{Chirp!Chirp!}
Yaaaawn~!
Ugh, I wonder how close I am now.
-Status
[Name:####]
[Age:####]
[Body Age:7 days]
[Rank 1]
[HP:17/18]
[MP:12.2/12.2(->13)]
[Left Eye(Mai####):Awakened, 95%]
[Right Eye(####):Dormant, 100%]
Huh. I didn't realize it with how tight my schedule is, but it's officially been a week since I've come to this forest.
It's been 3 days since I absorbed my first mana core and honestly, I'm surprised by just how slow adaption is. After 3 days of basically constantly fighting with groups and groups of strong beasts, I've only adapted to 1.2 MP. The thing is, I can't even feel the difference in my power as no matter how many or how powerful they are, these beasts are still just that, beasts.
Granted, it's not like I've fought against a thousand beasts at once, I'm sure that a thousand beasts would easily be able to kill me, but yesterday I fought against a group of 10 beasts, each one way stronger than the wolves I had first encountered, and I did get hurt a bit, that's the reason why I'm at 17 out of 18 HP and Mai had to lend me a bit more of his power so that I could see the Ethereal Strings, it was still a relatively easy fight.
On the topic of the Ethereal Strings, I decided to name them that way because that's the way I see them, strings that are ethereal in nature, Mai was wrong about me having nothing to train. While yes, I don't know any fighting technique, my fighting style right now is extremely primal and bestial, I have been surrounded by beasts for the past week and technically since I can remember after all, there is one thing I can train in. That's using Mai's powers. I've gotten way better at hitting the critical spots of monsters, using the faster thinking speed, and that fight yesterday made me have a revelation.
It seems that my current amount of mana is way too little for me to see them on my own, but with Mai lending me more of his powers, I can just barely, juuuust barely, see them, and they actually do help a bit, but it feels like I'm barely using them, as if they could be something much much greater, but I just can't quite grasp it yet.
I'm sure that with my increased MP, the small upgrades in my fighting style, but especially learning how to hit critical spots better, and the small amount of training I had with the Ethereal Strings, if I had to fight that same monster again, while I for sure wouldn't leave unscathed, I would be no way near to passing out.
Thinking about that fight with the monster, I had an idea. I want to fight another monster again.
There are several reasons why fighting another monster would be a great idea. First, I'm almost done with the adaption to my first core. Second, honestly, this isn't a logical reason. I...am bored.
I haven't met any other person yet, so I can't really compare myself to others, but even with that, even I think that I'm a bit weird compared to a normal person. I can still vividly remember the feeling I felt when I first encountered that monster. No, not the feeling of fear, the one...of excitement.
It seems that I really, really, really love battles. After all, in my grand total of 1 week of being alive, that moment, in that fight with the monster, was the moment I was the happiest. These fights with the beasts, while they aren't that bad, I just can't feel the same feeling of excitement, the feeling of my blood bubbling. These beasts are just way too weak to prove a challenge to me.
Third, fighting a harder battle would help my body adapt faster, or at least that's what Mai told me when I asked him just why it was adapting so slowly these past 3 days.
Fourth, it's something that came to mind after the fight yesterday. I want to train my ability to use the Ethereal Strings, and wasting Mai's energy on some mere beasts just feels wrong.
Fifth, -
'OK, stop. You are alone and I can read your mind, so there's no point to make excuses on why you should fight a monster. I can clearly feel what you really want. You just want to fight a monster because you like fighting, so why are you trying so hard to find reasons to do so, you battle junkie.'
B-b-battle junkie? What's that? And why do I feel so offended when you said that?
'Huh, you're right. What is a battle junkie? I just...felt that for some reason I should've called you a battle junkie in this situation. This is weird... Anyway, forget about it. Just go and fight.'
Huh...okay.
---------------------------------------
-Analyze
[Species:Great Lion]
[Rank 1]
[HP:19/19]
[MP:15/15]
Finally, I found the perfect one!
It's been about 2 hours since I decided I'll be fighting another monster. It took a bit to walk back to the central area of the forest and then I had to analyze the monsters from far away untill I found the perfect match, but I finally found it.
Honestly, it's a welcome change from the monotonous weak beasts, but it still doesn't get my heart pumping that much, it's after all weaker than the bear monster.
It looked like a lion, I'd fought a lot of them the past 3 days, only this one looked bigger and stronger. It looked a bit more yellow-ish than the normal brown-yellow lions I had seen, but the change wasn't as prominent as with the bear monster. It looked as if the lion's path of evolution was leading it to a golden fur colour, but it came nowhere near to gold, my own pupils were thousand of times better in that regard.
Hey Mai, can you lend me some more of your power, just enough so that I can see the Ethereal Strings? Actually, is it possible to not give me the other benefits of your power, like the easier-to spot and more precise critical spots and the increased processing power, and redirect that energy to making the Ethereal Strings more visible?
'Hmm, can't say for sure, I've never tried it before. Let's see...I can redirect the energy going towards critical spots to the strings, but it seems like processing power and the strings are highly connected. I can help a bit there but not that much.'
It's fine, whatever you can do to spend less energy while still making the strings visible. I want to prolong this fight as much as possible to get as used as possible to the strings.
Suddenly, a scene I was already accustomed to as it has happened a few times already, played out. The usual sound of gears turning, the usual seemingly-slowed down time, and finally, the thing I was looking towards, very faint, more illusory than real, almost invinsible, Ethereal Strings, connecting parts of my body in extremely intricate ways, twisting through space as they moved forward, attaching themselves to different paths of the lion.
As I had remembered them, they were a mess to follow. I can only try my best.
I dashed forward, half my attention towards the beast, the other half, towards the strings, trying to follow these semi-invisible strings that led me to my target, and as always it seemed I was missing something, something crucial. With my every movement these strings broke, tangled over themselves, dissapeared, removed and reattatched themselves from me, almost as if mocking me for a job badly done. I really could not understand what I was doing wrong.
At some point I was already infront of the beast. I tried to throw a punch following one of the strings but it was awkward, only reason it dealt any amount of damage to the monster being that the monster was just not that strong.
The lion swiped its claws at me, and rather than following my instincts that I had build over the week of me being alive, I decided to try dodging following the strings.
It did not go well.
Seeing that the claw was just about to destroy my left shoulder at the last moment I decided to forget about the strings for a moment and dodge, avoiding any critical damage but still leaving a bleeding wound behind.
My resolve wavered. I started doubting myself. No, I started doubting the Ethereal Strings. What was the point of following them, when I could've dodged that strike with my instincts?
It took a lot of willpower to continue the training with these Ethereal Strings, these strings that I could hardly see, and whatever I saw of them barely made any sense.
---------------
15 minutes. This fight has been going on for 15 minutes.
I'm tired. I'm bloody. At least the lion is bloody too. Both of us are a bloody mess. The ground around us is a bloody mess as well. There is only one thing remaining clean in the area of our fight. These semi-invinsible, indecipherable, Ethereal Strings.
My brain is hurting, a lot. Seems like dividing my attention on 2 things at once while in a battle for 15 minutes really tires out the brain.
My attention started slipping...from the fight with the lion.
I don't know what caused it, but in these 15 minutes, I had noticed something. No, noticed is too strong of a word. I had seen it unconsciously, but I could not exactly observe it well. Something was missing.
It seems like the key to it was just my full attention. It took one second, just one second for my full attention to land on the strings and not on the lion, and I fell in a trance.
My brain was hurting so much, both from divided attention and overuse of Mai's power, that by the time I was in a trance, I could not even form thoughts, only act.
And that was all it took. Even though I wasn't drawing on more power from Mai than before, the world around me drew to a halt. The world had come to an almost complete stop.
And yet, in this frozen world, there was one thing moving. The Ethereal Strings.
I could feel the strings on my legs, I could feel them exerting a pulling force, a laughably weak pulling force. Under any circumstance, it's a force so weak that I should not be able to feel it at all. The gravitational pull of the lion exerts a pulling force millions of times stronger than the one the strings does, and that gravitational pull is still laughably weak. If I stood still, it would take billions of years for the gravitational force to draw me in right beside the lion. And the force of the strings was still so much weaker. This is why I hadn't felt it till now, this is why only in this world frozen in time, where no force can act, could I feel this mind-bogglingly weak force.
I could not think, I could only react. I could not consciously move my body, so my body could only react to the forces that be. In this world frozen in time, there is only one force present, the pulling force exerted by the strings. So, naturally, my body could only follow the strings.
It took time. Not that I would know, as by this point, my brain could not even perceive time. The first step took a very long time. It took less than a second, it took a year, an eon, a billion years. It had reached the End of Time, and it was only then that my foot had been lifted from the ground.
Time began anew. The birth of primoridal matter. The birth of the universal forces. The birth of the stars. The birth of the planets. Years, years, years, years. The stars had died. My foot touched the ground. I had taken a single step.
The inevitable enroaching of Entropy. My foot had been lifted off the ground yet again.
And then, Time reached it's end. Only for all to rebegin.
A step, A step, A step. Yet another one, Yet another one, Yet another one.
----------------------
A long time had passed. Or maybe a short time had passed. Maybe it wasn't even enough for a photon to cross a hydrogen molecule. Not that it mattered. The passage of time in a timeless world affected nil, and there was noone who could perceive the time that had passed.
No matter how long had passed, I had somehow reached right infront of the lion.
The thing is, the strings aren't only attatched to my legs. They are attached to my whole body. Even though the strings had led me to right infront of the lion, they were still not done with their task. So, they started pulling my arm to a glowing spot on the lion.
It doesn't matter how long it took for my arm to reach there, but it did. Though, it's not like my arm just punched the glowing spot. No, that'd be way too imprecise.
The strings didn't lead my arm to the glowing spot, they led it to a single spot on that glowing spot, a spot so infinitesimal that there isn't any comparioson that could be done.
It took a long time, or maybe, it took a short time. Whichever may it be, there would be no difference. The strings had taken my arm to the strings' desired destination, so this timeless journey had been completed. All that remained was the result.
Suddenly, as if water was quickly filling a gigantic hole of air in the ocean, Time gushed out of its containment and filled the frozen world with its presence.
There was no flashy explosion, there was no devastation, the lion just simply disintegrated.
{Ting!}
A blue mana core fell down to the ground.