All the creatures here are like body builders, the squirrels have legs that make up 60% of their bodies and leap around, even the birds will have buffed up necks that allow them to peck at a rediculously fast speed and strength.

Most creatures also seem to use the pulsating mana to improve their physical attacks.

I am at a point where I can experiment with this mana myself as I walk, although leaping from one object to another is a faster way to transprt myself.

Having Ratina carry me is more comfortable though, so most of the time I just travel that way.

None of the creatures in the area seem to be above rank 2, and none of us have gained any levels after 4 hours of hunting.

That is when the tremors began.

The earth shook with a massive sound echoing from further in the forest. It didn't seem to be approaching but I had Ratina build a temporary base from earth magic just in case.

I use my astral projection skill to investigate what is happening further in the forest.

The concentration of the pulsating mana in the ground rises the closer I get to the direction, and the ranks of the local monsters rises as well. The trees also begin to become fewer, but the ones that remain are larger and larger.

After about 45 minutes of flying and the earth has started to break apart from the tremors, and all the monsters are far stronger than me to a degree where I can't tell by just how much the difference is.

The source of the tremors are 2 gigantic monsters at the center of the clearing. The landscape is decimated and the grassland is littered with craters.

One of the kaijuu has a shell like a horshoe crab and a bipedal form with 6 arms that is closer to an insect than a human and has spikes covering the body.

The other one is a gigantic lizardman with deep green scales and both of them have absurd muscles for their already over sized bodies.

The are fighting by taking turns charging up and punching the other, both are smiling and wait for the other to get up after they fall down.

They also seem to use massive amounts of pulsating mana to enhance their physical abilities, sometimes they even move the mana around as a feint to misdirect their opponent.

I let my monsters know that the danger is far away and isn't focused on us so they can relax a bit, and observe the fight for a while longer.

Watching them fight is pretty awesome at first, but begins to get boring after a while of them repeating similar moves over and over, so I cancel the astral form and return to my group.

It makes sense that we are on the outer edge of this territory after leaving the last one, and now there is a decision to make.

Do we stay hunting the weakest creatures that barely give any xp, or do we go further in to hunt things closer to our strength at the risk of getting noticed by the stronger monsters beyond what we can handle?

Ratina and Pythana wat to go all in, but Nasby would rather play it safe.

Seeing as all my monsters are still level 1, I go slightly deeper to where the level 2s are somewhat common as opposed to few and far between and we hunt there. I also tell Ratina not to use explosion so that we don't alert the whole forest to our presense.

Ratina and Pythana both manage to level up once, Pythana levels up her shadow strike skill thanks to me using lecture on her for the skill, and I get a new skill.

Xp assist LV1 Able to transfer up to 10% of the xp you would get for a kill to another target, xp transferred is based on how much the target would get for the kill instead of the owner

This is useful for training new monsters, but I still need all the xp I can get to catch up to Nasby's rank and avoid having too much of a penalty for my monster being a higher rank than me.

Ratina wants me to constantly use it on her but I deny her request no matter how cute she pouts or adorably she stares at me. They are quite powerful weapons of cuteness, but my defenses ultimately prevail.

While I do have a new taming slot, the xp is already getting split quite substantially with a party of 5 and I dislike the idea of slowing it down even more.

Instead I come up with an interesting experiment to use it for.

I plant a flower seed using my farming skill and tame it, I then use telepathy to leave it a message I doubt a baby plant can comprehend, much less remember, but its the thought that counts.

"I am going to leave you with a magic connection, but otherwise you will be on your own. This connection will provide you with knowladge you can use to defeat your foes and rise above your peers. If one day you become strong enough to move, you can seek us out as comrades to reach the pinnacle of this world" (Auxentius)

"He went full chuuni...." (Nasby)

"A speech to be expected of master, we will become far more powerful than the idiotic masses and become unstoppable" (Ratina)

"None will escape the darkness kukuku" (Pythana)

"I will be strong enough that no one will steal my food ever again" (Slimerene)

"That wasn't an invitation for the rest of you to start!" (Nasby)

We leave the independent little flower who I will let choose her own name, and head to sleep for the night. The flower seed is tamed and has magic connection, but is not in our party.

The tremors have stopped by the next morning, I have Ratina carry my body while they hunt as I use astral projection to view the aftereffects.

Both fighters are still alive and hanging out, seems like it was more of a friendly competition than a fight to the death.

The landscape is still littered with craters, but the grass is already growing back, and the pulasting mana will occasionally kick up a large amount of devastation here so it seems that plant life here is quick to restore dead zones.

That actually makes me curious about the border of the undead lands and here, I decide to float my astral body over to look at it in more detail.

The flower I planted before still doesn't have a level yet, but is already a 3rd of the way there so it should be finished growing in about 2 days.

The pulsating mana concentration gradually lowers and even bottoms out to the point where I can't sense it before after a long while traces of undead mana permeate the ground.

The border is less a line and more a dead zone of mana between biomes, the few monsters that live (or "live" as the undead ones) in the mana dead zone are all low ranks with a few rare rank 1s among many rank 0s. Undead and muscly are more common, but all sorts of other ones exist with some appearing normal and others having fire or water abilities.

After looking around for a while I even discover what appears to be a territorial conflict as a group of rank 3-4 undead battle rank 3-4 muscly fighters, the fighters even manage to punch ghosts with the pulsating mana so that neither side has a decisive advantage.

The mana still seems like a dead zone though, so does winning the conflict alter the natural mana concentration, or does it change when certain creatures live there long enough and they are fighting to gradually change it? I initially postulated that the undead mana was spread by a singular powerful lord, but maybe all creatures influence it to a degree. Or maybe they are in a cooperative excerzise to train skills or are part of an agreement among their lords to level up by killing each other. I'll need to debate this more with Ratina later as the others have little interest in these types of things.

I cancel astral projection to return to the others and begin alternating between using lecture on Ratina and trying to figure out mana bolt.

I manage to learn mana bolt by the end of the day, Raina levels up ice shard, Slimerene levels up once, and Pythana levels up lesser venom spray.

Mana bolt LV1 Fires a blast of mana at your foes to deal damage MP cost 15, cooldown 15

I use mana bolt for a while to figure out how it works while we finish up hunting. For one thing, mana bolt is even weaker than my unlevelable ball skills, and Ratina's magic grew in strength when she got levels for them.

On the other hand, mana bolt can become any attribute I am farmilar with, it can become ice, electric, dark, light, death, even the pulsating mana. It can't however be curse magic which I have never seen beyond a possible evolutionary affinity, but any I have interacted with are fair game.

I try to make one out of the place I was when I died, but that interferance turns it into death attribute when I try it. I am still hesistant to directly try to break the rules of the world at my current strength, but it is annoying how it keeps interfering with my experimentation.

I also notice that using the pulsating mana makes it take less MP to make a ball of the same concentration of other attributes, and that using the base MP cost will have it more concentrated than the rest.

This is likely indicated that the enviornment will affect my skill, or there is something special about this pulsating mana.

While being weaker than the magic Ratina practices, the versatlity of mana bolt is far greater as I can even mix multiple attributes into a single attack, but Ratina already just learns multiple paths of magic anyway so this skill would rarely be useful for her.

She still tries to learn it of course, it could lead to a future evolution and she still doesn't have any death or pulsating magic skills.

I decide to try sending my astral projection up and around to scout as far out as possible while the others all hunt.

My astral projection can only travel for 2 hours upward before reaching the maximum range, and considering I fly at a walking speed that means I am about 6 miles up, and from there I can see the size of this forest as well as see quite far into the undead lands.

I can see plenty of massive creatures near the centers of these areas, but there is no sign of civilization in sight.

I can barely see the surrounding territories other than the undead one, so while we will travel to the closest one I can't quite tell what they have in store at this distance.

I rejoin the others and enter the middle of a fight against a 3 meter muscly spider that is constantly punching Nasby while the others team up on it. I try and teach Nasby to sense magic so that she can try and mimic using pulsating mana to fight, but as usual Nasby has little in both talent and interest in learning magic.

Pythana on the other hand has much more success and manages to learn

Ki manipulation Able to manipulate ki mana to enhance your physical prowess and deal damage to creatures otherwise immune to physical attacks.

The pulsating mana is evidently called ki, and using it allows Pythana's pounce to have yet another skill making her go increadibly fast for a powerful strike.

Even the rank 2 spider we are fighting now only survived her assassinate because she missed hitting any vitals, stacking assassination and shadow strike on a vital hit wither her dagger will one shot most enemies, especially since her dagger does bonus damage to beasts who are the predominant creature type in this forest.

Despite Pythana's insane speed however, the creatures here are used to CQC and are able to react fast enough to block or parry her first attack to avoid an instant loss, some of them even manage to counter-attack even when she ambushes them.

However if they don't notice her when she is about a half meter away or closer, they don't usually have time to react before their heads are gone or a knife is where there heart was a moment ago.

With evade detection even I don't notice her from a distance, and if she hits a vital point she could deal substantial damage to me even with a rank and 40 levels between us.

Ratina can quickly finish off anything Pythana hits, and Slimerene is far more effective tanking here than Nasby because even though ki lets them damage her, it is weaker than it would be on Nasby and her life force drain makes up the difference.

By the end of the day Nasby levelled up healing aura, Pythana levelled up silent footsteps, and Slimene levelled up life force drain. I also manage to get a new skill that I think unlocked by maxing out lecture.

Class lecture LV1 Able to use the lecture skill on up to 2 targets at a time with 50% less effectiveness on each target.

In the long term this skill is equivocally the same, but hopefully leveling it up more will make it increase the total rate and not just allow more and more targets at less and less efficiency.

By the next day we have another decision to make, if we move to the next area than we will begin going to lower mana concentrations than we are at now meaning even weaker hunting for a few days before entering a new territory.

We could head out now, but we are still mostly at low levels from evolutions so it may be better to train here some more, and if we do delay to train more it may be better to go to a higher level area as all the fights here have been so easy we could probably split up to hunt and still be fine.

Either way it is best if I scout with astral projection tomarrow while the others hunt so that we have a basic understanding of what the next area has in store.

Ratina wants us to just farm this area untill we are strong enough to beat up any local lords that get in our way, but I am against that as it as that is a great way to get the attention of the regional lords and we also can discover new forms of mana and hopefully therefore new evolutionary options by exploring more.

We come to a general agreement to at least get Nasby up to level 15 before heading out to the new territory unless the locals are all super weak to our party composition, or the next area is too dangerous and we need to leave this area from a different exit.