Though nothing really changed when Nik unlocked his new trait, he felt good. While his class was still {smith}, he felt like he was progressing, moving away from what he could have become. His class wasn’t anything cool like a mage, fighter, or healer but it was giving him more options then he expected. After his transmigration he had feared that this class would suffocate him and cause him to be defenseless but both of those fears had been somewhat alleviated. He was no longer a passive entity but rather taking an active role in his life. In heavy contrast to the life he had led as a student and all of his previous life. It was emancipating and invigorating.

Glancing a last time into the water, sparkling eyes and a completely bald head looked back at him.

“Damn, it looks really bad. Noone would recognize me like that. I might just be the naturally most ugly human out there now,” he thought, huffing annoyed, “at least there is nobody here to see me like that. I wish though.”

He remembered his mother seeing his mother a single step away from death, lacking any hair due to her medication and shivered.

In time it had grown evening and the sun had already started to dip behind the canopy during all of his testing, preparing, and mana expelling. This was the first time that Nik didn’t feel tired as the day progressed but had become more awake. The stamina berries definitely had helped, and so had pushing mana through his body. Mana seemed to have an effect on the body if channeled through it. However subtle it had actually come to invigorate him after pushing multiples of his mana pool throughout his body.

For the following couple hours Nik wanted to prepare for the next day. The setting sun thwarted his plans of furthering his smithing development. The lack of light didn’t hinder him overly much, he still had other stuff he could accomplish regardless of light levels. He could have gone back and continued working on the smithing related tools but the night vision bonus from unobstructed optics was rather poor and it was a skill that supported vision and not enabled it.

Climbing up on the tree he checked his oversized hammock for any damage. He noted that the condition was still up to his standards and laid down, starting to relax. Fairly quickly he noticed that the previous evaluation of his fatigue levels had been poor. Struggling to keep his eyes open as his body relaxed, he focused inwards.

He wanted to use his recently - through mana berries - filled up mana pool for a last round of experiments. This time he reached out with his internal energy manipulation skill, grasping the mana firmly and moving some slowly towards the edge of his skin.

The movement of the mana was too fast. As soon as he started to funnel mana outside of his body it was drawn away as though a vacuum that only affected mana was surrounding him. Nik had a few ideas on how to act around those issues. He could try a clay enclosure, maybe that would reduce the issue of dissipation, or maybe scoop out a small amount of wood from a piece of tree so that there would be a hole which he could inject mana into. Further consideration made him excited and slightly more awake, he postponed the thought for another time when he had time and would be more awake.

Those solutions all suffered from the same issue, he was not in the mood for getting up any longer. Hadn’t he laid down he would have happily tried each of them but alas he was too lazy and tired now. He furrowed his bow, considering other options. Maybe he could make a metal container, suffuse it with mana, insert his hand and try again. This should be within the scope of his smithing class, if it actually gave him a good skills. It too though wasn’t an option for now. Right now he had two other options that would most likely only somewhat work.

Another option that might be worth a try was join his hands together as though he were clapping; creating an ideally sealed space between his hands. If it went according to plan he could put the mana there without it dissipating. If that wouldn’t work, he would have to check for mana interactions with water, maybe other inorganic materials and possibly even fruits and nuts. Especially mana berries could have some interesting interactions with mana.

“Maybe sealing the openings between my hands with mana berries would work,” he theorized. Due to his current tiredness he would only try the option of pushing mana in between his two palms. The option he anticipated to be the most successful and also the currently most feasible.

He started by folding his hands over each other and readjusting their respective positions towards each other until the back of his hands buckled under his adjustments and he felt pressure on the skin on his palms. Once he was satisfied with the seal between his hands he started channeling mana through his right hand into its palm, pressing the energy outwards as slowly as possible.

The mana he expelled started to itch the skin of the other hand and slowly his mana consumption decreased. Having kept an eye on the expulsion rate he grew somewhat irritated, until he saw his health points dropping too, which made him stop the experiment and reconsider.

The mana had exited his hand and it seemed as though most had stayed in between his palms. A fraction of the rest had started to pierce his left hand and intrude into his system. His body was apparently able to reabsorb his own mana which was good to know. The mana that wasn’t absorbed back into his body and didn’t stay fixed between his hands seemed to have flown out along the edge where skin stopped touching skin. Nik didn’t see that, but he suspected as much.

Upon opening his hands around 50 mana, spread with exploding speed into the environment and every direction. Shocked, Nik tried to evade the lightly glowing white wave that quickly extended, but found no cover in the short period of shock. The wave washed over him, causing another few damage points but also filling up his mana pool by 3 points in an instant.

The superficial damage did cause some concern but Nik continued. He had previously managed to create a barrier of mana just below his skin with just Energy Veil and internal Energy Manipulation. He tried to recreate that effect for his hands, which worked to a usable though not satisfying degree. He punched with mana through the middle of both protectiive mana covers and repeated the earlier setup of his hands.

This time, as he pushed mana through the hole in the mana barrier his health stayed at the same number, not dropping. This mana steadily decreased, not flowing back into his skin and system. As he kept ignoring the increasing strain that was accumulating all throughout his body the mana indicator went towards zero. The pressure in between his hands, a result of the low pressure zone he created between his palms lessened. He originally thought that was from air leaking until the system sent him a message.

Requirements for special class skill [Condense Mana] met.

Soul constitution not ready for the learning of the skill.

Special Class evolution unlocked.

And he totally agreed with the prompt. His head and body was aching. Not a bad overall result though. It wasn’t exactly what he was going for. The Mana pores trait fulfilled most of that.

Greater Deed Unlocked - [Solid Energy] Solidify mana, one of the five primary energy types.

Nik Thems: {(Evolving) Extraterrestrial Human} Level up! You have accomplished the Greater Deed [Solid Energy]. 15 Stat points have been awarded. One General Skill Slot unlocked.

Class development. 250 exp gained for reaching a class milestone [Solid Energy].

“Nice, another level, I really do need to start spending all those points. At this point this could end up being quite a powerful buff to my overall capabilities. Maybe I should just try to evenly spend points on all the stats, balance should be good. Maybe invest in strength a bit more because of the bonus,” he considered while slowly falling asleep, not checking whether he was holding anything in his hands.

The next time Nik awoke came sooner than expected, as drops of water were slowly dripping down on him. Clouds occluded the night sky and the pleting of rain gave the nights air a pleasant but eerie feel.

Not really wanting to get wet, Nik quickly got up and climbed down the tree, dropping the last 3 meters easily. In a rush he made it onto the path towards the cave in almost utter darkness. Dumbfounded, he arrived at the cave, barely slower than the time it took him during the day, even though he barely saw anything. That was when he realized that tracking finally must have been useful, in combination with his trailrunning buff and unobstructed optics had managed to avoid collisions - though not the water dripping down the forest leaves-, tripping, and managed to be almost as fast.

Having gotten soaking wet during the run he decided to make use of the wood he stored here and dry himself with a fire.

Having started a fire with flint he had laying around almost everywhere now he sat down, leaning against the cold wall and sitting on the cold floor. Both quickly got uncomfortable enough for him to decide against taking a nap. He repurposed one of the matts he had designed to keep the coal off of the floor as a mat to sit on and considered his options.

Eventually he settled on prepping some of the gathered iron-rich stones for further processing. His thought-process let him to assume that a finer grain of rock would have a larger surface area per volume and thus would potentially decrease the amount of heat required for the separation between stone and the metal within. Ideally this would also reduce the overall heat needed for the smelting and separation process but he wasn’t sure on that. Most likely high oxygen throughflow would end up helping through a higher heat output, increasing the melting speed but he had nothing to do either way.

The pulverization process was set up on a mat of woven sticks, covered in large leaves. Nik placed a larger flat rock In the middle, to work as a counterweight to the rocks he smashed.

He fully expected the process to be a hard, exhausting, and straining one. Which it totally turned out to be. In the early stages he just smashed rocks on top of each other, supported by Lesser Hammer Strike, reducing the grain to about the size of pebbles.

The hard work allowed Nik to let his thoughts sweep around. Playing around with other things he could do to keep himself occupied. For the first time since his migration he actually thought about home. The more time he spent here the easier it got to consider his family and friends. He missed all of his friends, and he also missed his family to a degree, though he was still pissed at their controlling attitude.

He remembered the fun he had in college, the freedom he experienced there and how his newfound freedom dwarfed what he had back then. He reminisced about the first time going to the movies, or hanging out with people that had completely new and different ideals about life, their roles in society and the pursuit of happiness.

Eventually though his thoughts drifted away from him indulging in interpersonal contact and back to reality. The deed he had accomplished stated that one had to solidify one of five primary energy types to get the deed. Nik speculated about how he would work on the same issue with stamina. It had so far not really responded to any of his prodding, not even really with [Internal Energy Manipulation]. He could make minor alterations to the flow and what it affected but Stamina primarily just infused his muscles and to a lesser degree bones.

Not really figuring out a method to affect stamina more efficiently on the fly he let the matter drop. The general concept stayed with him for the next few hours and was frequently considered.

At one point during the rock crushing the downpour reduced slightly, though it was still drizzling. Nik decided then to get up, stretch his bones and work out a bit. He had grown rather fond of sports once his endurance increased.

The water dripping down his face was a now unfamiliar experience as he had also started sweating less. His bare feet digging into the muddy ground or slipping on wet stones. Without using any skills he could stabilize and balance against the unsure footing, as he had gotten used to faster speeds. Grinning, he ran around for some time. His body temperature slightly dropped and he did feel a bit colder, a lot less than what he would have expected.

After having run a small loop from the cave to the small stream, then back to the lake and finally back to the cave, he sat down refueling the dying fire. He stored the large amount of pulverized iron he had laying around and considered moving on with pulverizing some charcoal for the same reason he had done so with the iron rich stones and started the whole process anew.

As the day had progressed further the rain hadn’t stopped assaulting the world with its thrumming beat but it had gotten more gentle. Nik looked out at the world and considered his wood supply. He had steadily used up about half of the wood he had originally stored for drying and emergency purposes to keep a pleasant temperature, but the cave only barely kept its temperature, and when the fire went out it cooled fast. While Nik wasn’t as affected as he used to be, it still made him uncomfortable, so he went out to gather more wood embracing the uncomfortable wetness of the rain while leaving most of his clothes inside to stay dry.

He moved further now using running to propel himself faster through the underbrush. Neither caring nor worrying about slipping. He planned on getting as much wood as possible as quickly as he could. He could always wash up later and it might be refreshing.

Nik moved to and from the cave over twenty times - each time carrying figurative boatloads of wooden branches - before he found something that made his heart light up. A large and fallen down tree trunk, still weeks away from complete decay but already on the older side. Carefully he separated around one and a half meter long segment - through the frequent application of a stone driven hammer strike - from the tree trunk.

Through large effort the shattered off piece of trunk was pulled throughout the forest for over a kilometer. Nik had to start eating stamina berries quite quickly, as he was pushing both his strength, condition, and physique to their respective limits.

Exhausted and drenched in a combination of sweat and rain water, Nik finally sat down after over a half hour of pulling the log through the forest and up a quarter of a mountain. He sat and smiled, having solved one of the last puzzle pieces he was facing for the next steps of his smithing endeavours.