Flee!

As it gains sentience, the first thing it notices is that it’s losing itself. Mana does not naturally flow to this location, and it requires a significant portion of its faculties to keep the mana from flowing away, both to other sites as well as to the other beings surrounding it. The dense mana within these creatures tucks on the mana of which the creature itself consists. It has to get away from them until it can find a place where it can exist.

So it flees.

Using its mana it can move fast, but it leaves behind parts of itself as it does so. So it slows down. Consisting entirely of mana, naturally, it can feel the mana in its surroundings. Like breathing, it takes it in and allows it to flow out again. It is looking for a place where the mana has been drained so thoroughly that no threat to its existence would choose to live there.

With its speed, it takes no less than three hours to find one such a place. A location, so dry of mana, that life here is weak and not used to having access to a lot of mana. After whatever had been here sucking the atmosphere dry of mana had left, slowly, more vulnerable creatures that had fled the more dangerous regions came here for security. They won’t grow strong here, but at least they will live.

Here it can find a home and increase its power and influence.

Being able to stop and be without being threatened allows it to think. To try and come to terms with what it is. Mana is formless and invisible, like the air in which it exists. As such, it doesn’t have a set form and keeps changing. Like a cloud does. It can feel what it is. It can feel the mana in its surroundings and can lay claim on it. When mana was being absorbed before it was growing weaker, but now it starts taking in the mana in the surroundings, and despite how sparse it is, it feels that it is getting stronger.

The first thing it does is to expand. Like breathing out, its body permeates the area region. It has to take care to keep mana levels equal, at least until it understands enough to know how to make the zone better rather than hurt what is currently there. Having taken over the local mana, it now feels the local wildlife. As they live within the mana it controls, it feels like it is continuously being touched by their presence. Slight enough so it can ignore it, but still it can also focus on each individual beasts actions as well.

However, the mana just a few meters away is in such disarray that it can’t be controlled yet. To grow, it would need to learn how to do this.

Over the next week, it just watches. Content to learn about life here. Around the new area, the lowest on the food chain are the grasses. They grow fast, ensuring survival through sheer numbers. Each blade instinctively uses what little mana it has access to, to increase its growth. Following the mana as it is passively absorbed by the grasses, it sees the mana being sent to the tips of the blade to boost growth. It is a constant balancing act, where grasses that grow too high attract predators which then cut its life short. Not growing high enough means that the other blades overshadow it, cutting it off from the sunlight which it needs.

Towering over the grasses are bushes, trees, and flowers. Each larger but less numerous than the grasses are, they, however, do have access to slightly more mana. Following the flow of mana, there are some more diverse places mana can go. For those trees where most of the mana flow towards the leaves, more sunlight is absorbed. When more mana flows to the roots, they have more access to water. And when mana flows to the stems, they grow stronger and taller.

Looking at this shows that balance is possible. Balance is life. There is a constant ebb and flow of mana between the flora here. A plant will passively absorb little bits of mana throughout its life, and when it dies naturally all of it is released in the air again and only when eaten will a small part go to the predator. Plants don’t move. The mana that is here remains here.

The subsequent part of the food chain are the insects. They fly small distances from plant to plant, taking in small amounts of food and mana while they do so. While looking at the mana flowing in, it can be seen that the bulk of the mana absorbed is coming in from the food eaten rather than passively consumed from the environment. The mana is then used to grow larger, fly faster or repel attackers. The area in which they operate is not large, mostly staying in the creature’s area, and the few that leave are replaced by ones coming from other regions. As the surrounding areas are more mana rich, it comes down to a net positive. Whenever the mana increases ever so slightly, our creature becomes a little stronger. It has a little more mana to use to expand or grow.

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As nothing substantial will want to live in a mana poor area, the top of the food chain are the spiders and the rabbits. Spiders either make webs staying stationary and catching insects that enter their webs. Without any predators here, these spiders use all their mana on their spinnerets, increasing strength and production. More massive webs increase chances of catching insects, giving it more access to food. Other spiders have gone the hunter route. These are generally smarter, larger, venomous, and more powerful. Mana is split into five equal parts; venom, size, legs, chitin, and sensory. There seems to be a symbiotic relationship between where the mana focusses and the lifestyle of the spider.

The creature learns that the more complicated something is, the more options mana provides for enhancements. This is shown especially clearly with the rabbits. Mana can go to the stomach to increase the energy taken from the grass. Mana can increase the overall size of the rabbit, as with more weight it can perform better in fights with others of its kind and win more land to graze on. Mana can also increase muscle density.

When this happens, nothing is seen on the outside, but the rabbit might be able to jump higher, run faster, or bite harder, when pregnant mana can flow to the fetus to help in growth, though in this short amount of time it can’t see if there is any effect on the infant. The teeth can become sharper, and the ears can become longer for better hearing. Possibilities are becoming endless.

There are also many more transient species like birds and moles that don’t stay long enough in the zone to either have a significant impact or to be impacted, so they are not considered to be residents.

The painful thing is that these most significant absorbers of mana, without predators, grow to group sizes that can’t be sustained on this little plot of land, so they keep having to leave the area. And when they go, many of them die to stronger predators, making these rabbits real mana drains on the field. In the week of observation, two rabbits left the area without returning, making the first improvement clear. Ensuring that more mana flows in than flows out by making it so that fewer creatures leave its area than are entering it, and when they do leave they both have the will and the power to return.

But how to do this?

As the controller of mana, it can guide the flow of mana even after it has been absorbed. The first task is to increase the food source. This would be a temporary measure as, without predators, rabbits will continuously multiply until the area itself can’t bear the numbers. However, first things first. Rabbits eat grass so that a good start will be at the bottom of the food chain.

First for the grasses. It had observed that grass grows both above and below ground. While the food part, the blades shoot up towards the needed sunlight, below the ground, the stems grow too and from that new blades of grass prop up. Currently, the stems barely get any mana to use, and each blade is selfishly using it for personal growth. Through careful guiding of mana that each individual blade absorbs, instead of keeping the mana in the blade itself, it moves the mana to the roots into the underground stems. Stronger and longer stems grown more blades of grass faster.

This change takes a few days to take effect, but as grass is the fastest-growing of all the plants, the first effects are noticeable within the next week. The grass growth is slower, but there are more blades, which increases the food source for the rabbits here and hopefully attracting animals from the surrounding areas.

The next few days it looks at the rabbits, and things are good. It knows that it will take time for the rabbits to increase in number to the point where they again overshadow the grass growth. So for now, the rabbits can stay, and there has even been a large buck with great antlers come by, though there is nothing to kill it and the low mana levels can’t keep it around.

It has also noticed that the grass and flowers compete for space. With the increased expansion of grasses in the zone, the roots of the flowers are having trouble passing through the underground web of stems. As flowers are an integral part of the food source for the insects, it can’t allow flowers to fall too far behind so flowers to need a little boost. Directing small amounts of mana into the roots, it grows them more efficient in gathering water. Where in the past only drops from the groundwater were being absorbed, the now reduced roots can absorb more water resulting in a similar effect to the previous state.

Noticing over time that sometimes creatures come into its zone, take minute traces mana and leave again, the second objective slowly becomes apparent. Either it needs to find a way to keep these beasts around, or it needs some kind of hunter that can kill them. Considering the options the land under its influence isn’t large enough to feed a group of massive beasts. There isn’t enough land to grow enough food, even with the enhanced growing speed. And even if the growing speed could be improved indefinitely, how to keep such mobile beings on a small plot of land?

Something is needed to kill these mana bombs that occasionally come by.