It was agonizing sitting in that tree for hours with nothing to entertain but the occasional lemming shuffling about around the tree roots. I eventually went back to training my Mana manipulation out of boredom, with the upgrades in the skill I could control 10-11 small pebbles simultaneously, and although there is a rather significant reduction in power the more objects I control.

And although harder I could also control a stream of water large enough for me to drink from, though it was still more effective to scoop up the water with my hands it was no way near as fun,

While I was playing around with the pebbles, from forming faces in the air to spinning them around mindlessly, or even trying to form a steady stream of water from my bottle to my mouth. I realized I hadn’t tried controlling something living yet. Directing my Mana sense(witch was now almost 80 cm) towards the trunk of the tree I sat on I tried grabbing on to the solid Mana…

Damn that’s hard

While I did succeed in pulling of some bark it was like I was trying to play a tug of war with the tree, it refused to let go of its Mana. I continued observing the trees reaction. I took some more Mana from the tree which seemed to have broken through some sort of shell since I could now use my Mana sense on the inside of the tree instead of being restricted to the surface area.

Continuing to experiment it seemed like the surface of not only the tree but also several other plants that I experimented on nearby seemed to have a thin “layer” of protective Mana that stopped me from sensing more than the outer parts.

That’s interesting, wonder if animals have the same layer…

I looked up towards the sky and after confirming once again that there was no helicopter I climbed down and started trying to catch a lemming to test my theory on…

After failing at catching a lemming for almost an hour straight I once again went back up the tree and tried different ways to control the tree, maybe by trying to create a tree house I could improve my level… my success was marginally more successful than my lemming hunt, that is to say the parts of the tree I managed to alter just seemed to get disconnected from the tree and in the worst cases even “died”. Well as much as removed piece of bark can die anyways.

I was starting to grow worried about the helicopter arrival at this point, since I couldn’t look at the sun(since there was none) to tell the time I had to guess it was past midday. far later than the helicopter should have arrived.

For what felt like the thousandth time today I climbed up the tree, but this time I climbed to the topmost branch so I had a view of the valley, as well as the path that the helicopter traveled when dropping me off.

Aaaaaaaand nothing…

I continued watching the valley as I tried to get a leaf to float my manipulating the air around it, it was a lot harder than it sounds. And a lot more entertaining than looking at a blank, sunless horizon for hours.

Finally when it was almost dark outside I saw a tiny dot in the distance closing in, unlike the birds that I had seen so far it had no flapping wings that held it up, but as it got closer I saw the rotor blades keeping the chopper afloat. as it neared my position I was overjoyed and let go of the branches to wave.

But as it got closer I realized something was wrong, the helicopter was not heading towards me, it was being chased by a giant bird. A very familiar giant bird. So familiar in fact I could tell it was an eagle from almost a kilometer away.

Shrieking eagle…

Once the helicopter was only a few hundred meters away I saw, no, I heard that the chopper was being attacked. Shit! It’s probably using that shriek from earlier to take down the chopper!

Watching the chase the helicopter passed only a few dozen meters to the south of the platform before continuing on, past the tree tops of the valley. Turning around I saw the eagle catch up to the helicopter and grab it from the belly and pull it towards the ground while pecking the chassis.

A second after that I lost sight of the helicopter before hearing a resounding CRASH from the distance.

Shit…

I raced down the tree, making sure I left my hiking bag in case I get trapped like earlier and start sprinting towards a growing plume of smoke where the helicopter crashed.

It took only a few minutes before I was looking down on the wreckage, in the middle of a circle of flames that seemed to be expanding into a proper forest fire were the remains of a large military helicopter, the front half was completely squashed from the nose dive the vehicle seems to have landed in, the rotor blades were to bent that they seeped like something you would see in a geometry textbook.

The back half of the helicopter was better off seeing as it still vaguely resembled the original cylindrical shape of the chopper, though based on the large hole in the upper back side of the helicopter I’m assuming that is where an engine exploded.

All of the windows of the aircraft seemed to have been blown in from the landing, as close to the fire as I could get I saw the pecked apart an mauled remains of what looked like soldiers of the Stratocracy of Ecoputon.

And most shocking of all, underneath all of this was the barely twitching feathers of the shrieking eagle.

It’s still alive…