It takes me an hour to run into another wolf pack. I’m lucky and this pack has only two wolves. That means I can experiment a bit more. I leave my staff on the ground and advance on them. Without the range the staff provides, I need to be more careful. The bigger wolf attacks first with a head-on charge, while the other tries to flank me. I use every vestige of speed in my body and I grab the wolf by his throat.

He snarls and tries to scratch me, but I pull him up and throw him. I almost hit the other wolf. He rolls on the ground with grace and the other wolf goes for my own throat. I push his head to the side and he goes rolling like the first wolf. They try different things, and I get a few scratches, but nothing too deep. These wolves don’t have claws too dangerous, but their sheer strength is enough to hurt me. At 20 Constitution I would probably not even need to worry about their claws. That is assuming stats scale like I expect them to. I spend a good twenty minutes just playing with the wolves, but they are getting more desperate.

I study their patterns, their breathing and their preferred moves. How they organize themselves. I change the way I move to see how they react. By the end, I’m starting to understand how they think. That helps me in conserving a lot of energy. I could keep this up all day. The wolves however have ragged breaths and they are not pressing me as hard.

I start to throw them farther and farther until both of them give up and retreat. I find another two packs, each with three and I play with them. I know that any of them would kill me in an instant given the chance, but I don’t hold that against them. Each encounter further convinces me that they are not inherently bad. There is something that is forcing them into this state. Perhaps an Alpha that commands then to attack everyone. It could also be a disease. System interference? I then have a distasteful thought. It may be Council interference. It would be just like the council to infect animals to do their bidding.

I occasionally get my staff to use it during the fights. I need the familiarity of using a weapon. It is good practice for pole weapons, like spears and poleaxes. Perhaps my future weapon would be some sort of staff. With those thoughts on my mind, I start to tread my track back to the city. I stop by a tree with the caracteristicas I was looking for.

I saw and stab, the 6 inches thick trunk, with my dagger. When I get to an inch and a half, I cut off most of the branches. Mentally preparing myself I ran and hit both my feet in the middle of the tree pushing with all my strength.

I may love to run barefoot, but once in a while I do something it would be better while using shoes.

After a second run the tree is down and I’m sawing the last few fibers from the foot of the tree. I balance the 200 pound tree on my shoulder and I’m running back. A mile away from the village, I hear people and head in their direction. They are carrying back another wolf and I talk to them.

“Hey, did you came back to the city already?”

“No, but we heard the tanner was buying the wolf for their skin. It’s only half price of a healthy wolf, but it is better than nothing.”

“How much?”

“Two copper I would guess for this wolf. The tanner needs to see then. You know to appraise the quality and size.”

“Is it worth hunting wolves for that reward?”

“Definitely. The Money aside we actually get good Exp for the kills. They net an average of 500-700 for a single kill. And the wolves that escape net at least 200 each. I already hit level 3. 2000 Exp just for 6 hours of hunting. The other two guys also got over 1000 Exp. each. That is over a day hunting rabbits. And that is taking into account we spend time bringing the wolves back to the city. This is our third one already.”

“You guys could just fight the wolves until they flee. Here just a minute.”

I go through my messages quickly.

You have gained 712 EXP You have gained 1062 EXP You have gained 1041 EXP EXP 567/3000 You have increased your Staff Mastery skill by 1 level: Staff Mastery Lv.3 You have increased your level: Lv. 2 – You have 2 free stat points. You have gained +1 Agility You have gained +2 Constitution

I think just for a moment but I leave the reflection for later and continue speaking.

“I got 350 Exp average per wolf. And I did not kill a single one.”

“You are kinder than me. And a better fighter, we can’t play around these wolves. And these mutts are too ugly to let be.”

“They are not ugly; there is something wrong with them. I’m going to figure it out.”

I feel another message, this time with a stronger mental chime. As usual I ignore it until I have the time to look over them properly or I have reason to look over them.

“It’s an idea, but we also need the money, so for now it’s a moot point. That said, I heard speculation that if we aren’t careful we could kill off the population. Or flood the market until they are only worth a copper by the dozen.”

“I also have that concern. Humans have a gift to interfere with whole ecosystems. It seems we can’t just let things be.”

“You are one to talk, Mr. Fancy Pants, I’m so in connection with nature, I don’t even wear shoes.”

I see him grinning and I join in the joke. With my most pompous and arrogant voice I can make I say:

“I will have you know, I have a guiding hand in 3 of the most significant organizations trying to end exploitation of natural resources.”

“Ooohh, I see. I see…But, aren’t you the founder of the biggest mining conglomerate of South America?”

“Somebody has to do it. Better be a conscientious person like me. “

“I agree; that is better. I see that you really care, but I heard about the accusations that you have funded protests and petitions against other companies for your own financial gain.”

“All unfounded and slanderous accusations that were started by my opponents.”

Everyone laughs at that for they know that people in power do whatever they want as long as they can get away with it. Their large checkbooks and people protecting them are powerful tools being misused.

A young man comes to my other side, passing below the tree I’m carrying.

“Damn, you don’t even change shoulders. This log is huge. It must weigh more than you. Your strength stat must be through the roof.”

“It is good enough, what you need is endurance to carry a log like this. In no time you will be able to carry twice as much.”

“Damn right, I will.”

We get to the gates and are let in. We say our goodbyes and I head to my sleeping spot. I think about my gains. I managed to level twice. For now I will probably not be able to keep up with the highest levels, but as leveling speed slows and I have my economic base figured out, I will be able to dedicate more time to hunting. Or I could make it more efficient, somehow. I have heard of someone hitting level four today in the afternoon. By now they might even be level five.

From my sleeping spot I check the closest empty house and mark it as occupied. I break a couple of branches off and leave them and my staff in the room. That way no one will mistake it for an abandoned unit. I leave the log partially outside because it is too long.

I take one of the longer branches and break it off in several pieces against my leg. Sitting in my meditation position, I send my mana into the piece of wood. What I find a bit surprising, is that this wood reacts to my mana slightly. I try a couple of different things and put all the resulting pieces of wood over a flame. All of them are green wood, but the reaction does seem to be the opposite of my goal.

The results are that the better I integrate the mana throughout the wood, the harder it is to burn it. I discovered a critical step in the journey to infusing wood. Probably the last step. Now, I need to find the right type of mana and maybe add intent so the mana knows how to act. I pull the mana from my most successful experiment and it seems different from before. Just like the mana I recover as I burn wood.

This, however, is a different type of mana. Possibly nature mana, or earth, or life. It could also be a different type of mana entirely, or a combination. With my mana pool slowly dwindling I find some scrap wood to burn and have the most expensive part of this endeavor taken care of. I cut the dry wood in thinner strips with my knife and slowly add wood to the fire. I try to extract mana while the wood is burning but it doesn’t go well.

I manage to extract some mana back at a rate of 1 to 20. When I put that mana in the wood, I get even better results than M’r. Blackwoods firewood. The wood, even wet burns at about ten times the rate. The temperature could be better but given the water content I’m happy with the experiment. I suppose the higher density of mana allowed it to burn even hotter than at the forge. The problem is the efficiency. I only had enough mana regeneration to make one of these per hour.

I slowly go through the wood branches I cut off from the tree. I start to have success when I use a method that is an intermediary between actually infusing the wood and just pushing my mana on the wood as I was originally doing. I manage to get a 1 to 5 efficiency. Probably would have gotten even better with more time to refine my approach.

After a while I also notice the effect my skill level increase has. I may have a much higher control than expected given how similar mana manipulation is to doing the same exercises with Aether. But that is only my initial impression. After closer examination, I notice that Mana is actually easier to manipulate. It has a physical quality that is hard to ignore once you become aware of it.

Aether on the other hand is completely Aetherial, It cannot be physically manipulated, it goes through anything without noticing it's there. Coming from first learning about mana to Aether would be a whole different beast. I already got past the initial stumbling block, now I just need to get used to the quirks of mana.

Finishing up, I gather my things and clean the spot. I leave and go in the direction of the river. Taking a bath and washing my clothes I entered the city soaked.

I go to the smithy with all the branches I didn’t use. I look at the sky and see it’s about 2 am. After entering, I place the wood in the forge, light them in fire and sit by the side of the mana input plate. I place my hand on it and send as little mana as possible. Instead of focusing on a smooth flow I focus on sending an ever diminishing supply of mana.

I enter a meditative state as profound as I can while balancing the act of sending as little mana as possible with making it as continuous as I can. The small disturbances are confusing in my efforts to take the shape of the machine in my mind but the smaller mana flow seemed to help me picture it better. I don’t pay attention to the close details, and in my mind an image is ever so slowly revealing itself. Maybe in a week with training I might be able to look at it well enough I could draw it.

After a while I reach equilibrium. I take a quick look and I am sending 1 mana every 18 seconds. When I start I only have 32 mana so it only takes 10 minutes to exhaust myself. I keep at it until my mana almost runs out and then I go to sleep. I just lay back and I’m snoring away.

Back on earth, Pando sees the third attack on his domain. A season has gone by since all the moving beings went away. This season he was hard at work not letting a single second go by without doing his utmost to prepare himself. In this wave, locusts came flying and quickly started to eat his smaller branches in the most damaging way possible.

Soon all the locusts start to drop to the ground dead. Their insides being poisoned, they don’t last more than a few seconds. Not a single one that took more than a bite survived. The forest is peaceful again.

Time to grow. Time to defend. Time to feed.