Clays thoughts had come to an abrupt end as his apartment building trembled, his first thought was that there was an earthquake or something on the same scale.
Immediately he panicked and called Timber who dashed to his side the very next moment, as they made their way to the window to gauge their situation Clay was perplexed as he saw no shaking but soon these thoughts ceased as he took notice of the gargantuan hulking figure below him.
With each of this beasts steps the surrounding earth trembles against the weight and pressure of the mighty beast, as Clay watched the monstrous figure roam down his street he couldn't help but to try to burn every detail of it into his mind, as Clay attempted to scale the beast against the surrounding buildings he found that it seemed to be a near fifty foot tall bear like monster the giant body of the bear was packed with a dense coat of metallic fur that looked as if would be impenetrable to him at current, his eyes wandering landed on the massive fear inducing paws that the creature boasted as each of the sword like claws couldn't be less than a full grown mans height and glistened with a ferociously sharp point and edge to them the thought of the damage that this beast could do already shook clay to his core as he shook in his place... and he hadn't even reached the head yet, the head of this mighty beast really set the fact into stone the incredible gap in power that the two had as its maw even through the cover of darkness he could see its glittering impossibly sharp teeth that came by the tens and were each by clays own estimates about as long as his entire leg, then came its eyes, the eyes alone were enough to freeze clay to his position as if glued there as they faced directly ahead of the monstrous bear and glowed a vibrant blue as if it has blue headlights on its face that terrified everything in its path.
Even from his position five stories above it he was still terrified at the horrendous beast as it slowly left his view he tried to shake the fear from his head by taking a look at the surrounding areas he could see from his vantage point, and it was at this point that it would be better for him and Timber to ration their food and bunker down until they found a way to get past all of the crazy and fantastical creatures that littered the streets.
The city had been reduced to rubble in mass quantities surrounding certain areas that were sparsely littered around the flaming city, apron closer inspection of the nearest patch there was a giant obelisk near the center of the patch of decimated building the newly discovered obelisks were tall enough to nearly touch the cloud line and the one he was observing seemed to be made out of an unearthly grey stone that was surrounded by a light blue aura, clays attention wained from the detail of the obelisk itself to what it was doing as it continuously spat out a small amount of monsters at seemingly irregular intervals.
As Clay saw and took the sight in it only served to solidify his decision to stay in his loft with Timber until they found a way to defeat the monsters that were around them.
To try and clam himself down Clay started to practice through a set of breathing techniques that he had been thought when he was younger by his martial arts instructor, the breathing is meant to help recover the body and mind.
But as he circled through the familiar breathing technique he began noticing a difference in himself and his surroundings because a mysterious energy that was never there previously he could sense it as it permeated through everything like a gentle breeze whisking through an open field.
Once Clay learned of this energy and that he could keep and store it in his body he spent the next three days with it in his company.
On the first day Clay continued to bring in this energy that he had taken to calling mana for a total of 26 hours without stop or rest because the energy seemed to sustain his body an he felt no needs during this period but to continue to draw in mana as the feeling it produced as it integrated with his body from the air was addicting, and Clay just couldn't get enough of the electrifying empowering feeling it produced but as he felt himself reaching some sort of ceiling to the amount he could draw in Clay suddenly lost control of the mana that was flowing into his body as it increased in sheer volume until it was a raging torrent, as this happened the addicting feeling has increased in intensity as it now felt as though he had constant lightning bolts raging throughout his body it was as the mana reached the peak flow into his body it started to converge into a sphere or core somewhere behind his sternum as this happened an agonizing pain was added on top of the torrent of mana that flew into clays body this pain was caused by his organs shifting and changing to become tougher and sturdier along with everything to his boned to every strand of long hair on his head.
When this process finally ended Clay had spent 3 hours in this horrible state of constant agony but as he found it was worth it.
This was at the start of the second day because Clay had spent the first day absorbing mana and now he knew that if was not for not as he began to draw mana from his newly formed core and as soon as it did it filled his body and strengthened it by multiple times over and after a while Clay came to realize that he could move the mana that currently filled his body around and with more practice he began to focus more mana to a certain part of his body thus even further strengthening it but as his control was still weak the effect was very limited, after this discovery he began to think and practice manipulating the mana inside his body for the rest of the second day
On the third and final day that Clay would stay in his apartment with Timber he made a break through as he was able to much more easily control his mana, thus as he pulled it from his core he set out to attempt to figure out of the thoughts that had to came to his mind during his training the day before.
Keeping this in mind Clay headed towards his kitchen as he grabbed a large but sharp knife and a dense and tough cutting board he first struck the cutting board with the knife without doing anything special and it scored the surface making only a scratch, but then with the control set Clay began to try what he had thought of and that was to info his mana from his core to the knife in his hand and thankfully enough Clay had spent the whole previous day practicing as after a while the blade started to glow a dull purple color, it was then that Clay struck the cutting board again but this time the knife split the board clean in half and got lodged into the stone countertop under neath exited to the point of jumping Clay though that since that had worked the next experiment must as well.
With these thoughts he turned his hand palm up as he began to try to push his mana outside his body as it leaked from his skin it started to form a small dense cloud that hovered above his palm, deciding to take this experiment a step forward he began to envision the cloud of his mana heating up then catching fire to form a small flame but his mana only lightly sparked a few times before dispersing die to his lack of control still. Thought seeing his newly acquired skills Clays heart nearly beat out of his chest as he decided that the next day he and Timber would finally leave the apartment building.