[679 hours remaining]
That notification was the sound of his day's start. Sure it was the countdown until his death, but if he wanted to live he couldn’t stop moving, training, and brainstorming. He managed to get his armor on, by just moving the vines and fusing them, he was only knocked unconscious from what the system said was thirty minutes.
He captured a python in one of his traps today, the scent of rotting meat is most likely what grabbed its attention. The lizardmen were nowhere to be seen today, their camps were empty and he couldn’t see a single trace of them. Not even tracks of them leaving, it was most likely magic.
The lake was busier than ever today, multiple herds of different animals are there. Monkeys, deer, and bovines from the look of the animals.
The monkeys screeched and hollered when the deer intruded upon their area, but otherwise, the animals didn’t notice him.
On his way back he harvested some more bark from trees that recently died, it made them more pliable and less brittle.
“Screech” some kind of larva screamed on one of the trees when I pulled the bark off. Otherwise, I managed to harvest enough bark to replace my armor and I learned [Body Manipulation] which allowed me to manipulate my own body and my [Twisted puppeteer] allowed me to create and control bodies.
His body was slowly being affected although, his blood now crystalized outside of his body. Sure it only happened outside his body but what about wounds he might have, little shards of crystal don’t sound very healthy.
Now to start working on a puppet, He used a copy of his blood-soaked armor to make the outer frame for the puppet.
The hard part started around now because his blood counted as his a part of his body, he could manipulate it. By making a semi-human-like skeleton the puppet would be able to move he didn’t want a bundle of moving wood.
By using seeds he was able to create [Living wood] which was awesome.
The system deemed it as a construct right now, but my skill deemed it as a body. As it produced my blood and counted as a heart, Toby would have to wait a day while occasionally “Beating” mana into its makeshift heart that was a particularly dark [Blood crystal].
[Identified: Sanguine wood elemental]
Now as he was a child Toby almost screamed with glee, but the cynic in him said “do you wanna wake up the forest” so he held it in.
He would have to wait but he would have a safe way to traverse the forest and learn about how to control mana in his body. And it was a freaking elemental, extremely hard to kill and durable. Now since it was a sanguine blood elemental it should be able to control wood and blood.
He could almost walk through trees if this was true, and he would face little terrain impediment.
It would have fulled its insides up in due time but for now, the wait had begun.
Major pov shift :)
The fog had come again the beasts were going mad, as the chief it was his duty to defend his people. But he knew he couldn't defend his home, they would have to leave it. Archiv had come back and explained a potential danger in the forest, and days later the scouts returned reporting their findings.
“ Chief we managed to document our findings” his magic advisor Kiev spoke
“ Well tell me about it then” he spoke
“It is a large bipedal being, no scales some type of hair on its head?”
“ Keep going”
“ It is strong, and agile enough to take down an owlbear” Kiev stated
“ Any weaknesses”
“ It has some type of sickness, that caused skin tearing and moderate blood loss we don’t know when it happens enough to deem it a proper weakness”
“ Any solution to the beast horde”
“ None except an immediate retreat to the fire elemental lords territory”
He dismissed all his subordinates to their proper posts and went into thought, The bipedal it wasn’t a concern for now. They could either retreat deeper into the woods or they could enter Ignatius's territory, he could be reasoned with. The forest was wild and untamed both options would potentially have many die but the devil you know was always the better option.
From the scouts, he learned there would be a hydra in this beast horde. Hydras were horrifying things worse than elementals in many ways, they didn’t have a core they just regenerated and healed from every wound. The only way to stop a hydra was to trap it, or tear it into so many pieces it couldn't heal.
Pov end :)
Toby’s elemental was kinda clunky, to say the least, he learned the skill [Intent understanding] but it was just emotional intelligence. He could now tell when the fruits wanted more nutrients and the trees more mana.
It only worked on what he could see as well.
Otherwise, it was pretty great, it would allow him to grasp a faint timing to an enemy's aggressive attacks.
His spears he could sharpen now using [Mana manipulation] and [Body manipulation] as plants are kinda in between objects and living things. And using his blood to harden some naturally occurring vines he created something akin to steel thread.
The elemental finally finished, allowing him to guess what was required to use his twisted puppeteer at 100%.
He had to use [Body storage] to create a medium in which to store his own body, and then kinda take over whatever body he wanted to control. He did it and his senses were flooded with a higher version of mana vision, and the ability to see vital energy and manipulate it.
It took some time to get used to his new body as it was twelve feet tall and weighed around four hundred pounds. The mana-infused wood would act kinda like a muscle, and the blood crystal acted as support thus allowing movement.
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After falling on his face a couple of times, he managed to stumble around. He was a lot stronger thus having an even harder time controlling this new body. His original body wasn’t degrading, but the medium which was the branch could still be destroyed. And then his body would be defenseless, and slowly die.
“ Creak, creak CRUNCH” was the sound that was made when his makeshift body opened its mouth and closed it.
He manipulated the body using surrounding tree matter to add a tail to help with his balancing issues, and it added another forty-five pounds.
Using his crystalized blood he could make claws and spears out of his blood, his blood was alive and wasn’t restricted by his mana channels when outside his body. Allowing Toby to convert mana into blood, his blood when made into a mist allowed him to make spears anywhere, it would eventually evaporate but that took hours.
In this body, he could hit just a little bit faster and harder, and he had a humongous mana pool to use.
[3,000/3,000]
Each blood spear was around 20 mana, and the blood mist was 50 mana. He generated 50 mana a minute and the mist would evaporate in about an hour, using all his mana he could create a huge mass of blood crystal that pulled in mana from the surroundings.
He was sort of like a glass cannon, he cut off its arm and put it in storage, and explored.
He ran for 3 hours and managed to reach the area of the forest that started turning into moss, there were lots of skeletons here. It looked strange, with lots of vine-covered skeletons and warped trees.
He touched a tree, and it fell apart none of these trees would be good material. But the corpses would, he broke them apart into knife-like shards and used them to make small daggers all over his body. His mana pool increased by a whole 10 mana, but all the skeletons were absorbed. The skeletons weren’t very dense as they eroded over time, more of a quantity over the quality situation.
He found a couple more skeletons, but his mana didn’t increase. He spotted the mist slowly coming in and saw little brownish-green humanoids. They shrieked and started running towards him, eyes red, frothing at the mouth, and starved.
He lazily made three spears and pierced three of them with it, and then made them explode. The tiny shards ripped through bone and skin as they shot outward. There were a couple of them left, so he made one more spear and killed them.
They looked like goblins but are more mature from what he had seen, they had clothes and basic weapons. And what looked like axes but otherwise besides the skin color, they weren’t that different.
Wondering for a couple of hours longer, he found a cave system in a hole in the ground.
There were corpses and feces-covered walls, but no monsters, using [Intent understanding] he looked again and still nothing so he left.
He headed back towards camp, after he got back Toby would have a couple of hours to try out his skills and figure out what anyway to improve them. He managed to get back, and he was pissed the tree had done it again. It had put out his campfire, it was almost 80 feet from it what do you have against his need for cooked food. He was going to absorb it for material he swore, wait a minute that was an idea.
He walked over to the tree and put his hand on it, shoved blood threads into it, and turned it into a puppet. He did this to a couple more trees in the surrounding area and restarted his campfire. Taking his body out of storage, took over it, and started eating and drinking water. He checked his timer and saw it hadn’t moved since the last time he checked it, he was going to have to put it in storage until the foreseeable future, sacrifices must be made look like he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the food he gathered for awhile. It also allowed him to stock up on more food for winter, he didn’t know what happened to wood elementals during winter would they hibernate?
“ Hey system how is earth faring,” Toby asked
[It suffered a wide panic, and mass casualties but slowly the situation started stabilizing as they are in my range they are all improving quickly]
“ How is Karl doing, he okay or could you send him a message from me”
[He is doing well, you cannot message him as the mana would dissipate long before it reached earth]
That was depressing, Karl was fine but he couldn’t tell him he was okay. He couldn’t even let his parents know he was alive, sure he knew he was but they didn’t.
He also hoped his little brother was alive, he was too afraid to ask. He would rather hope and believe he was than face the truth. After moping around for a while he sharpened some spears and went to sleep.
The next morning it started snowing out of nowhere, not even a single cloud above the canopy until it started. The temperature started to rise also, as the wind smashed itself against rocks and vines. It was probably some creatures fighting, just like when he almost got hit by a tree.
Although terrifying, it was nowhere near him, he started his routine. There was only one squirrel this time, he didn’t see a single snake either.
Then the mist started rolling in, he went back to camp when he noticed it slowly started to get thicker. He used half his mana to set up a small dome around his camp and he put out the campfire. Using the rest of his mana to reinforce it he went to sleep.
The next day, he couldn’t see the sun as the mist was too thick outside. He put some more mana into the dome as it would slowly dissipate when it ran out of mana, he made a couple of spear bombs and threw them into the mist. He heard a scream as they exploded and sent shards flying, although he couldn’t hear it he knew the general direction it was in. Using half of his mana to reinforce the dome, he only had around half left. Spreading his red-tinted mist he started generating spears around in a circle from where he heard the scream and started firing. After a deafening continuous explosion, he stopped making spears, and he wanted to have some mana just in case there were others. he had around [800] mana left.
He listened around for a bit before taking a nap.
Pov shift :)
It was hungry, everything around it was hungry too. The mist made everything hungry, and they ate everything in sight. The trees, small rocks, and other animals it was the strongest and ate the animals around it not the other way round.
It heard a scream off in the distance and traveled towards it, pushing the small trees in their way aside. It used its thermal vision to spot a fresh corpse, and started eating it. It managed to fit a leg down its throat before its danger sense went off the charts, it looked around for signs of anything coming towards it and didn’t see anything.
A tiny thing pierced its chin, it was annoying but not enough to warrant danger. But its sense of danger just kept increasing, then it got hit again they just kept coming. It got turned into a pincushion, its muscles stopped them from advancing. It was about to shake them off when the tiny red things turned extremely hot and it could finally see them through the mist in its vision. They were full of mana, and then they exploded, it burned and writhed in agony as tiny shards went through its organs.
It was slowly bleeding out, its heart was pierced, and it was starting to choke on its blood. Small animals gathered and started picking away at its skin and chewing through its muscles.
It just wanted to die but its immense vitality wouldn’t let it, the shards started heating up again and exploded finally ending its suffering.
Next perspective
Archiv suddenly heard a loud boom and urged his tribe to go faster.
“ Chief do you know what that was,” one of the smaller of the tribe asked
“It was probably one of the larger beasts breaking a tree” the chief answered
He knew they weren’t attacking a tree, even though they were crazed they were also hungry.
It was probably trying to kill something and got into a brawl.
Then some shard of red crystal peppered the nearby tree behind them.
“ RUN NOW!” the mage advisor roared
They all started running, and after a while, they slowed down a little as some started to fall behind.
“ Why did we need to run?” he asked the advisor
“ Because they were chock full of mana waiting to explode”
And almost to emphasize his point, they exploded. Trees started falling behind them as they fell over from the blast.