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More characters! When will he stop! NEVER! I really wish I could delve into more of the other characters too zzz. Too many people bitch about that though if you don't maintain at least 90% of your time on your MC. No one likes classics like Les Miserables, etc. anymore. So the extra side stories, more actual character development other than the MC, will have to wait for the actual release zzz. Or maybe I'll do them as donation links, idk haha.

Most of all, I just hope you guys enjoy the story!

I know the feeling of waiting for author's to publish here, one of the many reasons why I started writing, so I'll try to continue releasing even if my grades scream at me haha!

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— POV Torgue —

I’m so tired and hungry. Where did papa go? There was a loud ‘Boom’ and ‘Crash’ then all of us were running from some fire. Papa found us, but he looked to be in pain, though he didn’t show it. He said that he was going to go ask for some help from humans and told us to hide.

It’s been three days but we still haven’t seen papa again, where is he? I need to go find him - Jard and I can’t be here by ourselves. The only food we’ve eaten are some bugs Jard found for us under the tree. The bugs always run away from me, but somehow he is able to sneak up on them before they notice them. Must be because he has black fur. My fur is white and orange.

We also both have sings, but neither of us can use them yet. Otherwise those tasty birds above us would already have been gobbled up by us!

‘Grrrrrrrr’

Oops, there goes my stomach again.

‘Jard? When is papa coming back? I’m really hungry!’

I didn’t make any noise, since we can talk with our minds or something! I didn’t really understand what papa told us about our abilities and whatnot.

— POV Jard —

‘Sorry Torgue, but I can’t sense him anywhere close to use. Normally I could sense his mana anywhere, but it’s disappeared.’

‘…And we would probably have more food if you controlled your mana like I do. You’re really scary to everyone else.’

Usually we were already surrounded by so many other powerful beasts that my brother’s lack of control could barely be felt, but now that everyone was scattered, it’s much more of a problem. As the older brother, I have to take responsibility and try to find us food, but we’ve eaten or scared away anything that we could currently find. Brother’s aura is truly scary for other beasts, though we are both really small.

Where did papa go though? What happened to him? I miss him a lot. We can’t stay here - there’s not enough food, nor shelter.

‘Torgue, let’s go look for papa! With you and I together, we should be able to find him in not time!’

‘Okay brother, let’s go!’

— POV Taeya —

This world is a cruel place. There is no such thing as happiness - all there is is hidden malice behind kind smiles. Nothing has ever gone right in my life, and every chance at hope I’ve ever had was smashed before my eyes.

First my parents. I was an ‘unwanted’ child. They never told this to me to my face, but apparently my mother was taken forcefully one night by a previous suitor of hers. I grew up hearing these whispers and rumors coming from my clan. While every time my brothers or sisters entered the village they were given treats and smiles, only I was ever looked coldly upon.

I stopped asking my parents why people didn’t like me after they beat me several times by both of them. I couldn’t move for weeks, but by then I realized the best course of action was to keep my mouth shut. It still hurts to this day - both in my heart and from my wrongly healed bones. While I was recovering my mother came to see me in tears, but instead of worry that I thought I would receive, she only cried about how sorry mommy was, and to not tell anyone about what happened. When I then asked if I could have some medicine to relieve the pain she slapped me and said how ungrateful I was for living with them.

Again, I learned a rule to protect myself - don’t talk with others. Their words only contain ugliness. Even if I smile, or say a pleasant thing, their eyes never laugh and dance as they do with others, they only sit still and desolate.

I’ve asked myself countless times, why, why me? I’ve screamed silently at god, I’ve screamed silently for years now, but I have yet to receive an answer.

Things could have been better if maybe I had magical talent, but when I was tested, I was almost devoid of any magical talent at all. They said if I tried for years to cast a spell, I might be able to produce a small flame, but beyond that, nothing. I would need to be specially trained and given expensive medicine to be able to become a mage. I asked my parents if I could, but they said no, and later smacked me so hard I couldn’t talk without excruciating pain.

The last light in my dark tunnel was snuffed out, just with a few words from a wizard and the negative response from my parents. I had hoped to overcome my station and leave my clan and never come back as a strong mage, but even that was taken away from me by my parents and my lack of ability.

I can’t live here anymore - even dying to some beast out in the forest is better than staying here. I need to leave, at least out there I have hope. I won’t give up, not ever! I will brave the wilds to find my fortune, or my demise.

— POV Mathias —

I’m sweating right now. I think I made a big mistake. I can’t contain all of this mana I just gave myself - just looking at my stats are giving me heart palpitations, even if I don’t actually have a heart a heart.

Name:--- (Mathias)Age:3 MonthsGender:♂/♀Level:1Class:Plant Sage+Race:Bermuda Grass Unique Variant: Mana VampireHP:20/20Mana:20/20 (+10,000 pt/hour)Growth Points:10000Growth Rate:55 (45) pts/hour day (night)Strength:3Vitality:20Agility:1Intelligence:140Tamed Species1Tamed Total13Titles:[td colspan="3"] [Destined to Die], [Reincarnator], [Martyr], [Boundless], [Late Bloomer], [One of Many], [Eaten Alive+], [Kin-Slayer], [Bug Tamer], [Unnatural Predator] [/td]

Abilities:[td colspan="3"], , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , [/td]

Drug Compounding: Caffeine, Cyanide, Simple Sugar, Octopamine, Nightshade Toxin, Milkweed Toxin

I seem to have evolved into another variant of my species, also unique. I’m a Mana Vampire now. I don’t know exactly what that means to others, but if I saw something with a name of X vampire, I would try to kill it.

And this mana, while great and all, is extremely troublesome! Like I said before, I have way too much of it! Without a man stone to contain it, my mana is rampaging all over the place, causing every small critter around me to scatter and run away.Not only that, my bugs are also having some difficulty resisting the turbid mana too!

I absolutely refuse to have a mana crystal, but without it, what the heck am I to do! That mana regeneration rate is insane! Even if I had a mana stone though, I wouldn’t be able to spend all of that mana! They say if you have a broad foundation, the future is there for the taking. I built way too tall without thinking of the repercussions thoroughly. I just wanted an increase in base power, enough to actually cast a spell instead of not even being able to draw the primary part of the spell.

It looks like my Slaughter guards are doing better now, it seems they’ve been building up a tolerance slowly through the past few months from my dosing habits continually increasing their mana supply in their food.

Oh shit the eggs! Shit! My carefully controlled experiments and data collection is ruined! They’ve all been exposed to this horrendous mana pressure I’m giving off - I hope at least some of them live through it!

Damnit, it looks like already half of them are lifeless, only the ones I had been feeding mana to before, and the ones with adrenaline (Octopamine) still contain life - the other eggs seem to be slowly crystallizing into… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Small fucking mana crystals damnit. Damnit damnit damnit! I don’t want these anywhere near me! It does tell me though that organics exposed to a lot of mana can turn into mana crystals, but that’s all the good news from this catastrophe. Even the eggs that have survived are dying one by one.

Wait, wait! It looks like it’s stopped - approximately 10 adrenaline bug eggs and 24 mana bug eggs have stabilized, phew. I would have been devastated if they were killed off like last time. Each of them seem to have created a small mana crystal inside of the egg that the embryo is attached too. That’s good, I think.

Maybe I can feed those small mana crystals to the bugs when all of them hatch. In the mean time, might as well try to do it for my current Slaughter Guards. I’m totally not just trying to avoid thinking about my mana flying everywhere willynilly, not at all.

Come on June, look, this totally isn’t a bug egg, it’s a juicy mana crystal coated in sugar! You were one of the first to recover from being exposed to my mana, so with you I have my highest hopes. I can see your energy fighting with the mana in the air - I think you’ll need a mana stone to keep living here and protecting me. Something to both gather, store, and protect you from the excess mana. Maybe you can even evolve! Think about the possibilities!

Of course I couldn’t tell her that, but I think she got the gist of the message through my emotions I sent to her. And she ate it! Sweet! Uh-oh, looks like she’s in some pain. Shit, I need to send her some energy stat! Leaf, go, start injecting her with your spine full of my healing energy! At least, I think that’s how it will work! My dark green natural energy slowly goes inside of her, and starts swirling around the swallowed mana stone.

She’s stabilizing! Good, good! The mana stones were originally red from the color of my mana, must have been because the beast was of the fire attribute. But with the inclusion of my natural dark green energy, the mana stone changed. Instead of looking like a living flame in crystal form, it slowly was influenced more and more by my energy. I felt as if I could easily overwhelm the mana with my energy, but I withheld myself, and was rewarded! It seems the mana from June, after I tempered the red energy, also started to enter the crystal. A black mist formed at the center, while the red mana and my energy started swirling around it. Slowly, a galaxy like shape started to form, with an infinite black abyss at the center with green and red planets formed with green and red gasses as well. It was actually dazzling to see!

It looks like she’s unconscious, but not in pain anymore, that’s good. I’ll send her a lot of loving care emotions for awhile, she deserves it. The mana in the air isn’t fighting her anymore, it flows serenely around her, through her, and into her mana crystal. She seems at balance in this new world. This is good. Now, for the rest. It seems as though I need to suppress the strength of the mana crystal after they consume it, so that they can become in harmony with them with their own internal mana type.

Hmmm, it looks like the other 12 Slaughter Guards are all similar in type. Instead of the black mist in the middle of their own mana crystals, they had a flowing, crystal-colored mana. I’m guessing if June’s mana was a black mist, that must mean dark, or shadow mana. I especially think that because of how June’s looks compared to the others - while her’s is an infinite darkness around which the other mana flows around, but never intrudes, the others’ formed a true mixture of mana. The crystal colored mana flows in between the red and green mana, forming a sphere of swirling color. I think it must be the fabled wind mana - it makes sense because the bugs can fly I guess, but wonder why June’s turned to dark mana? Something must have happened long ago that made her need to hide. I wasn’t paying attention, so it could have been anything. Huh, oh well. These gains are really great! With my mana assimilation, I could even take their mana, maybe. But I still like them, these 13 are the best friends I’ve ever had in this life. I owe them my everything. I’ll wait until another beast with mana I don’t have shows up, then I’ll take their mana.

Oh yea, the mana that’s everywhere now. Sigh. I could use it somehow, but the only way I know how to use it is to maybe, maybe send a spell out. But that in itself is extremely attention grabbing. Shit. What I need is a decoy then - something to draw attention away from my current being. Mana producing grass is strange, but I wonder if a tree would be better? A tree might be protected if someone comes along, but grass is always rooted out and harvested. Especially if I can bribe others in the future to leave me alone - growing a fruit for them to eat brimming with mana, maybe colored gold or something oughta entice them to keep me secret so that no one takes the spoils away. Or just producing a fruit brimming with so much cyanide they would instantly die. That could work too. And when I get a lot more mass that way, I can store more mana in my biomass, and maybe even just release it high into the air instead of having it stay here and spread. At least in the air it won’t saturate the area as bad.

Ok, I’ve made my decision! Back to the lab!

My secret weapon by fortuitous encounter - a tree seed! Now to try to determine if the trees here are any different from my own. First, their basic cell structure is at least extremely similar to my own cell structure, but with thicker cell walls, as expected.

Oh, it also has more mana reactors than my own did back then. Maybe absorbing these mana reactors would have been better than what I already did, but I’m not going to cry over spilled milk. Other than that, this is as far as I can tell just a tree cell.

If I just use its DNA I think I might run into trouble. I might just turn into that species, instead of Bermuda Grass. That would bring a whole lot of other trouble - I can deal with things that eat grass, but things that eat trees might be much more dangerous. I need to stick with my base species for as long as I can, minimizing the effects of [Destined to Die]. If I look like a tree, but quack like grass, then of course I’m grass! Hahaha, I’m a genius! (A lightly disturbed, slightly insane, isolated genius, but a genius nonetheless!)

I guess I’ll build a tree near the spring, several feet away from my main body, and make it look similar to the trees around me. I can’t mask the mana, nor match the colors (can’t see them anyways haha) but I’ll just try to make a natural oak look.

Yosh, let’s start. I need to thicken my cell walls selectively - it’s not so hard thanks to my class, I think. But growing a tree… This is gonna be expensive. Just thinking about the size is giving me a headache - growing grass leaves is really cheap, only 1 GP is needed. However I can feel just growing a stem that’s thick enough and strong enough to support a tree framework is closer to 100 GP, and it would only reach about a foot high. As my diameter of my “trunk” grows, so does the cost of growing higher.

Man, trees have it tough! Or they just have a naturally higher growth rate/ability to absorb nutrients than grass. I won’t ever know, sigh, if I want to remain alive. For now I’ll just plow on, decide my own fate.