Yanz woke up, his arms still hurting whenever even a small pressure was applied. So he used his healing magic twice on his arms. They returned to normal, probably even better than before. Then he ate. He realized that he was soon going to run out of food. After his physical training, Yanz knew he needed an animal for his experiments. He went back to the tree/forest area and saw the squirrel again. It was sleeping on the ground under the hazelnut tree. Yanz sneaked up and caught the sleeping squirrel. The squirrel woke up, scared, and started struggling, begging for its life.
Yanz wasn't a stone-hearted person. Seeing how much the squirrel was struggling, he felt guilty and let it go. He pulled out a piece of meat jerky from his ripped pocket and offered it to the squirrel. "Here, little buddy, a token of apology," he said gently. He put the squirrel down and walked away.
Yanz was really running out of food; it would last two days at most. So he decided to go back to the village where he had first woken up. Although the village was strange because of the incident he saw with the white-robed men, he decided to go tomorrow when his energy was full. That whole day, Yanz read the magic-related books. He couldn't find a single book specifically about healing magic. All the books were either about how to use mana or about the other elements.
Yanz found a book with no title. He opened it, and it said, "The only way to increase your mana capacity is by gaining experience. Keep using high-class spells to exponentially increase one's mana capacity. Another way is by drinking mana potions. Not all mana potions increase your mana capacity; they are supposed to refill your lost mana. However, an unknown alchemist created a potion (named the Legendary Mana Potion) that instantly increases your mana capacity. The ingredients were a secret known only to him, but he died. Rumors say that people assassinated him to get the ingredients for themselves to capitalize and make money, but they couldn't find the ingredients because he either destroyed or hid the ingredient list somewhere. The alchemist was good-hearted and wanted to use it to make the world better and people's lives easier."
Yanz turned the page, and a piece of paper fell out of the book. It was a strange list of things written. Yanz tried to read it but didn't understand anything. "Wait, is this the ingredient list of the Legendary Mana Potion?" Yanz thought to himself. He wondered why it hadn't been destroyed and how it ended up in a nameless book. He opened the book and looked further, but it wasn't about the mana potion. He thought it was probably someone's diary, most likely Ileu Damian's. He decided to read further.
It got dark, and he couldn't read in the dark. He couldn't make a fire in the library because the floor would catch fire, so he decided to sleep. *𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘱* The birds' singing woke Yanz up; it was morning. He went as planned and decided to go back to the village today. He knew the diary was important, so he decided to take it with him along with the meat. About two weeks had passed since he came to the library, and Yanz's body condition was much better than before. He looked a lot healthier. Although not completely healthy, it was a significant improvement from two weeks ago. He ate the dry meat for breakfast and headed back to the village.
As he was walking, he saw the squirrel from yesterday. It was following him. "What do you want?"
Yanz asked as the squirrel followed him closely.
"Squeak,"
the squirrel made a noise, holding its hands out with sparkly eyes.
"You want to come with me?"
Yanz asked.
"Squeak!"
the squirrel replied, nodding its head eagerly. Yanz thought the squirrel was really cute and couldn't reject its proposal.
"Well, I guess it'll be less boring with a traveling companion"
he said, holding out his hand. The squirrel climbed onto his hand, and he placed it on his shoulder. "Hmm, I guess I have to give you a name now. How about Hazel? Do you like it?"
"Squeak!"
Hazel replied happily.