Having chosen a goal, Alex's mind calmed further, and he released much of the built up tension he'd accumulated in his body. Continuing to lie in the river shallows, he stared at the darkening sky, trying to tune out all the excess stimulus from the world. Getting comfortable, he then closed his eyes, and began focusing on the small perturbations in the shallows, as it rocked his body back and forth.
He noted that as he relaxed, he was able to connect better with the water in the surrounding river. Letting his senses drift over the bottom of the river, he started picking out the stones amidst the flow of the current. The current of the river felt like a light tug, and as he probed, he could feel the small vortices forming when the rushing water hit stones in its path.
Letting his senses extend farther into the river, Alex then felt something shoot past through the water startling him. Panicked, Alex sat up, trying to process what it was.
'Fish giving me a damn heart attack.'
Checking his system interface, Alex noted that his mana had recovered to roughly half his max capacity.
'Looks like a half hour works out to around half my mana capacity, so a full hour should completely restore it.'
'I wonder if I can feel the sensation of mana in my body? I'd prefer to avoid reliance on the system.'
Laying back in the water Alex focused on the sensations in his body, as he tried to relax again. Alex tuned out the sensations of the water around him, and focused. He could feel his heartbeat and the pumping of his blood as it spread through various organs, out to his hands and feet. As he focused he could feel the wave-like propagation of the beats.
Was there anything else he was feeling? Alex focused on his stomach, and felt he could feel the churning of deer meat as he digested it.
He could feel the subtle passing of air through his lungs, tickling his throat, along with the rhythmic pushing and pulling of his diaphragm.
As Alex focused, he noted a faint buzzing, almost itch throughout his whole body. Unlike a real itch, it wasn't annoying, instead this felt more like the various tissues in his body were charged with energy. He was suspicious of the sensation, having never felt anything quite like this before, though with his heightened perception stat, who knew what was possible.
Deciding to focus on it, drawing it to the forefront of his consciousness as much as he could, where he entered an almost meditative trance. Alex continued to meditate on the sensation for a half hour, noting the sensation growing in strength and intensity, at which point he decided he'd had enough and checked his system.
'Mana's full again, back to practice.'
This time he stayed laying in the water, instead deciding to use his water control to help his body float, creating a small stream underneath him like a jet. Alex managed to maintain this for around 3 minutes, after which his control failed, indicating that he was again out of mana.
Not bothering to even open his system interface, Alex instead tried reconnecting with his body, trying to feel the absence of mana. Everything that greeted him was the same, except for the distinct absence of that itching sensation.
'Got you.'
'He didn't know what exactly the itching sensation was, but it was clearly related to his mana somehow.'
'System, are you going to confirm anything for me?'
The interface remained completely unresponsive, to Alex's dismay. 'What good are you anyway? You just teleport me to other worlds and forget about me.'
He then returned his focus to the sensation, or its absence, and waited for around 5 minutes. There he felt a growing sensation, which Alex quickly concluded was his mana restoring. He also noticed a distinct tingle on his skin and his lungs, which he couldn't make sense of at the moment.
Alex practiced focusing on his mana for another 15 minutes, after which he decided that he'd hit a wall. Deciding to take a break from practicing his mana and ability training, he instead turned to his second goal.
'I should get some strength training in for the day.'
Alex started brainstorming how he was actually going to work out. He found himself quite unequipped to actually tackle the issue.
'I don't even know what I want to focus on. The goal is something like a warrior physique, the goals of most strength athletes don't actually apply here.'
'There are various aspects to combat, physical strength and endurance are both critical, as well as flexibility and mobility.'
'Endurance and my cardio are easy enough to practice, I'll just go for runs.'
'Flexibility and mobility shouldn't be awful to practice, as long as I don't do anything stupid in my strength training or my running. If I keep my strength training exercises as functional as possible, and work through the ranges where I'm tight, I should be just fine.'
'Getting the weights to practice the strength portion is actually the biggest issue, not like this forest comes equipped with some barbells.'
Getting up out of the water, and walking down the riverbed, he considered his options, trying to find appropriately sized stones. After finding an unwieldy stone roughly the width of his torso, he leaned down and wrapped both hands under it, and hugging it to his chest, he started walking back to the clearing, away from the river.
His core movement was simple: he'd pick the stone up, hugging it close to his chest, then carefully transfer the stone to his shoulder, after which he'd press it overhead. He repeated this nonstop, constantly switching arms for around 15 minutes, after which he felt intense exhaustion set in.
Unlike what he was used to, he wasn't greeted by the normal soreness or tiredness associated with lifting weights, instead he was just greeted by pain and the fact that his shoulders simply stopped responding to his commands. Alex strongly suspected this was due to his endurance stat, which let him push out more sets, and drive his muscles far further into exhaustion.
It was now long past dark, and Alex returned to his fire, noting the smoking meat, which by his estimation was dried out enough. He then removed the racks and took them inside, leaving them with the dried murder chicken he'd prepped the day before.
He then spent a little more time practicing his water control, before going for a run circling the clearing. He was reasonably confident that he'd be safe if he stayed nearby, but he wasn't absolutely sure, so Alex took the time to practice running through the forest quietly.
This proved to be a far more mentally exhausting endeavor than he'd anticipated, especially at night. He had to remain quiet, taking care of his footwork, while simultaneously taking care to stay alert and keep some focus on his other settings, alerting him to any potential ambushes.
Returning to the clearing, he used his now recovered mana practicing, after which he grabbed his rock to his chest, and practiced doing some squats for 15 minutes straight, after which he headed inside and promptly collapsed on his bed, drifting to sleep.
Waking, he attended to his morning's business, before returning to the river, where he practiced his water control. This was quickly becoming a routine for Alex, and he almost found himself becoming absentminded, his mind beginning to drift somewhat as the water twisted and turned around him.
'Rocks aren't awful as weight training tools, but I can't easily wrap things like rope or vines around them without modifying them, so I'm probably better off trying to find appropriately sized logs.'
'I'm going to need lots of vines.'
Alex set out to the forest in search of potential candidates, grabbing his hatchet. After walking through the forest for around 15 minutes, he'd managed to locate a potential candidate.
'Now to bring you back.'
Alex stared at the log, which by his estimation was around 150 pounds, lying at around 2 meters long, and a whole foot in diameter. He began by trying to pick it up, by one end, and dragged it about a foot, before one of the branches got caught on some underbrush, causing Alex to stumble and trip, landing on the ground.
'Fucking tree.'
Pulling out his hatchet, Alex cackled.
"We'll see who has the last laugh."
Alex then proceeded to dismember the tree with his hatchet, chopping off all the unneeded branches with his hatchet, leaving some of the thicker branches as nubs to hook things like vines around. He then hooked several of the longer vines he'd found underneath the tree, looping them around one of the remaining branches. He then pulled the log up off the ground and wrapped the vines over his shoulder, allowing him to lift the log with his bodyweight and pull with his arms.
His progress was slow and arduous, and he had to stop to recover his stamina numerous times. He estimated he was maybe progressing at around a half kilometer an hour. After about the half hour mark, Alex observed some rustling in the bushes about 20m ahead of him.
Out of the forest walked the demon bear, casual as can be.
'Well shit.'