After retiring for the night, I quietly snuck out of my room and into the forest. Today was a bit more difficult than before as I encountered one of the guards patrolling around the manor. There would always at least be one looking out for animals or beasts that come too close. Maybe even the occasional robber.
As I made my way across the grounds using the cover of darkness, which was very little on this cloudless, moonful night, a patrol guard came from the corner of the house. Seeing that I would soon be in his direct line of sight, I quickly laid down flat and used earth magic to cover and submerge myself.
It wasn't perfect, but being in the shadow of the house gave me just enough cover to get by undetected. After the guard had passed, I dug myself out and continued. This time I would stay in the Sienna section. I did not nearly have the level of magic proficiency to keep on par with Gold-ranked beasts.
It was the middle of summer and the sun had set an hour before, so I estimated the time to be around 9 or 10. It would take me half an hour to come back and forth from the forest, and I wanted to sleep before midnight, so I would have about an hour to practice.
Planning it out in my head, I was quickly blurring through the treetops. It seemed that Maruto had some semblance of realism. Feeling the night wind blowing through my hair and whistling past my ears made me feel sleepy.
I kept running, but the drowsiness made me slow down little by little. Eventually, I came to rest on one of the branches of a large pine. I tried to rub my eyes awake and even summoned some water to wash my face with, but no matter what I did I couldn't shake off the drowsiness.
That was when I noticed it. A distinct floral scent in the air. Before I had been rushing too fast to get a proper whiff, but now I could smell it. It was a light, almost citrusy smell. It also smelled a bit artificial; it was out of place.
I sensed around with my mana but didn't find anything out of place. This had been done manually. I placed an air-filtering spell on my lungs and nose and enhanced my sense of smell with neutral magic to track the origin of the scent. The filtering was happening after the fragrance reached my olfactory nerves so it wouldn't interfere with my ability to track.
With my now canine-like sense of smell, I traced the source back to the Orange realm part of the forest. It was coming from a large overgrowth that surrounded a huge rock. The leaves were ginormous, the sizes of car tires. Among the green leaves were smaller, yet still huge gold and violet flowers.
The pollen these flowers produced was so much and so thick that it was visible to the naked eye. I could see a huge pink pollen cloud near each of the flowers. The pollen was rapidly spread across the forest floor as the night wind blew.
From the nocturnal animals I saw sleeping around the plant, I could also confidently say that this was the thing that made me drowsy. I had avoided the pollen by going through the treetops, but farther into the forest there was an updraft that had caused me to ingest the pollen.
The plant had probably evolved to be carnivorous and knocked out its prey indiscriminately. And judging by the organism's size, it was successful. I thought about fighting the plant but decided against it.
It wouldn't give me any good fighting experience anyway. I mean, one good fireball and it was done for. That was my thought process until I noticed a movement within the thick foliage.
Among the thicket of leaves and flowers stepped out what could only be called a beautiful maiden. The woman had tanned skin and flowing dark hair. Even from the side profile, anyone would be able to tell that she was an absolute beauty.
She had long lashes and nails and a green dress trailing behind her as she walked forward. She was the very image of what came to mind when you thought of a druid or nymph. Even I was entranced and followed her every step.
The woman slowly and calmly walked toward a pile of unconscious animals that had gathered without me even noticing. They ranged from small woodland creatures such as mice and shrews, all the way to earthen deer and I could even see a young owlbear.
I had been studying the beasts near here with an encyclopedia for some time now and knew that even the weakest adult owlbear was at the Gold Realm. The one captured was an older teen, judging by its size, so it should have been at the high Sienna Realm.
Yet it had been knocked out with ease. This plant was more dangerous than I had initially thought. The woman reached the pile of animals, and out of nowhere from her sleeveless dress produced a silver blade.
It was around 6 inches and almost looked like a butter knife, which I would have believed it was until it sliced through flesh and bone like soft butter. The woman had plunged the knife into the nearest animal to her, an Earthen Deer. A species with hide as hard as a rock that was normally taken down by blunt force as blades couldn't cut through.
The woman had aimed for the heart and sliced straight through the ribcage. The deer's guts spilled out as I saw the cleanly cut bones. Blood sprayed across the woman's face, but she remained unfazed. This was not a pure maiden like I thought.
She kept on cutting up the rest of the soon-to-be corpses one by one until eventually she was covered from head to toe in viscera and blood; not even the smallest creatures were shown mercy from her blade.
All this while, I just stared, unsure of what to do. On one hand, I could fight the women and plant for practice, and on the other hand, this was a roughly human figure. Could I bring myself to kill another human?
Well, I definitely could, but should I? And on another thought, was this even a human? This could be a monster taking the shape of a human, or a humanoid. Conflicted, I decided to observe for a bit more before taking action.
As for all the innocent slaughtered animals, I didn't feel a need to avenge them or anything. It is a dog-eat-dog world out here, besides if it served my purposes, I would be willing to do a similar thing.
After all the animals were dead, the woman started going through the piles of corpses. She would look at a carcass for a second, then she would either throw it towards the overgrowth that eagerly caught the prey with a venus flytrap-looking appendage, or she would dig through the carcass and fish out a small orb before placing them in separate piles.
After 10 minutes she had sifted through the pile and was left with a small pile of orbs as well as the carcasses they came from. After she finished, she gathered up the orbs and sat under the plants' cover.
She picked up the biggest orb, which had come from the owlbear, and started to use mana for the first time. An ebb of mana left her body and moved into the orb. Once a couple of seconds passed, there came a burst of energy with the orb as the epicenter, and the flow of mana between the lady and the orb became reversed.
She was absorbing mana from the orb instead of supplying it. This piqued my interest as I hadn't heard of this before. None of the magic tomes I had flipped through mentioned taking mana from a source other than nature.
The first thing that came to mind was extracting mana cores. A common trope in magic novels is that people would extract the mana cores of creatures and use them either as an energy source or to improve their cultivation.
I already knew mana cores were a thing, so it wouldn't be too far-fetched to think that the extracted orbs were the mana cores of the animals. And guessing from the flow of mana, the woman was most likely absorbing cores to either refill her mana or to cultivate.
After 1 minute of emptying the core, the orb shattered in the woman's hands, and she reached for another one before repeating the cycle. It was after absorbing 1/3 of the pile, that a change started to happen.
Light started emitting from the woman's navel, and her body started twisting and contorting. It started with her hair that receded into her body, then her skin also tore off her muscles and was sucked back into her body.
Strangely enough, instead of the red muscles you would expect of a human, the woman was instead covered in green pulsating stems and roots. She looked as if vines had been sculpted into a human shape.
Her eyes fell away to reveal bright green lights and her hair was replaced by long, rough vines. A dryad perhaps? Or a nymph of some kind. I didn't know for sure, but what I did know was that she had just advanced her mana core.
The bright light was something I was familiar with and using my magic sight, I could see she now was at (Bright-Gold), a level above me.
'Well, shit.' Was the first thought I had, then the next was, 'Time to dip.' then I tried to do exactly that.
There was no way in hell I would be fighting a beast my level, let alone stronger. I had just gotten this life, I wasn't trying to throw it away for nothing. The problem came when I couldn't move.
Unbeknownst to me, vines had slithered up right next to me and grabbed me the exact moment I tried to escape. Sure, I could cut free within a few seconds, but if the woman wanted to, I would be split in two by then.
I quickly enhanced my defense and prepared all the offensive spells I knew. The breakthrough should have taken all the mana out of the nymph, but I still didn't want to take any chances.
The Nymph slowly made her way over to me, and I used that time to scan around. I was also on the lookout for any abnormal mana movement signifying a spell. Even the slightest foresight could help me prepare.
But, as expected, the only abnormal movement was the nymph siphoning mana to refill her core. It looked as if she wanted to recuperate first. Even if she was a level higher, she could still lose easily without enough mana.
Still not knowing if the nymph was peaceful or not, I decided to try and communicate with her.
"Who are you?"
She made a show of looking around before pointing at herself. "Me? Well, I'm just a little old wood nymph. I should be asking you who you are. A human child, no older than an infant, yet possessing such a huge mana pool. Aren't you a strange one?"
"I admit to being strange, but you still haven't fully answered my question. Are you peaceful or hostile?"
"Who knows? What do you think, little child? Is the person who shredded all those carcasses a peaceful person or a hostile one?"
"From your response, I am inclined to think you have bad intentions, and just to let you know, You don't want to fight me. Neither am I looking for a fight."
"Oh, are you saying that you can beat me? Intriguing. Even in my weakened state, most lower-level animals would be scared off. Even with your extreme mana pool, you would at least need to be at the Gold Realm to beat me, boy. Your aura is only of a Bright Sienna at best."
Only at (Bright-Sienna)? Oh, I remembered, I had only partially revealed my aura as a trump card. Guess it worked. And it seemed she either didn't or couldn't look at my core directly as well.
"I don't need to be at the Gold Realm fight you and escape. I suggest that you should let me go before my companions get here." I bluffed. I didn't want to lose my trump card, but I didn't want to fight either so I made up a believable lie.
"Oh No, I'm so scared of your companions." The nymph deadpanned. "I already checked the area, boy, there's no one coming to save you. And you think you can take me on? Well, let's find out shall we."
Looks like I would have to fight after all.