A cracking sound echoed in the air.

"Agh!" Torrin groaned as he stretched his aching body.

"Why couldn't that old hag have given me a bed? Not even a bedroll? Really?" Torrin grumbled, peering from the cave trying to decide what he should do.

Scratching the side of his nose, he pondered, "What should I do... Hmm..."

He'd taken to talking to himself over the past week, being alone in the now clean cave. Walking in the area on his second day in the forest he'd found a stream about a mile away, which is where he headed now.

During this week he'd made a lot of progress in studying the herbology book, his runes, and practicing his body enhancement. After searching the herbology book he was able to find an herb that could be used in processing hides. He fancied making himself a comfy place to lay at night if he was going to be stuck living in a cave.

Searching through the woods he was able to find the herb and it was just as it described, a slender green stalk leading to a pale pink flower that had five petals. Looking at it with mana sight, he could see mana flowing all throughout its stem, coalescing in a ball near the top of the stem and flowing outwards into the petals.

The herb had its own mana system which Torrin found fascinating, watching it draw mana from the earth. After following the instructions of the book, he was able to make a solution by adding the herb to water, crushed ginseng root, and crushed Dew Berries--a common small blue berry that grew in the forest. The herb he had searched for was called an "Audacious Heart Song Flower".

The herb had something to do with helping bloodflow. Torrin focused on the solution he had created with the herb, whose main use was irrelevant. The book had a side notation that it could be used in softening leather, which would help with the hide he'd collected.

Growing up in his old world, his father told him a ruler needed to know their people. So he would send Torrin to apprentice with a new craftsman every summer since he turned 10. He'd spend the day learning what the common people did, which included a huntsman and a tanner.

He learned the basics of making a skin into something usable, and had killed off a wolf that had hunted a buck near the river. The buck was injured so he had finished off the buck and spent time collecting the hide from both animals, as well as the meat and the Beast Core of the wolf.

He'd found an edge of a cliff to dry both the hides and the meat and was now checking on them, hoping they were still there. To his surprise, they seemed undisturbed. It'd been a few days so he was unsure if they'd be taken by some other animal or not. He spent time applying the solution to the stiff dry hides.

"Should just need one day soaked in the solution, then we can get to drying..." Torrin mumbled as he prepared to descend the cliff to make camp.

A small fire crackled in a clearing, bordered by a small log that Torrin sat upon; he held the page of runes, studying them intently. He'd been able to understand the intent of five of the six runes so far. The runes were strange; you couldn't just draw the symbol and be done, you had to give intent to the rune, with mana, and the stronger will you had the more you could imbue, giving added effects to the rune.

It was taking Torrin what seemed like forever to understand these runes because Grams' will was incredibly strong, so she had imbued these runes with profound knowledge. The five he'd learned so far were Harden, Restoration, Flow, Absorb, and Condense, he only had one left to learn.

But the intent behind these simple runes was incredible, he spent time using his brain pathway to have more time to study them each day. The longer he practiced, the more accustomed his brain got to the mana, and he would be able to last longer in his high perception state.

He estimated he had doubled his available time so far. As he studied the runes he wasn't distracted, keeping his will spread in a twenty foot radius around him. His will could be pulsed around 100 feet, but he could also keep a steady field up to analyze his surroundings within 20 feet.

These days he hadn't made much progress with his sword, but that was to be expected. The only reason he made it to the second stage so fast was because of practicing in his old world for so long at the first stage.

As he read, he also absorbed the red-tier Beast Cores with his ring. A human couldn't directly absorb a Beast Core because of the impurities, it would be far too hard to process and would damage their mana core. They often made mana arrays to extract and purify the mana from them.

His ring, however, had no issue with the impurities, it would process them and turn it into usable mana. Sending his will into the ring, he estimated it was about 80% full, he'd need a few more days and it would be full.

"Okay, that's the last red-tier Beast Core I've got... Should I absorb the orange-tier ones? Or are they worth money..." He pondered aloud with squinted eyes as the Beast Core shattered to dust that blew away on the wind.

Shrugging, he took out one of the orange-tier Beast Cores and began to absorb it into the ring as he put away his rune sheet and grabbed the stick that had been roasting a rabbit he'd caught.

Tearing a hunk away from the salted rabbit meat, he groaned in pleasure. He'd eaten through his jerky slowly, adding an extra day to the estimated three. Once he'd ran out, though, he'd only been able to eat roots and berries since.

It wasn't that he couldn't eat anything he killed or that he didn't kill anything edible, he had just been nervous about making a cookfire before he had made sure the area didn't have anything too big that might be attracted.

He'd checked around a ten mile radius and had only found one potential threat that he'd left alone. It was a green-core bear. The bear hadn't seemed to notice him at the time, so he decided he didn't want to make trouble with it.

"Of course, I had to think about the bear..." Torrin grumbled under his breath, setting his stick neatly against the log so his rabbit wouldn't get dirty on the ground.

Placing the orange core away in his pocket, he pointed his index finger in the bear's direction. As the lumbering beast came crashing through the trees, he pulled mana from the ring and formed a small ball in front of his index finger with the runes for Absorb and Flow inscribed in it.

The production wasn't perfect, but his will and intent made up for it. The ball began to spin and condense mana from the surroundings into a ball of various types of mana. He surged mana from the ring once more and sent the ball flying toward the bear, the ball continued spinning and gathering more mana along the way.

*BOOM*

The ball had grown bigger than the bear's head it was about to crash into, the impact caused an explosion, causing Torrin's ears to ring. The green-core beast was blasted backwards, tumbling end over end, until it crashed through a wide tree, slowing its momentum. The hundred foot tall tree crashed to the ground, taking another tree with it, the chain reaction cause an even louder noise than the explosion.

Torrin checked the mana in the ring and felt it was now at about 75%. He looked from his hand to the path of destruction the bear was sent on. His eyes seemed stuck on a loop, going back and forth between the two.

"What the fuck?"

This was the first time that Torrin had used mana offensively, and had definitely not expected his plan to work. His fine control over mana was definitely impressive, and imparting his intent on the mana with runes using his will was a resounding success.

"Old hag probably knew that was possible and didn't say anything..." he huffed as he trudged to find the bear.

Surprisingly the bear was still alive, its legs pointing at weird angles, and its chest caved in on one side. It gargled out wheezing roars.

"Sorry, buddy, didn't know it'd be that bad." He said, ending the creature's pain with a swift strike from a stick he picked up and wrapped in sword energy. The usual looting of core, claws and teeth followed, but the pelt was completely ruined.

Sitting by the fire once again, finishing off his rabbit, he sighed in contentment. He put out the fire and climbed up a tree, tying himself and his backpack to a limb.

"Might as well sleep near the river tonight so I can get to the hides easily tomorrow," he yawned out, stretching and trying to get comfortable for the terrible sleep ahead.

Bird calls woke him as sunlight painted the horizon with pink and orange flare. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, yawning.

The morning was cool as he worked his hides over with stones, making them more flexible and drying them of the solution. By the time he was done, he was ready to find something to eat. His jerky would take a few more days to dry completely, so he went looking for something easy to catch.

The river water flowed over his ankles rapidly as he waited for a fish. He assumed the fish were birthed upstream at the mountain and then migrated down at some point, as he'd seen them swimming by on some days.

Sword energy wrapped around his stick as he patiently waited. Catching a glint of light from scales, he activated his brain pathway, slowing the fish's movements. He simply stabbed it lightly, flipping it in the air and catching it.

This was repeated a few times until he thought he had enough. His fire was set up shortly and he cleaned his fish expertly, followed by a little salt, and directly to the flames they went.

Mouth watering from the smell, Torrin tried focusing on his last rune. It was something ambiguous, he didn't understand what it meant. It had something to do with Change, he thought, but the specifics eluded him.

Hours passed as he continued studying the rune, he was enthralled by it. His camp fire had long burned out, burnt fish lying on the ashes, his mind completely absorbed in the rune.

He felt like he was out of his own body, sounds were gone, but they were everywhere at the same time. He thought of water solidifying into ice, then melting into water, but heated so far it turns into steam. A seed grew and turned into a sapling, over time it became a full grown tree.

Change.

A pain shot through Torrin's side as he was thrown from his seat. He instantly cycled mana to that area, jumping from the ground into a crouch.

Mana shot to his head as he scanned the area slowly. A boar stood where he'd been, with blood staining its tusk. Torrin's eyes glowed as he analyzed the boar, seeing its yellow core.

'Fucking shit, I get distracted for one second and a stupid boar takes a cheap shot.'

He let time return to normal and pain shot through his side once more, causing black spots to appear in his vision and forcing him to his knees.

The boar charged at him, causing quakes that make his legs unsteady, the ground shaping around the boar's hooves as it charged. He sloppily rolled to the side as best he could. His leg was nearly snapped in two as the boar stomped past him.

His hand came back from his side covered in blood and he was already feeling lightheaded.

Mana flowed to his hand as he made another ball, using Gather intent. He pressed it to his side once it was the size of his palm and added Restoration intent to the mana.

Almost instantly his side began to recover as the mana seeped in, but he had to side step the boar again, losing his focus and letting the mana dissipate.

That little bit of healing along with using some mana internally made the bleeding stop and he felt a little better.

He didn't have his stick in hand so as the boar ran at him once more, he stepped forward, stepping left, he felt air pass by his face as the boar nearing ripped his head off. Wrapping sword energy around his hand he slashed forward at its eye. His hand passed along its entire face, leaving a trench along its face from its right eye to the back of its head, trimming the spiky mane on its back.

The boar squealed as it cried rivers of blood. Torrin's dodging had led him back to his campsite; grabbing his stick he quickly ended the fiend, sidestepping its attack once more and using the stick as a blade he cut off the leg. From there it was a simple stab to the chest to end it.

He'd noticed the boar was able to use earth magic, causing tremors as it ran and also using it as some sort of platform to push its steps faster.

'I'm just glad the green-core bear didn't get a chance to use magic...'

Using mana with Restoration intent was quite efficient, so he was glad to use it, knowing he wasn't wasting his ring's supply.

A short while later he was sitting before a new camp fire, boar roasting away.

"Asshole boar... I was in the middle of something!" Torrin shot a menacing look to the roasting corpse, he sat arms crossed and looking petulant.

Soon he was scratching his hair and thinking that maybe all this isolation wasn't good for his mental state.

He waved the thought away and started absorbing the boar's yellow core. He felt thoroughly wronged by the boar and would take everything from its corpse for his own use. An evil grin appeared on his face as he thought of this.

Days were passing quickly with his routine of studying and killing anything that came into his path. He'd been injured a few more times, but was always able to kill the beast in the end.

Progress on the last rune was slow, so he didn't really have a use for his ring that was full, so he began using mana almost all the time to reinforce his body. He would have a constant flow of mana through his entire Mana Pathway, slowly flowing to each area.

His "Time Slow", as he named it, could now last for 15 seconds of real time. That meant for 15 seconds his perception of time would be sped up significantly, essentially giving him a little over a minute of thought processing over those 15 seconds.

He could activate Time Slow about once an hour now, and its recharge time was inversely proportionate to the amount of time he used it, so if he used it less than 15 seconds it would recharge quicker.

This ability was his biggest boon from this month of survival. His cave was now adorned with random runes he'd drawn for practice, so the walls slowly absorbed mana now and the cave was dense with the stuff.

It attracted a ton of Mana Beasts as they thought it must be some powerful herb or fruit they could eat to advance themselves. The only thing they found waiting for them was a slice of sword energy. He couldn't use his "Mana Bomb" to defend the cave anymore because of the dense mana. He'd forgotten about the increase and wanted to retest the Mana Bomb, but it ended disastrously.

The mana bomb got so big that it nearly blew him up even though he instantly sent it flying 200 feet away outside the cave, the shockwave that the explosion caused blew him into the back wall of the cave, knocking him out instantly.

The only thing that saved him was a ring he'd made from wood and carved a restoration rune into. It was relatively weak because it only had the mana he provided it, but it still saved his life.

The mana bomb had made a crater in the forest, clearing out a fifty foot stretch of land, with trees blown far and wide. It was a peculiar spot in the forest now that animals seemed to avoid at all costs. He never found the body of the Mana Beast he'd been aiming at.

He had gathered a stockpile of herbs that seemed to be useful, and kept them in his backpack for safe keeping. The mana the herbs produced was still potent even after picking them.

He was now sitting cross-legged in his cave pondering his current situation, it'd been days since that mana bomb incident and he didn't know what he should do right now.

"I'm a huge feast for Mana Beasts right now... I should remove the runes for mana and just absorb as much as I can before anything else drastic happens." Torrin mused while standing up, putting action to words.

Over the month he'd collected a bounty of Beast Cores, he'd filled up two bags that weren't used for the herbs. He would have to start putting them loosely in his backpack from now on.

"I need to find a town!" Torrin suddenly thought, after thinking about his situation. If he could find a town, he could offload all of his useless stuff.

Putting action to words once more, he rolled up his collection of furs and skins he used as bedding and tied them together with his rope. He stuffed his backpack with his miscellaneous things and tied the skins on top.

He looked pretty ridiculous, his burden now as tall as he was, but he had no issue carrying everything while infusing mana into his legs, back, and arms. He smiled to the sun as he passed through his man made clearing.

"It's going to be a good day!" Torrin said merrily, a huge grin plastered on his face as he trudged towards the unknown.