It had been an entire year since that incident with his mana pool splitting, not that there was any kind of calendar. Will ended up just made each month as 30 days, 12 months in the year, and however many hours there were in a day (he didn’t bother counting as he had better things to do). Over the course of this period Will had learned more about the world.

One of those things being that apparently you are never too old to be held by your neck. Shui-er seemed to believe that whenever she is interacting with her little brother, the tighter she gripped his neck, the closer they are to each other.

Will wasn’t entirely sure which parent put that stupid idea into her head, but when he grew up, he was going to beat the everlasting shit out of one of them.

There were other new changes that occurred over the course of year. Will have picked up more minions...cough, pets. They were named, Blacky, a tiny ant queen, whom Will found while gathering munchies for Professor Bun-Bun. It seemed that there exists ants in this world, kinda weird for a mana filled place, but hey, there’s also Professor Bun-Bun. Will rescued her from another ant colony invasion, right after she lost the war and was about to become food for her enemies.

A few months later, Will found the bargain pair after wandering a bit further away from the house then usual.

First is Fluffy, an injured blue-furred kitty, whom Will helped nurse back to health by feeding it grass, and no, he still doesn’t understand why it ate only grass and vegetables. At least he didn’t have to roast Professor Bun-Bun’s siblings. Fluffy had small odd shallow holes where blood was trickling from when Will found him. Luckily, the wounds scabbed over pretty quickly after Will fed it some more grass.

And then there is Birdy, a small red feathered bird, who Will found right next to the injured Fluffy. It seemed that Birdy had been clawed by another animal and was bleeding out heavily at the time. Will had to bandage the wounds with woven grass patches, as there was literally nothing else around, before also feeding it plants to recover. At least Birdy was somewhat bird-like and ate flowers, which Will was somewhat sure is part of their diet… right?

At least those lessons he learned in basket weaving come in handy, something that he never thought would ever be used in his entire life.

Still he had wondered what kind of deranged animal would attack two small little ones and leave them hurting and bleeding on the ground. The day he found whoever was responsible would be the day he would have an actual meal. Preferably roasted, but he wasn’t picky.

Strangely enough, for some reason Fluffy and Birdy treated each other like mortal enemies…

The three new additions to the little family wasn’t the biggest change. Will had been experimenting with the connection between mana pools, and had discovered an amazing secret! Using the information and data he gathered from his new minions, it could be concluded that… he still had no idea WTF is going on.

Basically, whenever Will connected other creature’s mana pool to him, it somehow connected everything within together. In other words, when he connects his mana pool to say, Professor Bun-Bun’s, they aren’t actually sharing the mana within the pools; they are sharing the pools themselves.

So taking the first time Will had “recovered” his mana from Professor Bun-Bun, it wasn’t really mana that he took back, but the mana pool that was storing the mana. That little bit of information came with a bunch of new questions, like how regardless of the way he splits the mana pool between those connected to him, they would all still have growth in their personal mana pool?

Will had messed with this concept once when he absorbed everyone’s mana pool into his own body, and then he watched as his little minion’s bodies continue on creating their lost mana pool from zero like nothing happened.

In fact, rather then mana pool, as it would invoke a sense of an actual pool, Will felt that it would be more akin to mana sand. Tiny bits of hollow sand that each hold a small amount of mana within. Regardless of how much sand there is, there is always new sand being “created” that can hold mana within their bodies.

Sadly, Will discovered that it’s not really the fastest in terms of actual increase, as even if they all gained say, a handful of mana sand daily. It really doesn’t change much for him at all. The creation of each mana sand takes far too long, about an hour or so. That’s to say, about 24 mana sands a day (not that he counted) for each creature connected to Will, including himself.

Problem is, Will still haven’t determined exactly how his body, and those of his minion’s, creates the mana sand in the first place. He get that his body somehow filtered the outside mana through his stomach. But for the life of him, he couldn’t find what was doing the filtering.

Recently, his parents seemed extremely sad whenever they looked at Will.

At first Will thought it might have been because whenever he wasn't experimenting with mana, he stuffed them all into Professor Bun-Bun. But after thinking for a bit, he threw the thought away.

Will was smart and made sure to keep his mana pool level at the point when he had first “gained” it back all those months ago. This basically ensured there was nothing suspicious for his parents to find out.

He figured that they were probably sad because he was growing up. Now that he was able to stop Shui-er from holding him, mainly due to the fact that he still didn’t want to die yet. Not when things were looking so good for this new life and his future.

Reminiscing of all the events that had transpired over the course of the year was basically a way for him to ignore the glaring reality in front of him.

Will stood in the living room with a sleepy Shui-er next to him, who seemed to be still groggy from waking up suddenly. On the table, that was never used his entire short life, was a piece of parchment that glowed in the faint light streaming through the open door of the house. It appears to be made from dried tree bark or something of the sort, and was rather old as it had bits of the corners ripped and worn out.

On the parchment there was two parts to it, one side filled with little drawings and arrows pointing to the next one. For the other side, there was a definite asian-like writing style that strongly resemble Japanese characters

It all started when Will woke up this morning, snuggled up with his minions around him, inside of his little crib bed. Usually around this time, Will would be able to hear the sounds of his “mommy” trying to make Shui-er get up from bed. However, today there were no sounds of Shui-er saying to give her a few minutes or the sounds of “mommy’s” voice trying to wake up her daughter.

Feeling that it was too quiet, Will jumped out from his little crib bed, or more accurately, barely land on his feet from his little hop down. Holding on to Professor Bun-Bun in his hands with Blacky clinging on his shoulder, Will walked out into the living room and found the front door wide open and his parent nowhere to be seen. The only thing left was the parchment on the table.

So Will immediately went off to wake up his sister from her room, and dragged her over to the table. It was during this time when Will tried to ignore reality, since people don’t just randomly disappear! And if they did, they should have said something or even screamed if the zombies got them.

They wouldn't just go poof and not make any noise.

Sighing, Will knew he had no choice, so Will tried to go through the little pictures first. Going by what he knows, there are no knowledge related to their writing and reading style within his little head. So by process of elimination the pictures should be for him and Shui-er to understand.

The first image was two stickman that were holding “hands”, and behind them was a badly drawn house. Following the arrows, the next image was another two stickman, this time they seemed to be drawn smaller in scale, or it could just be the bad art. In the background, Will could see some weirdly shaped creatures that seemed to be making a circle around a bed-like object.

Or it could just have been a really badly made box with poles.

'Are they trying to say that we are going to be sacrificed in our beds and that they are going to watch it happen?'

Following that picture, the next one was another stickman, but this time it was holding some sort of long cross in its hand. The previous smaller stickman show up again along with the sacrificing creatures.

'A church person is coming to stop the sacrifice ritual? And they don’t want to be caught? I can’t understand these shitty pictures!'

Then the final image was of a group of stickman, all holding that long-ass cross in their hands. They were surrounding the small stickmen and the weird creatures, and in this one, the background appeared to be clouds. But it could just as likely be fog…

'So, the - what I’m guessing as a priest - shows up. Then somehow we all go into heaven? Or some sort of fog place and… you know what I’ll just see if I can read this crap.'

Switching over to the other side of the parchment, Will tried to read what it’s saying.

'Let’s see… this first symbol sorta looks like a snake. So, Shui-er? It starts with a ‘S’. Probably right. This next one looks like a line...so it goes Shui-er line?'

Frustrated about his inability to read the language, Will looked over at Shui-er, “Big Sissy! Can you read what this says? Me no understand what it is trying to tell us...Big Sissy? BIG SISSY!”

Yelling at his dozing off sister, Will tried to wake her up. After a few minutes of shaking, yelling, and talking, Will concluded that his “mommy” must have been some kind of magician. There was no way to wake Shui-er up at all.

“BOOOOM!!”

That was when the giant shockwave exploded outside.

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

Daddy POV

“Dear, are you sure it's fine that we just let the sect take care of them for now? You know how Will might have messed up his body somehow and be unable to cultivate past Qi Condensation Stage 2! What if he gets bullied by the other children in the sect?” “Mommy” seemed really stressed out as they both flew through the air. They were moving faster than anything below them as they flew past the dense forest of tangled trees and creatures underneath.

“Look, if we were to try to take care of our mission and the kids at the same time, it would end up with us not being able to do either completely through. Besides, Will’s a big boy, when I was his age; I was already pushed off a cliff!”

He then felt an intense stare from his wife, “Dear, we still don’t know exactly how they would turn out. So if you lose your goddamn mind and tried tossing MY children off a cliff, I’m gonna. RIP. YOU. APART. OK?”

Attempting to make his best smile at his scary, scary wife, he tried to calm her down, “Dear, look we just need to take care of this mission. It shouldn’t take a month at most, the only reason we couldn’t complete it earlier was because we kept returning to ensure that nothing happened to the children - “

“KKKKAAAABBBOOOOM”

A mansion sized hole appeared on the ground, some 500-meters below.

A dark voice that seemed like it crawled out of hell vibrated over the gap, “Oh? Dear, did you just imply that our children are a BURDEN? That THEY were what kept us from observing the stupid humans and their movements? If you had the capacity to blame the children, why don’t you use your USELESS-ASSED wings and fly around?”

Trying to stop his body from trembling, he looked at the she-devil in front of him, and thought bitterly.

'If I had known she was a psycho, even mating season compulsions wouldn’t have made me do what I did…. Now it's too late for me… Hopefully she doesn’t flip out and kill me. Need to calm her down; this might be the separation anxiety I heard about that frequently occurs in females.'

“Dear, you misunderstood! I meant that I love our adorable children SO much that I don’t want us to keep separating while doing our mission! The faster we finish this the more time we can spend as a family! Right? You want that don't you?”

'And the more time I can make sure they don’t end up like you… '

Almost like a switch was flipped, “mommy” went right back to worried mother mode again.

“Sorry, you’re right. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I’m just anxious that our children wouldn’t know what’s going on and get scared about where we are.”

'Well, maybe if you listened to me and just told them what’s going on you wouldn’t feel that way. But you were like, “Oh no! I can’t bear seeing them cry as I depart, so we need to leave before they wake up!” Hell, not even I could understand those shit drawings and I knew exactly what is happening. I still can't make out what you were trying to tell them through those things. Good thing I wrote a note for whoever is coming to pick up the children about their habits and stuff.'

Looking as if she suddenly remembered something, “mommy” asked, “By the way dear, do you know what’s up with Will’s rabbit? The last time I checked it, it had grown from mortal up to Qi Condensation Stage 2. But I don’t remember ever passing any kind of cultivation method to any of them...how is it cultivating exactly?”

Imaging the white rabbit in his head, he felt that it’s probably the first ever mortal animal that gained the ability to cultivate without knowing how. The way it did would need to be looked into later.

As soon as this stupid mission was completed.