Chereads / Mountain with a Soul / Chapter 24 - Chapter 24 - Mana Progress

Chapter 24 - Chapter 24 - Mana Progress

Liam dived into the new world.

This time, he saw everything in prisms. Instead of limbs, he felt sloshy?

A 360 degree vision confused him for a whole hour as he soon realised who he had entered.

Slime like a monster, except that its body represented perfect water. Though he wouldn't bet about the Ph of the water as it left half corroded grass.

The water slime, as he called it, didn't have a core of any sorts, however he felt something invisible inside it.

An extensive network of veins that ran through it.

Perhaps other living beings might be able to see it, but the slime vision couldn't.

In his observations, the slime reproduced only when it came to a contact with water and through various conditions.

Rain helped the water slime the most. Liam felt a pleasurable rush as droplets of life enlarged the slime.

When it got twice as large as before, it split into two. Soon enough, a new slime hopped around.

Liam found these slimes incredible because of one thing. They acted like a natural barrier to floods.

Although a newly born slime couldn't absorb water or multiply right away. After some time, it could.

He still didn't know how it worked, but it fascinated him.

Thanks to mother nature, slimes had predators as well. Some water slimes acted somewhat like bees.

Few flowers got dissolved by the slimes as the seeds remained. Then, when it met other flowers, the former seed would dissolve and fuse with the first one.

At first, Liam didn't understand. But when the slime spewed out the seed, it couldn't dissolve. Everything explained itself.

The seed fell through the air as it split into multiple portions.

Some insects also used slimes. They filled themselves with slime goo and became blue.

Whenever such a thing happened, Liam noticed that they seemed a bit bolder.

Overall, the world became much different.

Animals seemed quite rare, though he had seen a white deer with crystal antlers.

No signs of humans, though. Combined with the intelligence of the water slimes, which he had a general affinity with.

While he hadn't seen other types of slimes, he felt an urge to see if other types existed as well.

He found himself surrounded by a forest as his core became a small hill.

The one thing that remained constant became his presence around the hill, so he had his guesses.

Natural affinity with rocks added more weight to his theory. If he already had a physical body, then it would be more of a problem.

Liam knew that magic held infinite possibilities and creating a living body might not be out of the realm of reality.

However, if he already had a vessel. Then he would have to extract himself out of it before entering a new body.

That would turn it into another realm of difficulty.

Still, for Liam, the amount of time to create something like that...

He didn't know. Right now, he could at most play around with mana mist, nevermind some kind of complex thing.

Body, nerves, veins, blood, organs, etc.

So many things required near perfect knowledge of autonomy, with the brain being the most mysterious part.

A small mistake in the brain department and he might cripple himself.

'Whatever. One day, I'll walk this planet like every other lifeform.' Liam thought and continued to observe the slimes.

They never left the general vicinity, which worked for him very well.

Months passed.

Over the time, he met more animals. A lot of them resembled the old fauna he remembered, almost as if he met magical templates.

So, he ignored their weird general body parts and named them the same as he did in his previous life.

Other than the elemental like body parts, some of the animals had. Nature became much more untamed.

Thunderstorms had an unprecedented aggression every time they appeared.

Slimes couldn't reproduce during it. Strong winds just blew them away as he lost contact with many water slimes.

When it rained, so much water would create a flood with no problem were it not for the slimes containing a lot of water inside of them.

The growth of plants also astounded him.

He grew to appreciate water slimes. They looked more like regulators of the nature instead of wild monsters.

No slime hopped twice into the same place. And places that the slime ate regenerated in a matter of hours.

He thought that it exceeded the growth rate of bamboo from his old world.

Liam himself didn't just spend his time watching cute slimes hopping around all the time.

After hundreds of tries, he created a stable tornado like whirlpool. It sucked in the surrounding wind mist mana at a slow speed.

When he made it, he thought of it as another failure. Except that this time, he didn't need to spend a lot of mental energy on it.

On the contrary. He used almost nothing, and the tornado spun in one place for hours.

A day later, he cancelled it.

However, instead of it dispersing like it always did. He noticed something different.

In its former place, he found a liquid form of mana. A small drop he would miss if he didn't look carefully.

Liam couldn't control it at all, and other mist ignored it.

Wind mist gathered around it, but didn't get close no matter what he did. It didn't harm him, at least.

Liam messed around with it for days, but with little to no result. Meanwhile, he setup another tornado not far away, to see if he could create more of it.

A month later, he got his answer.

Indeed, he got 5 droplets' worth of wind mana liquid.

Liam then decided to do something quite drastic. So far, his body never interacted with anything.

However, the mana liquid did. He could feel it in a weird way whenever he touched it.

Thus, he did one thing his ancestors did to identify if something had poison in it.

He drank a drop of it.

Liam almost jumped out of his skin when he saw a light green light travel throughout his body.

Near his heart, it split off before it travelled across his entire body.

Dozens of little dots had a quick stroll before they dissipated. During the process, Liam didn't move.

When it vanished, he tried to move his feet as his body flew into the air. He found himself 10 meters above the 'floor' he stood moments before.

When he fell back down. A feeling he thought he lost came back. Something like adrenalin.

'Maybe I might find my body somewhere inside this hill?' He thought about it for some time.

The space he took as his mental space seemed special. Or other living beings could also play around with magic inside their heads.

That he had to find out.

"Maybe that's my golden finger." He said to himself and snickered.

...

Since then a year passed in a blink of an eye.

Liam sat in a lotus position as over a dozen of small tornadoes surrounded him.

The surrounding area lacked any air mist and when it appeared, it got sucked into the tornadoes.

The liquid he drank had one additional quality to it. When Liam drank a 3rd drop of it, he finally noticed.

His mental strength improved. It grew at such a small level that he couldn't even quantify it.

But he counted it as a breakthrough. He could grow more powerful!

Liam played around with the concept of stable wind tornadoes creating the liquid and tried to create other liquids.

No luck though.

While he could create a better form of a volcano now. It never became stable.

He played around with the ratios and knew that he might succeed within a decade.

For water and ice, he didn't create a whirlpool, but a cycle.

This one took much more space than tornadoes and thus more mental power.

Nonetheless, he succeeded.

A small water mist pond split in half with ice as one side grew cold and the other hot.

The hot side evaporated thanks to some fire mist and entered the clouds, which soon enough rained back into the cold one.

At a really slow pace. The ice moved to the right, as it kept melting.

This action created two mana liquids. One blue one and one light blue.

It came from the two split ponds right from the bottom.

When he added some depth to it, which cost a lot more mental strength. He noticed that he could create a bit more of it.

Unlike wind liquid, he didn't fly into the air. Instead, he felt like moving around became more effortless.

Friction became his friend for a short period. Bones, ligaments, muscles and other things didn't interfere with each other.

But didn't break either.

His flexibility grew quite a bit too, however, when he almost completed a split.

The water mana ran out, and he felt...

Bad.

Liam didn't notice, however, a lot of sensations came back under the silent support of the mana mist.