Alex proceeded to return to the village, dropping off his pickaxe and hatchet, and retrieving one of the spears.
The spear was made of what seemed to be some hardwood, about an inch in diameter, with one end that was sharpened into a two inch long point. While fairly straight, the spear was still a little warped, presumably having been made from a branch or a small sapling. Alex carefully pressed one of his fingers into the top of the spear, feeling its sharpness.
'I don't think I'll have any issues piercing the hide of a creature with this.
Would have made my fight with the murder chicken a whole hell of a lot easier.'
He then began practicing with the spear in the clearing, giving it a few thrusts, trying to get a good sense of its weight and balance, not that he really knew what he was doing. Alex had never been into martial arts or weapons, and his physical activity had mostly been reliant on swimming throughout most of his youth and adulthood, with some brief stints into weightlifting in recent years.
He then spun the spear around, twirling it around his body, trying to get a sense of his hand placement.
'I really have no idea what I'm doing.'
Visualizing the chicken in front of him, he gave a few swings, replaying his fight in his mind.
'Would I have been fast enough to react to its jump?'
'With how small they are, I just have to keep the pointy end between me and the creature.'
After he gave the spear a few more swings, he gave up his practice, and started prepping to set off into the forest.
Taking the time to drink some of his stored water, he checked his system.
[Honor System]
[Name: Alex]
[Existence Tier: 1]
[Ability: Water Control]
[Ability points: 0]
[Mana: 14/14]
[Soul Force: 100]
[Strength: 0]
[Endurance: 3]
[Dexterity: 0]
[Vitality: 5]
[Resilience: 0]
[Cognition: 0]
[Perception: 7]
[Available stat points: 1]
'Seems my mana fully restored over those two hours or so. It also increased by 1 along with my stat points?
I should have checked earlier.'
Alex was still quite worried about getting snuck up on, and he felt the increased perception would be invaluable while hunting, so he put his extra point in perception. Only investing one point at a time, the sensation was easier to follow, and rather than getting overwhelmed by it, he was able to trace the path of the warm energy as it traveled through his body.
He felt some of the warmth spread from his core - near his heart? Alex couldn't really tell, out towards his skin, where it tingled. The rest made its way towards his head, where he felt it spread to his tongue, eyes, ears, and nose. He then inhaled sharply allowing the smell of the forest to wash over him.
'It almost makes the sensation of the humidity worse.'
Having finished investing his stat points, Alex then pondered what to do next. Though he quickly settled on training, seeing as his mana was full, and this was a prime opportunity.
He was starting to really enjoy practicing his water control. It was calming, and rewarding, and demanded enough of his focus that he could stop ruminating on his circumstances.
Alex headed back to the river, stopping at the edge of the shallows, where he began his water control ritual again. Scooping the water up in his hands, he closed his eyes and pictured what he'd like to do.
Where previously he'd only been able to manipulate a ball of water the size of a marble, this time, he shot for the stars and tried to pull out a golf ball sized orb. Scrunching his brows in concentration, Alex focused, creating tension along the surface of the water as he created a pulling sensation upward.
Intuitively he knew that if he pulled too hard upwards, the ball of water would deform and it would pop like a bubble. Where he was deriving this intuition from, he wasn't sure, but he trusted his gut.
Maintaining the upward pull against gravity, he began adding a second force, in a spiraling motion, which the water seemed happy enough to comply with. As he continued practicing, he felt the ease of control improve, and he could ease off the focus.
'It's just like muscle memory, you gotta grease the groove, get the motions down, and let it be subconscious.
Though the only muscles I'm working are my eyebrows.'
Rotating the ball, he instead started to focus on the sensation of the water under his control, feeling it flow and twist, though he soon grew bored of that. Feeling confident in himself, he tried pulling a second ball of water up from his palm, with some effort, he felt it lift off from the larger group of water, as it slowly picked up speed to match the other ball.
Pondering on the vision in his mind, he couldn't help but be impressed by how well he was visualizing the water in his palm, with how well he could feel the water, he thought that the image in his mind perfectly mapped to reality. Taking a quick peak, he confirmed the location of the water.
'Nice, it seems as my control improves, so does my ability to sense the location of the water.'
Alex pondered some more, sensing water obviously had a high amount of utility.
'This would give me a huge edge in aquatic environments, I wonder what I can do during rain.'
Alex re-read his skill, oddly enough, there was nothing in the description that implied sensing water, simply that he'd have control over it.
'What does it mean to control something?'
'Part of control is obviously forcing or changing something to your will, towards some goal or target that you have in mind.'
'To be in control of a situation is to understand all the variables in play and be able to respond to changes or unexpected circumstances.'
'So is sensing intrinsic to control? How else could I control something that I cannot sense?'
Alex smiled, pleased at his comprehension. Though that quickly turned into a frown.
'I'm certainly not in control of my life.'
Returning to the idea of water sensing, Alex realized that he had developed a sixth sense.
'My perception stat mentions that it improves all senses, does that mean that it will allow me to better sense water?'
Alex walked closer to the river, and placed his hand above the surface of the water, closing his eyes. He'd previously tried this exercise and gotten nowhere, though he had noticed in his recent training that when he was controlling water he could start to get a feel for it.
'Concentrate on the feeling of the water.'
Alex's tuned out the world, doing his best to hear and think nothing.
'I can barely perceive it, but it's definitely there, I can feel the water flowing in the river. It's a viscous, heavy feeling, like if I try to imagine touching the space where the river was my finger would get pulled along with the current.
Alex extended his visualization of the sensing, and found there was a hard limit, he could feel no further than perhaps a meter. Beyond that things seemed fuzzy, though somehow, he intuitively sensed that if he focused hard enough he might be able to pick out some details or movement.'
Changing his focus to the water immediately in front of him, Alex tried pulling a chunk of water the size of a bowling ball from the surface, where he levitated it for about 3 seconds, letting it hover in front of him. Then he promptly ran out of mana.
'Things are starting to get fun. Time to check the system.'
[Honor System]
[Name: Alex]
[Existence Tier: 1]
[Ability: Water Control]
[Ability points: 0]
[Mana: 0/14]
[Soul Force: 100->162]
[Strength: 0]
[Endurance: 3]
[Dexterity: 0]
[Vitality: 5]
[Resilience: 0]
[Cognition: 0]
[Perception: 8]
[Available stat points: 0]
Alex's eyebrows shot up. This far exceeded his prior gains.
'Was it the volume of the water? Or the intricate control? I really need to run more experiments when I'm doing these things.'
He was increasingly finding that he was being inefficient with his training. Not only did he not know the best method to approach his training, he should really be practicing whenever he had the mana, but right now he had to come back to the river to practice every time.
'I'm going to have to come up with a better way to practice on the fly, having to come back to the river is troublesome.'
Setting training aside, Alex headed into the forest to retrieve some vines and some resin - he needed a way to carry his spear hands free. Finding the vines was easy as they were everywhere in the forest, but he ended up going searching through several sections of the nearby forest until he found the tree he was looking for.
To his surprise it ended up looking surprisingly like a pine tree, there were no pinecones, and instead the tree had these weird spiky nuts. Instead of the straight needles of pine trees, it had these weird fibres which bifurcated, creating almost feather like leaves, and they were coated with a thin layer of the resin, making them terribly sticky.
Alex had already managed to get a bunch on his hands, and he was not happy about it.
'I was going to apologize for stabbing you, but not anymore.'
'You're covered from head to toe in tree snot, have you no decency?'
Stabbing one of the low hanging branches with his dagger he watched as the resin oozed out of the wound in the branch. Quickly before it dried, he grabbed his longest vine and started rubbing the resin all over one end, doing his best to coat as much as he could.
Making haste, he then grabbed his spear, and started wrapping the now resinous vine midway down the shaft of the spear, wrapping it tight several times over, creating a thick spring like coil.
He then took the free end of the vine, and tied it to a separate section of the spear, and then proceeded to knot it and tie it as tight as he could, creating a solid loop of vine. He then ran over to an area of the forest and grabbed some dirt, which he rubbed into any of the exposed resin he could find, hoping to use it to prevent the spear from sticking to his clothes or his skin.
He finally looped the spear over his head, letting it rest on his back.
'My hands are liberated.
Tree climbers beware.'
Alex then turned and started going deeper into the forest, preparations complete, it was time to begin the hunt.