Holy Brilliance Calendar Year 1028, at the end of the Month of Winter, just as the New Year approaches.
Levi spent several thousand Aether Stones to refine eight Swordsman Mantises.
These eight Swordsman Mantises working together can even spar with a Poison Fire Bone Snake, a powerful first-circle creature—this surprised Levi quite a bit.
"Not bad. Eight Swordsman Mantises are more than enough, whether it's patrolling my territory or handling simple chores. Any more and I really couldn't afford to raise them. In the future, I'll have to get a blueprint for a first-circle alchemical creature from the Tower Master to refine one myself, but that'll have to wait until my Furnace Meditation Art and alchemy reach level 4. My School of Alchemy isn't advanced enough yet to refine those more intricate and complicated first-circle alchemical creatures."
