As far as I have seen, nothing else but beings like me can consciously control the mana. But I have also noticed that mana does not flow to the same parts for the same types of organism. I know that for this blade of grass, the growth must be the most important and the target of its focus. Perhaps mana goes to what is used most when I don’t control it?

I test this on two spiders. I choose one which hunts by running after insects, and another who has built a web.

First, I start by increasing the mana around the hunter spider. I start adding a little bit more every hour and monitor. I notice that the mana intake isn’t consistent. I knew from previous observations that there is a passive absorbing which is always happening and is dependent on atmospheric mana density, as well as absorbing through food where it would take some of the mana its prey held. That means that the mana intake is dependent on both the region where it lives and the prey it can take. This revelation opens another opportunity for me. If hunter spiders were to take prey back to a nest, a nest in my area of influence, then it can hunt in the neighboring regions and bring me mana. But as they don’t nest, and I can’t communicate with it, this gets filed under long term opportunities.

After almost doubling the mana surrounding the spider, I notice that the mana distribution follows the predetermined pathways. It seems that mana attracting other mana is always turned on even after absorption and that something that has been enhanced by mana, will be further enhanced by mana creating a specialist. But the question remains, how does mana decide on its focus?

Next, I begin enhancing the area around the web spider. As I now know what to look for, I first confirm that the web spider, similar to the hunter spider, is being specialized further. The spinnerets that produce the silk have gotten around halve of the mana previously absorbed, and so an equal of what it is taking from the atmospheric mana is distributed there.

Besides the continued specialization, I can’t seem to find any other difference between the two spiders. I even took care to choose two spiders who seem to have come from the same nest, meaning that they have the same organs and most likely started with the same physical attributes. The hunter spider can build a web if it wants to, and the web spider could go out to hunter if it wants to. But they have each chosen a method to catch prey with, and somehow the mana is encouraging this as if an outside force is guiding it. But that too doesn’t make sense as a guiding external force would mean interference when I guide the mana somewhere.

Not knowing what to do next, I keep increasing the mana around the spiders. At the very least, I want to know how enhancements work and what they do.

It takes me an entire day to get to the point where it feels like I am hitting the limits of how much mana I can spend on the spiders without fear of having to reduce the mana that is me or lower the atmospheric mana to the point where I can’t feel it anymore. The hunter spiders growth has been snowballing, and it has become much stronger and faster but also seems to need a lot more food and mana to maintain itself. It has now gotten to a point where it doesn’t skitter away from the smaller rabbits anymore, though it probably still couldn’t beat one.

The web spider, on the other hand, has built a web large and robust enough that it has entangled a passing bird. This will definitively be something I want to enhance as these birds are migratory and can bring me mana from outside.

I stop enhancing the mana around these spiders while I ponder what I have seen. I know what my limits are, though I am going to have to find a way to quantify it if I want to know precisely what I can spend without dropping to dangerous levels.

I also can’t do any more tests until either or both of the spiders die as a lot of mana is now locked up in them, and I have no way of retrieving it. I can’t even kill one of the spiders if I wanted to as I can’t affect their material world more than just sending mana.

While I am digesting my test results, I am keeping a watchful eye on the spiders I had tested with to see if there are any changes. Besides the hunting spider vastly increasing its hunting efficiency, it also seems to want to hunt more. No... it seems to need to kill more. For some reason it is frantically running around trying to capture anything it can find.

After killing a fly, I see that the mana inside follows a similar path to the mana from the atmosphere but the percentage going towards the legs is slightly higher than the atmospheric mana was. Perhaps when something is used right before eating the energy to that part is replenished with mana. That would explain the differences in the spiders. If the web spider had eaten just after finishing its web, catching a weak insect, its web making capabilities would be enhanced, and it would more likely be able to capture something that way again. As this would keep strengthening itself, it would soon learn that continually improving its web leads to more food than hunting does, so it becomes a pure web builder.

The hunting spider, on the other hand, might have gotten a relatively large portion of its first meals from ambushing or hunting and thereby enhanced its physical aspects. As its webs can’t compete with stronger insects, yet it finds that hunting provides the highest success rate. When a new nest of spiders is born, I will have to check this, though I don’t see any spider eggs around so that may take a while.

While I had been distracted mulling over how the different spiders might have gotten to be as they are now, I notice that the hunting spider has become so frantic that is has started following a small rabbit. I doubt it is a fight it can win, so I wonder why it would take this risk. It may have grown considerably, but even the smallest of rabbits is still more substantial and much, much heavier.

I can come up with conjectures on why it would take the risk. Perhaps it needs more food to support its new size? Maybe it has become addicted to mana, and the small amounts from the insects don’t satisfy anymore? Perhaps the sudden reduction in mana to the newly enhanced body parts causes pain or distress in some way?

I think if I had a way of communication, and if the spider were intelligent enough, I would progress so much faster in understanding the world.

The web spiders change is much less noticeable but it has been sleeping for a while now. I know it isn’t dead as the mana hasn’t released from its body, but it is strange for web spiders to not work on their web for such a long time. It also strikes me as odd that the two spiders would have such different responses to the same issue. Where one becomes frantic and much more active, the other in the absence of the previous abundance of mana seems to conserve what it can.

Perhaps this is also a difference between the types of spiders?

Feeling a relatively large amount of mana being rereleased, I see that the hunting spider has attacked a rabbit and died. It had run at the rabbit and had been squashed when the rabbit jumped on top of it. Rabbits don’t eat spiders, so the body releases most of its mana and remains to lay there for insects and bacteria to eat. At least now I have some mana to do some more experiments again.