After healing his immediate wounds, Lucras decided to take the snake corpse back to his cave. After arriving inside the cave with the snake corpse, Lucras tried his hand at skinning again. This time after beheading the snake, and taking strips of snakeskin down, this time he was left with some edible meat.
Sitting down and taking off his bag, he noticed a glow from it. Curious he opened his bag and saw the notebook was glowing and decided to open it. The first line he saw was [New Title Acquired! Bloody Survivalist], which was closely followed by [By seeking for blood, either consciously or not, to survive in the world, you gain the trust of blood].
Asking in slight concern, Lucras thought, 'Ava, what is this about? Why do I have this title? I was only stopping the monster from regenerating and surviving.'
And to his serious concern, all he got in response was, [Don't worry about it]. This on its own wouldn't be concerning, only mildly annoying, except for the fact that Ava likes to hide things that were very big important as it makes his life "interesting". She hid the fact that he didn't have magic so she could make it interesting. Now she directly said [Don't worry] which means this was going to be a hurdle at some point.
But sadly, he couldn't do anything to get her to spill as he has learned though a lot of experiments. Moving his mind away from that, Lucras that he would finally eat some meat tonight, so he started to prepare the snake meat for meat on a stick. Gathering some more sticks he quickly use some of the still-heated embers to relight his fire. Taking only the muscle around the snake and puncturing it with a stick, he turned the meat over the fire to cook it. It might not be the best food ever, but it was food at least.
After it was cooked, he placed the stick into the ground and let the meat cool down while he went outside to clean his hands on some dew. While he was outside, he realized that he was going to have to look for some water soon.
Eventually, after the meat looked cold enough to eat, he tried his "totally gourmet" meal. He found that it was actually quite good compared to what it could have been. It tasted slightly salty and earthy while being slightly rubbery. Finishing his meal quickly, he decided to look around the forest for some helpful herbs, since it seems like all the monsters that weren't bolted to the ground were missing.
Exiting the cave, he went into the forest again and decided to go much further this time. To not lose where his cave was, almost every tree he passed he sliced into the tree, so it pointed him back to his cave.
On his way, he decided that this was a good time to try and learn how to better swing a sword. At least this time he would have an unmoving target, that definitely won't hurt him. Taking a wide stance, he swung his sword forward with his dominant hand. Unsurprisingly since he was now getting used to his left hand, due to the repeated injuries on his right, his dominant sword hand was weaker.
After a while of "training", and making his tones of slashes in one "innocent" tree. His left and right hand felt about the same with his sword in his hand. Slashing and slashing, he decided to start experimenting again. Taking a step back, he focused on the mana he felt before and infused it into his sword.
But before he could proceed, a green screen popped up {{Before you do that, Imagine what you want the mana to do on your sword. If it's to pierce, then guide it on how. If it's to slice, then tell it what it should do. And eventually, when you want it to elementize, teach it the world it needs to reproduce}}
Quickly reading the screen, and understanding what the ghost meant, he quickly closed his eyes and decided to imagine the blade slicing. An ethereal energy lining the edge of his sword, causes his enemy to be cut like butter. Slowly he felt the energy flow towards his hands and decided to open his eyes he felt his blade contain something new. Deciding to check the notebook, since he might have a new ability, he found it glowing again.
Opening the book up he found, [[New Active Ability Acquired: Mana Slice Lv 1]], then the next line read, [[Using mana to power your blade, it increases the slicing power of a blade by a factor of 1.1 damage per mana point, it can be upgraded with &^$&@#^@& or by a better understanding of mana.]]
Excited that he created a new ability, he decided to try it out in its entirety. Taking his sword in hand, he thought to himself, '[Mana Slice]' as he pushed as much mana in. The sword seems to respond to his call and his mana, and a translucent glowing edge formed. Quickly he slashed it at the tree, and what happened frightened him slightly.
Even though he didn't go all the way through, he sliced a majority of the way through. He believed that he could have gone completely though if he had actually got close enough. And maybe with more strength into the blade perhaps. But that didn't matter right now, because Lucras felt the power of his new ability.
As Lucras was about to move on, he felt his body become light, as he started to fall forward. Catching himself thankfully, he sat back down. He then heard Ava's voice as she berated him, [Why did you use all of your mana?!? You need mana to survive in this world! Stupid, stupid little one! For your information, if you run out of mana, you won't be able to move. I didn't think you had to hear it, and now you are vulnerable in the middle of the woods! This is called mana-paralyzation]
Frightened by this new information, he quickly tried his best to use his breathing technique. Breathing and breathing in more mana at a time, Lucras slowly recovered. Slowly a vine crept around his waist, unable to resist as his body was in mana-paralyzation. The vine pulled him away from his beaten path.
Carrying Lucras limp body further and further into the woods, the vine seemed to become faster and faster at pulling Lucras. Lucras quickly tried to speed up his breathing technique in an attempt to get his mana back quicker. But his attempts are feudal as they just caused him to lose the rhythm he originally had.
Pulling him into deeper vegetation, Lucras watched in terror as he noticed that all the plants around him seemed to be alive. Feeling like his mana was almost full, he continued his rhythm, while praying to whatever god this world has.
Far away, this god smiled in amusement that someone was praying to him. After all, he put them in their current circumstances. Back to Lucras, after a minute he finally gather enough mana to move again.
Taking his sword, he quickly slashed through the caring vine. A loud shrike could be heard in the distance, and before Lucras could have found out, he already ran away from it. At least for a second, he didn't want to deal with the plant monster. Deciding to inspect the plants around him, he found,
{{Unknown
Mana Attribute: Plant, life
Approximant mana: (5000/5000)
Description: A scare plant creature that has the ability to control other plants. Watch out as it can bring life into something dead to fight for it!}}
Seeing that mana value scared Lucras silly, as he quickly tried to find his way as far away as possible from that beast since even though he was crazy, he was no fool. Looking for something that reminded him of his home, he found nothing.
Looking at the tread marks, he started to follow it back for a bit since this was the best guess he passes through and looked at these magic plants. Finding some to replace his almost depleted supply of magical herbs.
As he passed, he noticed a weird glowing blue mushroom that seemed special enough to be investigated. He received,
{Night-light Glow mushroom
When combined alchemically, allows the user to improve their body
Description: Only found in mana-rich environments growing on a mana-rich tree.}}
Happy he finally found something to improve his body, he carefully added into his bag that thankfully didn't come off of his back when he was being pulled. He started grabbing every single plant that interested him. If they turned out useless, he could always use them as decoration or as a big cover.
As he reached further into the tracks left by his little scoot around the forest. He started to understand more about this place, as its secrets started to reveal themselves.