His body is currently sleeping within a dark void, poisonous whispers constantly ringing through the black expanse.

Take the power! Don't Reject. Come nearer. Don't be afraid. Don't you love power? Take the apple. Why are you so cruel! Please take us. We need you!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

The man jolted awake from his bed. His forehead covered in beads of sweat, and eyes occasionally showing flashes of horror. He turns and takes out a water bottle from the wooden bedside table, and drinks a few sips.

After a few minutes of staring at the room's white wall with a blank gaze, he closed his eyes and started absorbing the energy from the environment, seemingly starving from the atmosphere's nourishing mana.

The sparse but nourishing energy of the atmosphere slowly starts moving towards him, its gentle warmth slowly being drowned out by the black-colored mana within the man's body, making it join the streams of darkness within his body.

His pale-white skin that has been donned with sweat now slowly gains a better luster, as his breathing becomes less labored and his grimace slowly turned into a calm expression.

After a half an hour of absorbing mana while sitting on his bed's corner, someone knocked at the room's door.

"Breakfast is ready, Vie" A woman's voice comes out, which is the woman in last night's stroll in the outpost.

"I will be right there" The man named Vie replied with a calm tone, seemingly calmed down from the nightmare he had.

Later that day, they would arrive at the outpost's center to start today's expedition into Outer Grounds. The Outer Grounds are the lands that haven't been incorporated into the system built state of theirs, which is just outside the imposing cement wall, with the incorporated lands being the Kanto plain of Japan.

The cement wall is 15 meters tall, and 3 meters thick. It seems to be made with cement, and it is covered in Japanese words that says "Fortification", "Enhancement", "Endurance"," Harmonization" and others.

It also has 8 gates that hold a denser amount of the words, some even overlapping. The 8 gates also contain a higher amount of mana than the ones that normally flow within the rest of the walls, with the gates most likely being the ones that is the source of the mana flow.

As for the gates' appearance, they look more like white marble rather than cement, which seems to be not a major difference but it is as it is a 1st Grade Mana Material, which is something that incorporated enough mana into itself for it to be considered a true mana material and, in turn, be recognized by the system.

In the center of the outpost is a large circular patch of land that has not been paved with cement. It extends 50 meters on all directions, which is basically a park of some sort in the middle of the outpost.

In the center of this circle land is a small tree. It has a brown bark with a healthy amount of leaves, but most importantly, it emanates an aura of healing and life. It is a tree with healing effects, aptly nicknamed as the recovery tree.

Though it is still a juvenile 1st Grade Mana Tree, with only being slightly taller than the average person and a trunk that is around 4 inches thick, it already converts a decent amount of mana in the air into life energy.

Vie, his female friend and 9 others is currently standing near the small tree of recovery, seemingly waiting for someone or something. And here he arrives.

Izuki Sato, one of the 7 Commanders of the Restoration Council. He is wearing a green cloak that looks like a bunch of leaves stitched together and stretches to his knees, green shoes that look like they are partly made with crystals with their shine, and vibrant green pants that matches the cloak.

"So much green, don't you have any sense of style? Also, you were late for 2 hours, how dare you make this young lady wait." The woman that was with Vie last night said to the approaching Council Commander, seemingly giving not much of a care about his way of approaching him, one of the most powerful beings within the Council.

The others could only give a wry smile at the peculiar attitude of one of their allies, though at least it was only peculiar. While Vie could only heavily sigh as his friend has no limitations approaching him at all, she didn't even sense that something have changed with the High Druid.

One of the persons near Vie walked a bit closer to him, and whispered to him in a hushed tone." You sure that Angela hasn't hit her head when young?" Only to be followed with a yell from the subject of the talk.

Sato then removed the hood of his cloak, to reveal a face filled with a sea-like disappointment. His mouth almost looking like a straight line as he grimaced, with his eyes looking like they gave up on the world.

Sato has black hair, with a face that could be considered fine among his peers. His height is just one inch above 5 feet, easily shorter than the rest of the group except for 1.

Most of the group can only sigh as 2 of their members argue, their minds questioning the universe's sanity at this 2s bickering, though they can't exactly say that they hate it as this world haven't been kind to them.

It is a bit hard-pressed to believe that these 2 is part of the elite group that led the fight against the rift in Tokyo, part of the ones that survived the assault and closed the rift of wooden beasts.

It was just 3 days ago when they used the State Formation Seal, a month and a week into the Integration.

-------------------------------

{Month 1, Week 2}

It has been more than a month since the integration, and I am doing quite well if I may say so myself. My body, magic, and skills has been developing quite rapidly, though far from satisfactory level as I feel that it may be necessary to grow as much as possible.

And the humans weren't struggling as much as I expected when this notification appeared from the system, on Month 1, Week 1 of the apocalypse and my transformation.

====================

Congratulations to Humanity for establishing their first state!

====================

Though I am not exactly certain as to how well that measures humanity's situation, as it may not even be enough considering my observations from the past weeks.

I have been expanding my sphere of influence and forces for quite some while now, causing the surrounding 20 kilometers to be partially within the control of my forces, even though I can only comfortably reach 8 kilometers with my connection if I am using the main body as the source of the connection.

The amount of servants also rose to 42 individuals, 1 dog, 4 birds, and 37 Blood Humanoids. It is pretty decent if you ask me considering the low amount of time I was given combined with me needing to pour energy to my growth as well, especially with something that happened.

But it is still a bit far from an ideal level if I want to comfortably expand my current dominion, though there is no rush considering that I haven't completed my project, but I have been making progress, and I believe that I am almost there.

I have also not been ignoring the development of the army's individual strength itself, not just the expansion of my power and surveillance capabilities.

Doggo was level 19 when I managed to give my servants a higher level of sentience, which mostly came from a system-prompted improvement of the skill. He reached level 20 before the incident.

Within 2.5 miles north from my main body(the Tree), is a powerful and poisonous little snake. It did not hold a particularly large level of strength or endurance, but it is incredibly quick and holds a poison so strong, that before Doggo can retreat to my main body, it had already melted off all the fur and most of the skin of the poor animal.

It was 1.05 meters long and a 2.16 inches thick, with that size, it is kind of unfair to call it a little snake but it is a lot smaller compared to the rest of the surroundings leveled animals, but definitely one of the deadliest.

At this point, most beasts in the forest are already around level 10-15, but most are below level 10, with little to no change to their physique other than being physically stronger, contrary to my expectations that they would be able to wield mana in more intricate or complex ways. Their growth though is alarming as that average is 5 levels higher than last month

But there are some anomalies of course, and these ones usually take more than a few of my blood servants to cooperate and defeat them with relative ease, as they seem to be a lot stronger than their brethren, and range around 13-23 levels. The Quick Poison Snake is an example of this

Despite the seemingly excruciating pain that Doggo should have felt, I only felt a feeling of sadness at its inability to defeat the snake, or rather its slow reaction to the snake's swift speed.

It approximately took me 8 days of taking care of doggo before he returned to his full strength, but not all is that bad as it gained a single level after surviving the 8 days, greater resistance to poison, and substantial increase to evil mana manipulation.

And of course, in process I was also able to refine my mana manipulation, though only the skills "Healing Roots" and "Carnivorous Roots" got improved.

The 4 birds is currently being groomed by me to become a way to relay my commands to the blood servant when I am too far when necessary, but possibly also guide them when the mental connection's cost is no longer viable.

They are currently as strong as the average mana beasts, but they might be lacking in a battle due to their lack of combat experience with their strength, while the mana beasts has been fighting other mana beasts and my blood servant forces that are sent to harvest the lives of some animals for my nourishment.

So I have been sending them to attack other mana beasts to make sure that their instincts are not fully dulled by the influence of my mana and main body. I might have to deal with safer methods of training in the future.

I have asked the system about what is the differences and categories of the 2 beast types that I have encountered, but I only heard the echoes of nothingness from the system.

It seems that the system has a bit of grudge against me, or most likely everyone considering its attitude for just the most basic of information. Unfortunately, as long as I don't have access to civilization, I wouldn't be able to gain good information for my development's guidance.

Apparently, all settlements with the right requirements can become recognized by the system, gaining access to the features it can provide relative to the settlement's quality and size.

Unfortunately, only humanoids can access the system's shop and other features, while monsters are stuck with their version of the system which shouldn't be inferior, at least I believe it to be, so I am under the assumption that there is more to the monster-version system than what I currently have.

For my personal skills

My fruit bearer skill got system improved twice for nearly a month of usage, causing me to be able to hold as much as 5 fruits, with them being as large as tennis balls now rather than cherries.

I have been trying to modify the contents of the Blood Fruits to better suit my needs. The current ones seems to be something stored within my biology just like when I was growing, though I am not sure if that is connected to the difficulty in manipulating the fruit's composition.

As for now, trying to cut the fruit causes it to destabilize and rapidly lose energy. Though they have been useful in rapidly increasing my mana output when necessary, but not too much as a far too fast extraction causes instability too.

For now, I use the extraction method when converting the corpses. This increased the time of conversion from 1 hour to 4 hours, but it wastes a lot less mana. This is only possible due to gaining the skill "Mana Control" after doing the conversion with the One-Fruit method a few more times.

Unfortunately, it is still a bit painful to see fumes upon fumes of evil mana being wasted into empty space, but I will work into that in the future when I am done in the present project.

As for the details on the expansion of my "territory", it is far more complicated than a level expansion.

In the entirety of what I claim is my territory, contains 48 mana beasts that is equal to the quick poison snake and my Doggo.

It was originally 63 but we hunted 7 and the others died due to the other reasons.

They are distributed unevenly, especially with the difference in terrain. First, 5.4 kilometers north of me is a mountain range that stretches from west to east, with area that hasn't been fully explored by my servants.

There are also 4 relatively large rivers, one of the places that has the lightest concentration of the Little Lords(I will be calling the 48 remaining notable mana beasts as the Little Lords). I haven't been able to spend resources for water exploration on the rivers though.

There are 5 notable mana beasts that have become my target due to reasons. First, the Quick Poison Snake due to its excellent poison and Doggo's vengeful feelings about it, second is a 7-petaled pink flower that is being protected by the third, a human-sized brown bat that can use mental attacks.

The 4th is some sort of Rat King, and the 5th is a pudgy brown bird.

Previous observations have provided me insight towards the mana usage of other beasts, the Quick Poison Snake can help me with that when my constant inspection of its poison alone provided me the capability to produce liquids with my evil mana, with a light poisonous property.

So I am anticipating its capture, or even just its dead body with poison samples.

As for the 7-Petaled Pink Flower and its guardian, I was originally not that interested on the flower as it seems to be not much of a threat, until I saw it and the Mind Bat cooperate.

2 of the blood servants that I assigned for reconnaissance got ambushed by it, which was surprising considering one of the natural abilities that I bestowed to them, the skill "Blood Vision".

Blood Vision provides them with the ability to sense any form of ill-will that is targeted on them as long as it is within sight and within 100 meters. They did not sense anything before the Mind Bat appeared to cover the sky and temporarily blocked my mental connection to them.

I no longer felt the presence of their life a moment later, indicating death.

This provided me the dreadful possibility that operations involving my blood servants would constantly be under the threat of being whittled down, and that cannot be accepted.

So in Month 1, Day 3, I sent 20 blood servants that is being led by Doggo, with 2 of my birds circling the skies above.

I lost 5 more blood servants to pinpoint the location of the Mind Bat's base, and it was on the 7-Petaled Flowers clearing.

But I lost the battle, I was too wary with the Mind Bat threat that I forgot that other Little Lords or mana beasts can intervene in the fight.

And that is exactly what happened.

The Flower was able to emit an odorless and colorless poison mana that slowly entered my approaching blood servants through the pores.

When they finally surrounded the Mind Bat and the Pink Flower, the Mind Bat suddenly released an excruciating wail that pierced the forest's silence, while at the same time muddling the feeble minds of my blood servants.

It also cut off my mental connection in the area, temporarily blocking me from observing them. As much as they are more than 15 kilometers away and I can still use the stored images within the automatic skill "Senses Recorder".

"Senses Recorder" allows me to enchant an object or servant with evil mana that can record 5 minutes worth of my servant's senses, and has been crucial to my information collection about areas that I can't reach with mental connection.

This seems to have activated the hidden poison too, restricting the movements of their bodies, meaning both the body and mind has been hit.

The Pink Flower also started releasing its pinkish mana that merged with the Mind Bat, increasing the Mind Bat's aura by a substantial amount, until it easily dwarfs Doggo's aura when it was originally almost equal to Doggo's only.

Meanwhile, only Doggo and the 5 Blood Humanoids with blood seeds within them were able to wake up on time to start fighting the Mind Bat before it can inflict any damage, while the rest of the group is still stuck in the 2-way entrapment.

Doggo confronts the Mind Bat while the other 5 is behind the dog, just in the sides to make sure that they can support Doggo when there is a chance.

There was a tiny stand-off which was broken by the Mind Bat as it tried to blast another mental blast at my blood servants, but before it can finish the skill, it was blasted by Doggo's bark.

This made it disoriented and confused, something that Doggo didn't pass up as it pounced at the bat, but the mind bat was not easily injured as it managed to sober itself, and flew up to avoid doggo's terrifying maw.

Doggo's maw sealed shut as one of the bat's feet was not able to escape the pounce in time. It cried out, as the wound starts spewing out blood as Doggo repeatedly bite till the bat's feet is cut off.

Meanwhile, the 5 blood servants have not been idle and were actually running at the bat to pierce its body with the wood weapons that I made with the skill "Wood Melding". While the rest of the immobile blood servants starts showing signs of waking up.

Despite all the pain that the Mind Bat is feeling, it did not waste a single second when Doggo is still trying to pounce again by releasing a mental blast that targeted only Doggo and the 5 mobile blood servants.

This managed to stop their movements for a moment, but enough to go up in the sky for it to escape the hits of the 5 blood servants, but not Doggo when the surface of its fur started getting covered with a thin layer of red aura.

This gave Doggo enough strength to bite on the other feet of the bat despite the bat rapidly rising into the air, causing another cry of pain, while the bat glared at Doggo, seemingly asking if he has some kind of feet fetish.

The 2 birds in the sky also started rapidly descending towards the compromised mind bat, but the mind bat casted another mental blast, this time directed at the 2 birds and Doggo causing the birds to horribly miss their descent while Doggo released his jaw's vice-like grip.

The bat when released suddenly changed the direction of its flight, that instead of going upward it suddenly dived down onto Doggo, pounding it into the ground with a massive thud and the ground cracking a bit from the strike.

But before they can recover from the previous mental blast, the mind bat was once again released another mental blast.

This mental blast was a lot stronger than the previous ones, its strength almost being twice the previous ones and has an effect stronger than the 2-way technique it had used at the beginning.

This blast is also far more concentrated, and most likely is aimed again at the group near the bat.

But at this time, is where the recording ended and I was able to connect to my blood servants again.

Sensing the mental magic that the bat was about to cast, I increased the mana input in the mental connection to act as a first line defense against the blast and to make sure that it didn't break.

And it came.

The mental blast felt overwhelming as I struggled to spend a huge amount of mana for too little of an output against it, it easily ripped apart the mental shield I made, forcing me to just huddle within Doggo's defense until the connection is strong enough again.

An invisible wave hit Doggo, while 5 smaller waves hit the approaching 5 blood servants while another 1 wave spread to immobilize the awakening blood servants.

This caused Doggo to be petrified while the Mind Bat repeatedly bites at its 2 front legs, face, and face. It bit off one of its paws, leaving behind a bone paw with traces of meat and a few toe bones missing, while also biting more and more of that leg, leaving behind only bones with meat hanging off.

It also scratched and bit at the upper abdomen after turning one of doggo's arm useless, causing huge amounts of its fur and meat to come off till the ribs is starting to show while Doggo's face remains clueless.

But it was only limited to there as I finally managed to stabilize the connection and rapidly pour mana into strengthening the connection and possibly providing a bit of support.

In the center of the cement anomaly surrounded by a forest, is a tree that is almost 7 meters tall with the trunk as thick as at least 1 meter. It has a healthy crown of leaves that glistens under the sun's rays, with a brown trunk that seems to mimic an ancient tree's look while being as smooth as a polished piece of wood.

On its branches are fruits that glistens with a sanguine color, with a nice and healthy sheen to it but shows not even a single trace of mana when the surroundings is populated with it.

Suddenly, the fruits started emitting mana naturally while also releasing a sweet scent. The entire tree slowly started to shine, until it almost looked like a red bulb with huge amounts of water-like red mana climbing up its trunk and into the center of its crown.

Even more energy is coming out of the wood near the tree trunk's top as the fruits are being extracted at a rapid rate, coalescing with the other energies that came from other parts of the tree.

Every living creature within 1 kilometer can feel the overwhelming amount of sinister mana, while mana beasts and the sensitive ones can sense it from as far as 3 kilometers.

A monster is moving