112 The third day. (1/2)

As the night fell, the mercenaries again placed their tents and began to stand guard around the perimeter.

Ozul again went into the tent, but this time he was practicing with his Ball of Purity. First, he created a small amount of it around the size of a fist.

Then he would just separate even smaller drops of it one at a time while also keeping his control over the previous ones. Unlike when he was attacking others, keeping them afloat and controlling each smaller drop at will was more challenging than expected.

This exercise was similar to the one that he was making Blaze practice. The only difference was that he did it in a more demanding way.

The drops that he would separate were around the size of the nail, and he would try to control each one independently from the others. For example, in a typical battle when he just turned the Ball of Purity into fine needles, Ozul only commanded them all to shoot towards one direction.

That level of control was already impressive, but Ozul wanted more. He wanted to have such precision that moving each needle in another direction at the same time wouldn't be a problem to him.

However, that was easier said than done. Because even after trying for the whole day, the best he could achieve was being able to move three of the smaller balls in different directions.

Adding the fourth one required him to slow down the speed and put more focus into it. Furthermore, the fifth ball would just mess up everything.

”Sigh. And I considered my control over it to be almost perfect.” Ozul muttered to himself in disappointment.

He could very well kill a rank-8 mage on a whim, but he can't even move more than four such balls at the same time in different directions.

However, this was all reasonable. Ozul's Ball of Purity is like an extension of himself—as a body part. And usually, a person wouldn't be able to multitask and move each of his limbs in different directions to perform various tasks.

That was precisely why controlling every small drop of it was a challenge for him to move separately. Ozul was, fortunately, able to feel the improvement in his proficiency while he practiced. Only the rate at which he improved was negligible.

Despite the slow rate at which he improved, Ozul continued to practice until he concluded that it was enough and went back to sleep.

On the other hand, Raven checked up on the group to see if Clive was going to do the meeting again.

She came back to the tent when she noticed that everyone was busy with their own stuff. Clive was also in his own tent, which meant that there was no meeting for tonight as well.

Raven decided to meditate in hopes of a breakthrough to the next rank. Although she knew that it wouldn't be so easy, she still had to keep trying.

Some of the people were really annoyed as the trio's routine felt like they were only tagging along with the convoy and weren't a part of the hired mercenaries. They could not complain to anyone, however, as they had noticed the behavior towards Ozul by Clive.

This had led to the mercenaries avoiding the trio even more. Nevertheless, the trio didn't care about interacting with others anyway.

As Raven entered the tent to meditate, Blaze remained outside. After so much time in the jungle, he wasn't as on edge as he was on the first day. It seemed that he was slowly adapting to his situation.

Blaze could still not focus on meditating, but his situation was improving. Since training the body as a Fighter did not require as much focus, he was able to practice in that.

While the trio were using this time of journey to train themselves, others were not as peaceful as them.

Clara sat on a chair in the wooden cabin with her hands crossed to her chest, looking sideways as she pouted.

Venessa stood in front of her with a troubled look on her face. It was just that Clara was throwing a tantrum that she wasn't able to find an opportunity to meet with Ozul today either.

”It is your fault. I even saw him today, but you didn't let me out of the carriage!” Clara took her anger out on Venessa.

”You don't understand, Young miss. Sigh... Fine then. If Sir Hanry agrees, then you would be free to do whatever you want to.” Venessa gave up trying to persuade Clara when she noticed that the latter was not willing to listen.