It had been a month since Al had gotten his core, and he had been hard at work pushing mana in and out of it, both his own and from the ambient.

He had also been playing with his friends, in order not to worry Khan-Wan and the other adults too much. He had also learned that there was a village near the orphanage, but apparently there were ‘demon beasts’ in the forest. They seemed a lot like the magic beasts that appeared back on earth after the assimilation, and even though they were of the weakest rank, it would take several grown adults to deal with them.

That’s why every week half of the orphanage staff went to the village to get the necessary resources, and exchanged them for the produce they reaped at their farm. Apparently the orphanage was built here because of the rich ambient mana (although back on earth this much would be considered sub-par) which made crops grow much faster, and since everyone in the orphanage except us young kids helped maintain it, it was enough to make a relatively lofty living.

‘But I digress,' Al thought. He had to focus. He had the impression he was getting somewhere by using his core so much, so he made a last push.

Suddenly, it felt like something clicked inside his core, and the previous mismatch of ambient and unattributed mana inside it turned into a uniform mass of pure mana. Then, all the impurities started exiting his body through his core. ‘Wait, another trope!?’ He quickly went to the nearby stream to wash up, and when he exited it he started testing his core. It was as if some shackle he wasn’t even aware of before had shattered, and both the capacity and absorption rate of his core had improved considerably.

He had been doing all this with his eyes closed, and when he opened them, a new message greeted him:

[F Grade Core] has reached Mid proficiency. It will add Mana capacity and regeneration equal to that of F Grade Will and Intelligence.

Al expected this, but it was still nice to see it. He was going to head back, but a red glint coming from the forest caught his eye. Al had been a hunter for ten years, so he knew top what it was.

The eyes of a beast.

“This’ll make some nice target practice, I suppose." He said in English, something he often did when he was by himself in order not to forget the language. He didn’t know why, no one knew English in this world after all, but it was one of the only things that reminded him of his home planet. There was also Spanish, his first language, but he wished he could forget that language altogether. It only brought bad memories.

He arrived at the wall separating the clearing from the forest, and he effortlessly jumped it by imbuing his legs with mana. This was a skill called [Body Enhancement], and it was the only skill he had learned in his past life other than [Mana Manipulation] and those given to him by his class. It was just like imbuing your body with mana normally, which was the most basic of techniques, but it was much, much more efficient. He had re-learned the skill on his own a couple of weeks ago, and it had been a great help with moving around. Since the amount of mana he has in his past life was paltry, he hadn’t gotten it past Low proficiency, but it had saved his sorry ass a couple of times.

He landed on the ground with a thump, and, despite the reinforcement, he could feel the strain in his toddler legs.

“I’m an honest-to-god idiot. Doing this is just looking for trouble."

Despite that he marched onwards. He peeked between some bushes, and he saw it.

It was similar to a badger but much, much bigger, almost as tall as Al himself, and it was on all fours. His legs were comically skinny though, so much so that Al didn’t know how they could support its weight. There was something off with his fur though, but Al couldn’t pinpoint what. He knew the characteristics of all the Rank 1 beasts that appeared around these parts, since the adults warned all the children about those all the time.

That thing didn’t fit any of those descriptions.

Then the beast noticed him, and suddenly entered it’s combat form. It turned around so that its backside faced Al, then its fur stood on end in Al’s direction like it was going to shoot out of his body.

Then it shot out of its body. ‘It’s a damn Badger-porcupine!’ Al thought as he instinctively powered his legs with mana again to use a tree as cover, and started running away.

‘With those legs, at least it’s slow,’ Al thought, but the beast didn’t have it, and instead folded its legs and curled into a ball, then started speeding towards him. ‘And now it’s pulling off a sonic? I’m gonna get trampled at this rate!’

Fortunately, the forest clearly wasn’t this beast’s home turf, as it kept hitting trees and boulders which slowed it down. On plains though, that thing must reach cheetah levels of speed, perhaps even more, given enough time to accelerate. It wasn’t time for musing though, as Al finally saw the wall that separated the forest from the camp, and he jumped on top of it. Of course, when he ran away he wasn’t just panicking to lose the beast, but he was leading it here, where he would have a vantage point and could defeat it safely. The wall was sturdy, almost 2 meters tall and made from some kind of mana infused wood that absorbed charges and blunt attacks and redistributed throughout a larger area, and the puny spikes of this beast wouldn’t cause more than a few scratches.

Of course, an agility-type beast would be able to jump over it, just like he had done a while ago, but there weren’t any in this area. ‘At least I hope there aren’t. Clearly there weren’t supposed to be any giant, rolling spiked badgers around here either.

Once it reached the wall, the beast tried to take Al down with volley after volley of spikes, but they soon ran out. ‘Huh, so it’s true that demon beasts don’t have any intelligence past their instincts.’ Meanwhile, Al laid his eyes on one particularly large spike, that had run all across the back of the beast until it shot it out in its last volley. It seemed to function as some hints of structural support as the creature collapsed into a heap the moment it shot it out.

Al grabbed it from the wall and immediately felt as if his weight had reduced in half. Without hesitation, he pierced where the beast’s heart should be from its back, and was delighted when he felt that familiar feeling of an incorporeal substance entering his head.

The tutorial screen had said that it was a part of the beast’s soul, that merged with his own to make him stronger. It wasn’t quite enough to push him to level 2, but he could feel he was close.

He then inspected the spike, which was around 30cm long, and sensed it was imbued with some kind of mana. Checking his memories, it reminded him of a diver he had met on earth, who was upset his element was air instead of water, but he used it to create an air bubble around him and dive incredibly deep without equipment.

‘Air mana, that’s it!’ It seemed to have some kind of lightening effect, which explained how the badger managed to stay up on those stick-like legs, and it must have increased his rolling speed by a lot too.

Al went to the stream to test his new limits, and after less than an hour was pleasantly surprised once more.

Dexterity has reached F- Grade

“I’m on a roll baby!”