CelestialShadow
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Chapter 9 - Searching for food
🕑 Added 2023-11-22 14:51:13 +0000 UTCAdion spent the next few days trying different uses of his space mana and meditating. Thankfully, space mana was always abundant, so he didn’t need to waste his Will to change pure mana into space mana and could focus on feeding his core to increase his strength. Adion felt he should be able to reach all the way to Bronze with his current Will, so all he needed was time to fatten up his core. Unfortunately, time wasn’t a luxury Adion could afford at the moment. Even mages had to eat, and Adion was only in the Stone stage, making him starving for food at the end of the week.
He had yet to reach the peak Stone stage, but felt it shouldn’t take him too long. The mana was much richer here than in the Remori manor, making advancement relatively quick work.
He knew he would only stand a chance against the weakest of beasts, and this deep in the Endless Forest should not be a place for weak beasts. So Adion planned to avoid all beasts he could feel and only aim for animals if he could find any, but mostly, he would look for any edible fruit.
He made his way down the partly caved-in hallway once again. He released a bit of space mana around him to get a good sense of the obstacles and the path through. This time, it only took him thirty minutes to get down.
Once he got out, he checked the pills and elixirs he had hidden away. He decided to leave them behind as he had no real way of carrying them with him safely, and this place seemed safe enough as they had been left alone for hundreds of thousands of years already. Adion couldn’t be fighting for his life while looking out for those treasures. He would come back for them before trying to leave the forest. Adion’s current goal wasn’t to get back to the sapi part of the continent. His goal was to survive. He needed food, and he needed to get stronger.
Once he was strong enough, he could make an effort to leave. It wasn’t easy traversing this forest, even for a single person sneaking their way through. If that were the case, every corner of the continent would be under sapi control and every hidden treasure long discovered. Sure, many mages were not content to just fight on the Outskirts and made long treks deep inside the forest, but every day inside the forest was a risk, and the deeper one went, the more significant the risk.
He didn’t leave all the pills, though. He grabbed one of those precious healing pills in case he got injured. He also brought one of the Grand Soul Clarity Pills. He wouldn’t need it any time soon, but it could work as a bribe if things got dangerous. While most beasts were incapable of communicating with sapi, that wasn’t the case for the stronger ones. A Diamond beast was almost as intelligent as a grown human, and should Adion run into one of those, he needed to have some sort of insurance.
Even if the pills got lost, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. He had 8 healing pills and 12 soul pills. Sure, even one of them was probably worth a small kingdom, but Adion was rich now.
Adion pocketed the two pills and went to the large windows overlooking the forest.
It’s actually really beautiful. But strong beasts hide within. It's very possible that I die today. I need to be careful and hope that the stronger beasts won’t care for a weak human.
Adion jumped out of the wide window and put down his feet on the mountain slope on the opposite side.
This isn’t too steep, but I should be careful. A moment of carelessness and I could tumble down to my death. Or maybe I could freeze space. That would stop any momentum I have.
Adion had tested many aspects of his space powers during the week and discovered that if he throws a rock horizontally and then freezes the space around it, it will simply drop to the ground when he unfreezes space again, losing all its previous speed. He assumed it takes more effort to stop something that moved with a big momentum, though. He didn’t notice anything from a small rock, but a beast hurling at him should be a much more significant challenge.
Adion made his way down the rocky mountainside, and he estimated that it was a few hundred feet before trees started growing that could help him keep his balance.
It took him a while as he kept a safe and steady pace. But a few hours later, Adion eventually found himself surrounded by vegetation. It was still sloping down, but not as bad as before. So, Adion stopped focusing so much on his balance and kept his senses focused on the environment around him, both on the lookout for dangerous beasts and seeing if he could find any fruits growing. He released some of his space mana around him so that he could get a better grasp on his surroundings and prevent anything from sneaking up on him. It wasn’t very tiring as long as he didn’t try to manipulate space but only tried to feel it. But if he kept it up for too long, he would eventually exhaust his Will and need to rest. He hoped to find something to eat before climbing back up a bit, as there didn’t seem to be any beasts in that area.
But after a few more hours, Adion still hadn’t run into any beasts, and by now, he was down from the mountain and in the wide valley below.
Maybe there aren’t as many beasts in the Endless Forest as I thought. Or maybe most of them are fighting the sapi in the Outskirts. Or perhaps the forest is so big that even if there are millions of beasts, you can walk through it without running into any. No, if that were the case, more people would have gone into the forest to search for treasures. I’m probably just lucky so far.
Adion continued his journey, but instead of heading away from the mountain, he started walking around it. Even if it was lucky he hadn’t run into any beasts, he was unlucky not to find any animals. He heard a few birds at times, but they were high up in the trees, and Adion couldn’t stretch out his space mana so far away from him yet, and even if he could, he doubted he could fight them from this distance. It wasn’t like he could freeze space around them and then move the frozen space towards him.
Adion had tried doing that with a rock a few times, and it was tough moving around space. Or, well, at least space contended by the Will of the world. It was much harder than simply freezing the space. But since taking the pill, Adion did have a certain volume of space he could grasp easily with his Will, and just like how he could freeze that space without much effort, he could move around space there, too. It was a little trickier, but still not too much effort.
But these things were done to rocks, not living beings. And Adion knew that would be a lot harder.
After a few more hours, Adion still hadn’t found any food. He was close to just eating the bark off the trees at this point.
No wonder there are no beasts here. This part of the forest sucks. Adion thought grumpily.
He had managed to find a small creek where he got some water to quench his thirst, though. Otherwise, he might have had to start thinking about heading back up the mountain to the small spring in the teleportation room.
It was starting to get dark, and even though he hadn’t run into any beasts, Adion wasn’t entirely comfortable sleeping in the wild. So he decided to sit down at the foot of a large tree and meditate through the night. He would at least get to rest his body a little, and he needed to continue increasing his strength if he wanted to get out of there.
I can go without sleep for a night. If tomorrow comes and goes and I still haven’t felt any beasts, I might risk it. It might be that no beasts dare come here at the moment. A Phoenix was just born here a week ago, after all. Maybe beasts are sensitive to that kind of stuff and choose to stay away. That would be nice. If I could find anything to eat, that is, otherwise I will have to risk going further into the forest in search of beasts to hunt.
Adion spent the night meditating, slowly but steadily controlling the space mana around him and guiding it into his core. At the same time, some of his attention was focused on his surroundings for any signs of danger. But luckily, the night passed without any incident.
The next day, Adion got up and continued his search. He was ravenous by this point, and the hunger was starting to get to him. He felt it was harder to focus, and his space mana control was slipping a little.
Hours passed as Adion saw no signs of any food.
If I don’t find anything by tonight, I’ll just eat the leaves straight off the trees. I don’t care anymore.
Fortunately, that appeared not to be necessary. As the day once more approached night, Adion finally found it, a Red Royal apple tree. It was a delicacy from the Delovan Empire and was the most sweet and juicy apple on the continent. Its taste could rival even the most luxurious of desserts. Adion felt that he could almost cry in relief; the tree had plenty of apples, enough to feed him for weeks, and he could even see two more trees a bit further away, though not as big.
He approached the tree and climbed it in order to reach the apples. As he bit into one, he felt that the feeling was almost as strong as when he had eaten the Wisdom Pills.
I swear I will never take food for granted again.
Adion stuffed himself with five apples before laying down on the thickest branch he could find.
I will sleep up here tonight. Even if I fall, I don’t think I will get too hurt. I don’t want to stay on the ground even if I have yet to sense any beasts.
It didn’t take long for Adion to fall asleep as he closed his eyes, his stomach full for the first time in over a week.
When he woke up, he felt better than he had for a long time. He decided to spend the day in the tree and focus on resting his body and meditating to increase his strength. His body was still a little malnourished. After a few hours of bending the surrounding space mana to his Will and controlling it to his core, Adion felt that his core couldn’t hold any more mana.
I’m already ready to advance to the peak Stone stage? That was fast. Maybe I formed my core with more than enough mana to form a high Stone stage core and almost had enough to reach the peak stage already.
Adion felt more than ready to increase his strength and had no fear of not having enough Will. It was usually an issue of not having a strong enough Will that stopped mages from advancing. Anyone could gather enough mana to advance given enough time, at least in the earlier stages. And the better the mana control and the more mana around you, the faster it would reach the required amount.
But far from everyone could advance as soon as they filled their core with the required amount of mana. You needed a strong Will to compress your core and advance to the next stage. Almost anyone could form a Stone core if they had been born with a spark, with people in mage families doing it as early as the ages of 12-14 as they had received training and tempered their Will for much of their life.
But to reach the higher stages was much more challenging. To reach Iron was not difficult for most, and even Bronze was reached by the majority of mages in their lifetimes. But Silvers were very rare, and Gold even more so. To reach Diamond was seen as the peak of the continent. Of course, there was a higher stage, but not even the Noble families had someone of that strength in every generation.
A 2nd tier family clan like the Remori had to have a Diamond mage in the family. To become a 1st tier family clan, you needed at least five Diamonds, something very rare. And if someone in a 1st tier family clan reached the Soul stage, they became a Noble family from thereon out, even if they went back to only having Diamonds. The fact that someone from the family had managed to reach that stage at any time in history was a testament to the family’s power.
There were also 3rd and 4th tier families, where you needed a Gold for 4th tier and at least 5 Golds for 3rd tier. A Silver was seen as a powerful and respectable mage, but they weren’t strong enough to be entitled to form a family clan. You could only do that if you managed to reach Gold—making that the dream of many mages who didn’t come from a family clan.
Adion had been training very hard his entire life, though, and even managed to form his core without a spark, solely relying on his Will to do so. So even if he wasn’t even 13 yet, he could feel that his Will was more than strong enough to reach all the way to Bronze. So, compressing his core to a peak Stone core was no challenge for Adion.
He simply focused his Will, and with little resistance, the core was compressed, denser, and a tiny bit bigger than it would have been at the beginning of the high Stone stage.
It feels really good to get more powerful. Now that I won’t lack any food for a while, I should focus on increasing my strength. Beasts seem to stay away from this area for some reason, so there's no need to go pick a fight with them. I can simply look for more food around the area while coming back here to sleep and eat. I can probably survive for two months just from these three trees.
Adion quickly got into a new routine. Every day, he would eat a few apples for breakfast, meditate, and then head out in search of more food sources. He would then take some time to practice his space and fire magic as well as practicing his shadow mana control. At the end of the day, he would once again eat and meditate to increase his core size. Day by day, his strength increased little by little.
