Having upgraded his sense Alex returned to the problem of catching fish. Prepping his spear, he decided to forgo using his water control to catch fish, and instead try by hand. He waited for an opportunity, noticing several fish swimming through his sense, he needed larger fish to come near the reach of his spear, most were too small.
Finally a candidate appeared, a large fish was swimming a foot beneath the surface of the river, and it looked to be approaching the rock Alex was perched on. He readied his spear, mapping out the path of the fish, and just as it entered his range, he struck down.
Seeming to notice the disturbance in the water, the fish reacted extremely quickly, swerving out of the way. It had proved far more acrobatic than he'd anticipated. Even knowing the exact location of his target beforehand, it didn't matter if the fish would just evade.
'No free lunch, huh.'
Sighing, Alex returned to his initial assumption, he'd need to use his water control to make his spear much faster, or use it to restrain the fish.
Leaving his spear dragging in the water, he contemplated how he was going to approach his water control problem. Directly controlling the flow of the water and reversing it was far too difficult, the turbulent impact with the incoming water stream constantly eroded his focus and control, making the water stream shoot out of his control.
'I need to change my approach.'
Alex then began watching the interactions between the river and the surrounding environment, watching closely the areas where the water hit the rocks and the produced turbulence.
'Water obviously doesn't want to change its flow, just like all things, things in motion like to stay in motion.'
'But everything in fluids is linked, and the number of variables make things ridiculously chaotic.'
Getting bored of watching the rocks, he dragged his spear through the water, moving it against the current. He watched little vortices form as he went against the current, slowly decaying into chaotic motion and leaving wakes in the river.
'Hmmmm. That looks promising.'
Alex reached out with his water control, creating an image of the river in his head, he tried to replicate a twisting, spinning sensation with his mind, and managed to create two small vortices, spinning in opposite directions. The water between them shot forward against the current, knifing through the water before twisting around and rolling back on itself.
'Excellent. Exactly what I was after, and with far less concentration.'
He played around until he ran out of mana, tinkering with the speed and size of the vortices. Making them larger and faster pulled more mana, and he found he could get more of his desired effect by creating multiple small vortices together, creating a channel through the water.
After tinkering around for a half hour, he found he could make vortices of his desired size and speed with just a thought, no longer requiring the previous concentration.
'Let's find a victim and try this out.'
After waiting another ten minutes, another good sized fish appeared in range of Alex. He waited until it was within spear's reach, when he used his water control to create two vortexes, pushing the fish back and halting its momentum. Just as he did so, he thrust out with his spear, skewering the fish.
'Victory.'
Making sure the fish was securely attached to his spear, he lowered himself in the water, and returned to shore, where he gutted the fish with his knife. He set the meat aside, and thinking for a moment, opted to return to his rock - he'd roast the fish once he had a decent stockpile. While he waited for more fish to come to him, he continued practicing creating vortices, creating small ones that only lasted for a fraction of a second, before the water reverted to its normal motion.
After using the same method to catch two more fish, he went to the fire and roasted the three fish.
'I think I'll need to give my leg a minimum of three days to heal before I try to walk on it again.'
The next three days proved highly uneventful, Alex would hobble around on his crutches, catch fish, and train his water control. He had gotten quite bored of training his water senses, as he felt they were quite well developed at the moment, so he instead turned his attention towards sensing his mana.
He'd gotten to the point where he no longer needed to open his system interface to identify how much mana he had, he could identify it almost to the single point of mana. The sense also became much more intuitive, instead of an energetic itching sensation, his brain now identified it as a single sensation - mana.
On the third day, right as he was eating lunch, Alex tried sensing mana, and noticed that it was far more concentrated within his stomach, and he could feel the flow out from his stomach towards the rest of his body.
'So food contains mana, huh?'
'I had my suspicions.'
'Can I sense the mana in things that aren't in my stomach?'
Alex placed his hand on some of the roasted fish he'd made up, and tried sensing the mana, trying to compare it to his stomach. To his satisfaction, he noted that he could distinctly feel the mana flow, and as he focused harder, he noticed that he could notice the very slow diffusion of the mana from the fish into the surrounding air.
As he was practicing feeling the mana within the fish, he let his senses drift elsewhere, and there he noticed it - the air had mana too, and the concentration was high! Excited, he took a deep breath, and focused on the sensation of the mana within his lungs, where he noted that he could feel concentrated mana in the air.
Experimenting, he walked to the riverside and stuck his hand in the water, where he noticed that the concentration was identical to that in the air. He touched the dirt and rocks, and found that they also had mana. Even the trees and plants had mana, though he noted that it was slightly more concentrated in them than in the air or water.
'Does everything in this damn place have mana?'
Alex then recalled the recent encounter with the demon bear, it had sniffed him before disregarding him as a potential source of food. He tried estimating his mana concentration at the time of his encounter with the bear, he vaguely remembered his mana had been around 30 points.
'So, was I not worth eating, as the concentration of mana within me was lower than in the atmosphere?'
He was irrelevant to the bear, not even worth its time.
'Does that mean that by becoming stronger, I risk becoming a target?'
'Well that's a predicament.'
Recalling the diffusion of the mana from the fish into the atmosphere he pondered the question of how the transfer of mana even worked.
'Is it diffusion?'
'That can't be completely correct, otherwise everything would be the same, there has to be another dimension to it.'
He walked over to a tree in the forest and noted the concentration of mana in the tree, it was measurably higher than in the atmosphere or the earth. As he placed his hand on the trunk, he could feel the ever so slight movement of mana diffusing into the tree.
'Strange.'
He reached up to one of the low hanging branches up the tree, and felt one of the leaves where he noted the same thing he had earlier, mana was diffusing into the leaves, despite their higher concentration. He then plucked some leaves, and holding them in his hand, started to hobble back to the clearing.
After around 5 minutes, he noted the reversal of the process. Now the leaves were expelling mana into the atmosphere.
'So living beings accumulate mana, somehow. Only after I plucked it from the tree and it was considered dead did the tree leaves release their mana.'
'I can increase my mana by eating food, and presumably higher concentrations of food will increase my mana more.'
'It then seems logical that predators and even herbivores would follow a similar trend, those who eat the foods rich in mana end up with the highest concentrations of mana.
'The mana concentration within the predators will probably follow some sort of principle similar to bioaccumulation, with the mana concentrating most in the oldest predators higher up the food chain.'
'I'll bet the demon bear is absolutely loaded.'
While his newfound discovery was somewhat reassuring and interesting, it didn't alter his plans much. He still needed to hunt for food and work on his physical strength.
The next day, on waking up, Alex decided to try his weight on his wounded leg. It seemed his vitality stat had done its work, and standing on it, he only felt an achy twinge of pain, nothing too severe.
Alex decided to take the rest of the day relatively easy, he'd resume his physical training tomorrow. Again, another day of fishing and training his water control.
The following day, he began his training in earnest, returning to training his body, though he still relied on fishing as his primary means of gathering food. Alex found himself driven by a mixture of rage and by the sense of doom that still pervaded his thoughts.
The pain in his leg had only dulled slightly, and it flared up whenever he did things like go for runs, but he fought through it. He assumed that the bone hadn't healed properly, and short of re-breaking it and going for surgery, he doubted there was anything he could do. Instead it served as a constant reminder of his failings, and only further drove his rage.
He was angry towards himself for his negligence, and weakness.
He was angry towards the fowl demons for they had wounded and almost killed him.
His memories of the demon bear fed his sense of impending doom, in his mind there were only two scenarios, he would grow strong or he would die, there was no middle ground with this creature. On the fourth day after resuming his physical training Alex noticed that he could actually draw mana in from his surroundings, and surfaces he touched, provided they were dead.
However, he noticed a few things. First, while he could draw mana from things like the dead fish directly, it was far more efficient for him to ingest the food, and absorb the mana through his digestive system.
The second was that, due to its low concentration, accumulating mana from the atmosphere, or by drinking wasn't terribly effective. If he wanted to make rapid progress, he needed to hunt. Instead, meditating was far more effective for restoring his mana, and allowing him to practice his water control more.
His new routine centered around hunting fish for food, physical training until his body couldn't bear it, practicing his water control, and meditating to restore his mana.
Over the course of his training Alex noted that, for whatever reason, his soul force also started to plateau around 3300 points. It was still increasing but the rate of increase had drastically decreased compared to previously.
On the 10th day, Alex checked his status panel, just as he did every day, before he went to bed.
[Honor System]
[Name: Alex]
[Existence Tier: 1]
[Ability: Water Control]
[Ability points: 0]
[Mana: 132/(72->132)]
[Soul Force: 3830]
[Strength: 2]
[Endurance: 15->20]
[Dexterity: 0]
[Vitality: 25->35]
[Resilience: 0]
[Cognition: 2]
[Perception: 25]
[Available stat points: 51]
He'd continued investing in vitality, and endurance as they significantly contributed towards his physical growth rate, and how much physical training he could do. He'd left most other stats untouched, as he hadn't completely decided on how he wanted to distribute them yet.
The next day, the war would begin, the murder chickens had made him bleed, and he was going to return the favour - with interest.