After the encounter with the slithering creature I keep walking east. I’ve been walking for almost an hour. But nothing dangerous happened so far. But for about 5 minutes I’ve feeling slight tremor in the ground and more I walk heading west more intense it gets.

And after walking for 40 more minutes I finally see the blue sun in the sky after coming on the edge of a huge cliff overlooking same endless forest. Sun looks cool but what’s attracting my attention most is the reason for tremors.

I see two beasts fighting over who knows what. But what’s important is their sizes, both of them more than 15 meters tall and 30 meters long. Well this is eye opening. And fucking scary. If I face one those beasts I won’t even fill the gap between their teeth.

But they look fricking cool though. One of them looks like a giant lion but without the mane and pitch-black fur with crimson eyes. And those teeth look fucking scary.

Other one looks like a horse with sharp teeth but its feet structure is different from normal horse looks more like lion it’s fighting. Strange creature. What would you even call it. Got nothing. Even then they are fricking scary.

Their fight is causing earthquakes around them.

Their hides must be made from a steel. Seeing that it’s not tearing even after being bitten by those teeth. That is scary. But only consolation in this disaster is they don’t seem to possess much of an intelligence. Seeing they only use brute force and brawl with each other.

Still their fight causes terrible devastation around them. Lion bites the horse and horse bites back. This kind of simple and primitive fight is the most brutal and can only end in one of their death. Every time they collide nearby trees get ripped apart. Ground become small hills and gets smashed all over again.

So, if I manage to create a strong enough spell I can kill them. Still if I want to get out of this forest I need power. I now see that I was wrong. Thinking that I can survive out here with my puny power. Ant struggling against elephant is pointless right. Damn this suck. This overwhelming sense of weakness.

I need power. For that I need to train and kill. I just don’t want to have this feeling of weakness ever again. I need something stronger than a fire breath. I need real power.

I turn around and walk toward the tree. Don’t know which one will win. But one day I will kill whoever won.

After crossing the creek, I cancel my camouflage and head toward the tree. First, I need to increase my Vessel rank and increase my mana quantity. Second, I need to increase my knowledge on mana and strengthen my control over it.

And since I know that I can increase my body potential rank by killing other lifeforms and absorbing their dissipating life force. So, I need to kill to increase my rank high enough to temper my cells and nurture it.

Just being a Wizard is not enough. I need to become a Warrior too. Only by doing that can I adapt to any kind of situation and emerge on the top.

After coming back, I enter my Soul Palace and enter my first door to talk to the tree.

“Hey are you there?”

“I’m here. What do you want?”

“Can you teach me more about mana and how can I use it?”

“Well as you know mana is simply energy converted into your own energy that you can use. Only difference is you can’t use the pure energy according to your will, you can only will your soul to suck surrounding energy to convert it into mana. In other words, mana is energy that you can use according to your will.

Mana is most versatile energy. You can practically use it to do almost anything. But what’s required is quantity, quality and knowledge. As long as you have these three you can do anything with mana.

For example, you used elemental mana to cast fireball and killed that wolf. Elemental mana is not that different from normal mana, its property is simply changed a little bit after conversion. It simply becomes more in tune with basic elements. If you compress elemental mana it will become a water, if you make it vibrate it will become a fire. Like that use of mana is endless. What’s important is control and image. More control you have, more your mana will take the shape of you image.

If your control and image is strong enough you can simply will your mana to cast a spell. Spell Matrices are just for those who don’t have strong control. If you simply follow the instruction written in the matrices you can cast the spell. And since your soul is extraordinarily strong you already got the control now you need the image. You actually don’t need any Matrix. After you manage to cast what you want few times that will can become a spell matrix.

First visualize what you want your mana to do or create. What do you want to do then? Remember you can only will your mana to do something or take a simple shape. To create something, you’re way too weak.”

Hmm. This is all something I need to think about. But in the end, all this means I need to train more. So, I guess that is what I will do for now.

“Okay, I got what you’re trying to say. Any advice on how can I nurture and temper my Mana Vessel faster?”

“I got nothing there. You can only train patiently and gradually if you rush you know what will happen.”

“Okay, got it.”

After that I get out of my Soul Palace and simply sit down and start training my brain cells.

First suck in the surrounding energy and convert it into mana and will that mana to my brain and let it flow along the pipelines that is my brain cells.

This feeling is actually not bad cool and refreshing. But I can’t feel any kind of progress. I suppose it is slow and gradual process. Let’s try increasing the mana and see what will happen.

I increase the suction force of my black hole and convert more mana and will it all to my brain. At first, it’s fine but after a while I start to feel burning headache like my brain cells are being torn. But at the same time, I can feel it being mended back at the same rate. I guess high vitality and enhanced regeneration are at work.

This process of being nurtured, tempered, torn and mended is actually working. I can already feel the progress. Only downside is the pain. But I think I can endure it.