The minute the pill entered his mouth, it melted, leaving a warm sensation in his mouth. This was short-lived, as the heat kept increasing. The comforting warmth turned into a smoldering burn.

All of the aura inside the pill burst out of it, ready to rampage. However, it was quickly and forcibly controlled by Leo who started channeling it. He forced it down his throat, carrying the burning sensation down his body.

The aura quickly gushed into his stomach and was ready to wreak havoc, but he split up the whole sea into two parts. Then he started circulating the two parts from different ends of his stomach around his body.

They were circulating in the same direction as each other, but never met and combined. This meant that while the entire aura would have damaged his body if it was allowed to circulate, the separated halves couldn’t do anything.

After an hour, parts of the aura that had been circulating for a long time started to calm down. He brought it into his dantian and settled it there. As more and more aura entered it, his aura level started increasing.

He was firmly in the Middle-Stage before taking the pill, but he started approaching the Late-Stage. After another hour, the aura he had tamed was enough for him to advance. However, he didn’t open his eyes yet even though he broke through a level.

A Late-Stage 2nd Circle Aura Knight would be considered a very high level of accomplishment, especially for someone as young as him. It would probably even be enough for him to enter the Phoenix Trials and get past the reserve member status.

But he didn’t care about what others thought was enough. He wouldn’t be satisfied with something as small as a minor breakthrough. With the amount of aura present in the pill, he would be ashamed if he stopped just at the Late-Stage.

He kept circulating the aura in his body for a long time. Half a day passed and he persistently kept at the process. Nothing was making him stop. His concentration hadn’t declined at all which made Nefrati a little surprised.

At this point, very few things that happened around Leo were making her truly astonished. She had seen a lot of things in her time, and she would be surprised if anything that she didn’t see happened in front of her. However, Leo had broken all of those with his absurd accomplishments and she was getting used to them.

As the hours went by, the only aura left circulating through his body was that which was completely tamed. Once that happened, he brought together the two halves of the aura. Since they were completely tamed by him, the aura calmly flowed through his body.

Once he did this, he got ready for the next step. It was time for him to move on to the next part of his agenda – reaching the 3rd Circle.

He allowed a part of the aura to enter his dantian to reach the Peak Stage of the 2nd Circle. Once it settled there, he started forming the circle.

There was a vast difference between forming a circle before going to the Blood God’s temple and forming a circle after. The major one was that the circle he was going to draw was 10 times more complicated than before.

Fortunately for him, there were three positive differences. One was that he perfectly knew exactly what the circle looked like. The knowledge of it was wedged into his mind by the Blood God, making sure that he would know if he was making a mistake.

The second positive difference was that he had reached the Divergent Mind Stage. This gave him a higher control over his aura, making it easier for him to draw the circle. And the final, and maybe the highest definitive difference that decided whether the circle would successfully be formed or not was his breakthrough to the 4th Star in magic.

Because of his breakthrough, his ability to control aura and concentrate had increased so heavily that he didn’t need pills and potions that helped him draw the circle.

Knowing all of these, he immediately started drawing the circle. The minute he did, he started to realize the change in his body. With the blood aura in him instead of shadow aura, his body was more active and restless.

He started off with the outer circle, the easiest of them all. Drawing it with the aura he had was fairly simple. The more difficult part was keeping it that way while he drew the rest of the aura circle.

As he maintained the circle, he quickly went on to the numerous inner circles. While he couldn’t afford to make a mistake, he also couldn’t afford to be too slow. He was confident with his accuracy, so he sped through the process.

He drew a total of four circles. After that, he turned to the hard part – connecting them. While maintaining the circles with his concentration, he quickly started drawing the runes that connected each of the circles.

This was the first time he needed to draw such a complicated circle, but his immense concentration and focus were pulling him through. The circle became more and more complete.

Lines between the circles formed, and runes were etched between them. Designs were starting to become apparent, as were the words displayed by the runes.

A bead of sweat started to form on his forehead and it slowly trickled down his face. It rolled to his chin where it lingered there for just a second, before dropping onto his lap. He let out a huge breath and gasped for air.

His body tumbled back onto the soft cushion. He looked at the ceiling with eyes that smiled even when his mouth was gasping for air.

“Congratulations,” Nefrati said to him.

“Thank you.”

He had crossed the barrier and got to the 3rd Circle. This made him as strong as a Baron without even needing to use magic. At least, close to that level.

“6 days have gone by,” Nefrati said. She had been keeping track of time for him while he was busy practicing. It was useful since he would know exactly how much time he had left before needing to leave for the academy.

With 6 days gone, he still had around a month left. Out of those 6 days, he had used most of his time to separate the shadow element from his aura. Now with his breakthrough, he had completely filled his body with blood aura.

The change was very visible. The shadow aura was perfect if he wanted to conceal himself and sneakily attack his enemies. The only similarity it shared with blood aura was that it also siphoned off aura from its enemies.

Blood Aura, on the other hand, was extremely violent and would favor head-on collisions. He didn’t mind it, except that it would put him in the light and he wouldn’t be able to hide his involvement in a fight.

It was a trade-off he was willing to accept. He was noticing the difference in the quality of aura immediately, but he wanted to test it out before coming to any conclusions.