Ethan stared out at the rain from within the burrow, lost in thought. There were so many things to do and process, and so many more to think about. He wasn’t even sure how long this Tutorial would last, or if the sun was even rising from the East here.

After a while, Ethan shook himself out of his stupor and forced the questions surrounding everything away. He didn’t have time to waste on these things; every single second of his day needed to be spent on improving his chances of survival as efficiently as possible.

‘Water’s being collected, can’t do anything about food yet… what are my priorities aside from those?’ Ethan wondered. He needed to spend his time on the low-hanging fruit, getting the most juice for his squeeze. What could he do that would align towards that?

Alyssa was somewhere behind him, butchering the Ferrow. Ethan heard her grunt a few times doing it, and almost wanted to offer her help… but he really didn’t want to butcher the Ferrow, and he’d already offered help once.

Ethan recalled that strange feeling he’d gotten while summoning Cred; the feeling that he’d been doing something wrong throughout the whole process. He couldn’t locate the issue, though, so it probably wasn’t easy to find the solution to. He needed low-hanging fruit.

What about the non-verbal communication through the connection he shared with the goblins? That would bring huge benefits, and he didn’t know how hard it was at all. It didn’t hurt to at least try it and, if it was too hard, quit and move on to something else.

“Fred,” Ethan said to the goblin standing out in the rain, getting his attention. “Speak to me through our connection.”

Fred frowned. “What mean?” He asked, technically disobeying orders- but, to be fair, he didn’t understand them.

“Speak to me like how you spoke to me when you found this burrow and were really far away.” Ethan rephrased.

The goblin’s face contorted in concentration, but nothing seemed to happen for a while. Finally, after a good twenty seconds, its message came through.

“This?” Fred asked, but Ethan was too preoccupied with examining the message to respond.

The connection between Ethan and his summons was fickle and ethereal, only barely perceived by Ethan’s passive mana sense. It required his utmost focus and concentration to get a good ‘look’ at. The connection, which Ethan decided to call summon links, was many things- how Ethan sustained the goblin, kept it obedient, and how he could sense its location relative to himself. It was also how he could vaguely sense their emotions and, of course, receive Fred’s messages.

The connection seemed akin to a simple string connecting them. He couldn’t detect any changes to the summon link when the message was being transported, but Ethan’s attention had drifted slightly due to the period of time it took Fred to get the message over.

“Do it again,” Ethan instructed, and then roughly nineteen seconds later, Ethan got the message. “Fred big and strong,” echoed within his ears, but Ethan hardly noticed. He just barely detected a slight vibration running down the string a moment before Fred’s message had come through.

He knew how the message was transported, but he didn’t know how Fred was doing it. Ethan knew questioning the goblin on it was likely futile, and instead decided to watch the goblin do it himself… unfortunately, to do that, Ethan would have to go out into the rain.

‘I need to get the blood off my face anyway,’ Ethan placated himself as he got rid of everything water-sensitive in his pockets and stepped out into the cool rain, shivering as it ran down his shirtless body.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Ethan got as close as he could to Fred without it being extremely awkward and focused his mana sense on everything the goblin was doing. Fred lacked a mana core of his own, and was upkept almost exclusively by his own mana, so as long as he was nearby, his mana sense was hardly any weaker than it was inside his own body.

“Do it again,” Ethan told Fred, and the goblin’s face contorted once more. A bit faster than the last couple of times, the message arrived; “Fred gooder than Cred and Gred,’, but once more, Ethan didn’t allow the resounding words to distract him.

He’d seen it; the slightest manipulation of the mana that Ethan was constantly pushing into the goblin. The mana had gathered around the summon link and plucked it lightly, sending the words that the goblin was focusing on to him.

Ethan broke out into a grin, giving the goblin a thumbs-up even as he dashed back into the burrow and out of the rain. Fred’s messages had been right; he was gooder than Cred and Gred.

Ethan sat down and immediately tried to copy what Fred had done, but… failed, miserably. Without the Forms to direct his subconscious, Ethan couldn’t control his mana.

‘Then how would you even push your intent into the message? Why was Fred concentrating so hard? That’s actively negative for the process of manipulating the subconscious, isn’t it? Is he stupid, or am I?’ Ethan wondered. His mind fell back to the feeling of wrongness he’d had while summoning Cred; what had he been doing wrong? It hadn’t been his Forms, and it wasn’t like he’d forgotten to push the mana out of his body first.

‘Is it possible to control the mana without manipulating the subconscious?’ Ethan wondered. His Impartment had said that using the Forms to manipulate the subconscious was the only way for beginners to effectively use mana; was there another way? How did he get the mana to listen to him, then? It seemed to actively rebel against his will whenever he tried to force his desires onto it.

‘The Magic Attribute also mentioned a greater ability to manipulate mana, but I haven’t noticed anything while summoning Fred, Cred or Gred.’ Ethan considered.

Ethan was beginning to stray into this-is-gonna-be-hard territory, but the gains would be tremendous if he figured out the problem.

‘I haven’t even tried any other ways to manipulate mana yet; it’s too soon to give up. If I can’t get it after an hour or something, I’ll move on to something easier.’ Ethan thought.

Ethan, recalling the state he’d managed to enter when summoning Fred, tried to center himself in the same way he had then. He pushed all of his distractions and worries, but it didn’t come to him with the strange ease that it had then. Still, he persevered, and after three minutes, Ethan opened his eyes feeling a bit calmer and more mentally resilient. The state felt fragile, though, and Ethan constantly had to sweep aside worries and distractions that threatened to shatter his mental state.

Before it could fall apart, Ethan tried to clamp his will down on the mana and force it to move according to his will, and… it did. Every inch that he made the mana travel was like pulling a tooth, but gradually, Ethan improved.

His grip on the mana loosened only slightly, allowing the mana a bit of room to follow his will without being actively pushed forward. Ethan’s attitude towards the mana changed when he realized this interaction, and he tried to push more positive feelings towards the mana to make it more cooperative. Rather than take a “move or else,” stance with the mana, he gradually altered the message until it was “go here, please,”.

When it did, though, the mana began to resist again, and Ethan had to add an “or else,” at the end. After that, Ethan gradually moved the mana towards the tip of his index finger, where he ordered it to stay.

He intended to pluck the summon link with the mana inside his finger, which would move when he moved his finger. It was easier than getting the mana to do it, which allowed him to put more concentration towards the message he wanted to send to Fred.

His fragile mental state, which had survived thus far, began to fracture when he tried to split his attention between keeping the mana in his finger in place and forming the message he wanted to send Fred. He struggled to keep it intact, but realized that splitting his attention a third time was only accelerating its demise, and instead just rushed the message.

It wasn’t hard to decide what to make the message, but forming it was harder. The words needed to be solid in his mind, like the text of the System. Rapidly, he changed his intended text from meaningless and simple gibberish to something much more important to him.

A second or two later, his right index finger twitched, and Fred received a confusing message.

“Counting steps, avoiding cracks, and still getting into trouble,”