A few days after Luis got the baby rock golem blessing he had spent the time focusing on how the blessing worked. While practicing the breathing techniques his father taught him.

His dad's lessons were easy to understand. Aura was something that grew the more you used it, or you could grow it by focusing on breathing and imagining pulling in the energy from your surroundings.

His dad's lessons had helped Luis become an adept aura user. He was told everyone visualizes auras in their body differently. Luis had imagined his as a circle as told to do by his dad. Every time someone reached a higher tier in aura their cores would multiply by two. Their initial cores would split into two. Which would then slowly need to be filled up with aura to be at its maximum capacity. This is why most people imagined their cores as circles because it was easier to visualize their cores splitting up.

"Focus on the circle, your aura always follows from there" Noah had said.

Now Luis visualised his two cores as glowing circles. The first one burned with a faint red glow, because of the Phoenix essence that was in his body. The second circle which Luis was still filling because of how much he had to use recently up glowed a faint brown grayish hue. Together the two blessings used up 40% of Luis's aura with the Phoenix essence being most of it. His aura would go in his chest where the Phoenix essence was located, always passively strengthening that area so his body would not collapse.

The number of blessings you could get was dependent on the number of cores you had. But for Luis, he could get another blessing because the Phoenix essence was dormant in him. All it did was make his body consume aura not actually give him a blessing which made it so he could have another blessing.

During the 8 days of traveling Sera had told Luis how to keep his blessing active and turn it off, because passively it will always use aura to maintain an invisible veil of aura around his entire body. Using more aura whenever the veil was damaged at certain parts. "Don't expect the blessing to make you invincible, it's a very common blessing amongst soldiers that increases your defense by 25% just think of it as leather armor. When you are low on aura make sure to deactivate it, so you can focus more on attacks or fleeing by using your aura in your legs or arms."

They had finally entered the forest an hour ago. Luis and Sera ventured deeper into the forest, with aura enhancing their ears so they could listen better.

Before Luis could keep walking Sera raised an arm in front of him, making him stop. The sun was low which was making it harder for Luis to see.

The sound of rustling started to be heard in the forest. A creature emerged from behind some trees.

It was a lightning lynx but it was battered in blood. Despite all the blood, its yellow eyes glowed with defiance. Small arcs of electricity crackled along its body.

"A Lightning Lynx," Luis whispered.

Before they could discuss what to do three more creatures appeared. They had dark fur with red eyes which shone in the darkness, they were slightly larger than wolves and their movements seemed fluid. They slowly started to circle the injured lynx.

Sera muttered. "They are tier 1 rank 2, defensively weaker than the adolescent golems but stronger with their attacks."

The lynx looked too injured to run away but was not backing down. "Luis what do you want to do, you could use this opportunity to gain its trust, let me give you another hint between those wolves and the Lynx's a lot of territorial disputes happen here. The lynx might or might not give you its blessing."

Luis didn't want to fight against but this was the only situation he could see where he will be able to gain its trust.

"Let's help him fight"

"I'll help you this time, I will take down one of them," Sera said

Luis and Sera stepped out from behind the bushes. Just before stepping out Luis closed his eyes and focused on his rock golem blessing activating it. Luis could feel the aura envelope a tiny invisible barrier around his entire body.

The wolves and Lynx didn't move, judging what the two new individuals would do.

Having two daggers behind his back, that he practiced using with Sera whenever he was trained by her. She had not given them to him for the golems but had for the Lynx.

Luis enveloped the right one with aura and launched it at one of the weaker-looking wolfs the dagger pierced into its head killing it. Instantly the two other wolves dashed at Luis. Sera disappeared from beside Luis and kicked the other wolf miles away and then sat down.

The other wolf lunged at Luis, he awkwardly side steped swinging his stick at the wolf. The dagger hit but it didn't deter the wolf, which snarled and went for his legs with its claws.

The wolf felt resistance because of the defense's blessing but its claws still put a not-deep claw mark on Luis.

Luis felt a jolt of pain and the wolf not giving him any second lunched at his face with its teeth. Luis barely rolled out of the way.

Luis scrambled to his feet and focused aura on his eyes to better focus on the wolf.

This time Luis was able to dodge its claws when he lunged at him again but the wolf was relentless. Not giving him an opportunity to attack.

The wolf finally managed to get another attack in on Luis's legs making him fall to his knees.

Without wasting a second the wolf jumped on Luis tacking him to the ground. Sinking its claws into him as it stood above him. Its front claws dug into his chest its back claws dug into his legs.

Luis couldn't attack back he was focused on using his last dagger to stop the wolf from biting his face off.

The Lynx seeing this from the sidelines finally acted. With a sudden burst, it leaped, its claws slashing at the sides of the wolf.

The wolf yelped and retreated back. The wolf's instincts told him that it would not win this fight so it, turned around and ran full speed into the forest.

Luis and the Lynx stared at each other, Luis had the dagger in his hand not knowing if the Lynx would think he was on his side. While the Lynx still seemed apprehensive about approaching Luis as it took a few steps back.