It wasn't until much later when the disciple tournament finally ended. I managed to stay at the top position with ease, the rest of the competition not as powerful as Griaugh The crowd warmed up to me somewhat as well, resulting in modest amounts of cheers.

I headed into a roomy room I was directed to by the referee, and inside was another counter with another girl manning it. Did they always have to hire women for these kind of jobs? In front of the counter was Pewjack, smiling as he chat with the girl; he turned away from the grinner as he heard the squeak of the door.

"Alan! Back so soon?"

"Not really, the tournaments end at the same time for everyone."

"Come on, man! You don't have to such a thud! Weusis, get to registering him." The man hit me on the back with a thud, laughing at his visual pun. Fantastic, getting labelled by a moniker I didn't understand, then punned by the it; it annoyed me to no ends.

"Alright, come here and sign this, Alan."

It was a long and tedious process to me that probably actually took minutes in reality instead; I was then handed an identity card. Finally done, Pewjack led me through towards a long corridor and up a long flight of stairs. It was a good thing I had a good amount of strength, or I might have been panting and pausing all the way up.

"And here we are, behold!" Pewjack stood before me with his arms spread out wide dramatically, emphasising the the "majesty" of the sight before me. Despite being in an enclosed area fortress, what laid before me was hundreds of trees covered in flowers and many plants; I could see birds flying about as well.

"And tell me, why the heck is this built here?" Sure, it was a nice place and all, but WHY build a forest in the middle of a fortress? Pewjack didn't look very happy with my curt speech.

"Damn, you really are a spoilsport aren't you? Well first of all, the flowers, plants and stuff look good! Heck-"

"And there is a forest right outside."

He looked like I had kicked his puppy, but the words were blurted unintentionally. Not that I felt that bad or anything.

"Well, if YOU bothered to observe the place, you should have realised the abundance of mana in the air. This is a special mana cultivation zone reserved for outer and core disciples only, the trees having the ability to gather mana. It also has 'beast zones', where you can train your fighting skills against monsters that won't kill you and will be revived after some time. Oh, and the trees planted here have flowers and stuff so they look better!"

Sure enough, there was a lot of mana, around five times the thickness of outside, but sitting beside Rocky still yielded more mana. That made me a lot less impressed. Pewjack left in a huff, angered by my attitude. Well, I wasn't trying to get along or anything, so that didn't really matter. Well, there was a issue of not knowing where my room (if I had one) was, but I could look at the card I was given; surely that would help!

I looked at the back of the card and found a part labeled "102-I", likely the room number as expected. The only problem that remained was where the housing was located. I decided to wander around the forest first to get a feel of the area.

Swaths of vibrant plants grew all over the place, somehow relaxing sight despite the chaos. Rabbits and other small critters hopped around amongst the plants as well; seemingly unafraid even as I approached them. Unlike the the outside forest, it was a hospitable and peaceful location; the best part was, there were no mosquitoes!

As I wandered around, I soon came before a HUGE ring of glowing mushrooms. There were a dozen or so tigers sleeping within the ring. Was this one of the 'beast zones'? Since Pewjack said the beasts weren't designed to kill, I decided to try a fight with them.

With the rustle of grass, I took a step into the ring; I stepped on several mushrooms. The previously passive tigers perked up and stared at me, growling aggressively. It wasn't very frightening after I was attacked by a tiger many times larger, these tigers were midgets compared to it! As I stepped further into the ring, one tiger rushed up to face me while the others stood back to watch. I took out my hoe and swung at the tiger, sending my hoe smashing right into it's head. The beast let out a whimper and fell down, out cold with a visible dent on it's head without any blood.

That was unexpected, these tigers were too weak! Another two charged at me right after seeing the defeat of their kin; they were defeated with ease. Then three charged. By this point, I was sure that they fought increasingly numerically. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5....

I hopped out the ring, having tested how the combat works, deciding to continue working on my mana absorption. I sat down, focusing as I pulled the mana into my body slowly. Enjoying the abundance of mana, I suddenly realised that there was some neutral mana in the air after the fight, despite me not using any spells. Could it have something to do with the tigers? I stepped into the ring, walking slowly while continuing to absorb the mana into my body, a hard task requiring lots of focus. A tiger pounced, landing a hit on me and sending me flying out of the ring. There it was! There was a small trail of neutral mana emitted as the tiger attacked; was it because they were fully made of mana?

I had a brilliant idea. If I found a 'beast zone' with very powerful opponents, couldn't I exploit that for large amounts of mana?

It took a spent a long time trudging aimlessly, but I finally arrived to a spot where there were small dragons (by that I mean twice human height) in another glowing mushroom ring.

The dragons eyed me as I stepped in, snorting out plumes of fire in a contemptuous manner.