A few hours later Sear awoke.

*Where am I? Gah!*

The memories of what had happened all rushed into his head as he tried to process them all at once. Giving himself a few seconds to relax he let go of his head and looked around.

*Ok, so I still don't know what happened. Am I in a weird afterlife? Did the weird lightning being kill me or did I just get sent to another continent? God, so many damn questions to answer. For now, all I could think off is my body went into a subconscious state while I drained mana to replenish myself. And since when did I have those two abilities? I absorbed the body somehow and I created a few minions out of liquid mana.*

Sighing, he went into his inner mana pool to look at it. Before he got hit by the being made of lightning, his mana pool was quite large. Compared to it now though, it was about 1/10th of the size, but luckily the lighter shade of liquid was still there.

*Ok, I'm going to do something simple for myself. If before I had for say, an area of 100 units taken up by mana, it now takes up 10 meters. If I had to number my mana, I'll use 100, I now have 11. My body most likely used up all of my mana to allow me to live, and because of that I was put into that state where I had to absorb more mana into myself for me be safe.*

*Maybe I can still absorb mana like that?*

Pointing his hand at the ground, he copied the feeling he felt when absorbing the other things. Soon, the black, purple fog began gushing out of his hand and anything it touched began to get absorbed. Soon, he was standing in a crater, having absorbed a few cubic meters of dirt.

*How much mana did I get back? Hmmm, I got back a third of what it would cost me to create this much dirt.*

Looking around, he saw the remains of the ape. Though he absorbed some of it, he reached the threshold of gaining his consciousness after only absorbing it's arm. Letting the gas flow out once more, he continued absorbing it.

Unlike when he absorbed the dirt, he could feel the large amounts of mana flowing through his body. Soon, the body was gone. All that was left was a white pearl. Picking it up, he realized it was an air orb. The same thing that he had created by compressing a lot of the same type of mana.

Looking back into his inner pool, he saw that it had gone from 10 units to around 25 units. He still only had around 25% of his original mana. Grabbing the air orb, he began to absorb it. Surprisingly, it held almost the same amount of mana as the body of the ape.

Confused, he continued to absorb it until nothing remained. Now, he had around 40 units. While still nothing compared to how he had been, it was still much more powerful than the ape.

*The ape was strong enough to create a center for all of it's mana? I guess since it used air magic it would be normal for it to have an air orb, but why does it have the orb? Do animals not have the capability to store mana like humans?*

Realizing just how little he actually knew, he decided that it was time for him to find some more animals to absorb. Closing his eyes, he felt a large source of mana coming from the north.

There were two sources, and from what he could tell they were fighting. They each held around 1 unit of mana, but compared to everything around, except for the now deceased ape, they were the strongest by far. Looking in that direction, he began running towards it.

Sadly, he had forgotten that he underwent a transformation when he awoke, and his own strength surprised him, so instead of running along the forest-side like he planned, he instead started tumbling across a small plain.

As he came to a stop, he got back up and continued, slowly getting used to his new body strength.

Whatever had happened to him, his physical capabilities were now double what they used to be.

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A few minutes later, Sear saw the two fighting animals, or insects. And let me tell you, they were huge. One was a beetle, roughly 15 meters long. It had two long, lightning fast pincers. Even to Sear, who had vision hundreds of times stronger than a normal human, the pincers closed and opened so fast and that was left was a blur, and the blast created when something goes faster than the sound barrier.

it's opponent was no less dangerous. A hornet, roughly 20 meters long from head to stinger was flying overhead and sending out strikes every so often. It's stinger looked like a drill head and was 3 meters long on it's own. While not penetrating the beetle's shell, it was leaving visible dents.

As the ground rattled around the two, Sear stood and watched. They continued their attacks until the hornet got to close. It stung forward, aiming for the beetle's head, but the beetle scurried backwards the bit the hornet in two. As it's lower body collapsed, the hornet tried to escape with it's wings, but ended up falling due to pain.

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As the beetle closed in, Sear finally intervened. Creating two spears of light, he sent them flying through the insects heads. The two collapsed, and Sear quickly absorbed them. The two also ended up dropping orbs, but they were so small compared to the ape's that he almost missed them. The beetle had dropped a earth orb, and the hornet dropped a nature orb.

The beetle, given time, would most likely learn to use mana to give itself an even more impressive defense, while the hornet would most likely use it's mana to create poisons and toxins to kill it's pray with only one strike.

Smiling, he absorbed the two orbs, and began walking away, with his inner mana pool now at 45 units.

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Soon, a week had passed, after two straight days of absorbing the strongest things around, he had gotten back to 55 units. But something he saw was that the strongest animals weren't even giving him half a unit anymore.

So, he decided to sleep it out. Going back into his inner mana pool, he realized that during the time he had been unconscious along with the time he was on the island, the slightly brighter puddle of mana had increased by around 10%, without having a crazy aftereffect like last time.

To be able to safely do that again, he would either have to go deep underground or get strong enough normally to fight back.

During those 3 days of waiting, he saw as the strongest animal would constantly change. Sometimes, two even numbers would fight and the winner would absorb the other, becoming stronger. Other times, insects swarmed the strongest and killed him. Luckily for Sear though, since the ape, which was most likely the strongest thing of this island died, the number of strong beings went up.

Right now, there were around 17 of them above 1 unit, 8 above 2 units, 4 above 3 units, and there were 2 that were above 5 units. Luckily for Sear, they lived on opposite sides, so they didn't kill each-other.

*This is good. Right now, if I hunt them all I should be able to get around 60 units. And that's without abosrbing their orbs. With the orbs I should be able to get easily over 150 in total. Not only will I get back to my old limit, but I'll pass it by a lot.*

Getting up, he sensed where the nearest 5 was, and flew towards it. One thing he had managed to quickly learn during these three days was to use his air magic to propel him, allowing him to fly around 10 times faster than he could already run.

In a few minutes, he found it. The first one, currently with 6.5 units, a spider that specialized in fire magic. It would spit venom out of it's mouth, and anything it touched would catch fire. It's web would had an average heat of 80°C. Most things that touched it would slowly heat up as it was stuck on the web.

*Too bad it's still extremely weak.*

Quickly using earth magic, he created a dome around the spider. The dome was made of several layers of reinforced dirt, and would be able to withstand temperatures tens of times higher than the melting point of stone. It was also harder than diamond, not that diamond was hard to break for Sear.

He quickly made hundreds of spikes poke out of the walls of the dome, and the spider was stabbed in hundreds of spots at once.

Quickly getting rid of the dome, he absorbed the corpse and held onto the orb. Once he killed everything, he would use all of the orbs at once to give him a rapid increase.

Sensing the nearest thing over 1 unit, he rushed towards it.

Soon, all the animals below 4 units were dead. Sear currently had 99 units of mana. The rason the last two animals were still alive is because they were buried beneath the earth. One was a ghastly white worm, capable of shooting tens of meters into the air after bursting out of the ground, while the other was a mixture between a mole and an ant. It's front two arms were much thicker and used for digging while it's body composition reminded him of an ant.

That ant was the stronger once, at just over 5 units while the other was just under 4.5.

Due to them being underground, they would be the hardest to kill, with him having to create a sort of jail cell underground so that they can't escape.

Placing his hands of the ground, he quickly began. Spreading out from around him for 100 meters in every direction, the dirt turned glossy. He had hardened it to the point it would be hard for him to break out. As sweat began to drip off his nose, he continued.

Below the edges the dirt also turned glossy until everything below 200 meters was also covered in glossy dirt. Sensing that they were in a trap, the two animals tried to go further underground, but before they could Sear closed the bottom.

As he let go of the ground, he laid back. His body, glossy with sweat, wan shaking up and down as he gasped for air. He had used up nearly a third of his total mana within a minute.

You might think that wasting 33 units to get 10 was a dumb idea, but in reality, he would regenerate the 33 back, while he had to absorb the beings so that he could increase his total. If he didn't have a total, by now would easily have a few thousand units.

Cooling himself off, he quickly made an opening. The two beings, thinking they would get out, rushing out. As he two launched out of the ground, Sear quickly stabbed them with hundreds of dark spears. As their bodies fell to the ground, he quickly absorbed them and took their orbs too. He now had 110 units of mana as his total.

Now the only thing left was to absorb the orbs. Going down towards the center of his cage underground, he created an open space. Placing all of the orbs in-front of him, he began to absorb.

As his total spiked up unit after unit, he eventually finished them all. Looking around at his inner mana pool, what he saw mesmerized him. Not only had he gotten past 150 units, but he had also managed to break past 200.

Without him knowing, the moment he began absorbing, the orbs fed off of each-other and became stronger, allowing him to gain even more.

As he opened his eyes, he quickly fell over in pain, as his body began to emit steam once again. This time, he turned a slightly darker shade of red, and after a few minutes he was unconscious on the ground again, 2 times stronger than he was a few hours ago.