Final Preparation

Poke!

"Ha?"

Feeling something tickling his face, Leo rubbed his face in confusion as he tried to go back into dreamland, but the tickling didn't stop!

"Who…?"

As he started to feel annoyed by the constant tickling, Leo opened his eyes to check out the source of this annoyance, only to find two pairs of eyes staring at him.

'Huh?'

Finally starting to wake up, he looked at the two adorable faces that were staring at him, one of them was human, but the other wasn't…

'OH!'

Completely awake this time, Leo remembered why he started his morning this way.

"Is it already 8?"

He had been too engrossed in planning traps along with Crane yesterday to notice that he ended up returning late, so he left a note beside his siblings' beds to wake him up at 8 AM if he wasn't already awake by then.

Leo wasn't the one to usually need someone to wake him up, but what he did the day before was simply out of his usual routine.

"It's already 10, I only woke up now so I came to wake up big brother!"

Shaking her head adorably, Annie reported the time, prompting Leo to shake his head as well.

'It seemed that I underestimated the fatigue I accumulated yesterday.'

As for the other pair of eyes…

"That's an interesting way to wake me up, but thank you still."

After patting Annie, Leo removed the small creature that was standing on his chest, which was the source of all the tickling that woke him up.

Meow!

It was none other than the familiar white-furred cat that usually moved around the area the Orphanage was, Arthur himself was the first to get familiar with the cat, so Leo had a strong impression of it.

'I miss my own cat…'

Trying not to remind himself of the world that he wasn't even sure he would be able to return to, Leo gave the cat to Annie, before handing her a small piece of candy.

"Here's your reward for waking me up, remember to only eat it after breakfast!"

"Thanks, big brother!"

Annie excitedly held the candy high up in her hands as if she was holding a bar of gold before putting it away and hugging Leo with the cat in between.

"Alright, alright, don't worry, there's more where that came from! By the way, do tell mother that I wouldn't be here for breakfast, but I will be there for lunch."

After enjoying the wholesome hug, Leo left his hammock and gave Annie one more pat before walking away.

"Got it!"

Not forgetting to retrieve the two buckets that he put away, Leo took a detour to the water stream that's close by to wash his face and fill the buckets.

"Refreshing!"

Feeling like he was just revived, Leo lifted up the two full buckets as he went back on his way to his training spot.

On the way there, Leo couldn't help but zone off as he thought about the last few days that he spent in this strange yet mesmerizing world. Although things have been going smoothly so far, he didn't have much time to enjoy things due to the edge that came with the coming event.

Yet, as time went by, he understood the charm of a novel world to him even more. Unlike how things were in his world, where he would be constantly looking for new books to devour, in this world, his reading addiction had calmed down quite a bit. Moreover, his sense of enjoyment felt like it was enhanced, even for the little things that usually didn't matter or count.

'It's getting better by the day.'

The only explanation that Leo could come up with was that he could be said to be currently Reading. In fact, one of the very few words that he remembered 'Book' to have said before he was sent here was 'Reading' itself.

'Alright, that's enough overthinking for the day.'

Shrugging off the thoughts and ideas swimming in his head, Leo put down the two buckets at the training spot that he arrived at before walking off again.

'It's time to start the actual routine.'

Unlike the day before where he was just getting started with planning, today was the day to start the routine that he planned to follow for what was left till the upcoming event.

At the very beginning, Leo put 'warming up' as a target, lasting for about an hour to two. Starting by foraging the forest before hitting the town to grab some breakfast.

Even though 1 or 2 hours might seem like too much for warming up, that was just Leo's secondary purpose, his main purpose was none other than the foraging itself, especially what he specifically foraging.

'This one!'

As he walked slowly through the forest, Leo suddenly stopped in front of a certain beautiful flower, but instead of admiring its beauty, he put on a pair of gloves he bought yesterday before picking up the flower and throwing it into the small bag beside his pocket.

'It's a good catch.'

Around the place where the flower was taken out, there was nothing growing but mushrooms, even grass disappeared for a certain perimeter around the spot. The reason behind this was obvious, this flower was an especially poisonous one!

This was precisely the target of Leo's foraging, after having started on producing traps as well as gaining the basics of swordsmanship, the only vital part that was left to prepare was poison to complement the traps.

After all, while some traps had high lethality, there was a limit to what they could do to adult sword breath users, if they weren't enhanced by something like poison, then the 12-year-old Leo would lose his chance to face them off as a group.

'Thank god the author liked to add a lot of filler content. Hehe...'

Leo laughed a bit as he thought about the ironic situation. Back when he first read the novel, the readers had always complained about the author adding too much filler in an already short novel. However, it was that filler that helped him in his current situation!

If it wasn't for the fact that the author added a lot of scenes where the main character would talk to one of his companions who was a botanist, Leo could have had it harder to solve his predicament.

Although a flower like the one he just found had obvious signs, not all were like that, and the effect of using the modern world's method in a fantasy world was bound to be limited, not to mention the methods of the poison extraction itself.

'It isn't much, but that's enough for today…'

Unfortunately, after searching a certain part of the forest for an hour or so, Leo didn't manage to find any other plant that he was after, he decided to be content with what he got and headed back to town to grab breakfast.

Splash!

After a satisfying meal and a quick shower, Leo continued the rest of his routine, starting with three hours of weightlifting, and following along with two hours of sword training, he finally took another shower before he went back to the Orphanage to have lunch with his siblings.

Spending some time playing with his siblings, he left the Orphanage once more and headed to the Blackbird, returning three hours later for dinner before sleeping early. That was how Leo spent the following few days...