"What? So you're telling me that, in a world of magic and mana, where everything possesses mana in one way or the other, I am incapable of using mana and becoming stronger?"
"....I'm sorry."
"Well, I guess there's nothing that can be done about that! I just need to find other ways to become stronger. If one door closes, another door opens. Right?"
"W-wow, you're a strong man, Kano. If I were you, I'd probably start questioning if I am able to live in this cruel world. Don't worry, I'll find a way to help you."
"Sure sure! In that case, I should focus on strengthening my body first and foremost. I'll be at a corner exercising, catch ya later!"
John muttered softly, "That's indeed the Kano that I respect!", and continued cultivating with a small smile on his face.
Kano ran off to a secluded spot and started training. After a few workouts, he stopped and looked slightly depressed. His tears began trickling out of his eyes, and he couldn't help but punch at a tree out of frustration.
"Fuck!"
That punch contained profound feelings of sadness, which came from his own feelings of helplessness and his inability to assist his friend.
Even though one day had only passed, John had been the one doing everything for him. He was the one who found the tree to sleep in, the one who brought him food in the morning, and the one who taught him how to cultivate in hopes of helping him. Kano was the only one who couldn't give anything back in return. As John became stronger and stronger with the help of his cultivation, he couldn't help but feel mixed emotions of despair and jealousy. He hated himself for thinking why he lacked mana and not John instead, even if it was just for a moment. Regardless, he swallowed his emotions and continued his training.
After a short period of time, John called out to Kano to gather and head on their way inside the forest. Even though Simon and Wang Yan might be experiencing the same ordeal as them, they slowly realized that it was unfeasible for just the two of them to search for the other 2 in such a dense and huge forest. It was akin to finding a needle in the haystack.
Therefore, they went on their way in hopes of exiting the forest. Perhaps they can find human civilization outside and request for a search party.
During their journey, they began thinking of preparations for essential equipment. Water bottles, food, and weapons were at the top of their list. There were many rocks, branches and vines scattered around, so they had a great idea.
There were sharp rocks laying around the ground, so that was the easiest material to procure. The vines can be cut using the sharp rocks, so that was fine. The branches were the toughest ones. Because the trees around them were mostly 30 meters tall or higher, the branches were either too big for them to break off, or it was too high for them to reach.
"Alright, at the count of three, one, two, three!"
Crash!!
"Owowow…. That hurts!" John whined.
They managed to find a 5 meter tall tree after a long search, and cleared off any sharp objects on the ground. They then climbed onto the tree, held onto one of the branches, and used their bodyweight in an attempt to break the branch off. To their surprise, the branch was extremely sturdy, so they had to repeat the process multiple times, to the point where the final process succeeded, catching them off guard and resulting in them crash landing onto the ground.
They also figured that 1 spear is not enough, and decided to get a second branch. After going through many trials and errors, they managed to somehow affix the sharp rocks at the tip of the branch by securing it with the sturdy vines.
2 wooden spears get!
Rustle rustle..
"Wait, stop!"
"What is it, Kano?"
"I heard something over there." Kano whispered as he pointed towards an area.
The two retards headed towards that direction discreetly. They heard sounds of thrashing and roars between two monsters. Sure enough, a four meter tall elephant-looking creature was fighting a two meter tall tiger-looking monster. The elephant monster was swinging and thrashing around its two horns, attempting to deal a lethal injury to the tiger monster, but it dodged around nimbly and constantly inflicted scratches and bite marks. It was an extremely even battle, and the fight didn't look like it was about to end anytime soon.
"Personally, I would just steer clear of the two monsters since we might get caught in the conflict. It is not a great idea to be injured in this forest." John questioned Kano.
"We should observe for a little while more. Since these two are having such a close battle, when one of them barely wins, we can take the survivor down and reap the spoils. Like how you've risked yourself by ingesting those unknown fruits, I feel that this is also a necessary risk."
'Hmm, what happened to Kano? He seems to be more serious and is actually starting to think. Hehe, anyways it's a good thing.'
"Indeed, if you put it that way, it's also a necessary risk, and a good one at that. Thanks for your input, I'll follow your idea."
"Haha! Of course! It is also not a bad idea for you to rely on me too."
Both of them chuckled, and continued to observe the two monsters' fight.
Ten minutes of vicious clashing ensued, and both monsters were exhausted. All of a sudden, the tiger monster took a massive leap and pounced towards the elephant monster, intending on taking it down with its final attack. As if understanding its intentions, the elephant monster countered it by swiftly ramming its tusks into the tiger monster. The latter was incapable of dodging in mid-air and its ribcage was pierced right through.
The tiger monster whimpered for a short moment before it stopped moving. The survivor trumpeted loudly with its long snout, before dropping down to the floor and gasping loudly, with the loser still stuck in its tusk.
"Now!"
Kano signaled as he jumped out of the bush and rushed out towards the elephant monster. John quickly followed suit.
'What the heck? Even though I have been strengthened by mana, Kano is still running much faster than me. As expected of an athlete.'
The monster tried to lift its face up to counter attack, but the corpse that was stuck in its tusk was too heavy, leaving it immobile. Kano then pierced the spear through its eye, and it started trumpeting in pain.
"Pierce his other eye!"
"I got you bro!"
John slammed the spear into its other eye, and it thrashed around weakly. Despite having both of its eyes destroyed, it was still capable of standing up, and shocked the both of them. They then mustered their entire strength and shoved both spears deeper in, and the behemoth only stopped moving afterwards.
John was the first one to plop down the ground in exhaustion.
"Huff.. puff… this is a freak of a monster! Huff.. how can a single creature have so much vitality?"
'And how is Kano still standing? My adrenaline has worn off and I want to do nothing except sleep!'
"Haha, regardless, we managed to bring it down and we acquired these two monster corpses! Isn't it a hell of a reward?"
'Look at me John! I'm still useful!'
"Of course man, you made the right call. But now, we need to think of how we should make use of these corpses. Their smell of blood is quite strong, and it's very possible that other monsters will visit, so perhaps we need to make haste."
"Got it. We spent so much energy trying to fight this elephant, it's the perfect time to recover some energy by eating some elephant and tiger meat!"
"How are we going to make fire?"
"...gather some sticks and rub them around?"
"While fire is important for multiple things, I don't really watch the discovery channel, so I have no idea how to start a fire. Besides, the trees are so sturdy, we already had so much trouble breaking the small branches for the spear. Lastly, this forest is extremely humid, so it might actually be a waste of time to try it when we're just a bunch of newbies who can't differentiate left from right."
".... I mean, you won't know if you don't try..."
"Nevermind, I've thought of some other uses for them. First, I want to get the tiger's claws and teeth, they will make for a perfect dagger. The elephant tusks are too heavy for us to carry around, so while it's a pity, we should discard it. Secondly, I sort of know that we can use animal bladders to store water. We might want to carve them out. Third, we can use the tiger and elephant hide as a backpack."
"Ewww, bladder? You're kinda gross."
"Shut up. Lastly, this is a magical world. According to all the mangas, animes and light novels that I've read, strong monsters usually contain mana cores. I might want to dissect these monsters to try and find them."
"..Aight. Shall we start carving them up?"
They started using the spears to dissect the two corpses. Afraid of popping out the head of the spear (a sharp stone that they tied poorly to the stick with a vine), they only used a stabbing motion to cut the flesh open, instead of any slicing motion. Kano was in charge of cutting out their skins and finding the mana cores as he was the strongest, and John was in charge of taking out the tiger fangs and claws, and cutting out the bladders.
Just like that, five hours of their time was gone. Despite this, they reaped bountiful rewards, and were able to acquire all of the mentioned items. Most importantly, they were able to find crystals hiding beside their hearts. They were presumably mana cores if John's hypothesis was correct.
As their bodies were bloodied, they went on to search for a river to clean themselves up, and carried the items using the bloodied hides. They decided to only take a quick wash in fear of monsters showing up. Luckily, no monsters appeared. They also washed the two bladders and monster hides thoroughly, filled them up with water and the two openings of the bladder were tied up. One side of the bladder will be untied during consumption.
They also spent time crafting a makeshift drawstring bag by somehow wrapping the hide up, poking holes using the spears and weaving the vines throughout the holes. Fruits were then picked and stored inside their bags, and they were ready to travel again.
They decided to follow the flow of the river so that they can have easy access to water, and that it'll be easier to retrace their footsteps if push ever comes to shove.
Three days passed by peacefully like this. During their break, John would spend his time cultivating and trying to figure out different ways to absorb mana. He also attempted to absorb the monster mana cores, but nothing happened. Kano would continue working out and training his body, and even though he was moving throughout the entire day, the fatigue did not stop him from exercising. His duration of stomach aches after ingesting any food or water also shortened noticeably.
On the fourth day, they found a monster that was no bigger than the two that they had encountered, but it was in a healthy state, and there was no way the two of them could have beaten it. Hence, they sneaked past it and succeeded.
On the fifth day, they met two monsters in a row, so they tread even more carefully and went further in.
On the sixth day…
"Holy shit, I don't think we should go further in," murmured John.
"I agree. We already can't deal with a single monster, and yet we have already encountered six today. Let's retrace our direction."
Kano and John then turned around in their footsteps and started backtracking using the river as their reference point.
John went into deep contemplation while walking.
"I couldn't make any progress with my cultivation either. There must be something that I'm doing wrong. How about you? Are your exercises making any progress?"
"If I'm being honest, I do feel like I've become stronger. We walked for over 6 hours daily, and during our breaks, I did more training. I'd say that my endurance and strength have gone up sharply."
"I see… Do you have any idea how to cultivate?"
John knew that Kano couldn't cultivate, but he couldn't help but ask a rhetorical question as he was steadily getting frustrated. Kano looked over with an irritated expression.
"Ugh, are you trying to tilt me? I can't even cultivate, and you ask me this kind of stupid question. Hmm, since those monsters have them crystals in their body, maybe you can get those too?"
John's eyes suddenly lit up, and looked at Kano in surprise.
"You're a fucking genius! I'm sorry for thinking you're retarded! Hahahat!"
John crashed into Kano and bear-hugged him.
"Ew, stop being so cringey! I've always been smart since the start too. I'll kill you!"
"Come on man, it's just a joke bro."
'Kano is actually a fucking genius. Actually, why didn't I think of that in the first place? That was a direction of cultivation that I never tried.'
During their break time, John cultivated while Kano trained his body as usual.
'I've always tried to absorb mana directly, but it was never retained inside my body. I could only receive a small boost in strength, and the effect would fade away soon. But what if I have a mana core just like the monsters do?'
John recalled that the crystals were hidden beside their hearts. He began attempting to circulate the meager mana inside and find it. After 30 minutes of trying, he couldn't find anything.
Afterwards, he decided to just direct the mana he absorbed into his heart. At that moment, he felt the sensation of his heart cracking. However, there was no pain whatsoever. Instead, a wave of energy and power rushed over his entire body, giving him a pleasant surprise.
"Did I just breakthrough to the next level? I must test my strength now."
John walked to a nearby tree and closed his eyes. He circulated his breath, relaxed his excited mind and calmed his pounding heart. With his confidence brimming, he unleashed a punch onto the stem of the tree.