Progress

It has been hours since Will finished absorbing the boar’s mana, and he is currently doing the same thing with a deer. He was originally aiming to jump towards a bird to catch it in his web, but it began flying away just before he jumped. And when he landed, passing through branches, a deer was already beginning to flee, just 4 meters from him.

So he jumped again and finally catched one of those, the fact that he hit himself and the deer on a tree because of his momentum did help with keeping his prey from fleeing. After entangling its legs, Will tried assimilating the deer. Contrary from the boar, the deer did not resist immediately. It felt to Will as if his prey’s mana did not know how to react, it just let itself get manipulated. The resistance came later, and even with all the mana he accumulated thanks to the boar, he could not force the assimilation.

He tried, and it ended up having the same result as with the boar. He attempted to slow down the rate at which the mana seeped out using spider silk to cocoon the deer up. But the mana just passed through it, and to not lose any, he let the spider eat some of it.

The deer had less mana, but a similar quantity of the extra-thingy. Will tried feeling it, the same way he felt mana. But the only sense of it he got was that it was nearly empty, the boar and deer did not give much of what he actually needs to fill his reservoir.

Will tried moving, wanting to hunt more, fascinated by the sensation he got from absorbing this extra energy. But when the spiders’ body moved, it was sluggish. Will did not understand what it meant. ‘Is my spider-body sick? Do I need to make another one?’ But when he felt the body properly, he felt how tired the spider felt.

And now that he was not absorbed by consuming the deer’s mana, he could see that it was already night. ‘Oh, so it wants to sleep? Wait, the day just passed by that quickly?’ Will has the bad habit of losing track of time when he works on something he deems interesting. And taking mana from corpses that gives mana and an addicting energy, he finds it quite interesting.

It took Will Hours of manas’ worth to get the spider to this size and strength, and even if he now has what it would take him around 2 weeks to gather by himself, he did not want to lose it. So he just gave it back the control of its body, the spider then proceeded to climb a tree, weave some strings to secure it among the foliage, and entered a state that felt weird to Will. ‘It’s not sleeping, is it that thing insects do instead of sleeping? What was it called again? Torpor I think. Is that it?’ To him, it felt like the spider nearly turned off its’ senses and did not do anything.

Now that the spider is resting, Will does not have anything to keep his mind occupied. ‘What can I focus on then? Oh! I know, can I assimilate entire trees? Animals can resist the process, but can plants do so too?’ Without further ado, Will injected as much mana as he could control inside of the branch just under him.

First he tried to see if there was any kind of resistance, but the only one he found is the natural resistance of the mana. Then he felt the density of the tree’s mana, it sat between 2 and 3 times the airs’ ambient mana density.

‘What density can I build up? I never really got to test that, I did not have enough mana before.’ Quickly testing his capacity, he found his capacity at around 6 times the airs mana density. ‘I would like to see how much mana the tree has, but judging from its size, it should have way more than I currently do.’

It took him a minute to think of something to do with his mana. ‘Wait, in the spider's body, I didn’t assimilate it directly, I pushed its mana aside with mine.’ Will tried inserting hiw mana without the intent of mixing them together, he had to condense his mana to have at least the same density as the tree’s, but it worked without any problem. Then he got an idea: ‘The tree has a lot of mana, what if I seperate the mana in a branch, assimilate it and then absorb it? If I do that repeatedly I could just siphon it little by little.’

In theory he should not meet any issue, but when he tried to assimilate the mana cut off in the branch, he met resistance. It was far from the level of the boar or the deer, but it was not that weak either. Will tried brute forcing it, and he began gaining a bit of terrain. ‘Will the tree die if I keep trying to assimilate it like that?’

The thought came and went, the animals seemed to die because of how painful the process was, but plants don’t have a heart that will stop if it keeps beating too fast. So, intent on getting the tree’s mana, Will increased his mana’s density to a little more than 5, the point where he could maintain it without having to focus too much. He was surprised when the intensity of the resistance dropped, it was not much, he had an easier time actually mixing the two kinds of mana together. It made his task significantly faster to do.

He kept mixing for half an hour before he got another idea. ‘ I have separated a whole branch already, I should just separate a small portion that I can assimilate quickly, then take the mana, retract the second separation and repeat the process.’ Will thought with enthusiasm.

Trying his idea, he separated what he judged to be 1 hour worth of him accumulating mana. Then he prepared 6 hours worth of his mana and compressed it. Then he began mixing the two together inside of the tree. It took him a bit more than 7 minutes to assimilate the tree’s mana enough for him to then be able to take it out and inside his crystal sphere body. To his disappointment, there was no trace of the extra energy inside of it.

‘Well, too bad. That would have been convenient for sure.’ Will felt a little sad about not having an easy way to progress on the energy reservoir he feels he has to fill up. But the feeling quickly vanished, his attention kept on assimilating mana.

The first time took him more than 7 minutes, but when he finished assimilating for the 6th time, it took him 6 minutes and a half. The reason is fairly simple, the more he takes mana from inside of the branch, the more it dilates to fill in the void. Resulting in the lowering of the mana density in the whole branch, itself resulting in an increase in the assimilation’s speed.

In an hour and a half, Will assimilated the entirety of the mana in the branch. ‘What happens if I put my mana inside instead?’ He tested out his thoughts, and was pleasantly surprised. The branch reaches out of his mana control range by a meter, and all around the branch that is fanning out along its length, as long as it is inside a 30 centimeter radius of the branch, he can not only control his mana, but also attract natural mana from there.

‘Well, it does help to gather mana, but honestly I don’t know what I should do with it. I am more interested in the other energy, I don’t really have an objective with the mana. I could use it to reinforce the spider for example, but I don’t really need to. I could make it quicker I guess, but it would only be to catch the deers. I think I will just keep accumulating it for now.’

‘How do I take all the tree’s mana then? Should I prepare a little space where I will just let some tree mana in and assimilate it? No, the density would decrease really slowly.’ After some thought, Will decided to just do a simple decompression too. Making the loop be: 1 hour worth isolated, increase in the isolation space to get the mana to normal air density, assimilation and absorption of it. Rinse and repeat.

The method proved to be efficient as to assimilate and take the 1 hour worth of mana, it only took him 5 minutes each time. And once more, Will lost sight of time and just concentrated on getting the mana from the tree and absorbing it.

He fortunately got out of his trance like focusing when the spider stirred and woke up because of the sun beginning to become visible on the horizon. The spider repositioned itself and tried returning to its torpor, now facing away from the sun. ‘Don’t even think about it, we’ve got some hunting to do!’ Will would have none of this laziness.

And so he went on a hunting spree. He tried using the separation method to assimilate the animal’s mana, but it did not work at first. The resistance was still there even in the separation case he did inside the beast with his own mana. But when he pushed the rest of the mana to decompress its prey’s mana, he got a good result, the resistance dropping enough for him to butcher through it and quickly assimilate all he could. It still resulted in the animal’s death during the process, but at least he got more mana for himself as well the energy inside.

Where before the spider got 4 out of 10 parts of the mana, it now only got 1 out of ten from deers and 3 out of 20 for boars. And where it took 5 to 6 hours to get all the mana, it now only demanded half an hour. Guiding the animal’s mana to his core was useful, but continuing the assimilation process, even when the boar is dead, revealed to be the most efficient method. The mana lost most resistance once its owner died.

With so much improvement on his methods, Will roamed around in the forest. In 4 hours he found 6 prey, but from then on he had to go further out to find animals. At the rate he got through kills, he would depopulate the area quickly.

When the sun began to fade and let the night come, the spider was nearly completely exhausted. The way Will used its body got it quickly spent, and even if it got time to rest, the spider was evidently not adapted to such an active hunting method.

That is why even if Will wanted to find one last victim for the day, he was advancing towards the tree from last night. He could vaguely feel it, feeling the direction in which it should be was strange to Will, but he proved quick to adapt.

Once arrived there, the spider added some silk to its makeshift web-made bed, and got its hard-earned torpor. And while it rested, Will resumed his absorption of the tree’s mana. He is happy with the day’s work, he felt his energy reservoir being just under 1 quarter of its capacity. The gathering of this resource was more complicated than the one for mana after all.

Another reason for his immediate happiness was the fact that while he was away, he had left his mana inside of the branch he assimilated. The farther he got from the tree, the less control and sensations he could feel his mana. And now, he found his mana had mixed with the tree’s, improving once more the speed at which he worked. And by the time the sun came again, he had absorbed about a fifth of the mana the tree had before he began taking it.

The next day passed much the same way, except for the fact that Will found less animals. Those had seemingly sensed that a new predator had arrived, and they left him a large zone from which he could not find anything aside from the birds singing in the trees and insects he had no interest in.

Just before the sun had completely set, he was back to his tree. ‘Well, not my tree yet, I think it will be either tomorrow in the morning, or the next night. One or the other, anyway I will get myself my own tree. I wonder if it will be like with the spider, will the mana become both mine and the tree’s? Well, let’s get to it. I don’t need rest, I need answers!’