After the passing hours, it was finally over. The new power finally manifested. I reopened my eyes seeing the world in new light. Literally. I could finally see what the other tiered people could see. The traces of spirit essences that is floating around. This is also where true cultivation start. The ability to draw spirit essences into oneself to become spirit energy.

Hopping back into my mind, i tested my new power. For one moment i thought it was what i wanted. The replication ability. It felt the same yet different. There was like no drain.to minute to matter. Recovering the very moment of manifestation. Except i could feel everything from it. I could feel what it feels like it was an additional arm of mine. Knowing that, i stepped out of my mind. I had to try it out. Finding Daniel, i asked him for a practice combat. I needed to test out my powers. Something that only recently i could use offensively.

Reaching the combat grounds, Daniel readied himself and waiting for me to start. He brings out an armored trilobite. It is a defensive tree perfect for practice combat. I brought out my tree. The vine. It still looked the same. I practiced with it. Monitoring my spirit consumption, i started from 1 hh to 80 hh i made sure i have full control. Thankfully, like how it went in my mind, the drain had become minimal. I was recovering faster than my drain. This was not supposed to happen though. It was just that the speed of my cultivation was way higher than most at this tier 1. Confirming that, i began to take offensive. With the replication ability, i made more and more vines manifest. Upon breaking even with my cultivation speed, i have about 70 standing about not doing anything. It felt like i have 70 additions limbs all around me. Moving them about would be too draining. I let most of it dissipate and started my offensive. 5 vines waved about in the air heading towards Daniel’s shield. As the vines flew, they began to bend and twist into different shapes.

It was a peculiar situation for Daniel. He had fought with many people before. There were many with the ability to replicate but he has never seen that many at one go. Not only that, each vine was doing its own action. They weaved and formed into different animals and weapons. There was not much that could be done but to take them on head on. Seeing what that is coming, he parried them one at a time the rabbit pounced and jumped all over, doing head pounds when it has the chance to. Like a spring the serpent-like vine springs about binding daniel in its track. The others were weapons that binds as well. A snare, a web and a whip. Daniel had no way to fight back. No one expects a vine to be so versatile. Zero offensive ability other than that head pound. All trapping ability only. A support type. It is a simple system. Offensive beats support, support beats defensive and defensive beats offensive if they are of the same level. And i tier 1 support just beat Daniel who is a tier 3 it was a predisposition thing but to hold down someone who is 2 tiers higher is still rare among the lower levels.

After a brief contemplation, Daniel decided it was time for me to go hunting. Pulling Amy, Joyce and 2 others along, it quickly progressed on. We entered the outer woods of the nearby hinterland. It was a trip made for me. Everyone else was just support. They wanted to see how far we could push for my ability. We had a rolling cage with us. As a support ability, it would be interesting to see how many i can bring back alive for breeding.

The outer woods is sparsely populated by tier 1-3 beast. The deeper we go the higher tier they get. Moving quickly through the woods, we breeze through most of the tier 1 and 2. The evasive and fast ones took a little more time.

After the 5th pair of captured animal, all i saw was the eye of 5 adults blinded by money. Woe on me.

They did me promise me the future cores though. I would need fillers cores in the future. The humor was that they forgot i am a tier 1 spirit lord. I need way more cores than most people. Humans still need plenty of cores, but beast breed faster. As long as there is food for them, they will breed. Also, not everyone can afford them.

Everyone is now blinded by the greed while i am holding on to another goal in mind. I need the final cores for my fruits. Lightning foxhound and armored elehog. Speed and offensive. Maybe something poisonous in the future. Maybe some steel tipped beast as well. So much plans but without the final cores it means nothing. And with my binding ability, it would mean i get to keep them to the freshest. When i need the cores.

Traveling deeper into the woods, we reached the edge of the outer woods. It is where true danger begins. Not knowing when we will meet an enemy. We set up a base camp. All in all, we now have 5 pairs of basic tier 1 beasts 3, pairs of tier 2 beasts and 1 pair of tier 3 beasts. Not a bad haul. It is just that not all of them will survive or breed to large numbers. Sabotage is prevalent between factions and families.

We took turns resting and keeping watch. Not that i needed to but they wanted to keep it routine. Best not to be complacent.

Recalling all the details of woods i am in, i am hoping for some plant beast. In pockets of areas filled with dense spirit, sometimes we have plants that gains some form of awareness. They will at some point gain cores as well. There are 2 such zones in the near vicinity. I however, know of another 1. The location was mentioned in one of the diaries from 300 years back. It is located at a nearby canyon. The owner of the diary did not go to to that area he was in a rush and it was inaccessible for him. It was a small cave on the other side of the wall with an outcropping. He would have missed it if he had not used spirit sight to look around for beast hiding nearby. He came back months later but could not remember where it could be.

Spirit sight is something that everyone learns to use automatically when they gain their first branch. It is simply the ability to sense the spirit essence in the air around us. Beast with cores would also radiate spirit energy from their body. This energy would cause ripples in the spirit essence. No one keeps spirit sight on all the time. Imagine seeing colors floating all around you in different colors mingling and drifting about is fascinating at the beginning, but prolonged usage would cause nausea and various hallucinogenic effect. It drove quite a number crazy doing so.

What a waste.

Dawn broke and we headed to the canyon. It was just at the edge of the woods we were at. Together with Joyce, the two of us began hunting for that forgotten cave. After spending about an hour hunting, i made the discovery. It was really faint. It was no wonder that he could not find it. The cave had collapsed and the outcrop that he remembered had also fallen. Joyce almost could not detect it. I had to direct her to it for her to notice that minute difference. The wind spirit essence in the canyon is too volatile and easily hides the cave entrance. Knowing where the exact spot is, we headed to the other side with help of Amy’s tree and my tree.the winds in the canyon are aggressive and so the idea we came up with was that I made a rope bridge out of many vines while Amy's tree assisted us when we cross. We had to leave the cage behind for a moment so the other 2 stayed and only Amy, Daniel, Joyce and i headed for the cave. Daniel’s trilobite crawled along the wall and dug a path for us. I had to support it with my vine so that the winds did not blow away his tree. It was quite interesting to see the wall being shaved away.

AN: It would look something like this. http://www.plumby.com/photos/1998/1998_09_grandcanyon_havasupai/images/File0357.jpg

2 hours later, we reach the cave opening. We pretty much clinged on to the wall all the way. Daniel had made hand holds all along the path. So it was pretty much safe.

It took another hour before we managed to clear the rubble and enter the cave. The moment we cleared the cave, our first reaction was to turn away to puke. The was a massive grotesque outgrowth pulsing in the center. Around it laid what seem to be human corpses. The corpses looks shriveled and dead for for hundreds of year. It seemed like we were not the first. The horror was not that there were human corpses. The horror was they were still alive. And they were connected to the outgrowth.

It was a parasitic relationship where the outgrowth feeds off the barely alive ‘human corpses’.

One thing is for sure. That grotesque outgrowth is the cause of that slight spirit essence distortion. There is a core in it. From the looks of it, it is dangerous. Stepping away from the cave, we gathered back with the other 2 waiting at the cage.

an:Think http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=107385

So… what do we do? Kill it or leave it? Can we save the humans? Is it safe to even approach it.

After the slight discussion, it was a consensus.

Torch it. If anything survives, torch it again. If it could survive so long, it is dangerous so it must be killed. while we still can.

It was a painful hour to pass. Those screams that kept ringing in my head. Those endless resounding echo that will not leave my memories until the end of time.

The screams finally died down. We left the fire burning for a little while longer just in case and then we waited. After a brief peek into the cave, we send another 2 rounds of fire into it just in case.

After the cave cooled down, i used my tree to dig around for anything that could have been left. It was like finding a pen with your finger in a room with your eyes closed. It is just a good thing that I have over 100 ‘fingers' seeking at the same time. It was draining but it is more efficient.

After about another hour, i finally retrieved everything that i feel could be useful. Rings, armors, jewelries, and various items that survived the fiery assaults. Flipping through all these items we finally found what we wanted.

The core.

We flamed it again just in case. Very much to our surprise, we could hear an echo of scream coming from it. It is still alive! We continued to flame it. We flamed it until the scream died out. Then flamed it a while more just in case once again and then i probed it. Not Joyce as i have a higher level of spirit cultivation than her. Looking into the memories of the core, all i saw was fragments of what it did when it was still alive. Absorb. Absorb and give back.it absorbed spirit from the people it is attached to and puts them into a dream like state. These people do not die immediately but waste away with time, resulting in those “corpses” we saw at that time. Knowing that it has two abilities that are very useful to me, i decided to move on and plan on what i could do with it. To hold and gain 2 fruits at a time or take a gamble for one of abilities, or do i want to use it as a branch. A brief contemplation, with my lack of elemental abilities, i could still wait and give it as a future branch. The ability is too good to pass. With that i stored it away in a box for storing cores to reduce loss. Nature element has the best absorb ability. It absorbs almost everything that is not too extreme. As for the other items, we split everything excluding me. I already have the best item in this cave. We decided that this extra trip will be our secret and headed to the deeper woods once again.

Within the box, a small rattle was heard but no one noticed.