised a finger and pointed at Leon with a scowl.
“Yes, he is. Now calm down before you piss him off.” William glared at his brother and gave Leon an apologetic smile.
“Since Harry is awake now, can we finally start moving?” Leon waved off William’s apology and asked. He had already delayed his plans a bit by waiting for Harry to wake up. He wanted to get a move on. His millipedes had already discovered several places of interest as they scoured the forest. In fact, one spot was even connected to the stream that flowed by where he had initially spawned!
“Um, I guess so. Let us pack up quickly.” William nodded. The group began packing up their things and folding up the tent while Leon went to sit on a small rock, backing the group.
With his back facing the group, Leon undid the front of his dark shirt and stared down at his chest cavity. There, a colorful mana crystal hovered and bobbed without any support. Red, green, brown, gray, blue, and black were the predominant colors of the crystal.
‘My core… It’s strange. Is it because of it that I got those two new magic skills?’ Leon wondered to himself and pulled up his status page. There was something else that he wanted to check out now.
Closing up his shirt, he raised his attention to the translucent panel that floated before him. He always found it quite strange, but interesting that only he could see his own status page. While he heard that there were some ways for a person to see the status page of another person, he had never really put much thought into it.
He focused on his <Spirit Storage> skill, which was now level 70. The skill increased alongside his <Spirit Summoning> skill whenever he raised a new undead, or as he summoned and recalled his existing summons.
[Spirit Storage capacity: 312/750]
‘Oh?’ His aura changed slightly to something more curious as he saw the capacity of the skill. He had only taken up a small potion of the available slots. ‘I guess it is time to expand my army, then.’ He chuckled deeply, making the others look at him weirdly.
Before long, they were all done packing and Adrian came over and tried to tap Leon’s shoulder, but Leon spun around at that moment, startling the green haired man.
“Ah, are you ready?” Leon beamed. He was excited and ready to hunt for more creatures to add to his undead legion. He was contemplating hunting down creatures that usually moved in packs and groups. That way, he could take them down together with their leaders. When he did that, then the leaders could lead their kind in groups the same way Nedra partially presided over the millipedes.
He sighed as he thought about it some more. Doing things that way would take a load off his shoulders as every group would have their own roles to play in a battle, and they would be led by their respective leaders without him having to fuss over them.
“We are ready.” Adrian composed himself and nodded. Leon looked around and saw that they had backpacks on their backs containing their various needs.
“Alright, let’s get going.” Leon nodded and turned around. He felt around through his mental connection with his summons and after confirming the location of one of them, he started making his way through the forest. The destination this time was to the north west, in the direction of the stream that he had come across when he had first spawned on the island.
“Where are we going now?” Adrian was walking a step behind Leon who took up the lead. As the one who had nominally been voted to be the strongest in the group, no one found any trouble with him staying at the forefront of the group.
“We are heading to a spot with dense mana. I am not sure what we may find there, but anywhere that is a hotspot for mana surely has something good.” Leon told them as he pushed aside a large leaf from the path.
When he had unconsciously pulled back his millipedes, a part of him had automatically left out about a dozen millipedes. Leon did not know whether his mind had simply gone blank before he could pull them back, or if he had unconsciously left them there, but it had been a good thing. Not long after, the millipede waiting in the direction they were heading in had discovered a cave that radiated a large amount of mana.