Now that he was finally done with the whole bunny affair, Gunther had to regenerate his mana again. He currently was at 38/100 mp, surely not enough to hollow out a tree. He began to think it had been a stupid idea to decide to hollow out a tree for shelter. It really didn’t take a genius to realise it would take a very long time. He was committed to the idea now though, and one way or another, he would see it through.
The best way to regenerate his mana was, of course, doing it while hacking away at his favorite tree. So Gunther took the tool he dropped and got to work again, while utilising the technique he had discovered earlier to get his mp back up to the level of the ambient mana. His mana went back up to 45 in about two minutes, which was about triple his usual speed, but barely increased after that.
‘Well, that was kind of useless. Maybe I can just stay at 45 mp instead of going all the way up to the max. In that way my regeneration is basically tripled all the time.’
With the problem of his low mana regeneration temporarily solved, Gunther went finally back to creating his own cozy home. He got back to carving wood out of the tree, but this time tried to push mana into his tool. Surprisingly, it worked just fine right away.
‘This is probably the first thing I do right at the first try since I arrived here…’ Gunther thought, a little bitterly.
Of course, directly after he thought that, something had to go wrong. His trusty axe blade mark 3 exploded in his hand.
Explosion deals 20 hp damage
‘20 hp?! that’s ridiculous, I only used 5 mp for that…’
Gunther healed himself straight away, resulting in his losing another 20 points of mana.
You have healed yourself back to full health
‘Great, now I’ll have to regenerate my mana for another 7 or so minutes. Let’s see if the tree at least took some damage as well.’
Looking back at the tree, he noticed that a sphere with a diameter of about 10 was missing from the place he had been carving.
‘Maybe it’s not that bad after all! Now to find out how I can do this without harming myself…’
That was when Gunther noticed he had gained a new skill.
Active skill gained: Mana Explosion lv 1!
Let’s blow stuff up while holding it! Said no sane person ever.
By overloading an item with mana, you have gained the skill Mana Explosion.
Make items explode by pouring more mana into them then they can take
Mana cost depends on the item used, certain items can boost the power or add extra effects.
Higher levels allow you to add certain effects to the explosion as well as make it more powerful, independent of the item used.
He also noticed his Healing Touch skill had gone up by a level, as well as his Carving skill.
‘This can certainly be useful.’ Gunther thought, while coming up with possible uses of the skill in combination with his crafting. ‘The power of the explosion was probably boosted because I used a stone as a base. If I can find a way to delay the explosion I can maybe use it to clear out large chunks of the tree.’
With these kinds of hopeful ideas Gunther collected a lot of smaller stones to experiment with.
‘I haven’t even been here for one day and am already turning into a mad scientist.’ Gunther mused, grinning. ‘Oh well, if it takes a bit of insanity to get me a place to live, I guess I have no choice.’
Having collected a sufficient amount of stones of varying sizes, Gunther picked up one of the smallest ones. Pouring one mp into it, using his Mana Explosion, Gunther carefully studied the effect it had on the pebble. It seemed to glow a bit, before suddenly turning red and exploding, dealing a whopping 2 damage.
‘I might be able to throw it away just before it explodes.’ Gunther thought, while healing himself for 1.5 hp. His level 2 Healing Touch granting him that much for 1 mp now.
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Picking up another pebble of similar size, Gunther tried to pour in mana slower this time, while being ready to throw it into the tree as soon as it seemed like it would explode. When the pebble began to turn red, Gunther threw it away and watched as it exploded in the air, before even reaching the tree.
‘Should’ve thought about that. Maybe I’ll just lay it down and run away.’
After taking yet another pebble and laying it on the ground a bit away from the others, Gunther infused it with mana again, still trying his hardest to do it as slowly as possible. When it looked like the stone would explode, Gunther quickly jumped backwards. He managed to not get hurt and laughed at his success.
“Yes, have fear tree, for your end is nigh!” He shouted, not caring at how ridiculous it would sound if anyone heard it.
He experimented a bit more, using increasingly larger stones for a greater effect, actually earning another 3 levels in the skill. When he was confident enough to use larger stones without hurting himself, Gunther took one of them to the tree. Simply placing the quite large stone inside the hole the last explosion had made, he poured 20 mp into it. After running away a bit, Gunther turned back and saw this explosion alone had doubled the volume of the 'chamber' he had been carving out. The total size now probably adding up to about 1.5 cubic meters.
‘A few more of these and I’ll be able to enter it!’ Gunther thought excitedly. ‘It will not be pretty though. I’ll probably have to finish it up by hand.’
After having expanded the room with another explosion, Gunther started to craft new tools for himself once again. This time, Gunther decided he should make multiple blades, because he seemed to be going through them pretty fast.
2 Crafting levels and 3 Primitive Crafting levels later, Gunther had four more axe blades. He had already suspected skill growth was influenced by experimentation more than repetition after he was done testing his Mana Explosion skill and this new growth seemed to support his theory. While making the tools, he had been trying to change how he did things in little ways. He had, for example, tried hitting the rocks he was trying to turn into blades with smaller stones, which was actually pretty effective he discovered.
‘It seems the skill levels represent general understanding instead of just being a game like system with bland percentage increases. Maybe applying more knowledge from Earth could be more beneficial than I originally thought.’
His mana had recovered up to 50 mp while he was crafting, enabling him to use some explosions on the tree again. After blowing up as much of the tree as possible, he ended up with a room of about four cubic meters. It was about one meter high, two and a bit deep and a little bit less than two wide. There was now enough space for Gunther to sleep, the irregular surface was still a bit of a problem though.
Since most of the tree was removed by small explosions with a roughly spherical form, the floor was not very flat. Gunther took one of his blades and started smoothing out the floor, starting near the entrance, which was just an opening in the tree which was slightly smaller than the actual inside of it.
When he had been working for a while and his mana had regenerated up to 45 again, Gunther decided it was time for a bit of an experiment. Careful to not go over the limit that would make it explode, he poured a little bit of mana into the tool. After leveling up his Mana Explosion skill so much, Gunther had gained a bit of an instinctual feeling of how much mana a certain item could handle, before going kaboom. Having learned from his earlier attempts at healing himself, Gunther added a sort of ‘intent’ to the mana to sharpen his blade and cut into the wood. Said intent seemed to be important while using mana, since it would just try to destroy whatever it was poured in otherwise. When the tool began to glow this time, Gunther stopped providing mana immediately. The glow seemed to concentrate around the edge of the blade and began to become more and more opaque.
Active skill gained: Enhance lv 1!
Be it a tool or a weapon, enhancing it makes things happen.
By enhancing your stone axe blade, you have gained the skill Enhance.
Increases effectiveness of wielded tool, higher skill levels strengthen the effect and reduce the mana cost.
‘I even get silly rhymes now, the notifications are truly magnificent.’ Gunther thought mockingly. He had to admit that the skill was useful though. He could really feel the difference, the wood giving way faster than before. The mana drain was not all that high, but he had a feeling that would change if he used it on tools which could handle more mana.
It was already pretty late by now and Gunther grabbed one of the pills and ate it. He shuddered a bit at the taste and quickly began to drink from the river again. As he was drinking he suddenly thought of the effects his mana had if he just poured it into something.
‘Maybe using magic is a bit like drinking, you need to take in the mana in the correct way or it won’t work as you expect it. If I would try to use a high pressure water hose to push the water inside my stomach, I would just hurt myself. If I drink it normally however, it will help keep me alive. What if I have been forcing mana into things, while I should have just have inserted it gently instead?’ This theory of his would explain why he initially hurt himself while trying to heal himself or why the blade had just exploded when he added the mana to it.
Mana manipulations gained a level, it is now level 13
‘It seems my theory is correct. I don’t even have to apply it to make my skill level improve, just knowing it is enough, how interesting.’
After this revelation about the nature of mana, Gunther got back to work. When it became night and Gunther started to get tired, the floor was smooth enough to sleep on. Gunther had focussed on the highest parts first and worked his way down, already knowing it would not be possible to finish it all in one day. Deciding that he would finish the rest of his work the next day, Gunther entered his new home and fell asleep, exhausted from all that had happened on his first day on Elovar.