ã€ŠBalancing of the worldã€‹


 Prologue

    Sighing I look through the window of my families castle at the wilderness beyond. Another community has been destroyed, or so the clans bringing in refugees have informed us.

    The history of our people has always been full of ups and downs.

    At one point we were technologically supreme and dominated the planet. We had great machines, vast cities, weapons no animal or natural force could contend with, and we could communicate to those on the other side of the planet instantaneously. We were looking towards other planets, believing that there was nothing left to conquer on this one. We had been to the highest mountain tops, the deepest oceanic trenches. We had left the atmosphere and were at the cusp of starting to colonize other planets.

    But the higher you fly, the harder you fall. Nature, or the earth, or whatever it was, found a way to respond to us. It might even have been one of our own many, many experiments into our ever-expanding technological capabilities. We were able to chemically change matter and transform energy types and adding a new type of energy seems like something someone might have thought to be a good idea. Whoever or whatever did this; there was now a new energy type to contend with.

    Adding a new type of energy to the world has had many, many consequences. Gravity, electromagnetism, light, thermal, and all the other types of energy used to be in balance. However, add a new kind of power, and the previous balance is lost. Expanding the issue is that mana is not uniformly distributed everywhere. It was already known that increasing gravity slows down time and bends light, so we knew that energy types have a significant effect on each other. It should not have been a surprise that mana pockets change all the different energy types in its surrounding. It can increase or decrease gravity, and it can make a location warmer or colder, or even improve the flow of time in that pocket to the point where when you leave it you will have experienced time in a different way than people who haven¡¯t entered that pocket.

    Mana is a type of energy which seems to be able to adapt to and become any type of matter. This energy permeates the bodies of both humans and animals, making us better, or at least more than we were before. As our bodies absorb mana, it enhances us, making us faster, stronger, and our senses got better. Now we could run much faster, jump higher, lift heavier things, see further away and hear better. However, this is true for any living being. Powerful beasts roam the wilderness moving from mana dense areas to mana dense areas absorbing the mana at the location and leaving when the mana there is used up. Plants have become a force in their own right, making nature a dangerous foe as it had been in olden times.

    Now, with mana acting like a monkey wrench in the world of our own creation, our technology became unusable. Centuries of research on how to use the energies of the world suddenly became obsolete, the moment a new one was added. We can still create electricity but can¡¯t transport it. When the moving current reaches a change in mana density, it can slow down or speed up or stop being all together, and this effect changes constantly making it unusable at the final location. A combustion engine works differently in one location than it would work in another so your car could suddenly come to a halt, or your plane might drop from the sky.

    Traveling became impossible as sudden increases or decreases in gravity make any fast travel besides just running impossible. All forms of communication went down, even if we had been able to use electricity, as sound waves are affected as well as moving differently than they used to.

    Societally we went back centuries, to where your immediate neighbors were all you had around you. People lost sight of their friends and family that were outside of walking distance range, and governments had to go local too.

    It took years for humanity to figure out that the mana available to grow your capabilities was directly related to the mana in your environment. And humans mostly did the wrong thing. By staying in the same location, we used up the mana in our lands quickly, which we hoped would allow us to at least use some of our technology. We also kept living in as large of communities as we possibly could. It felt like it would be suitable for protection, and of course humans were and always will be social creatures, but in the end, we were splitting what little mana we had available to us among the many. This resulted in animals slowly but surely edging out humans in power. Entire countries were being wiped out by hordes of animals so strong that there was no way for humans to damage them with the weapons that were available.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

    This is how we got to our current situation. Refugees from the destroyed communities started banding around the few pockets where humans had stayed and grown in mana rich environments whom we now call the powerful. These are people who have taken in enough mana to be able to contend with the powerful beasts roaming the wild and threating the weaker people. With initially few others to share the mana with, the survivors from these groups of powerful became strong enough to protect a portion of land leading to the option of starting their communities.

    But there are so few powerful people left. Without the means of expanding our lands, we can¡¯t create more powerful than there originally were. The ones we have can¡¯t become more powerful without risking their lives in battles against equally powerful beasts. And after all this, there are merely nine stationary communities and seventyish roaming clans remaining in the entire northern Americas. To our knowledge at least. And if such a massive piece of the world has so few left, we can only fear what the rest of the world would be like.

    My community, Aprait, is a large one and was founded by seven surviving families that were living in a remote, mana dense, mountain village. Originally there were over 200 households in our town, but the constant battles against the beasts in the area had cut that number down to the mere seven that remain today. However, these seven became very strong.

    The other villages are far, far away from our current location. We are on the border between what used to be Canada and Alaska, and the furthest other community is on one of the islands in South Carolina or about 5200 kilometers away. Even with our enhanced bodies, we can¡¯t travel much more than 150 kilometers a day, leaving a little over a month of travel time.

    Being a mountainous village food is always an issue, so we started taking in refugees to help with this issue. The seven families each have a sizeable castle-like compound surrounding the village, so that we can maximize mana intake for our new members, but can still quickly enter the town. Within the tow, the refugees that were taken in, grow food, both through farming and livestock. As there are so many living beings in that small area, the villagers, as well as the cattle, don¡¯t have enough access to mana to grow strong enough to fight, so they are entirely reliant upon the families to defend them.

    Aprait is led by a council of seven; each family has one representative present in the council and follow a majority rules system. The other villages have become one of four types besides the one that we are following. There are the following types:

    First were religious communes that have stayed religious. Usually, these are led by a church leader who controls everything that happens. Directly beneath this religious leader would be a type of paladin. These take the role that in our village are accepted by the families. Like our families, they live on the edge or just outside of the community. These would be the most powerful around, and both keep the people safe as well as in line.

    The second type would be a monarchy type of community. Here usually one person or family rules through power. They would be the only one or ones with power keeping the rest in line as well as safe. Naturally, if one person or one small group of people monopolize most of the space they would become very strong themselves, but having so few protectors is a risk in and of itself, so these communities tend to be very small.

    The last types are the roaming communities we call clans. These can either be tiny groups or singular people who are strong enough to survive on their own. Or they are traders protected by someone powerful who travel between the known communities. These groups are small, far in-between, and we have no way of knowing how many are still out there.

    However, in the struggle for land and resources, humanity is losing. Badly. Until last year there were ten communities, but one of the monarchies has been destroyed when the head of the family died of old age, and there was no one powerful enough left to protect everyone. On their journey to other communities, over 80% of the refugees died, and so we lost another piece of land from which to derive power.

 Chapter 1, Creation

    Silently Andrew Fogg, the representative of the Fogg family, and I watch the delegates from the other families enter the room.

    Usually, we only meet once a month to discuss relevant topics, leaving all the minor issues to the families to solve on their own. This time, however, we have come to discuss options for survival long term. With another community being destroyed, this means another bastion of human resistance being lost and another group of beasts gaining access to mana to become powerful. We all know something must be done, and no family alone is strong enough to do it.

    ¡°William, look¡± Andrew nudges me towards the window where my grandson Arthur is playing. Arthur is the most promising youth of our Elliot family, but still too young to realize the gravity of what is going on within these walls. Smiling I turn to look at the James Stallwar who just entered and nods in our general direction. Stallwar people are usually silent, but James takes this to a more extreme, which is surprising as he is their representative to the council.

    Andrew is our chairman though besides opening and closing the meeting, there is not much more this entails.

    After everyone has arrived, he waits another ten minutes so people can get seated and have had a chance to exchange pleasantries, Andrew gently taps the gavel on the table and speaks our traditional words: ¡°with the banging of the gavel the meeting is now opened to the honorable representatives to do their business.¡±

    I am sure one of the survivors from our village when we were founded, was a lawyer and had started this as a jab towards legacy court proceedings. At least no one was forced to wear a wig or a dress.

    As my family is the only one who has maintained a library in our castle, we see ourselves as the keepers of the written word. Doing so has resulted in us automatically becoming the scribes of things significant, including these meetings. This may seem boring or denigrating to the uninitiated but in reality, being the enforcer of agreements as well as being the only one who has to completely understand what is meant, is a power in and of itself.

    Having converted this subtle power into actual influence over the generations, my family is now the first family with speaking rights, after the meeting is opened. So I take the gavel and explain the situation as I understand it:

    ¡°Dear ladies and Gentlemen. As I¡¯m sure everyone knows by now, Kerial has been destroyed. The destruction of it has left us with a mere nine other communities. As discussed in previous meetings, we have added this meeting to our regular ones on an annual basis to both specifically discuss our plans for security as well as any plans to expand our influence.¡±

    I take a breath and let my words sink in for a few seconds while I look around. As we had decided in our monthly meeting to have another annual meeting like this one, especially after recent events, no one could have been surprised by my previous words. They were nothing but an opener.

    ¡°As the representative of the Elliot Family, I have now relayed the meaning and goal of this meeting and will open the floor to the Foremann family representative to discuss their ideas on security for the coming year.¡±

    Hours go by with the representatives talking. I zone out most of the time as everyone is going through their prepared speeches, not wanting to be outdone by other families and making sure everyone knows that they too have had the same ideas as everyone else. These parts are always dull as they are just a way for everyone to show that they to belong here, but nothing substantial gets added.

    Blah blah blah, our family is strong, our young generation is going to surpass the previous one. Blah blah, we have subdued all the beasts in the few miles we are responsible for yada yada. Right from the first speech, I knew that they are looking at the defense part as just another time they can brag about what they have been up to and I am sure they are reusing their monthly speech but are only changing the words indicating timeframe.

    It becomes clear that this part of the meeting is not going to lead to anything. I would have stared outside or nodded off as some of the others seem to be doing if it weren¡¯t for my job of keeping notes. I wouldn¡¯t want to miss it if someone suddenly said something interesting for once.

    Three hours later, all the preprepared speeches have been droned through. As expected, I could have copied my notes form the monthly meeting and gone to sleep. It has been years since we lost any major battle, and the lack of urgency the representatives feel is not subtly hidden.

    I look at Andrew, and as if he reads my mind, he moves us along to the exciting part, ideas for future expansion. Where the representatives could use the fact that they have kept their parts of the community safe as a reason to brag, and nothing more, this next part is new and exciting.

    Unfortunately, it seems like some of the representatives, the ones I obviously like less than the others, have prepared a speech again. After the ones who wanted to have read their longwinded speeches, we are left with only two unique and viable solutions;

    The Stallwar family has come up with the option to send out a mix of powerful and youngsters who have yet to take significant amounts of mana to prearranged locations where they would try to start a new community. They have already sent out scouts in the past month to look for suitable sites to strengthen their solutions chance of being decided on. This would require continuous use of scouts, which they have already trained, to look for land to claim which is both rich in mana but not protected by something too strong. And preferably somewhere within a day¡¯s travel from us so that support can be provided if required.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    This option would put our children at risk, and we would risk the current balance of population to the point where our population might decline. We would also be risking some of our powerful to do this. But the upside is that more mana would be left for those who remain and those who leave have the chance to become powerful in their own right. We could expand our lands this way and our access to mana, and perhaps we can eventually connect these communities to become much more substantial.

    The area the scouts have decided on is a mana rich pocket, right beside an area close to devoid of mana. As a powerful beast had once lived here but left the moment it had absorbed most of what there was. The mana pocket only had a single grizzly living there and was just slightly more than a day¡¯s hike away from our community. With an area without any strong beasts right next to it, the new community would have a place to retreat to should their mana pocket be overrun, and they would have a chance to survive while waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

    Looking around James sees that the other representatives are seriously considering his idea, and he knows that if he is the one presenting the solution chosen and his family is the one set up to provide support, this would be a big boon to his prestige. But then again, he would have earned it.

    The other idea is mine and is much more theoretical as we can¡¯t be entirely confident of the effects that it will result in. We know that when any living being dies, the mana that it has saturated itself with throughout its life releases back into the world again. We have done tests in the past by luring beasts into our area and killing them there, and have seen positive results. Doing so raises the mana in the area slightly for each creature killed. Aprait has been doing this for years, hoping to increase our mana density. However, for every beast we slay in our area, a human dies outside of it, keeping the balance, unfortunately, as is. The theoretical idea is to lure many beasts in at once and kill them together through a significant battle.

    All the beasts and humans dying at the same time in the same place should theoretically rapidly increase the mana in the area, and hopefully, that would lead to the area becoming what we would call a mana pocket. An area mana would continually be attracted to. By raising our mana, we can then become stronger, and more of us can become powerful, which in turn would allow us to take more land, and kill more beasts ¡ª hopefully leading to a cascading effect which will enable us to become the dominant force again.

    Considering that these two ideas are not mutually exclusive, we decide upon both. As we set up and ready ourselves to send out the first excursion, we can try my approach and see if the effects are what we would like. The timeline would be something along the lines of spending two months setting up a battlefield and mapping out the methods and routes of luring beasts into it. Then in the third month have a significant battle. We will wait two months to see if the results are satisfying. If they are, we will increase our power and push outwards.

    It would mean that we won¡¯t have to risk our children in a new community, and we can slowly and safely expand. If for some reason, the results are less than desirable, we will start choosing and training a group of children and powerful for starting a new community. When we have the meeting next year, we will then decide if the group is ready, finalize preparations and send them out.

    ¡­

    Two months later, our preparations are finally all complete. The arena is built, and we have cleared unobstructed paths into it from all the luring locations outside to its center. We have mapped out the single beasts and beast hordes we want to lure here, and we have prepared suitable lures as well as our fastest powerful to use these lures. Then we have set up teams of powerful at each entrance with theoretically enough power to kill the beasts that will enter this trap. We have timed the luring and the killing and have doctors ready to try to save as many lives as possible. We also have a few warriors in reserve in case of too many casualties or more beasts than expected show up.

    If it were quiet here, I am sure that we could hear the first of the beasts making way towards us. However, right now all I can hear is the fighters pumping themselves up for battle.

    As the first beast horde arrives, a pack of massive wolves, the powerful holding the bait turns right in front of the team ready to catch the horde and slaughter them. The first of these wolves hasn¡¯t been cut down before I hear the next beast to my right enter the arena. The sound comes from a strong and overgrown grizzly that has been living about 2 kilometers from my family¡¯s castle for as long as I can remember. Getting rid of it will not just help us right now, but in the long run, it will take out one of the most potent neighbors we have to contend with.

    More and more beasts stream into the arena only to be met by our warriors. As a team finishes of their mark, they move on to help on the next, and so on. It takes two whole hours to get all the beasts in the arena, and by the time the last one enters, we have already killed half of them. Fortunately, careful planning and timing have kept our loss of human life minimal and less than we had feared. I close my eyes as I can feel mana levels rising. It feels like at the end of a cold night, waking up and basking in the sun in the morning. It may take time for mana to make us stronger, but the feeling of mana rich air around us feels good nonetheless. It does, however, also help the beasts and motivate them to fight harder.

    Another hour later, all the beasts are dead, and our doctors are trying to save as many humans as possible. The air is definitively more abundant in mana, but most of the mana is still hanging in the small area where most of the beasts died and coalescing into what I can only describe as a sphere. I can¡¯t see it of course, but anybody who has lived with mana their entire life can feel it well enough to know precisely what is happening. It seems to be increasingly focussing itself in one small area.

    Curiously the unharmed fighters and I approach the sphere. This is the first time I have seen anything like this. I have of course been to multiple dense mana pockets whenever they form in the surrounding areas, but this is different.

    And just as it seems to have reached the apex of absorbing the surrounding mana, it shoots away and is gone.

    Well¡­ if this is all the mana increase we are going to get, this was a tremendous waste of time and life.

 Chapter 2, Eking out a living

    Flee!

    As it gains sentience, the first thing it notices is that it¡¯s losing itself. Mana does not naturally flow to this location, and it requires a significant portion of its faculties to keep the mana from flowing away, both to other sites as well as to the other beings surrounding it. The dense mana within these creatures tucks on the mana of which the creature itself consists. It has to get away from them until it can find a place where it can exist.

    So it flees.

    Using its mana it can move fast, but it leaves behind parts of itself as it does so. So it slows down. Consisting entirely of mana, naturally, it can feel the mana in its surroundings. Like breathing, it takes it in and allows it to flow out again. It is looking for a place where the mana has been drained so thoroughly that no threat to its existence would choose to live there.

    With its speed, it takes no less than three hours to find one such a place. A location, so dry of mana, that life here is weak and not used to having access to a lot of mana. After whatever had been here sucking the atmosphere dry of mana had left, slowly, more vulnerable creatures that had fled the more dangerous regions came here for security. They won¡¯t grow strong here, but at least they will live.

    Here it can find a home and increase its power and influence.

    Being able to stop and be without being threatened allows it to think. To try and come to terms with what it is. Mana is formless and invisible, like the air in which it exists. As such, it doesn¡¯t have a set form and keeps changing. Like a cloud does. It can feel what it is. It can feel the mana in its surroundings and can lay claim on it. When mana was being absorbed before it was growing weaker, but now it starts taking in the mana in the surroundings, and despite how sparse it is, it feels that it is getting stronger.

    The first thing it does is to expand. Like breathing out, its body permeates the area region. It has to take care to keep mana levels equal, at least until it understands enough to know how to make the zone better rather than hurt what is currently there. Having taken over the local mana, it now feels the local wildlife. As they live within the mana it controls, it feels like it is continuously being touched by their presence. Slight enough so it can ignore it, but still it can also focus on each individual beasts actions as well.

    However, the mana just a few meters away is in such disarray that it can¡¯t be controlled yet. To grow, it would need to learn how to do this.

    Over the next week, it just watches. Content to learn about life here. Around the new area, the lowest on the food chain are the grasses. They grow fast, ensuring survival through sheer numbers. Each blade instinctively uses what little mana it has access to, to increase its growth. Following the mana as it is passively absorbed by the grasses, it sees the mana being sent to the tips of the blade to boost growth. It is a constant balancing act, where grasses that grow too high attract predators which then cut its life short. Not growing high enough means that the other blades overshadow it, cutting it off from the sunlight which it needs.

    Towering over the grasses are bushes, trees, and flowers. Each larger but less numerous than the grasses are, they, however, do have access to slightly more mana. Following the flow of mana, there are some more diverse places mana can go. For those trees where most of the mana flow towards the leaves, more sunlight is absorbed. When more mana flows to the roots, they have more access to water. And when mana flows to the stems, they grow stronger and taller.

    Looking at this shows that balance is possible. Balance is life. There is a constant ebb and flow of mana between the flora here. A plant will passively absorb little bits of mana throughout its life, and when it dies naturally all of it is released in the air again and only when eaten will a small part go to the predator. Plants don¡¯t move. The mana that is here remains here.

    The subsequent part of the food chain are the insects. They fly small distances from plant to plant, taking in small amounts of food and mana while they do so. While looking at the mana flowing in, it can be seen that the bulk of the mana absorbed is coming in from the food eaten rather than passively consumed from the environment. The mana is then used to grow larger, fly faster or repel attackers. The area in which they operate is not large, mostly staying in the creature¡¯s area, and the few that leave are replaced by ones coming from other regions. As the surrounding areas are more mana rich, it comes down to a net positive. Whenever the mana increases ever so slightly, our creature becomes a little stronger. It has a little more mana to use to expand or grow.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    As nothing substantial will want to live in a mana poor area, the top of the food chain are the spiders and the rabbits. Spiders either make webs staying stationary and catching insects that enter their webs. Without any predators here, these spiders use all their mana on their spinnerets, increasing strength and production. More massive webs increase chances of catching insects, giving it more access to food. Other spiders have gone the hunter route. These are generally smarter, larger, venomous, and more powerful. Mana is split into five equal parts; venom, size, legs, chitin, and sensory. There seems to be a symbiotic relationship between where the mana focusses and the lifestyle of the spider.

    The creature learns that the more complicated something is, the more options mana provides for enhancements. This is shown especially clearly with the rabbits. Mana can go to the stomach to increase the energy taken from the grass. Mana can increase the overall size of the rabbit, as with more weight it can perform better in fights with others of its kind and win more land to graze on. Mana can also increase muscle density.

    When this happens, nothing is seen on the outside, but the rabbit might be able to jump higher, run faster, or bite harder, when pregnant mana can flow to the fetus to help in growth, though in this short amount of time it can¡¯t see if there is any effect on the infant. The teeth can become sharper, and the ears can become longer for better hearing. Possibilities are becoming endless.

    There are also many more transient species like birds and moles that don¡¯t stay long enough in the zone to either have a significant impact or to be impacted, so they are not considered to be residents.

    The painful thing is that these most significant absorbers of mana, without predators, grow to group sizes that can¡¯t be sustained on this little plot of land, so they keep having to leave the area. And when they go, many of them die to stronger predators, making these rabbits real mana drains on the field. In the week of observation, two rabbits left the area without returning, making the first improvement clear. Ensuring that more mana flows in than flows out by making it so that fewer creatures leave its area than are entering it, and when they do leave they both have the will and the power to return.

    But how to do this?

    As the controller of mana, it can guide the flow of mana even after it has been absorbed. The first task is to increase the food source. This would be a temporary measure as, without predators, rabbits will continuously multiply until the area itself can¡¯t bear the numbers. However, first things first. Rabbits eat grass so that a good start will be at the bottom of the food chain.

    First for the grasses. It had observed that grass grows both above and below ground. While the food part, the blades shoot up towards the needed sunlight, below the ground, the stems grow too and from that new blades of grass prop up. Currently, the stems barely get any mana to use, and each blade is selfishly using it for personal growth. Through careful guiding of mana that each individual blade absorbs, instead of keeping the mana in the blade itself, it moves the mana to the roots into the underground stems. Stronger and longer stems grown more blades of grass faster.

    This change takes a few days to take effect, but as grass is the fastest-growing of all the plants, the first effects are noticeable within the next week. The grass growth is slower, but there are more blades, which increases the food source for the rabbits here and hopefully attracting animals from the surrounding areas.

    The next few days it looks at the rabbits, and things are good. It knows that it will take time for the rabbits to increase in number to the point where they again overshadow the grass growth. So for now, the rabbits can stay, and there has even been a large buck with great antlers come by, though there is nothing to kill it and the low mana levels can¡¯t keep it around.

    It has also noticed that the grass and flowers compete for space. With the increased expansion of grasses in the zone, the roots of the flowers are having trouble passing through the underground web of stems. As flowers are an integral part of the food source for the insects, it can¡¯t allow flowers to fall too far behind so flowers to need a little boost. Directing small amounts of mana into the roots, it grows them more efficient in gathering water. Where in the past only drops from the groundwater were being absorbed, the now reduced roots can absorb more water resulting in a similar effect to the previous state.

    Noticing over time that sometimes creatures come into its zone, take minute traces mana and leave again, the second objective slowly becomes apparent. Either it needs to find a way to keep these beasts around, or it needs some kind of hunter that can kill them. Considering the options the land under its influence isn¡¯t large enough to feed a group of massive beasts. There isn¡¯t enough land to grow enough food, even with the enhanced growing speed. And even if the growing speed could be improved indefinitely, how to keep such mobile beings on a small plot of land?

    Something is needed to kill these mana bombs that occasionally come by.

 Chapter 3, What am I

    For the first two weeks of its life, it had mostly operated on instinct. It had fled when it felt threats near it. It consistently tried to take in nourishment from the surrounding areas, and even when this was not possible, it attempted to anyway. It looked for a safe space to hunker down in. It observed other things that used mana around it, as a newborn trying to emulate what was already there. And while watching, it was learning. What is consciousness but a far more complicated expansion on instinct? At what point does a plant become conscious? Or an animal?

    It might not yet be at the point where it can consciously ask itself these complicated philosophical questions, but it has expanded its thinking. Slowly it changes from reaction to planning. Now that there is no direct threat to it anymore in the immediate vicinity, and it has an area where it can participate in its version of feeding, it has time to think, and it starts realizing that there is a self. The self that wants. The self that needs. The self that makes it different from anything else. The self you would refer to as I.

    I want to be safe. I want to grow stronger. I want to eat this. But while that was happening, an important question arose. What is I. I am mana. But mana is everywhere but not everywhere is me?

    How am I different?

    I can think. I can plan. Mana itself has not anchored anywhere but affects every living being around, but I am mana, and I also use mana.

    I see three different types of mana. First and most important is the mana that is me. Second is the mana I can control around me, but that isn¡¯t me. And last is the mana outside of my control.

    Looking inwards I notice that the mana that is me is by far the densest. I feel like I am like a self-aware cloud.

    To test myself, I take a small part of myself and reduce the mana density, and indeed, It turns from me to not me. It isn¡¯t painful, but extremely uncomfortable to lose a part of yourself like that. That drainage is why I ran right when I was born, and pieces of me were becoming not me.

    Instinctively I know I want to be more. I want more mana to be me. I want more mana to be under my control.

    I again feel outwards towards the region with high mana densities but where I can¡¯t gain control. But why? What makes this mana so different from the mana I can control? I can go to other areas, so I know that I am not stuck here. Being tied to one area would be strange anyway, as zones are defined based on mana levels which constantly change anyway.

    Conversely, I try to condense myself and take in as much mana as I can. This both makes me smaller and creates a mana vacuum around me through which I can¡¯t feel anything. Immediately I lose connection to the grasses I had slowly been feeding. I feel stronger and bigger than ever, but now I have no idea of what is happening outside of me. Right now, I am nothing but a ball of mana that can¡¯t do anything. But I feel great.

    I always felt that I needed to increase the mana in my region. But now I know why.

    I always felt that I couldn¡¯t take all the mana close to me. But now I know that I can.

    My goal should, therefore, be to become stronger and bigger myself, but also to keep lower density mana around me, so I know what is going and I can have some semblance of control. To do this, I both need the mana density in my area to increase as well as get the mana of surrounding areas under my control, expanding my sphere of influence.

    My next test is to try to siphon off some mana from the mana dense region next to me.

    I know that mana flows between the areas, and I can take over the mana that enters my sphere of control, whereas I can¡¯t control the mana anymore that has left my zone. I can tell by looking at myself that high mana density attracts mana. This attraction is most likely what has caused the area next to mine to increase in mana density in the first place, which leaves me with two ideas on how to take mana. Either I can move the mana that is me close to the border and see if the fact that I am dense attracts mana into my area, or I can see if I can use the mana that is here to pull mana into me or at least stop my mana from leaving so I keep a net positive.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

    First, I move my main body next to the other region. I can feel that the increased density is increasing the amount of mana attracted to my zone. Happily, I move even closer to the border until I notice that almost all of the mana I am gaining here, is being lost again on the other side where the mana density has become less further away from my presence. So I move back to the center of my zone again.

    Next test is to see if I can make the mana stay in my area and if I can make the mana at the border regions pull in the mana from around. The first part barely takes a toll on my faculties. With a tiny bit of effort, I can stop the outward flow and keep the mana inside of me. It feels like I am creating a dome around me. A circular mana shield through which mana can enter but can¡¯t leave. I also think that I can slightly increase the mana I am pulling in by expanding the border areas of mana and thereby attracting more mana into this shield, which can then be disbursed in my zone again.

    While increasing the density, I notice that I am getting decreasing returns on my attraction rates. It turns out that have twice the mana does not mean a doubling of attraction. It seems that something in the other area is trying to keep the mana there.

    Maybe there is an area where the mana density in the neighboring zone is so high it attracts as a rate that can compete with me? Perhaps there is a being like me which is controlling the mana there? Or another type of animal so powerful that it can control the mana and keep it away from me. Or maybe it is an extremely chaotic movement that is blocking me. Whichever it is, as I can¡¯t control the mana there, I can¡¯t feel what is going on in that area, and there is no way for me to find out.

    With this new mana shield in place, I have stopped the bleeding that would have drained me eventually. With the mana stabilized within this dome, I am home. I am in complete control, and I can grow.

    I always knew that I could change things, to control the mana that they so selfishly absorb. And now I know for what I can use this.

    Then I realize something. It is weird how mana that is taken by a plant or an animal still feels like it is in my control as long as it stays in the area I am, but when something from outside of my area enters me, I don¡¯t feel like I can control that mana. I see this most often with the insects. The insects from my area that have been feeding on the mana that I control feel like they are still mine. I lose this connection when they go to neighboring areas, but when they come back, the link is also back.

    On the other hand, when an insect from the neighboring area flies in. I can feel that it has entered my territory. I can feel what it is and how much mana it has. I can even feel where the mana has gone and what has been enhanced and by how much. But it doesn¡¯t feel like I can control the mana. The little bits of mana taken while inside my control, however, remain mine. And when the insect leaves, I again lose the connection.

    I think that there is a direct relationship between how much mana it has taken from me to how much it feels like mine.

    Thinking back, I wasn''t aware of this at the time, but when I came to this area, I could easily take in the unclaimed mana. And by feeding my mana to everything around, I quickly felt like everything here was mine, but the mana absorbed before I arrived only became mine once the being that took it died inside of my control.

    I can do a little test here. I look for a blade of grass ready to pop up out of the ground and start absorbing mana.

    The moment it does I create a mana vacuum around it so it can¡¯t absorb anything.

    What I notice in the following days is that the blade of grass doesn¡¯t grow as fast as the grass around it. Its color becomes brown from lack of sunlight, and it starts dying as the roots can¡¯t dig as deep as its neighbors, so it doesn¡¯t get any water.

    The second day the blade of grass is overshadowed so much that it won¡¯t be able to survive without any outside help.

    So I change the test. I increase the mana around this blade of grass to at least double what it usually would be. And the grass as expected starts absorbing the mana at a higher rate than its surrounding grass.

    Without me controlling it, the mana flows to the blade which within a day has caught up to the grass around it. But the color remains brown, as now the roots are not getting enough mana to catch up. I wonder why?

 Chapter 4, Different spiders

    As far as I have seen, nothing else but beings like me can consciously control the mana. But I have also noticed that mana does not flow to the same parts for the same types of organism. I know that for this blade of grass, the growth must be the most important and the target of its focus. Perhaps mana goes to what is used most when I don¡¯t control it?

    I test this on two spiders. I choose one which hunts by running after insects, and another who has built a web.

    First, I start by increasing the mana around the hunter spider. I start adding a little bit more every hour and monitor. I notice that the mana intake isn¡¯t consistent. I knew from previous observations that there is a passive absorbing which is always happening and is dependent on atmospheric mana density, as well as absorbing through food where it would take some of the mana its prey held. That means that the mana intake is dependent on both the region where it lives and the prey it can take. This revelation opens another opportunity for me. If hunter spiders were to take prey back to a nest, a nest in my area of influence, then it can hunt in the neighboring regions and bring me mana. But as they don¡¯t nest, and I can¡¯t communicate with it, this gets filed under long term opportunities.

    After almost doubling the mana surrounding the spider, I notice that the mana distribution follows the predetermined pathways. It seems that mana attracting other mana is always turned on even after absorption and that something that has been enhanced by mana, will be further enhanced by mana creating a specialist. But the question remains, how does mana decide on its focus?

    Next, I begin enhancing the area around the web spider. As I now know what to look for, I first confirm that the web spider, similar to the hunter spider, is being specialized further. The spinnerets that produce the silk have gotten around halve of the mana previously absorbed, and so an equal of what it is taking from the atmospheric mana is distributed there.

    Besides the continued specialization, I can¡¯t seem to find any other difference between the two spiders. I even took care to choose two spiders who seem to have come from the same nest, meaning that they have the same organs and most likely started with the same physical attributes. The hunter spider can build a web if it wants to, and the web spider could go out to hunter if it wants to. But they have each chosen a method to catch prey with, and somehow the mana is encouraging this as if an outside force is guiding it. But that too doesn¡¯t make sense as a guiding external force would mean interference when I guide the mana somewhere.

    Not knowing what to do next, I keep increasing the mana around the spiders. At the very least, I want to know how enhancements work and what they do.

    It takes me an entire day to get to the point where it feels like I am hitting the limits of how much mana I can spend on the spiders without fear of having to reduce the mana that is me or lower the atmospheric mana to the point where I can¡¯t feel it anymore. The hunter spiders growth has been snowballing, and it has become much stronger and faster but also seems to need a lot more food and mana to maintain itself. It has now gotten to a point where it doesn¡¯t skitter away from the smaller rabbits anymore, though it probably still couldn¡¯t beat one.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    The web spider, on the other hand, has built a web large and robust enough that it has entangled a passing bird. This will definitively be something I want to enhance as these birds are migratory and can bring me mana from outside.

    I stop enhancing the mana around these spiders while I ponder what I have seen. I know what my limits are, though I am going to have to find a way to quantify it if I want to know precisely what I can spend without dropping to dangerous levels.

    I also can¡¯t do any more tests until either or both of the spiders die as a lot of mana is now locked up in them, and I have no way of retrieving it. I can¡¯t even kill one of the spiders if I wanted to as I can¡¯t affect their material world more than just sending mana.

    While I am digesting my test results, I am keeping a watchful eye on the spiders I had tested with to see if there are any changes. Besides the hunting spider vastly increasing its hunting efficiency, it also seems to want to hunt more. No... it seems to need to kill more. For some reason it is frantically running around trying to capture anything it can find.

    After killing a fly, I see that the mana inside follows a similar path to the mana from the atmosphere but the percentage going towards the legs is slightly higher than the atmospheric mana was. Perhaps when something is used right before eating the energy to that part is replenished with mana. That would explain the differences in the spiders. If the web spider had eaten just after finishing its web, catching a weak insect, its web making capabilities would be enhanced, and it would more likely be able to capture something that way again. As this would keep strengthening itself, it would soon learn that continually improving its web leads to more food than hunting does, so it becomes a pure web builder.

    The hunting spider, on the other hand, might have gotten a relatively large portion of its first meals from ambushing or hunting and thereby enhanced its physical aspects. As its webs can¡¯t compete with stronger insects, yet it finds that hunting provides the highest success rate. When a new nest of spiders is born, I will have to check this, though I don¡¯t see any spider eggs around so that may take a while.

    While I had been distracted mulling over how the different spiders might have gotten to be as they are now, I notice that the hunting spider has become so frantic that is has started following a small rabbit. I doubt it is a fight it can win, so I wonder why it would take this risk. It may have grown considerably, but even the smallest of rabbits is still more substantial and much, much heavier.

    I can come up with conjectures on why it would take the risk. Perhaps it needs more food to support its new size? Maybe it has become addicted to mana, and the small amounts from the insects don¡¯t satisfy anymore? Perhaps the sudden reduction in mana to the newly enhanced body parts causes pain or distress in some way?

    I think if I had a way of communication, and if the spider were intelligent enough, I would progress so much faster in understanding the world.

    The web spiders change is much less noticeable but it has been sleeping for a while now. I know it isn¡¯t dead as the mana hasn¡¯t released from its body, but it is strange for web spiders to not work on their web for such a long time. It also strikes me as odd that the two spiders would have such different responses to the same issue. Where one becomes frantic and much more active, the other in the absence of the previous abundance of mana seems to conserve what it can.

    Perhaps this is also a difference between the types of spiders?

    Feeling a relatively large amount of mana being rereleased, I see that the hunting spider has attacked a rabbit and died. It had run at the rabbit and had been squashed when the rabbit jumped on top of it. Rabbits don¡¯t eat spiders, so the body releases most of its mana and remains to lay there for insects and bacteria to eat. At least now I have some mana to do some more experiments again.

 Chapter 5, Math for clouds

    With my spider tests leaving me with more questions than answers, I should refocus on what is essential right now. As my zone of control is stable, the next step is expansion. Just expanding two spiders into powerful beasts takes it out of me, so if I want to protect myself from whatever is controlling the mana close to me, I need more mana.

    The most consistent way I have thought of, besides finding a method of passive mana attraction, is by luring animals from other zones and having them die in my area. For that, I look at what I have at hand and immediately discard the rabbits, trees, and flowers.

    Rabbits aren¡¯t hunters, nor do they have any natural weapons I can easily enhance. I completely lack the mana to strengthen them to the point that they may even be a slight threat to anything coming from nearby and anything they can defeat wouldn¡¯t be strong enough to significantly make a difference mana wise for me.

    Trees are large and have defensive measures, but nothing eats them, and they can¡¯t attack on their own. I doubt I will have the ability any time soon to enhance them to the point where they can move and aggressively take something out. The best option I could think of right now would be to enhance the tree sap to the point where it could trap and maybe suffocate potential attackers. But who attacks a tree?

    Flowers are eaten occasionally and definitively attract nearby beasts, but the insects attracted are already dying due to my spiders and enhancing the flower to the point that they would be any threat would be far less efficient compared to improving spiders.

    So spiders, grass or insects it is.

    Spiders have the option of being venomous, which is not something I have tried enhancing yet, but it certainly can kill something larger. I would have to improve one of the hunter spiders for this so it can ambush prey much more substantial than it and inject its mark with venom.

    To me, this seems like a decent option considering enhancing the spider would also add a predator of the rabbits to my area culling their numbers so that in the long run they don¡¯t become a drain on my mana pool again.

    The downside here is that I would need quite a few spiders, and it might take me a lot of mana to enhance them to the point of being dangerous to larger game. And even if I could do that easily, I would also need to strengthen their physical abilities to the point that it can catch and bit the new prey. And then I have seen that the mana enhancements do not leave my spiders unharmed.

    It would be cruel to have to enhance spiders specifically for each target and have them die of whatever caused my test subjects to die. Though breeding a new type of kamikaze spiders does have some appeal.

    Insects can spread diseases, which may not be something they themselves make, but these diseases they carry certainly can be enhanced. I have seen a rabbit get sick from the infection brought, though even now it still lives. It would probably die the moment a predator comes by as it is now the slowest of all rabbits, but without predators, it is always safe and fed.

    Even a sick rabbit can outrun grass.

    I don¡¯t think diseases would be able to kill fast enough to so that its prey dies before returning to its home, but as a method of attack, this certainly holds appeal. If I find out that the mana around me is controlled by something else, getting it sick by sending disease-ridden insects in its direction would undoubtedly be a method of attack for me.

    The grass is another decent option. With the new higher numbers it is the main attraction for anything coming here, so I know that it would get eaten. Grasses already have multiple chemical reactions, from photosynthesis to emitting a smell when it is under attack. Enhancing one of these chemical reactions to the point of being dangerous should, due to the lack of complexity, not be that expensive.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    I would, however, have to find the means of finding out what the current reaction does. I also need a way to not kill all my own rabbits, and eventually everything else by sending poison up the food chain. Or even worse, if poisonous grass were to die, it might compost and leave poison in the land itself leaving it barren. Killing something but destroying my future domain in the process does not seem wise, though.

    Realistically, the options open to me here is between a kamikaze spider versus a scorched earth policy. Of course, both strategies have their appeal, and both could kill. The problem is that the scorched earth part might be the only one I could afford.

    The choice here would have been so much easier if I had been able to quantify my mana and determine how much I would need for the desired effect. It would be so much better if I could calculate exactly what my budget is so I can plan. I need to know how many spiders or blades I can turn without any risk. I need to have a better understanding of the daily flow. And if I were to send something out to hunt, I need to know what kind of rewards I would need to offset the cost of risk of sending it out there.

    Mana seems to have two variables I can consider. The volume, which dictates the size of the area I am looking to measure. And the density which is how much mana is cramped into that space. As I can¡¯t talk to other people, I need to think of a measurement myself, and I seem to have three levels of density to choose from for units. Either I can take the lowest amount of mana I can still control, the most moderate amount of mana I can make become me or the max pressure I can put on myself when I make myself as small as possible.

    It is a possibility that maximum density might become higher when I get stronger, and either way, I don¡¯t want to have to use a lot of mana to get a measurement. The same goes for the lowest mana density where a slight miscalculation might make the mana go out of my control, or it might change when I get stronger. That leaves the lowest density that makes mana me.

    As for size, I need something constant and available that if I had to move would be consistent too. All plants and animals vary in size and aren¡¯t regular. The same goes for rocks. Anything smaller would be too small to use. I can¡¯t reference myself as I am constantly changing in size, and nothing about me is constant.

    Luckily while I was considering my options, it started raining. Usually, things like day and night, rain or sunshine, don¡¯t affect me in the slightest. This time, however, I don¡¯t have much else to do but watch the raindrops falling. As the drops displace mana, I am able to determine that there is a maximum drop size before it splits into two drops. So my mana calculation would be the maximum density mana that I can control without it becoming me in the maximum size of a raindrop before it splits.

    Having a consistent unit of measurement is not going to be easy, and I first need to see if the water isn¡¯t affected by mana itself, because then it could change based on mana density in the area. I also need to know if I can replicate this with the atmospheric water which is always around. It would do me no good if I could only measure mana when it rains as it has only rained a couple of times in the 37 days I have been here so it would be inconsistent at best.

    So first up is trying to attach mana to the atmospheric water and see what happens. I add what I think will become one unit of mana to a drop while it falls and confirm that there are no changes. Then I add mana to an area of air the size of a drop to see what happens.

    So this is a surprise. It seems I can use mana to slightly decrease the rate at which the atmospheric atoms move. First, the water becomes somewhat visible as a type of cloud but stable in the area which I am enhancing. Second, when I increase the mana density further, which focusing on improving the water, then a drop will slowly form and eventually fall.

    After many tests, I think that I can conclude that if I were to make the area in which I slow down the atoms of the water too large, two drops fall. So now at least I have a dependable surefire way of practicing. At least until I can consistently determine the size and then I will have a unit. Mana directed this way is not used up in any shape or form; it is just utilization of what is there, so it doesn¡¯t cost me anything.

    For the coming days, I will focus on doing upgrades to my living creatures until I reach my self-imposed daily budget. After that, I will spend the rest of the day practicing determining mana units.

 Chapter 6, The rabbit and the grass

    So now back to testing on living organisms.

    Don¡¯t get me wrong. I understand that the frantically running hunter spider from before would have probably been in pain. Similar to my very first experience, when those around me were trying to take my mana. And though I may not understand why the web spider just fell asleep and died, I know that it was no the natural way for it to go.

    However, I also realize that the fly in the web isn¡¯t happy about the fate that the spider has in store for it. I have seen the chemical distress signals displayed by plants when they are eaten alive by the very same animals that I am now going to kill. To me, I am just inserting myself in the food chain and altering it to my needs. Nature is unforgiving, and being a part of it means that so can I be.

    So let us start with a blade of grass first. Grass, according to my expectations, should take much less mana than a spider would, so I don¡¯t risk running low before finishing at least one test. Even for the tests with the stems, I used less than 0.0001 points of mana according to my new scale per blade of grass.

    So first, I follow a rabbit around while it eats, I observe the chemical process of the grass¡¯s distress call in detail. I notice that it releases certain enzymes during the cutting of the blade, which are then carried by air currents far outside of my zone. These enzymes are what I want to change to make them harmful, and preferably make them, so they don¡¯t spread too far nor kill everything outright.

    Of course, now that I want to actually perform the test, I run into a minor issue. I don¡¯t know how to make these enzymes harmful. I know that they exist, and I know that beasts that eat my grass are consuming them. I also know how and where the grass creates them, but my only real options are to pump the enzyme full of mana and see what happens or pump the manufacturing process of the grass full of mana and then see what happens.

    So the first tests in increasing the mana flow to the part of the blade which generates the enzymes. I spend about 0.0001 points of mana on it, which is the same amount I have spent on enhancing the stems and increases its mana total by 10%.

    Next, the harder test is to wait for a blade of grass that is about to get eaten and see if I can add 0.0001 points of mana to the enzymes right at the point of creation.

    A second rabbit which just left its hole should be an excellent target to follow, as they usually only go to eat.

    As the rabbit leaves its hole, it hops towards the first patch of grass, and immediately I move the mana over ready to pounce the second the rabbit takes a bite.

    Slowly I am becoming increasingly confident that the rabbit is mocking me, as it just sits there for a while not doing anything. Though my time might not be limited, waiting is still a fool¡¯s game. Stupid rabbit with its passivity. If it weren¡¯t for the risk of them leaving my zone, I should lower their grass allowance.

    While rambling to myself, I miss the first bite the rabbit takes, and despite trying to bind the mana to the enzymes, nothing happens. It doesn¡¯t seem to take. The mana moves and follows the wind as well, but nothing takes.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

    As I prepare some more mana, I am ready for the second opportunity. The exact moment the rabbit takes a chomp, my mana is there immediately. I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s good or bad, but only a fraction of the mana I had ready takes, and the only effect is a slight increase in the chemical reaction which I assume means that the enzymes are more potent. However, I have no idea what they were meant to do, so doing more of it still leaves me baffled.

    I guess I should be happy that I haven¡¯t poisoned my entire zone of influence into being unable to grow anything anymore. However, this blade of grass is not going to be killing prey any time soon.

    I also see another issue with these latest tests. The first enhanced blade of grass is still sitting pretty, but as long as nothing eats it, there is no way to see its effectiveness. If only I could cut it myself or guide one of my animals to do it, then I would have an immediate result.

    Annoyed at my personal inabilities to further the previous tests along I start practicing estimating mana unit sizes again. Wait, this may be a solution. If I were to use small bits of mana, I can make the water visible. If I were to create walls around a rabbit looking to feed, perhaps I can guide it towards the blade of grass and have it eat that one specifically.

    I could, of course, also increase the number of blades enhanced and this way increase the chances of one of them being eaten. However, not knowing the effect of my enhancements nor wanting to have to pay attention to a whole bunch of grasses until one of the right ones are eaten just does not appeal to me.

    Unfortunately, it has turned night again, and nothing is around and awake that eats grass anyway. Sigh. My life as an energy creature seems to be full of difficulties. Desponded I just keep practicing my mana unit estimation skills the rest of the night.

    The next morning all the rabbits leave their hole. I choose the largest one of them and create the blue fog walls around it straight towards the blade of grass I want it to eat. Of course, a slightly visible wall of fog does not ¡°force¡± anything to do anything. I am not sure if the rabbit is confused about the walls or just doesn¡¯t want to get its hide wet, but it occasionally does take my guidance.

    A whole bunch of mana walls later, most of which were just hopped through, and a bunch of other grass eaten, the rabbit is finally around my test subject grass. Excitedly I box in the rabbit and the grass, in essence locking them in a room together.

    I have noticed that having to wait and work for something leads me to be excited about seeing the result ¡ª the rabbit and the grass, together at last.

    Of course, the stupid animal eats some of the other blades first. I guess an immediate response to my gentle guidance would have been too much to hope for. But at long last, it finally moves towards the blade. I keep making the room smaller so that there is less of a chance of a sudden misdirection towards something else. Come on little rabbit, eat!

    I see that on the patch where I had been doing my experiment, only three blades are left, so the chances are good that it is finally time!

    It bites into the blade! Yes!!! Finally.

    And nothing much happens.

    The enzymes are indeed released, so that worked. In fact, more of them are released then usually would be. But that is it. I still don¡¯t know what the enzymes do, so more of them is just more of a completely unknown effect.

    This is disappointing, to say the least. After such a long build-up spanning two days, and all of these nifty innovations I have come up with, basically all that happens is more smell.

    So I guess the grass upgrade tests are a bust. If only I could figure out what the effect had been, I could have decided if it would be worth it, but spending mana on stuff I don¡¯t know just seems like a waste.

    So I start sulking a bit and start practicing my mana estimation again. I may or may not have accidentally dropped all the water droplets I was creating on top of the rabbit, which has cost me much effort and time to guide towards its destiny only to be disappointed thoroughly.

    The rabbit has run to its hole, probably having eaten enough and goes to sleep, and now I don¡¯t even have a target for my little drops anymore. This has not been a happy day.

 Chapter 7, A sensible plan

    After a night of reflecting on a disappointing day yesterday where none of my tests showed any results, I figure I should probably start enhancing my spider during the night. Then I will have an entire day for testing. First, I cycle through my current spiders and look for the one which currently has the most potent venom.

    I settle on one of the smallest hunter spiders around. I can tell that its venom sac has been fed the most mana by far and it must have been hunting using that venom as it does not seem physically imposing enough to have caught prey any other way.

    Slowly during the night, I pump 0.1 units of mana into the spider and direct it into the venom sac. The sac does not get larger per se, but the muscles surrounding it get stronger and I can tell that the venom produced is changing, hopefully for the better.

    With the mana taking effect and showing visible results, I cant wait to see what the venom can inflict on its prey. As my default method of passing the time is to practice my mana unit measurements, I may have been practicing right above the enhanced spider. And what do you know, the water drop not only wakes it but sends it scurrying about. Well, I guess as it is awake now it might as well go hunting, right?

    And unfortunately, that too does not seem to be the case. I wonder why my animals hate me and keep refusing to do the things I want them to do. Yesterday the rabbit took forever to eat the grass I was guiding it towards, and now the spider doesn¡¯t take to me waking it up and finds a more sheltered place to go back to sleep.

    So I guess I do actually have to wait for the morning to come before it will hunt on its own. Perhaps at some point, I can attract some spiders who are active during the night. That way, I would be able to alternate between day and night spiders?

    Come morning, my newly enhanced spider goes hunting. Naturally, it hunts for its regular prey. I am not sure if it knows that its venom is now stronger or not, but I know that it isn¡¯t killing anything outside of its norm. So now how do I get it to hunt?

    And come to think of it, what should it hunt?

    I can try my trick with the walls again and see if I can lock up my new killer spider with a rabbit and have them fight it out.

    Having decided that a rabbit versus spider arena, in the confinement of my mana walls would be the most expedient method of testing, I now create the stage with two hallways towards it ¡ª one for my spider, and the other for the smallest of my rabbits.

    Naturally, neither of them follow the hallway, and I keep having to create new corridors towards the arena. And when finally the spider has entered, the rabbit has left already and does not seem to want to go back.

    Exasperation seems to be my newest state of mind. I think I am going about this all wrong. Rather than do tests and hope for the best, it may be better just to start enhancing. If I were to create my own powerful army here that could kill anything that comes by, perhaps that would be the way to go. Even if I don¡¯t know how mighty exactly something is, stronger is better.

    As my zone contains an additional five hunting spiders, I enhance all of their venom sacs with the same amount as I had with the one test subject before bringing my total to 6 hunting spiders with varying degrees of enhanced venom sacs.

    Luckily I am now aware of how the mana evolutions work, and by bringing the mana percentage of the venom sacs up, it increases the mana that will go there in the future as well. This way, my hunting spiders may be smaller, but they will also be more dangerous.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.

    An added advantage here is that if the issue of my first hunting spider test subject were that its body size needed an amount of food it couldn¡¯t provide anymore, this issue would be solved this way too. It would be like catching two flies in my web, one would be to see the improved killing power, and the other would be to have eliminated one of the options that might have been the negative side effect.

    I also use this time to enhance the web making abilities of all my web spiders. Here too, I use 0.1 points of mana as enhancements. They won¡¯t be able to catch a bird or anything more substantial than what they are preying on now, but perhaps if they were to eat more, they would get more mana and enhance themselves further.

    With these minor upgrades done, I go back to testing myself. I doubt my spiders will be doing anything noteworthy with their current updates besides be slightly more successful hunting. And considering I hadn¡¯t been keeping score with how successful each of them was before, I wouldn¡¯t even notice a difference.

    So first things first, Looking at myself I hold about 500 points of mana that is me but compressed a lot. The atmospheric mana currently not in use, based on the observed areas would be about seventy points right now, but based on my previous experiment if it were to drop too low, I would lose the ability to feel the mana.

    I also know based on feeling that before I created the mana wall around my zone, I was losing about ten mana per week due to the gravitational effect of the mana of the surrounding areas. That means that if I hadn¡¯t built the wall when I did, I would have been out of mana in less than five weeks and even fewer if the drainage is exponential.

    My spiders have about one point of mana stored in them without my interference, but now they are at 1.1 points of mana. During my first spider experiments, I pumped about five points into them in a short timeframe. That might have been part of the issue, too much in too little time.

    This fact was especially overkill considering that by merely changing the current configuration of mana in their bodies, I can guide their future growth. It seems like I am too rushed. I have already ensured a status quo, and can now take my time growing right. I also need to make sure that I don¡¯t get into a situation where a species dies out in my zone from too much experimentation.

    Just taking stock, I currently have a family of five rabbits in my area and a total of 12 spiders. Split in the middle between web and hunting, and hunting further split between venomous and overpowering with the venomous ones remaining small. Insects come and go, and die quickly but also have a high reproduction rate, so I think I can ignore their numbers for now though they are reasonably ample battery of mana as a whole.

    My five trees, though towering behemoths and far overshadowing anything else, merely hold twenty-five mana points total between them. Flowers are relatively rare in my area, so a mere four points are stored between them, but the most significant storage of mana is in the grass. Each blade holds little, but there is so much of them. If I were just to cull one area of the field that alone would make me significant stronger. But it would also impede my future options of attracting mana, and it would force some of my current residents to move on.

    I think for now I will do one enhancement of 0.1 points per spider per day for this week. That should make them significantly stronger by the end of this week, and perhaps then the effects would be noticeable. That would then lower my available points by the end of the week, if nothing unexpected were to happen, down to 65.

    I will also keep three points in reserve in case either a rabbit gets pregnant, or one of the spiders lays eggs so that I can see if enhancing a creature before it is born will have a stronger effect. At the very least I should be able to guide their future evolutions right from the start that way. Unfortunately, I seem to be unable to change a development that has already happened by detaching the mana already attached. It appears that once mana has attached itself, it will be stuck there as long as there is life.

    So unless something happens, this will be my life for the coming week. Spend a short time upgrading my spiders, pay attention to possible reproductive activities of my spiders or rabbits, and spend the rest of the days and nights wasting time. It will be boring, but it will be productive.

 Chapter 8, Giving spiders jobs

    It only took two days! Two days before I ran into the next new item which I had neither seen nor considered before. Diminishing returns.

    First, I had decided that adding ten percent of the total amount of mana that a creature holds without any upgrade would be one upgrade point. That seemed like a method I could easily calculate and would take into account the differences in mana requirements to constitute change.

    Thinking about it, it makes sense that when something has been made more substantial, it will take more mana to increase further. If I add one mana to something with a diameter of one millimeter, the effect should be more significant and more condensed than if I were to add one mana to something with a diameter of two millimeters as the same amount of energy would be distributed over something larger.

    If I assume that one point of mana has increased the density or the circumference of the venom sacs by twenty percent, then it should follow that to get a similar result, I would have to spend that same amount of mana extra. I would assume that the same goes with increasing the size of bones or creatures overall. I also believe that with sturdiness, increasing something that is already sturdy would require more mana than increasing something weak by the same amount. Dense muscles need to absorb more energy than weaker muscles do, and in the end, mana is just another form of energy.

    So now that three points of mana have been added to each spider, I see an upgrade of about two and a half points. Following this line of thought; I can think of eight general upgrades for my spiders. I can either choose to add one point into each of these attributes to see one point of upgrade, or I can choose to specialize and increase one aspect just over six times. I would assume that at higher levels it would become much more efficient to keep a somewhat allrounder build going.

    These returns on mana investment show that the natural path may have been the most potent all along. What is being used most, gets most mana points but the mana going elsewhere isn¡¯t wasted as the efficiency of the mana going there is higher. It would never lead to a full allrounder, but it would inevitably lead to a more robust overall being.

    An average hunting spider seemed to put about ten percent in increasing its size, twenty percent in its legs so it could move faster, ten percent into its exoskeleton so that it could take a bit of a hit, though I doubt it would ever become durable. Ten percent in its eyes, twenty percent in its fangs so it could better pierce its target, though perhaps also so it could inject more venom in a shorter amount of time and the remaining thirty percent would go to venom.

    With my interference, I heavily skewed the mana distribution towards the venom glands. As a result, I could see these glands strengthening in a short amount of time, but I would expect this to mean that over time as nearly eighty percent of the mana would now go to the venom it would end up with fewer upgrades overall. I do think I have figured out how to tinker with my creaturs and create my own ecosystem though.

    Now that I have split my spiders into two categories, which under my influence have diversified further but are also becoming more similar within their groups, I should differentiate within the species. Both are still spiders, they have the same base stats and options and could enhance the same functions, but due to the differences, their entire method of living has become different. Logically every choice made would follow the highest chance of succeeding, and by using the furthest enhanced parts the most, chances of success would be the greatest. As such, I will differentiate based on species as well as based on jobs. As such I should call them spider webmakers and spider hunters.

    Also, by forcing my spider hunters to all follow the venom route, the few that were overpowering insects or outrunning them have now become more efficient at poisoning. So it is not only possible to add a job to my creatures, but I can also remove jobs and make them unavailable by limiting the mana going the parts primarily required for the type of hunt I am trying to get rid of. If only these spiders could understand the fact that I am graciously pushing them towards a better life. Of course, I also figure that spiders from more mana rich areas would have passively absorbed so much mana that they should be equally or even more venomous than my spiders while also having all their other body parts upgraded further. Let ¡®s hope that none of these monsters comes over too soon.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    So let''s plan the spider army for now. My spider webmakers are my safest bet for enhancement, considering they are stationary and won¡¯t leave my zone of influence. That means that there is no risk of mana being drained through them dying outside of me. The spider hunters, on the other hand, can hunt outside of my area and absorb some of their kills there and when they come back and die here, I have a small mana increase.

    Luckily I have time. As such I choose two spider webmakers, and two spider hunters, which ones don¡¯t matter much anymore as my enhancements have made all the previously absorbed mana relatively insignificant, so they are all very similar to each other now. But for this test, diversification is my friend. I can have them follow unique upgrade paths and see which is the most effective hunter and how the upgrades change their behavior. I can then see if I can get my spider hunters to be my attacking force and pull some mana towards me and have my spider webmakers be my defending force.

    First, I take the spider hunters. I choose one and increase the venom further to the point where now eighty-five percent of passively absorbed mana flows towards its venom gland, making the venom just about as deadly as it could possibly be. Five percent will flow to the fangs for faster and more significant venom injections. Five percent would go to the legs so that it will be able to move slightly faster or maybe even jump on its prey.

    At least it would have to be able to move despite the added weight from its fangs and venom glands. The rest of the body would share the remaining five percent evenly. I expect this to be a slow, silent ambush hunter who pounces on anything passing by and injects a venom so potent it can immediately kill it. It would never be physically powerful and have good defenses so it won¡¯t be able to fight anything. With so little mana going to its legs it most likely won''t be able to outrun anything either.

    Had I known a method of making it invisible or at least harder to see I would give it that, but for now it would have to rely on lack of movement and strategically placing itself in positions from where it won¡¯t easily be found to both ambush prey and not get eaten by anything else. In total, the new upgrade cost me about a fifteenth of a point of mana. I will call this one my spider assassin.

    For the other spider hunter, I add more mana towards its size, legs, and fangs. This distribution lowers the percentage of the venom to sixty-five percent. Still very potent, and it should definitely be enough to kill, but perhaps not as fast or maybe it will only maim. However, now that ten percent goes to its legs, it will grow significantly faster than its assassin brother. Also, with its increased size and better shell, it will be more durable and stronger so it might even survive a physical confrontation long enough to inject venom. This spider I would expect to move around a lot more. Maybe not to chase down enemies as it still isn¡¯t built for speed, but it would for sure be able to stalk and then fight prey. I wish I knew how to make the spiders blend into their surroundings more, but for now, I will go along calling this a spider stalker.

    Now I will look at my spider webmakers. I can choose to enhance the webmaking gland further, and for one that will be the actual direction, I push it towards. A larger, stronger web will surely catch more prey. However, I would need to spend an unknown but significant amount of points on the spinneret for it to even be able to entangle and hold something as substantial or even more substantial than a rabbit.

    So vital in fact that I am sure that if I used all the mana available in this area for just one spider, it still would not reach that level. The spider I have chosen to push further down this path, I will call a spider Webber. For this one making a web is going to be its only way of hunting and hiding in one part of its web will be its only method of defense.

    The other spider webmaker I decide to go a different route. The web gland will remain the main focus, but I will add some percentages towards its fangs and venom. My thought process here is that if the web can¡¯t hold on to prey for long, then my spider needs a weapon to kill prey in the amount of time that it is held. This will be a precise check to see if holding for longer or being able to kill quicker is going to turn out to be more efficient. I would expect the more allrounder to be better with larger prey due to the diminishing returns giving it more stats overall.

    However, for prey that can already be caught, a more massive web will lead to more catches. This will be essentially dividing small prey towards the spider Webber and larger prey towards my new creation which I will dub spider defender. Named as killing anything it catches in its web is going to be primarily defending its home. And also me.

 Chapter 9, Unexpected guests

    I don¡¯t know if there is a consciousness controlling the world, but it felt like it was finally helping me.

    Just a single day after I expanded the jobs I could give my spiders, a family of seven squirrels entered my area.

    Now I may not have immediate access to the mana inside the squirrels, and the webs my spiders made won¡¯t be powerful enough to catch them, yet, but perhaps my spider assassin can kill one or two. Or maybe they would be willing to stay here and become an addition to my little ecosystem.

    Seven squirrels are holding a similar amount of mana as my seven rabbits, my former most expensive animal, so having an expansion of my larger animals is also a plus.

    I first spend some mana to do my daily spider enhancements on my four spiders, and then immediately excitedly move my attention to my new residents. For now, they are exploring two of my trees. I have little hope that they would be able to find something there that would be better than what they could find in the region they came from. But I am hopeful that they would be able to sense that there is also very little danger here. Having them live here and hopefully bring food from other areas would be a very welcome improvement to my situation.

    I look at their bodies and immediately see how they have been improving and what else I can enhance. For now, they have been focusing on arm and leg strength. Probably an automatic result from always being on the move and climbing trees, and these improvements should have made them much faster.

    Less than five percent have been going to their teeth, and I can¡¯t see any other weapon on them so I doubt they would be a decent fighter or protector. At most they can run away when they sense something powerful nearby.

    Ears are receiving a minor boost, and their eyes and nose should not be entirely useless. Perhaps I should send some mana into their fur too so that they could survive an ambush or first attack before they manage to run away. I also wonder if I were to add mana to their bones if that should make them denser to increase strength, or lighter so they can run faster.

    I again think of something I should start practicing sooner rather than later. I can control where mana goes, but I can¡¯t do anything about how it reacts. I have seen that it slows down the rate that particles move when I attach it to water in the air. And I know that if I add it to matter, it will take on the properties of that matter, such as can be seen with the venom sacs. But that also means that mana can have different reactions.

    There is a lot of water in the bodies of the animals I am improving, but those particles aren¡¯t slowing down when reacting to mana, it just expands as the other parts do. From this, I might infer that either a combination of my intent and the recipients will form the result of the mana boost, or that mana reacts differently depending on the environment as well as the material it is attached to.

    If I could control what mana does better, I could probably choose to have mana become more bone leading to a size increase or have the bone contract increasing density and therefore strength and maybe even add hollow parts to reduce the weight of the bones to enhance speed.

    Perhaps I could use mana to change color to give my spider assassin and spider stalker some camouflage. I have been ignoring the senses of my spiders as they are good enough as they are, but what if I were able to add ears to my spiders so that they can sense prey or predators coming from further away before they can see them. It would be an option of camouflage turns out to be impossible.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    As I keep dreaming about doing things that I as of yet am unable to do, I notice one of the squirrels getting very close to my spider assassin.

    I have not seen anything that the squirrels have which would be able to counteract poison once it is injected and I am sure that the assassin who holds the most potent venom of anything I have seen in my life, could kill or at least severely hurt it if it can be injected.

    I am not sure how I feel about this, though. I did hold some hope that leaving a safe impression of my zone on the squirrel family would convince them to stay here. But as there isn¡¯t much mana going around I very much feared them moving on without leaving anything behind.

    Should my spider assassin kill one, it would both guarantee some profit as well as significantly lower the chances of the rest of them staying here. I guess certainty trumps chance. Though there isn¡¯t anything I would be able to do either way, anyway.

    As I had little hope for the webs, I have noticed that one of the squirrels got ¡°caught¡± in a web of one of my spider webmakers I hadn¡¯t enhanced further. As expected, the web does practically nothing. Maybe it slowed it down for half a second, and perhaps the threads cause some irritation on the skin. But that is it. I think my spider has been hurt more by this than the squirrel was. And annoying it both reduces the chances of it wanting to stay here and doesn¡¯t bring me any benefits, so it is a double loss here.

    I am now focusing back on my assassin. It has hidden on a low branch of a tree between some leaves. With its dark color, it sort of blends into the shadows, and the squirrels haven¡¯t focused on their senses anyway. As it is, I would expect this ambush to be successful.

    As before with the test with the rabbit and the grass, exciting myself does not mean time moves faster nor would any creature, either my own or one of the squirrels, move according to my will. I don¡¯t want just to sit here watching so I choose a blade of grass, my cheapest upgradable living being and only see if I can do anything with mana.

    My first few tests should be in seeing if mana reacts to my will. In the past, I had seen that most of the mana was used for growing, so I figure that should be where its instincts would be telling mana to go. First, I enhance the mana around the blade and immediately notice that I was wrong. The mana is mostly flowing to the stems, which is where the mana after my enhancements is most prevalent.

    The next test should be with grass grown after my improvements. I don¡¯t know if it is a result of meddling with their parents or if it is mana reacting to my subconscious desire, but new grasses are following my previously desired growth path. This is interesting. I have opened up different progressions for my spiders, and if my subconscious is allowing for growth, then whatever causes the initial differentiation in my creatures would probably lead them down one of the preset paths.

    As such, most likely my will, being the controller of mana, creates the environment and possibilities. And something within living beings individually would be the one choosing the possible path.

    To test this, I need to start watching new grass and change about half of them to a new type. This should open up a second path, and theoretically, that would mean that a certain number of grasses would have enhanced growth, and a certain amount of them would have the new enhancements.

    I should choose an improvement tomorrow, and this sounds like the tests I will do tomorrow instead of my spiders, provided my spiders today prove to be strong enough.

    While my attention was entirely focussed on the grass, the spider assassin had ambushed the squirrel. The fangs could barely break the skin as is, but it got through deep enough to be able to inject about a third of the venom that a normal attack would.

    It didn¡¯t immediately kill the squirrel, but it did cause the squirrel to fall off the branch, without the spider, and start twitching on the ground. Slowly the spider assassin moved towards the squirrel and bites again.

    This time without any jerky movements, the spider can inject a full load of venom killing the squirrel. I sense five points of mana flowing into my area, which was a necessary move after the spider upgrades for my sense of safety.

    I also see that just over half a mana point flows into the spider which upgrades its venom glad twice and its fangs once. I hope that this sudden increase doesn¡¯t make it die again like with my first tests. However, we can undoubtedly conclude that we have a successful build here, unlike the web spider.

 Chapter 10, It is tree time

    After one of the squirrels got killed, and with nothing seemingly exciting around the few available trees don¡¯t provide enough appeal, so the rest of the squirrel family does not take long to take off again.

    Today I have planned to do a mana test with my grasses again to see if I can figure out mana behavior if there are different options. Grasses all feed the same way and behave similarly enough that mana used should be equal. So I choose a few blades and decide to send mana into their roots. While doing this, the roots grow deeper, so I would expect them to have access to more water.

    Setting an expectation, I can see three possible outcomes here. First and most optimal would be if certain grasses in specific environments follow either of the two routes depending on where they grow. This would indicate to me that mana flows through an optimal path either based on natural means or based on instinct and will.

    The second option would be one of the two solutions crowding the other out. I could imagine that for an individual blade, deeper roots would always trump more reproduction even if reproduction would be preferable for the species as a whole. This would mean that the particular blade of grass would have some control over the mana distribution even if it isn¡¯t on a conscious level.

    Visa Versa however, should the reproduction crowd out the roots then this would indicate that mana is controlled by something outside of the blade of grass which is trying to benefit the species as a whole. This would then open up a new host of questions for me, starting with if there are any more beings like me with which I will have to share possible progression paths.

    The last option is that grasses find a way to mix the two solutions. I haven¡¯t seen this happening with the spiders, but spiders change much more slowly than grass does. This would be a risky possibility considering any future developments as it would mean I would have to micromanage everything I want to control the enhancements of.

    So as I am doing this test with the grasses, I need to think of the next steps. Being the only one around here without the possibility to talk to anything else, I need to keep busy or else I might drive myself crazy.

    With my spiders turning out to be a success and not needing more mana, and the visitors having left already, I take some time to reflect. At the end of my seventh week alive, I look back at all the things I have done and learned. I have taken over a small plot of land. Though I haven¡¯t been able to grow it yet, I have been able to stabilize the mana and make sure it doesn¡¯t leak out anymore.

    I have gotten the lowest part of the food chain, the grass, to grow fast enough that it can sustain a broader community of animals higher on the food chain than I currently have. I have some flowers hanging around, which I haven¡¯t done anything with yet, but which I am hoping will attract something to me, or keep something here sooner or later. Then there are five trees, the behemoths in my area, which I now view as the next most essential attractors of guests to my area.

    I have a bunch of insects buzzing around. I haven¡¯t done much with them, except for combining them under the collective moniker of insects. In reality, they are not all the same. It is just that they keep leaving and coming back into my area constantly. They die frequently, and new ones enter my zone just as much as old ones go.

    I can¡¯t risk enhancing one of them for fear of them not coming back, and my spiders use them as food anyway. They seem to be attracted by the grass and the flowers somewhat, but I haven¡¯t cared enough about them to see what they eat.

    The rabbits are again my largest animal group, though they lack the means of being predators, so to them too I haven¡¯t done much and besides maybe increasing their breeding rate I don¡¯t see what I can really get them to be to help me out more.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

    The most essential inhabitants I have are my spiders. They are the most upgraded and the ones I have spent the most time on. The ones I have now I will keep as they are, little pockets of mana and death, while I monitor them for any signs of things unknown.

    With predators in my area able to kill weaker guests that stop by, and grass plentiful to act as food, the next step is housing. My rabbits dig holes and spiders too stay within their own regions. Insects and birds are always transient, so trees to see if I can keep anything around longer is my next target. The tricky thing here is that if they grow larger or broader, then it would impact the sunlight available to my grasses and flowers, and more trees would show the same result.

    Without any predators improving the bark or sap would not give it any improvements and more or longer branches would be such a small improvement for anything looking for a home I might as well not spend the mana on it.

    Perhaps if I could make the trunk stronger but thinner, I could achieve the effect of longer branches without sacrificing sunlight to anything else, but I don¡¯t know how to do this. Adding mana to the trunk would either make the trunk denser and stronger or broader or maybe even make the tree grow taller as a whole.

    That leaves me with the leaves. There is a chance that adding mana to the leaves will make them grow larger, leading to fewer leaves overall, or maybe it would make the leaves stronger. However, somehow, I feel that the leaves would become more efficient, getting more energy out of the light it absorbs and growing more green as a result. In time this would mean more tree growth, but that is a problem for future me, who would by then hopefully have more land to control and distribute any adverse effect over.

    Not knowing how animals choose a tree to reside in, improving the trees health and color might do the trick, so I have the next step.

    Before I can start my new task however, a day and night have gone by, and it is time for me to see if there are any changes in my other tests. First up are the spiders. They are passively taking in mana, though still at rates which are negligible.

    The further enhanced spiders, as expected take in slightly more mana due to their increased mana having a higher attraction rate. But nothing of note there. They are still contend feeding on insects.

    My assassin hasn¡¯t started showing any of the adverse signs of my first test subject when I overfed it mana, so I am hopeful that things are going to turn out alright. With the hunting method of ambushing, it is difficult to determine if it has an increased appetite or it is just eating anything that moves in its path.

    Though now that I think about it, I hope it doesn¡¯t leave its tree, as I don¡¯t have a way of keeping the rabbits away from it. If it can kill a squirrel, it will be able to kill a rabbit.

    The grasses I have changed the mana percentages of are turning out the way I had planned. Their roots dig a little deeper, but they don¡¯t propagate as much. It is a bit too early to tell which of my predetermined possible outcomes I am seeing, but I see little relation between which of the paths the new grasses take and from which of the older grasses they stem. This leaves me hopeful that we are seeing the first and best possible outcome.

    So now on to the tree. I start with the smallest of my trees and choose a single leaf and add the tiniest amount of mana I could manage to it. An entire tree only has about five points of mana in it when it is mature, so with my old calculations that would mean half a point of mana would be needed for one improvement.

    With around two hundred thousand leaves, that means that each leave would get an amount of mana so small, I won¡¯t even try to describe it in numbers. The upside of which of course is that if I make a mistake, the change in each leaf would be so small that it wouldn¡¯t matter too much. Of course, if I see the desired effect happening, I would need so much mana to have all the leaves in all my trees enhanced that I might not even be able to bear the cost if I wanted to.

    Either way, the minor enhancements on the leaves don¡¯t have an easily discernible effect. I can tell that the leaves haven¡¯t grown, but measuring the efficiency of photosynthesis on such a small scale is close to impossible to do. I think this is one of those; I will get back to it later when results are showing moment. That means I also shouldn¡¯t enhance the other trees and leaves yet so that I have a point of reference to measure the difference with.

 Chapter 11, Slow as a rock

    Yesterday was boring. I didn¡¯t spend a single point in enhancements on any of my creatures, nor did anything interesting enter my region, nor did I come up with a new test to do. The leaves that I had enhanced are showing minuscule differences to their non-enhanced brethren, so I don¡¯t think that this is the way to go.

    I am in a rut. No matter how good equilibrium is from an objective survivalist perspective, it is incredibly dull. Non-threatening changes are what I need

    To distract my self and do something which seems productive I am using the mana in the air and drawing blue versions of my spiders and having them chase insects that are seemingly ready to leave my zone back to the center.

    I have found that by manipulating the water in the atmosphere, I can make it seem like any shape I want it to show, and I can use that to scare non-sentient beings. I have tried to use it to scare my rabbits into eating specific blades of grass for future tests, but scared rabbits end up running towards their den. Dull, fearful little creatures they are.

    My spiders are even more tedious. When they feel threatened, they make themselves small and hope that they aren¡¯t seen, except for my stalker and assassin who both tried to counter-attack when my illusionary blue monster got close. As I don¡¯t lose the mana used and it just dissipates back into me when I finish my work, I am increasingly making larger constructs. Soon I will be making the monsters that were around when I first became aware. Or at least blue versions of them, that can¡¯t touch anything.

    ¡­

    In the last two days, the rabbits have been expanding their den. They fear the blue constructs that I am passing the time with so much that they have taken to staying in their shelter much more than they used to. I should probably stop, but on the upside, one of them does seem pregnant now.

    As I had promised myself to do when I got the opportunity, I try to see how mana reacts to new life being created. The most exciting thing about it is that there is no reaction whatsoever.

    Moving a little mana towards the young unborn, all that happens is that the mana sticks to the womb. It seems like the unborn can¡¯t take mana even if I were to help it along. The womb, however, appears to be upgradeable, so I send half a point there and hope that this will help either provide more nourishment towards the new rabbits or better nourishment. Or at least keep them safer.

    I have also had to create a fake, blue, bird at the edge of my zone to keep my stalker from slowly moving away. I hope that it was just attracted to the higher mana levels in the mana wall which is keeping my mana here, but if it were to enter that wall, it might see the higher mana levels in the neighboring region and leave. I did not make it one of my dominant inhabitants so that it could stop being a resident here.

    Initially, I may have wanted them to hunt outside of my zone, but the behavior of the squirrels has proven that there is a high likelihood of beasts not wishing to stay in a mana weak zone unless they have no other choice. In the squirrels'' case, it was that they were fast enough to escape from danger, and my spider could probably kill most things as long as it gets the jump on them.

    My main objective left is to conclude my latest test with the grasses and see if I can figure out what determines the path that each individual blade takes.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    I don¡¯t see a relationship between the parent blade, which means that it isn¡¯t locked into any sort of genetic relation. I also see individual blades in larger groups following the other upgrade path, so it also doesn¡¯t appear to be related to its surroundings per se. And I haven¡¯t seen any weird mixes or completely different job routes pop up.

    If I had to guess, I would say that if a new blade has trouble competing at the start of its life, when its roots haven¡¯t grown deep yet, mana will flow to the roots and the latest path of growth is locked in. When the blade has enough access to water from the start, the upgrade that is followed is the path of expanding its kind.

    That means that there is a mix between survival necessity and group thinking, and definitely requires some more guiding than pure randomness. I am still not sure if it is internal instinct or external factors that are pushing it towards an optimal path, but something certainly is.

    ¡­

    The next week, my days and nights are filled with scaring my creatures to stay in my zone when they seem to want to leave. I keep an eye out on the tree, grasses, and spiders that have been enhanced but don¡¯t have the mana to spare to upgrade them more or improve more creatures. The making of the constructs has replaced my mana movement practice, so no more random raindrops in my zone to scare my beasts. I also look at the new, yet still unborn, rabbits a few times every day and night cycle. They as of yet have not absorbed any mana, and have not taken any of the mana from the womb.

    I have kept the mana constructs to the borders of the region as I don¡¯t want to stress out the rabbits right now, and that means that they are eating and residing outside of their den most of the time again. The mother to, however, spend all her time not eating digging further into the ground.

    I usually would have passively absorbed the information that this was occurring and not pay any attention to it. However, this time while I am looking at the mother at work and trying to see if the work the mother does affect the babies in any way, I notice that the rock that was hit has strange markings on it.

    I first checked this rock out as the face which was uncovered by the pregnant rabbit was very flat. Anything being this flat is out of the norm and being as bored as I was, anything none standard would be very welcome. As such, I immediately noticed that there seemed to be markings in it that followed a consistent pattern.

    The rock itself does not contain mana, so I doubt that it is some sort of living organism pretending to be a rock and confusing my senses. It is possible that the connection to mana has caused such an effect, but then I would have expected to have seen this kind of markings more frequently in the world around me, and this is only the first time I have seen something like this. Or at least the first time I have noticed it.

    Much more likely is that some kind of organism has made these marking though for what purpose I don¡¯t know.

    Of course, my first modus operandi is always to see if sending mana that way to see if there is an effect. In my experience, mana almost always does something, so if nothing else I can learn something new. And if these markings were made for mana, perhaps they lead to a clue on mana control that I am currently still lacking?

    So I send some mana towards the markings. Unfortunately, the markings on the rock, as well as the stone itself don¡¯t respond to my mana probing. Or at least, similar to the way any other rock would. When I surround it with enough mana, the water in the atmosphere condenses and the rock gets wet, and that is the only effect I seem to be able to cause.

    Of course, the main question now is, why has whoever created these markings done so? If I could figure out who or what made them, perhaps I can figure out a purpose?

    Of course, I can recreate these markings in the air through mana, but that too doesn¡¯t have any effect. If only to be sure I show these markings to the other rabbits, the spiders, the insects, and all the stationary beings individually. This takes me almost a full day as I have to wait with each of them to see if they respond in any way. But unfortunately, none of them do.

    At least something happened though, so now I am less bored.

 Chapter 12, On the hunt

    William, back in Aprait.

    It took us weeks to get over the failure of the mana improvement test. Even after all our careful planning and preparations, we still lost too many of our fellow warriors. It is strange to see how immediate loss seems to count for more than more substantial damage in the future. Now the family representatives are complaining about risking their youths as well, while completely ignoring the fact that if we don¡¯t expand, we will, in fact, all be eliminated in time.

    The complaints got so bad that we had decided to skip the first monthly meeting so that everybody''s tempers had a chance to die down. Time not only heals wounds, but it can also mellow out tempers and help people to look at things objectively. Though I must admit that my family too had taken losses and the friends and direct relations of those lost in battle kept hounding me about being exempt from sending people for the expedition that is to come.

    It doesn¡¯t help us that the mana levels in different areas are always in flux, so if we want to use the ones that were already scouted by the Stallwar family, then we will have to send out the expedition team soon. As such, I have been training young Arthur from my direct family to be among the first of the groups. That means I have been going out into the wilderness with him twice a week. Just staying out in mana dense areas and killing and eating strong prey will make us stronger.

    We have been hunting so many different targets because, besides the mana obtained, it is also essential to have a wide range of experiences. Different prey requires different types of traps, different materials to make the traps from and leave different tracks to notice. Arthur is young and promising but has been coddled, so I am just here as a backup.

    With the map of the areas around, and the experience to know what type of animals likes different biomes, we can ascertain our targeted prey about half of the time before setting out.

    This time we ventured out further, to an area which is too risky for regular scouts and is, therefore, both dangerous and an opportunity. I do have provisions on me, but Arthur does not know that, and we have forbidden him from bringing anything but a knife, a bow, and four arrows.

    I also don¡¯t tell him that the scraped off bark from the trees in our surroundings was not done by antlers but by the claws of a bear. Antlers leave random scrapings in the bark based on the random placing of the different tines. A bear, on the other hand, uses evenly spaced claws to leave deep grooves. Both will scrape off the bark, but there is a slight difference in damage remaining in the tree, and the shape of the bark scraped off.

    He believes that due to size differences the height of the scrapings indicate antlers as bears scrape about half their height. To me, this means that the bear we are pursuing is going to be massive and very strong.

    He is going to have to learn to pay better attention to things, even when they are obviously not part of the test. It makes me nervous that he doesn¡¯t seem to have noticed that I am keeping my bow at the ready and am incredibly vigilant. Even if we are generally able to hear a bear coming from a relatively safe distance, we are at risk when we stumble upon the bear while it isn¡¯t moving. Also, earlier warnings, even when not necessary, are always welcome. Arthur has been leaving large spring snares around, which would be great for deer but would only slow a bear down and make it angry.

    My family focusses on knowledge, which includes tracking and trapping, and we employ most of the medical staff around. We are also known for having the best eyesight and hearing out of all the families, which helps us find animal tracks for trap placements and shoot our bows more true.

    When battling, we like to team up with the Stallwar family as they are the family with the most physically imposing members around. As such, we have always been encouraging our children to befriend theirs, though they themselves are usually too honest to use these sort of future planning tactics.

    Now, however, as a training exercise we are on our own ¡ª just the two of us, and a bear somewhere nearby.

    Even though I am known for liking books and knowledge, basically a nerd, that doesn¡¯t mean I don¡¯t enjoy the adrenaline rush of hunting something so mighty it could rip both of us to shreds if it catches us in its claws. The constant need for full focus, where every sound could be either innocuous or a dangerous predator.

    With the added tension that in the wild, we are not limited to one type of danger. We might be hunting a bear now, but we could just as easily run into a venomous snake or be attacked by a great eagle.

    This is a part of the danger of our hunting methods that most others don¡¯t understand. Most think of trapping as a method of hunting where you stay away from danger, but they forget that to lay traps you still need to enter dangerous regions, stay vigilant while placing the trap, and then hope that your snare both hits something and hits hard enough to trap or kill.

    Then you need to check on your traps regularly so that nothing else has the opportunity to steal your kill and the associated mana, or else your efforts will have been for naught, and finally, you will still have to face off against a trapped animal.

    Finally, if you were to misinterpret the signs, as Arthur is doing right now, you could run into an unexpectedly mighty foe while under-prepared. I just hope his lapse in focus is a result of feeling safe with me around rather than youthful indiscretion which could get him killed next month when he joins the expedition.

    Tomorrow evening we will have the first meeting after our previous fiasco, and we already have four of the families behind us who will vote for bringing the scheduled expedition forward to next month. That will be enough to push the issue, and once it is decided, there is no possibility that any family would shirk their responsibilities for fear of losing out on having power in a new settlement.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    In fact, Andrew and I have made a list of people of the younger generation and stronger ones of the older generation, and if families don¡¯t send people from the list, this would already result in a loss of influence. How can a branch family member possibly stand up to a main family branch member? Though we are equal in name, most parents tend to focus on their own children more than on the children of other family members, and that means that stronger parents create stronger children as a general rule.

    Just consider what I have provided to Arthur. I have taken him to areas with beasts so dominant that more than eighty percent of my own family would not be able to survive there save for sheer luck. As such, he has been able to take more mana than any of his peers have and is stronger overall. This doesn¡¯t mean he can¡¯t lose a fight to a more specialized person or someone with more experience, but it does mean he will always have an advantage.

    For the next meeting, I will be bringing Arthur with me into the session under the guise of training a successor. At least I will have to use that excuse in the first half of the gathering until we have voted on sending the young and then I can openly support him as my contemporary in the new settlement. If I can establish him as influential before he even leaves will make obtaining a high position easier.

    With strength and influence attained, as long as the settlement survives, we will have a springboard to controlling the most mana dense areas.

    This multitasking is not the easiest of things to do. I have trained myself to cover the topics of the next meeting twice daily, especially an important one like tomorrow. However, we are hunting a bear right now, and I am the only one who knows. Even with a warning, we would be woefully unprepared for a close quarter fight.

    If we make it through this encounter without any damage sustained, and through the meeting tomorrow without too many objections overruled, we need to start training for the more mundane perils that one might encounter in the wild.

    Our children don¡¯t grow up checking their tent every morning for snakes attracted by the body heat of the residents. Or checking shoes for spiders who might have crawled in thinking it to be a small cave of sorts where they can try to catch prey, but find a foot to inject their lethal venom into. The mosquitoes here may be annoying, but they aren¡¯t disease-ridden, so we haven¡¯t taught our young yet how to keep them clear of a campsite.

    Our teaching methods are focused on our current area, and only when something different comes along or if an adventurous powerful wonders out to new and unexplored regions does it require additional knowledge to be imparted. I see our current education system as a tree where the roots are the daily encountered situations, and the rarer an encounter might be, the less time is spent on it and the later it is taught.

    Every family member of seven years old can make a basic snare to catch rabbits and frogs with. By ten they can make spring-fall snares and deadfall traps, and some of the more talented youngsters might even be able to make a bird pole trap. However, as we don¡¯t have any large body of water nearby, even some of our most experienced hunters have never had to make a fish trap.

    As Arthur climbs a tree to get a better vantage point, I quickly double back a bit and set a deadfall trap with a rock, massive enough to both knock a bear out and make enough noise to warn us that we are being pursued.

    It takes less than five minutes after I got back to Arthur¡¯s tree before I hear the deadfall trap spring and the silent whimper that follows. Knocking an arrow on my bow and stepping into an area where I have a straight line towards the trap I shoot the arrow almost blindly towards where the animal if trapped would have fallen while Arthur is trying to get down as fast as he can without actually falling.

    As I confirm from a distance that the bear is not moving, though still alive and breathing I wait for Arthur to reach the ground so that he can finish the kill. It would be best for him to notice how wrong he has been about the danger that we were facing as that would be the optimal method of learning, but even if he does, I will still go over all his mistakes with him a second time. These kinds of things can turn out to be fatal, and I need to ensure that he doesn¡¯t keep these faults with him.

    While Arthur kills the bear and begins with the dressing of the body, I do a quick once over the area and get back to my pondering.

    With a group heading out into a new zone, I will choose two powerful from my family to accompany them. One who has extensive knowledge of different trap types and I am planning to send our doctor. His disciple should be far enough along with his education that he can take over the practice, and having an experienced doctor in the new settlement will surely increase their survival chances tremendously.

    I know the stallwar families will volunteer a seasoned fighter with extensive experience in hand to hand combat with many different types of beasts and send a young representative who is on his way to become just that.

    The Fogg family will send their fastest runner who will keep the communication between the two settlements active as well as Andrews own son, whom I know is being secretly trained to be a leader. I have known about the Fogg families ambition to turn leading the meetings into becoming the de facto leader. I suspect he is going to introduce a motion to have the new settlement start with a single leader to keep decision making fast and efficient and then move that as his son is the only one trained in the art to be that designated someone.

    Honestly, when he does, I am not sure if I will support that idea. It makes sense to have a centralized decision making organ, but being a leader without the knowledge of all the required fields as well as having to give up some of my own ambitions goes directly against what I have spent my life doing.

    I think that during this meeting we will end up deciding a system of what each family should send to ensure that all families both send enough to make success likely but not so much power that they could take over. It would be something along the lines of a main family branch member and either two powerful, or one powerful and a bunch of citizens.

    The Fogg family and Stallwar family will probably send two powerful with their team. We will send one powerful and a group of medics to accompany the doctor and will also be in charge of documenting their experiences for future expeditions.

    I have also spoken to the Northman who are going to send a powerful and a team of crafters who are going to make and take care of our weapons and eventually the furniture of the new houses.

    I think the Miros family will send two powerful, one to fight and one prospector to look for resources in the wild, and will send gatherers later on when the available resources are known. The Arderne should send one powerful and a team of builders and architects, and the Foremann family would send farmers with their powerful.

    The expedition then should have enough strength to take over a weaker area should have the knowledge to survive, and specialists to thrive.

 Chapter 13, An animated meeting

    William in Aprait at the meeting

    ¡°People quiet down. You have had two months to vent your frustrations, and now we need to move forward again!¡±

    ¡°I am sure you would like that, wouldn¡¯t you?¡± Samuel Arderne, the representative of the Arderne family, immediately shoots back. ¡°As I recall it was your cockamamie idea to gather as much mana in one location as possible and just ¡®see what happens.¡¯¡±

    I had expected people to be upset, but the meeting has taken a nasty turn where people, I am sure for political reasons mostly, are pointing the finger at Andrew and me. Me, as the whole mana hunting thing was my idea, and Andrew as he was my most direct backer and had guided the conversation in that direction. I am not sure what they are after, but I am sure that they had been preparing for this and are now ganging up on us.

    ¡°For years you and William have been increasing your influence over this council, steering us from the shadows in the direction of your choosing. You will see that growing your clout here also increases your exposure when you fail.¡± Laura Northamn calmly says.

    Now I am sure that they have been preparing for this. I am a little hurt that Laura has been playing both sides. On the one hand, she has promised us support for the vote to come on sending the expedition to the new zone sooner. While on the other hand, she was also conspiring with the dissenting voices on reducing our influence here.

    I can¡¯t blame her on playing smart politics here. Usually the Stallwar family, Fogg family, and my Elliot family are pretty tight, so we need just one more vote to win, giving us a reasonably high chance of driving our opinions through.

    The Arderne, Foremann, and Miros families are so focused on the internal goings-on that they barely leave the town and their own castles to train and clear the areas. If they didn¡¯t need the mana and keep their people safe, I doubt they would ever leave their little bubble.

    Laura¡¯s family focusses on crafting and is exceptionally reliant on materials we bring in from outside which usually puts her in our camp giving us a four to three majority, but it seems that she has seen a way of signaling that she isn¡¯t on our side, without hurting her own interests. Smart woman.

    ¡°As you are all aware off, just hiding in our little corner of the world is not going to cut it forever¡± Andrew calmly responds to their attacks. ¡°That is what some of the other communities that have been destroyed had tried, and where are they now?¡±

    ¡°Also, even if we could hide, if our community is to grow, we would need to expand into beasts areas, and we would then lack the strength to take their land. Would you have our people grow hungry as we don¡¯t have enough land to farm anymore?¡± James backs Andrew.

    I look at Laura and see her smile. She knows that we have to send more people and that increasing mana levels had been a calculated risk we took. I am sure she is orchestrating a specific outcome here, and I am clueless about what she is aiming at.

    ¡°Let¡¯s calm down now¡± Laura says calmly. ¡°Placing blame, regardless of how fun it can be, is not useful here. Sure Andrew and William dropped the ball before, and I am sure we can talk for many hours on how their supposed leadership has led us to many of our friends and families deaths.¡±

    Here it comes, let''s see what it is she wants.

    ¡°How about we have them, together with the Stallwar family, send their expedition members ahead of the actual expedition to clear the site. Their families are more focused on combat anyway, and I¡¯m sure this fits right into their wheelhouse.¡±

    So this is what she wants. She wants her family members to be relatively more safe by sending ours out first. If they clear the zone, there is less risk for the others, and if they are to die and fail, then the other families can choose not to send their own groups with the excuse that it is too dangerous.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    She knows that we won¡¯t be able to claim any areas ahead of the rest as we wouldn¡¯t risk building miserable hovels when the Arderne family would be right behind us with talented builders that can make real houses and defenses.

    This also means that we need to prepare more food to send with our groups than the other families would as our delegation would be out there longer and the Foremanns¡¯ are the experts on edibles for restocking supplies.

    Of course, I am sure after this meeting she is going to propose to us to send a powerful with someone from her main branch family to join the first group so that her group gets the dense mana advantage and doesn¡¯t lose out there.

    Smart play, this way her group has no responsibilities but gets to gain strength, she also seems to have taken the lead in punishing us and Simon and Samuel think that she has given them an easy out. A way to get more land without risking their family members.

    Looking at this little play, I wonder why she never played for a more influential role on the council. Perhaps she is more of a shadow influencer than a foreground leader.

    ¡°I agree to those terms.¡± James Stallwar immediately jumps on the opening provided by Laura. I am sure he mostly sees fewer people to share the mana with when they reach the new zone, and this is actually exactly what he would like to happen.

    Arthur, sitting next to me, nudges my side a bit. He is probably afraid that the reason why I wouldn¡¯t be willing to send him ahead would be the slipup with the bear before, and he wouldn¡¯t be wrong. Mistakes like that can cost you your life, and I would have been much more comfortable with sending them out had that mistake not happened.

    I quickly write down that I will agree and slip him the note. However, I don¡¯t want to blindly accept as that would make it seem like Laura is in charge. Either Andrew or I need to make an amendment to the proposal to save some face here.

    Luckily it seems like Andrew has thought of something as he smiles at me before turning towards the groups and starts speaking.

    ¡°Of course it makes perfect sense to send the stronger families out first to clear the land, but you can¡¯t expect them to sleep on the ground for an extended period while the rest of you sit around waiting for the frontline to clear out the land.¡±

    ¡°I propose we send out three groups. First, our three families will go and clear out the land. We will set up a triangular-shaped perimeter with enough space in the middle for the rest. The second group will follow two days later and will consist of the Arderne family to start setting up buildings and the Miros family to gather resources.¡±

    ¡°Finally, the Foremann and Northman families will join our delegations once it is safe to start farming and crafting.¡±

    That devil! He just put Laura on the spot and cut off any of her future plans before she could propose them. The last group, which in this configuration would not even be housed on the outskirts, would get the least mana and have the worst living conditions in the new settlement.

    I can barely hold my smile while I say; ¡°perhaps the third group should wait a bit to join, seeing as it has low priority to clear the lands enough for any farming to happen and as it is just a day travel tools can still be provided by our main town here.¡±

    It feels good to ruin someone''s plans. Especially when those plans were a double-cross on your own arrangements. I would even go so far as to say we are triple-crossing Laura here. Especially considering I had just implied that her family would not really be needed in the new settlement, essentially calling her group useless.

    Simon Miros is actually considering this proposal. His group would be sent soon enough for more mana to be gathered, but not in the first wave so the risk should be lower. Samuel Arderne backs into his chair, smiling. Knowing him he probably feels like he wins either way. His family will never be in the last group, nor in the first balancing risk and reward.

    ¡°I disagree!¡± Kinsley says. ¡°We would not start farming immediately, but setting up a consistent method of water gathering is of utmost importance and can¡¯t wait until the town is already there. Else I foresee you all setting everything up and then having no water supply and having to resort to medieval water-carrying.¡±

    Arthur next to me chuckles. I¡¯m sure he is imagining people carrying big jugs of water on their heads walking back to the village. If we can get six representatives to go for this, we will have cut down Laura, the one with the deciding vote, from the political position she has been crafting for herself.

    Not unexpectedly, Laura recognizes the direction in which the meeting is going and caves. She agrees to send two waves, with her family joining the second one, with the second one just days behind the first.

    Now perhaps the risk of being the first is higher than the reward of two days of fewer people to share the mana with, but if they can get three clearings to set up before the rest arrive, they will guarantee a prime location for our families new residences.

 Chapter 14, Meet the team

    William in Aprait

    The day after the meeting, I gather the Elliot families representatives to inform them of the plan.

    First, we have decided that as this new area is supposed to become self-sufficient where contact with Aprait would be as minimal as possible, it would be the most humane to send a family. We have chosen a couple of Powerful, Ethan and Sarah, who don¡¯t have children yet.

    A couple, assuming that they stay together, would probably have the lowest chance of becoming homesick and wanting to return, as well as having a lot of experience in battling together.

    To finalize training, I will first have them spend two days in the wilderness, together with Arthur, venturing out in the direction that they will be moving to. That way, whatever they encounter should match their future foes, and at the very least this should make the treck there easier.

    When they return, after an in-depth debriefing, we should lock them up in the library for a last-minute study session. With new insights into their skills and more importantly, into what they may be missing along with the scouting reports on what is available in the area, this should be a valuable addition to their current kit.

    Then finally a day before they set out the nine people from the first group should get together and introduce themselves to each other. Most should at least know of each other, but a formal presentation in which strengths and weaknesses are presented is an important step.

    As during the meeting most families pretended to be caught unaware by the expedited timeline we have not yet completed a list of who is going to go, which is another risk I am now happy with. However, I know that the first group will consist of nine powerful with no civilians.

    As for our families group, Ethan is one of our best hunters and is carrying a bow made from the bark of trees so durable it took three of Miros¡¯ gatherers to cut it down. It is strung with the sinew of an especially mighty wolf encountered last year, making it so that as long as you have enough strength to pull the string back, you can shoot with enormous power and at long range.

    Sarah is a decent enough trapper. She is good at setting up traps that she knows but has in my mind spent too much time in safe zones hunting the same beasts over and over again limiting her knowledge. She is still young but in my mind too inexperienced in alternating traps towards beasts which she hasn¡¯t encountered yet. The study session will be mostly for her to at least fill the gaps with some theoretical knowledge.

    Ever since the plan was first hatched, I have had some of our weaker family members make new copies of some of our most practical books for the expedition to bring along. This includes a book on known traps which can be referenced once it becomes clear what kind of predators and prey are going to be present in the new environment.

    They will also bring a copy of a compendium of all animals known to have lived in the United States, and which is the basis for the beasts now. In the end, mana enhances what is there so a scorpion might have faster-killing venom but would not suddenly become a sprinter physically overpowering prey. It would be a reference to what to expect when something new is encountered.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

    We will also send a copy of a book which used to include most common plants and trees here, but to which we have added notes on how these have all been changing.

    We know that in the past plantain was used to help fight toxicity, but the improvements with mana can make it so that it reduces the bodies natural immune system too. We have to be so careful with what we eat as it is almost impossible to know which parts of plants are further enhanced. The rule of thumb is to not eat anything that has been infused with too much mana.

    The area to which the expedition will go is going to be a relatively large grass field of about Thirty by thirty meters. This is where we will set up the first tents and build a first defensible position. This should take the first day to get done.

    The second day Arthur and Sarah will move towards the river and set up different types of traps along the way. The goal here will be to see which traps get triggered. Food won¡¯t be a concern yet, but knowing where strong beasts are, how they move, and what they eat will be a good start.

    Ethan will join a group of two Stallwar people and one of the Foggs to hunt in a circular pattern of incrementally increasing range around the clearing and make sure nothing dangerous remains nearby.

    Of the last two Fogg people, one will run back to us to give an all-clear for the second group to set out. The last one should be an expert in insects and small beasts that the Fogg family has promised to send who should be cataloging anything dangerous that can¡¯t be immediately seen. Think mosquitos carrying diseases or venomous scorpions.

    If all goes according to plan, the rest of the expedition should be arriving by the end of the third day. This triggers the second phase, where a more permanent base is built.

    The plan is to build the new community from the arrival position southwards towards a nearby river, so there will be one large building built in the clearing itself for one of the families to inhabit. This will be one of the points of the Heptagon in which the new town will be built.

    As the Miros family keeps clearing more of the forests in the direction of the river, enough land will become available for the other keeps to be built. Until we have a similar pattern to Aprait with seven keeps surrounding a large swath of land on which the non-enhanced people can live and farm.

    Then walls will be erected connecting the separate keeps to each other. But when we reach that point, we would be able to safely say that this had been a success and a second community would then be in play.

    Unexpectedly Arthur complains to me regarding accommodation. Sure he has spent time camping out in tents, but never for an extended period. The danger seems surreal for now as threats are yet unknown, but from experience, he knows that spending days, possibly weeks in a tent is not going to be pleasant.

    They won¡¯t have bathrooms, fresh food will be limited to what they can kill and scavenge, and it will be cold or hot depending on the weather. There will also be no downtime on rainy days as the first months are going to be crucial for survival as nobody wants to stay in a tent when winter is to hit.

    After listening to his complaints and trying to placate him with the prospect of growing incrementally more powerful under the effects of a dense mana environment, I send him off to go gather his hunting and trapping equipment.

    Youth has advantages and disadvantages. He is young and resilient, and as long as he survives in the new environment he will grow much stronger than I ever will. He will get over the hardships once he discovers the influence that comes from being truly powerful.

    At the same time, the moment he leaves I will search for a young new trainee so that the line will always remain intact. A hidden benefit to this arrangement is that besides the excursion personnel having more mana, the remaining people will profit from less competition too.

 Chapter 15, Defining paths

    Mana creature in its own zone.

    I have given up hope that I would be able to understand the carvings in the stone. Neither manipulating mana in or around it nor any of my creatures interactions cause a reaction in it.

    While trying new things with the carvings, I had also noticed that I scared a squirrel away with one of my constructs. It had come up to the border of the area I can sense, but I had a construct right at the edge of my domain to scare one of the insects back, so I also scared the squirrel away.

    I have noticed that the slight increase in mana that I have attained due to having a positive stream of insects enter my domain, has caused a slight increase in my cognitive abilities. I guess the same is true for me as it is for anything else, more mana makes me better.

    This presents a chance to me that I would love to be able to grab. More cognitive ability means that I can better multitask. If I had been able to focus more on my border constructs, I had been able to let the squirrel in, while still doing the tests on the carvings.

    I also spend my day checking on the pregnant rabbit to ensure that everything is still progressing without issues there.

    Now I will spend the rest of my day consciously guiding my constructs to only interfere at the last second when something tries to leave my area rather than having them around consistently.

    I have to assume that something is going on with my neighbors because within a few hours of the last squirrel which I chased away, a new one has now entered. I think this is a clear case where my neighbor''s loss is my gain.

    Anyway, as the squirrel enters my area, all I have to do to keep him here is keep doing what I have been doing with the constructs, and it is just a matter of time before it runs into the tree where my spider assassin is hunting. I would also like to keep the squirrel alive, but I guess my zone right now isn¡¯t big enough for both of them.

    I can already see that this squirrel is stronger than the last family¡¯s individuals that came by. I hope that with the addition of its mana to my own pool, I will finally be back at the level I was when I just arrived here. Before having to use mana to fill this area up again as well as loss to the neighboring zone.

    It just takes me fourteen scares to keep the squirrel present before he meets my little assassin spider and provides its sweet energy to me.

    Funnily enough, in that timeframe, it had come across my spider stalker multiple times, but the spider stalker lives on the ground and just isn¡¯t fast enough to catch anything built for speed like the squirrel or a rabbit.

    I also check in on the differences between my spider stalker and my spider assassin. As my spider assassin has killed two squirrels now, it has absorbed for more mana than its counterpart has. This means that even in the parts which are receiving less focus, it is catching up to the assassin.

    This is a result of specialization I had not foreseen happening. Yes, it needs more mana to enhance the specialized parts, but being able to catch more or larger prey compensates for that to a point. My spider assassin now has two thirds more mana overall, meaning that soon its fangs will be equal to those of the specialist, despite only getting half the percentage points of mana gained.

    When I had thought of the four paths that my spiders now take, I had focused solely on output trying to make it so that intake being equal, more benefits would be gained. However, I had neglected the input part of the equation, and obviously, that was a mistake.

    My stalker would do much better in an environment where targets are slow-moving but with higher defenses. My assassins fangs might not be able to pierce their hides, and it would take a long time for something slow to get within its range, but my stalkers would then have a clear upper hand.

    I take this time to also evaluate my other spiders.

    My spider webber is my most prolific small prey hunter. It has the most extensive web which catches most insects. As it then also spends the most significant percentage of its gain into webmaking, it then finds even more prey and gets into a good cycle. I just can¡¯t have too many of these spiders or I would not have any insects left. On the other hand, it would save me from having to spend mental capacity scaring insects back into my zone.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    My spider defender, similarly to my spider stalker seems to be built for something that is not present here. I would imagine that should we be getting more insects from stronger areas the defenders increased physical abilities would be needed to get the kill.

    Perhaps then the webber¡¯s fangs would not be able to penetrate a stronger exoskeleton, and then a living insect would just be stuck in its web where a defender would be able to get the kill.

    I think that I can safely conclude that in my area the spider assassin is the champion of quality and the webber dominates in quantity. The stalker and defender are around for when I gain more ground and by extension, a broader diversity in fauna.

    What I should also do is think of paths in stages. This would take more of my faculties, so it requires me to grown myself too, but I can tell that my spiders need to grow in stages.

    The assassin spider is an excellent example of this. Right now its prey is relatively week, and with the low diversity, there is no threat here. However, should I grow extensively and attract a wider variety of creatures my assassin would need to first get to a point where it can survive being hunted itself.

    I would think that a natural progression path would be newborn spider, into a hunter based on wanting to physically hunt rather than trap them. Here it would still be a bit of an allrounder with enough defense and speed to survive but enough killing power to kill weak prey.

    If the spider then survives long enough, if its surroundings produce fast but weak prey, it should go the assassin route. It would then have enough defenses to survive, as it has proven by surviving, and would consequently become more of a killer of increasingly formidable prey entering its hunting grounds.

    If the spider, however, is in an area with slower but more sturdy prey, or perhaps it has more enemies around, it should focus more on physical attributes. It would then maybe not be able to kill the large prey entering its region, but it would be able to catch food and survive its enemies.

    What this takes is for me to keep an eye out on all living beings; hopefully I can do this subconsciously to an extent, and guide their path. When I see that a newborn spider is increasingly sending mana to growth, that means that I will set it on the spider hunter path. If I would see more mana go to the spinnerets that would indicate it is going the webmaker way.

    For webmakers, running is close to impossible so for defenses from beasts hunting it, it would need more mana in its exoskeleton. As long as it survives and has a web, it should be able to grow. It would slowly increase the size of its web, increasing catches.

    What I now also need to do is decide at what point I would switch a spider from the second step to the third step.

    I am also not clear on how the first to second step works. I have yet to see anything significant be born in my zone of influence. I don¡¯t count things like maggots as they are born in a mana abundant animal which has died, and it is hard to see how this would not lead to different circumstances from anything else.

    I have however noticed that a spider, for instance, starts off with what I call one point of mana when it has not enhanced anything, and I don¡¯t think it is prudent to offer any guidance before it has expanded by about ten percent and chosen its path.

    As I don¡¯t think I am going to get new spiders anytime soon, and I don¡¯t think any of my spiders are getting to a point where it needs to specialize more, I think it is time to expand on the paths that my other animals can take.

    As my insects live such short lives with my spider''s effectiveness and the added benefit of a new batch of rabbits about to be born with a clean slate, I think that my choice on which animal to design first is clear.

    For any animal, survivability is divided between getting resources to live and not becoming such a resource to anything else.

    For my rabbits, the grass is the only source of nutrition they are currently taking. They don¡¯t even touch my flowers, let alone anything that can move.

    As for hunters, the only thing around now that can threaten them would be my spider hunter if it were ever able to catch one or my spider assassin if it were to come down from its tree.

    This means that I must design my rabbits for a hypothetical future with food sources I have not seen yet and threats that I can only imagine.

    Looking at my current rabbits, I would imagine that for defense, the five main parts would be the following.

    First would be fur for impact defense. Sending more mana here would either make it thicker or denser, both leading to more protection but might impact speed negatively.

    Second would be eyes, ears, and snout which would allow it to notice predators sooner, and maybe even enhance its ability to find food.

    Third would be its bones. Right now, the bones are relatively light and build for speed, but I would imagine that should one break the rabbit would immediately become a meal for its predator. Similar to what happened to the first squirrel that my spider assassin ate.

    Fourth would be its legs. Right now this is my rabbits'' most common defense. They are too fast for my spider stalker to catch and I would assume that this would hold true for many other predators.

    Last and perhaps more situational would be its immune system. I can tell that inside my sick rabbit it is its blood that is fighting the disease, though unsuccessfully so perhaps if I were to send mana there my rabbit would be able to fight off the sickness and become healthy again.

    As for food, I can also think of multiple improvements to make.

    I can enhance its teeth so that it could potentially eat hardier plants should it encounter them. I can also improve their stomachs to widen the variety of foods that it would be able to absorb nutrients off. Perhaps improve its paws so that it can find roots of plants to eat too, and that would also strengthen its den making skills.

    So many paths to take and so little information for me to go on for now. But first, it seems like my rabbit is ready to give birth.

 Chapter 16, New life, new oppertunities

    You can¡¯t imagine how excited I am. Even without any knowledge of how childbearing works for rabbits, I can tell that it is about to happen. She has been holed up in her den since yesterday and hasn¡¯t moved much since.

    Subtly, I have been focusing mana into the rabbit hole so that the new rabbits will have a better start at life. At least, that is what I hope the effects will be.

    This will also give me a chance to verify that my assumption on the baseline mana usage of rabbits is correct. I also want to confirm that just as with grass, baby rabbits don¡¯t take any of the aspects from its parents.

    My current rabbits have had no problems finding food not have had any issues with predators. Besides occasionally having to flee from the spider stalker, they have led a comfortable life, and it shows in mana distribution.

    Right now by far the majority of mana flows towards increasing the size of the rabbits. I will call these rabbits, rabbit eaters. As the only thing they are really built for right now is eating.

    I will keep my current rabbit eaters as a class but tweak them to be more adaptable. Right now, about thirty-five percent of all mana taken is used for growing larger. Being larger is useful in these environments as that means more can be eaten which again leads to more mana being absorbed and a cycle is started.

    However, as I want more rabbits that will have to survive in different environments, I will send some of that mana flow to blood vessels to make them more disease resistant. I will also expand the current to the fur to expand defensiveness and stomach so that more types of food can be eaten.

    I will also reduce mana flowing to the eyes, ears, and nose as I expect these rabbits to be unable to avoid predators anyway.

    These rabbit types will thrive in environments which are deficient in food sources, but therefor also lack predators. They can eat almost anything, but they are sitting ducks to any hunter around.

    For a second type, I want to specialize my rabbits into faster creatures. More speed doesn¡¯t just mean that they can run away from danger, but it also means that the feeding grounds can be more expansive.

    That means I won¡¯t have to send much mana to the stomach, and growth will only be detrimental to the rabbit. I will need to expand on the hind legs as well as on the senses so it can run away whenever it senses something approaching.

    For now, I will lead my rabbits to all be rabbit eaters, as I don¡¯t want to risk one running into neighboring zones. I will keep this second path on the backburner for now.

    As I watch the mother give birth, I confirm six rabbits are being born. I also confirm that for every rabbit born, five mana points are absorbed from around it. I wonder what would have happened if there was no mana around. Would the infants be born dead or maybe just much weaker?Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

    I also witness that the small infants immediately start absorbing mana from their surroundings. It may be close to nothing, but it means that mana does not necessarily have to be harmful to them and that I can run some experiments on them.

    I plan to divide the litter into three groups. I will take one group and enhance it right from the start. I will give each of them half a mana point now and start building rabbit eaters. I will then allow them to grow as they would and see what happens.

    The second group will be allowed to absorb half a mana point, while only guiding it towards the correct parts. After they have reached that level, I will then add a tenth of a mana point to their growth and see what the effects are then.

    And the last group I will allow to grow as they otherwise would, except that I will guide their mana paths for them.

    What I want to test here are a few things.

    First of all, I will be able to verify that me enhancing and forcing mana into a living being will not adversely affect it now or its future growth. If there is a difference, the first group should not end up where the other groups are.

    Secondly, I want to confirm between the second and third group that the age at which I start forcing mana into a creature has no impact on the final result.

    And last I want to confirm that my new rabbit eaters are viable overall. I will be able to compare the mana that these rabbits get with the mana absorption of their previous generation.

    My expectation here is that the first group will outpace the others right from the start as they should be stronger right from the start. This means that they will reach an endpoint sooner, at which point I will have to think of further specialization.

    I can already foresee possibilities here. Perhaps they reach a point where they can already eat anything around, and I can lower their stomach requirements to almost nothing.

    Maybe the current configuration leads to a rabbit that can barely move, or one so weak that it can¡¯t dig a burrow anymore.

    I might even have made a rabbit type that can¡¯t have any offspring.

    Without testing, it is impossible to tell.

    I also need to differentiate between them. Luckily these rabbits are not going to be able to tell what I call them so I can make it easy on myself and just give them numbers.

    So rabbit one and two are going to be in testing group one. Three and four will be in testing group two. And five and six will be in testing group three. Seems easy enough.

    After I provide one and two with half a mana point each and guide the mana to where I want it to go, I notice immediate effects. Immediate unwanted effects.

    You see, as most of the mana goes to overall growth of the rabbits these newborns are quickly growing about twenty-five percent larger than their brethren and their mother is freaking out a bit.

    You would think that after ten weeks of non-stop testing and figuring things out I would at least be aware of the variables in play. But then I find out I completely missed the psychological factor.

    My spiders are solitary creatures, so there is nothing around to react to rapid growth, and the spider itself is getting a power boost so it will probably feel elated.

    Grass doesn¡¯t show any emotion anyway, so I have no idea if it even reacts to the enhancements I am giving it.

    Now this is the first time I am enhancing part of a social pack, and thereby I learn something new. I wonder if it just means this is something that my creatures can get used to eventually or if I need to find a way to sneakily improve animals when nothing else is looking.

 Chapter 17, New lands

    Arthur Elliot after a day of travel.

    Today is the day! The day that we can start our new lives.

    The treck here wasn¡¯t as bad as it could have been. We ran into a few deer and we charged by a boar once, but with the Stallwars there I didn¡¯t even have to do anything. Michael Stallwar is the largest man from Aprait and the former family elder of his family. He may be old, but age has not slowed him down a bit.

    AS for my families part of the delegation, Ethan, Sarah and I were about as ready as we could be. And the constant talking to¡¯s from William made it so that we actually wanted to get this over with.

    After William¡¯s last farewell speech with all the expected platitudes about how we must remember to represent the Elliot family in everything we do, but above all, survive we took off on our journey.

    I made sure I would be in the back of the group fulfilling the only task I really could do while moving, and that was documenting anything we came across.

    We had agreed that Ethan and Sarah would each take one side of the caravan and report finding to me, and I would be in charge of documenting any animal they saw with any of the attributes or physical aspects that could be gleaned from there appearance.

    Being the first group, we were expecting to be regularly attacked by the wildlife so we decided to leave the bulk of our belongings for the second group to bring on their carts so that we could travel light.

    I have only brought an empty book to write in, my weapons and backups, some cloths, some food, and a basic tent. Basically enough to survive with for a little while but light enough that I would be able to run relatively unhindered should the need arise.

    It is a good thing that Ethan and Sarah are going to be sharing a tent because while Ethan is setting it up, Sarah can get an early start setting up some traps around the camp.

    Barely have I finished pitching my tent or Jason Fogg comes over to talk to me.

    ¡°Hey Arthur, almost done setting up?¡±

    I know Andrew had trained his Nephew to always look at a bigger picture, and therefore I doubt this is going to be small talk. No matter how much I like the guy, I am not going to get roped into some extra work so I won¡¯t give him much yet.

    ¡°Hi Jason.¡±

    ¡°Can you let me know when you guys have done a first sweep of the area for any dangers? I would like to start working on a report to our runner tomorrow when he reports back to Aprait.¡±

    ¡°Sure, I¡¯ll let you know.¡±

    Short and to the point. No extra tasks yet so this is the best opportunity for me to make a run for it.

    ¡°Sorry Jason, I need to check up on Sarah and make sure she is ok, talk to you soon.¡±

    And I make a clean break for it.

    As I walk South towards the area I expect Sarah to be, I get a good look at the Stallwar camp.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

    As the Stallwar are behemoths of humans, their tents are larger as well, and they tend to eat more. It also takes them much longer to set up their camp. I don¡¯t think it will be a good idea to wait for them to complete their setup before heading out.

    Reaching the edge of the clearing, I become much more alert. From now on it will be more dangerous.

    The beasts in this area haven¡¯t been culled by anything but even stronger monsters, and those that have survived are either powerful or stealthy. Neither of which I would like to come across.

    I am wearing thick clothes despite the weather being warm to give me some protection from smaller dangerous animals like insects and spiders. Despite having trained in these clothes for the past week, they are still uncomfortable.

    Yes, I prefer not being bitten by something small enough to pass my defenses but perhaps still dangerous, but I also want to be able to run as quickly as I can if I were to be charged by a moose.

    Within the first fifteen minutes, I come across the first bird trap.

    What she has done for this one is drive a pole into the ground, and added a stick into it which will serve as a type of branch a bird might sit on. She has tied an overhand knot in a cord which has become a noose and draped it over the stick in a way that a birds leg might get caught in it. If it were to then fly away the rope would tighten, and we would have food.

    Before two weeks ago, I had never even seen a trap like this. Around Aprait, none of the birds are dangerous, and none of them make good eating.

    Also, having a trap for the rare passerby is not an effective use of resources. But leave it to Sarah to leave enough variety in traps that we should be able to trap whatever is here.

    I also know Sarah personally and know that there would never be just one trap.

    One of the risks of trapping is that should you trap something, it now also becomes suitable prey for other hunters roaming around. And it would be a shame to come back to see your trap sprung but your kill taken by something else.

    Carefully looking around I see a thin wire run across, almost touching even, the pole on which the bird trap stands. This is a dangerous tension trap meant to incapacitate anything that would come by and take our prey.

    A stick with a spike attached to it is bent unnaturally and kept in place with this wire, and if you trip it, the stick will release, and the spike would embed itself into your legs. Very painful but it also means I need to be careful about a third trap.

    This tension trap won¡¯t kill anything more substantial than a wild dog and barely inconvenience a bear or moose.

    And as expected, there is a flat rock with spikes on the bottom balancing on a tree-branch overlooking both of the traps I had already seen with a wire connecting it to the bird trap. A triple trap to make this little area very deadly.

    After having admired the handiwork I give the traps a wide berth and continue on my path.

    Sarah is too good to leave any trails that I would be able to follow, but we had agreed that after the first trap she would start circling the camp clockwise and then head back.

    I also doubt that she is far ahead of me. It must have taken her longer to set these traps than it took me to pitch my tent and steer clear of Jason.

    Twenty minutes of walking through an eerily quiet part of the forest I see Sarah setting up a snare trap.

    Something in me tells me to remain quiet.

    I can tell that the woods we have been walking through hold plenty of mana. More than Aprait and its immediate surroundings do, so for things to be this silent means that something stealthy is the master of this region.

    Stealthy but still powerful enough to keep anything else from encroaching on its lands.

    And I haven¡¯t seen any tracks nor signs of fights either.

    For a trapper, something that silent and deadly is a considerable risk. It could sneak up on us while we are setting up these traps.

    I know that Sarah must have realized this too, so she should have headed back to camp to get someone to stand watch while she works.

    Crazy risk-taker. Ethan is going to tear her a new one when he hears about this.

    I must have made some sort of sound because Sarah Jumps to a side with her bow drawn.

    It takes her a split second to see it is me, but she doesn¡¯t relax yet.

    Seeing her, this jumpy is not doing well for my own nerves, and I push my senses to their limit.

    Minutes tick by, and nothing happens.

    I really dislike stealth hunters.

    Without a word, we head back to camp to report on this fact and to plot out a new area to go to. There are now four traps set here, and with some luck we will see what is most likely stalking us right now.

 Chapter 18, The first day

    We silently walk back to camp hope. I¡¯d like to think that we are taking things slowly to ensure that we don¡¯t make a sound or leave tracks for whatever rules these parts to follow, but realistically it might be more the fact we are looking up to having to discuss our findings with the others.

    The best situation would be coming back to our traps tomorrow and finding whatever ambush predator haunts these lands stuck in them or even dead.

    We will have to change our plans and set out with the three of us. Two to keep watch while the third creates the traps.

    We would plan to litter those parts of the woods with traps, hoping to catch what is there before we are forced to go in to replenish our water supplies. If we don¡¯t trap it, we would need to send in a large group in one go to fetch enough water until a hunting party can kill it, which would be risky and time-consuming.

    And this is just the first danger we have come across.

    Safe to say that once we report this to the others, none of us will be allowed to have a full nights rest tonight, between keeping watch and building some basic defenses.

    Naturally, we knew it would be dangerous. But is it too much to hope for a large lumbering predator we could riddle with arrows before giving the final blow in a heroic battle after which we could safely claim these lands?

    Now we are in a face-off between us and an unknown, neither party knowing what the other can do. Our traps might kill it, it might sneak in and kill us in our sleep.

    The first thing we do when we reach camp is to report to Ethan.

    Sarah tells him about the traps she has set and that we never heard nor saw any animal, not even just tracks. He naturally agrees with our assessment and immediately calls for a first meeting.

    All the other families were done with setting up their parts of camp and had started with some basic camp necessities and fire pits and are now setting up some quality of life improvements.

    The Stallwar have started digging a ditch surrounding our campsite, which would hopefully slow down a predator trying to enter the camp. The Fogg are checking the maps that the scouts had provided us with and updating what needs updating.

    We immediately call a meeting. With glee, I realize this counts as updating Jason, saving me from the risk of conversation with him.

    Even though people are quick to leave their monotonous manual tasks that they were doing. It still takes time before everyone is gathered.

    While people are gathering, I take time to survey camp. I had been gone for over three hours total, and with such a group of experienced and dedicated people, a lot has been done.

    First The tents are set in a semi-circular pattern, all entrances facing the central fire pit.

    Behind the tents, a circle of single logs has been made around them under which the back end of the tents are stuffed. This both keeps the tents outside steady as well as make it impossible for anything to crawl under it.

    Around the central fire pit, an area has been completely cleared of any plant or bush. This is for multiple reasons. We want to keep bugs out, we want to have a clear line of view, and we want to optimize workspace in the safety of our camp.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

    Outside of the ring of logs, people have started to dig a shallow ditch. These three lines of defense, together with a night watch, would hopefully keep us defended throughout the coming night.

    Sarah, being the one who experienced the woods the longest, is going to be our designated speaker who will inform the rest of her findings. After that, most likely, Jason will take over and organize any changes that need to be made to the schedule or our report back.

    Never having talked in such a meeting nor even been present in one, I can tell Sarah is nervous. It helps that she knows what she needs to say, and nobody expects her to say anything more than the bare necessity.

    A sure way to tell that she is nervous is that it barely takes her five minutes to rush through both her experience in the woods, the traps she has set and why and her conjectures on what is out there. It almost takes her audience longer to digest her words than it took her to say them.

    After a minute or two of silence, Jason, as was expected, takes over and summarizes things. I realize while he is doing so that by summarizing, he is implicitly taking over command. I am sure Sarah is just relieved, and most will be happy not to have to think about what her words will mean, but I also need to think of Williams instructions to me.

    I can¡¯t let Jason become the sole leader of our new establishment, I don¡¯t think I would live that down when it gets out.

    So in the brief period after the summary, I take over and add my own observations. To those without any knowledge on the political undertones, I am sure that it may seem that I am just expounding on Sarah''s statements, but both Jason and I know otherwise. I am using my first-hand knowledge to inject myself into a leadership role, as once I start talking, I can easily switch to ask specific people on their takes.

    Just as summarizing previous statements indicates a role of leadership, so too does the handing out of speaking assignments have that effect. I first ask the Stallwar family elder, Michael, as he is the most experienced of us all, how he thinks we should hunt something like this.

    While Michael is answering an expected Stallwar answer, sending a large hunting party once the second group has joined us but send a large group to fetch water today, I glance over at Jason.

    Expecting him to look annoyed or any other negative emotion, I am surprised to see him smiling back. I hope that means he would expect our leadership of the new town to follow the example set by our predecessors in Aprait and that Williams worry was for nothing.

    After everything is said and done, we agree that each family has a task. The Stallwar will be the ones to go get water. The Fogg will continue upgrading camp as well as protecting what is here, and us Foggs will set more traps surrounding field as well as scout the other directions. You could almost forget that we have now only scouted the south towards our water source and our west from which we came.

    The three of us plan to walk North for about two hours, setting a few traps along the way and then half-circle around camp until we are on the path of the water carriers and then head back.

    Luckily, walking north, we see clear signs of a multitude of beasts. We clearly see markings off both bears and deer, yes I can differentiate between them much better now that I don¡¯t have the old man looking over my shoulder.

    We see tracks and pathways that are being used by boars and rabbits. Overall, this is what you would expect of a wooded area. We set a few snare traps for the rabbits so we can study them and a single deadfall trap for anything more substantial before continuing on.

    A few times during our trapping, we came across a fresh trail of a predator, and each time we stopped to carefully lay out some traps. Most animals habitually follow pathways they have traveled in the past, and we can use that for our traps.

    It took us until dusk to finally reach the route that our water-carriers had followed, and they would long be back at camp before we got there. We had left plenty of traps and logged which beasts we would expect to rule over these areas.

    Getting back to camp, we arrive too late to provide any input on the division of the night-watch, and we end up getting the dreaded middle watch. That means we would have to sleep a little, wake up, and then get some more sleep.

    We agree that Sarah and Ethan will immediately get some sleep while I get together with Jason and our Stallwar contemporary David and discuss what we will include in the report to send to Aprait tomorrow.

    It doesn¡¯t take long to agree that the report tomorrow should include something about the ambush predator between us and the water source, but that everything else is going according to plan and the second wave can head out.

    With that done, I head to my tent and try to get as much sleep as possible before it would be my turn to take watch.