+[Mana Injection]

Allows mana to be injected into various things

A small screen popped up that cleared away some of my worries. Skills really could be gained outside of level-ups. Perhaps it was the value of personal understanding and experience. So I guess I just had to do what I was doing before - experimenting. Yay!

...

What would happen if I attempted injecting mana into a living creature? Would they just absorb it like me or would it have any adverse effects?

I would need to capture something to experiment on it. Power without knowledge was obviously useless.

I decided on a squirrel to capture, as anything else would be too big and bulky for me to effectively deal with. I would just surround the squirrel with many tendrils while it slept, then attract them all in at once capturing it.

I think my tentacles would have been able to endure tall of the stress of the squirrel struggling to move and escape.

Although I didn't really feel great about doing this...Perhaps I could find nuts and make a home for the squirrel after, to get rid of my guilt? Yes, that was a good plan.

So, I began looking for a squirrel. I looked around my surveillance network and found one sleeping atop a low tree branch. Immediately, I designated it as my target.

I extended several tentacles upwards and they slowly surrounded it and as the tentacle numbers increased I readied to strike.

NOW!

The tentacles wrapped around the squirrel with swiftness, as they pulled it down and towards the ground.

The squirrel woke up from its rest to find out that it was dragged across the ground. It struggled, trying to bite off my surrounding tendrils, but I held on tightly until we reached the rabbit's burrow.

Pulling it underground I placed the squirrel down and firmly secured it against a wall, with many gripping tendrils holding it in place. The squirrel continuously struggled but eventually calmed down and accepted its fate. I extended a small tendril and placed it against the back of its head, using my new skill, [Mana Injection], pouring a small amount of mana into it.

The squirrel screeched in pain and struggled hard against the shackles. It was so loud, my senses were overloaded for a second. I decided to turn off [All Sense] for this.

[All Sense LVL1 ->LVL2]

Oh, well. At least I got a level up from my pain. I guess I had to thank the squirrel for this. Then I got serious again. Wondering if either these creatures didn't have mana or they didn't accept foreign mana.

Seeing the squirrel in pain, I immediately stopped injecting mana and allowed for the squirrel to rest, letting it calm down before doing another experiment.

This time I tried extending a small tendril, into the squirrel's mouth. It was quite disgusting but I had to examine the digestive tract and see if there were any differences. Perhaps a solid mana core?

I also tested whether or not I could absorb mana from the squirrel. Turned out I could.

I absorbed mana from the squirrel and noticed that it got tired and more fatigued over time, not attempting to struggle at all.

So next, I tried absorbing Mana from the inside. The Mana absorption rate from the inside reached almost double that of the outside, and the mana gain increased the more the tendril was closer to the center of mass of the squirrel. That must have been where the squirrel’s Mana resided, like how it gathered together as a sphere in my body.

The squirrel at this point was already asleep, so I checked whether it could still feel pain by injecting a little of my Mana back into it. It woke up but had no strength to scream. [Mana Absorption] must have been heavily exhausting then. Pretty useful!

Then I had a bright idea. Could I control beings using my body? If yes, wouldn’t it be soo cool!? It would unlock a number of possibilities! But I had to make it unnoticeable…

I decided to test this out. I gently put several tendrils inside of the squirrel's skin and tried to use them as puppeteering strings. It was possible, but it needed to have a connection to the main body, or else the strings would all be cut off from me and the connection would be lost.

The process did have pretty high mana costs so that wasn't a viable option for me unless I could figure out how to control its brain and puppeteer it from there. Perhaps if I could control different creatures, I could also use their skills? Assuming they had skills like me of course.

I didn’t see much use for the little squirrel now so I decided to test [Mana Absorption] to the limit, I kept draining and draining until there was nothing left for me to absorb. The squirrel fell deeply asleep, and its mana wasn’t regenerating anymore leaving me nothing to absorb. I tried [Mana Injection] again but it didn’t wake up. Worried, I put a tendril near its heart but I could still feel its heartbeat, so it was still alive, just not conscious.

Fulfilling my promise, I decided to dig a little deeper into the burrow and created a small burrow just for the squirrel to be kept. A temporary home.

I covered the surface of the hole using my flesh, keeping little holes to allow oxygen in as it was still breathing. Maybe I could use it to test different skills in the future if it was still a worthy test subject by then, while also taking care of it

"Hmm...what to do next" I wondered to myself as I looked at the sleeping squirrel.

Then I remembered. I still had to evolve! So there was no excuse for me, but to go back to the bear. And now that I had a new skill, I had to level it up.

So next, it was time to see how much Mana that bear could give me.

Not too long after, I gathered multiple tentacles near the bear to extend to the bears' burrow. I noticed that it was sleeping. How convenient. Well, it was night time so it was understandable.

I gently touched the bear's back and activated [Mana Absorption].

A large amount of mana was steadily absorbed from the bear and luckily, the activity didn’t seem to awaken it. I did this until its mana pool was dry.

[Mana Absorption LVL2 -> LVL3]

Great! A level up! I was slowly, yet surely coming closer to becoming stronger and evolving. Just [Mana Injection] left. I couldn't help feel slightly excited about what evolution could offer me…

I quickly activated [Mana Injection], filling the unconscious bear full of my mana. Its body was still unmoving. Different from the results of the squirrel...

Perhaps draining all of its Mana allowed me to fill it with mine without consequence? I continued injecting mana until I couldn’t anymore.

[Mana Injection LVL1 -> LVL2]

Suddenly, the bear awoke. It turned its large head and saw me. It roared angrily and quickly started slashing at my tendrils, cutting up several in the process. Huh, it woke up but there seemed to be no difference from before? It was still as aggressive as before. Not tired in any way.

Maybe the change was more hidden than that, or there was no change at all?

I quickly retreated my flesh to where the bear couldn't reach me. Then I created my signature blade, causing it to be as sharp as I could make. Then, with all of the force my body could let out, I launched my blade. Straight at the bear's heart.