I spend the entire day slowly experimenting with the portal and the changes in design were slowly coming to fruition, but there was a fundamental shift needed that would require another resource.

Silver, while an amazing metal to work with magic was just not good enough, and even alloying with little quantities of gold is not nearly enough to make it suitable for our purposes. At least not in the quantities we had access to, so I have to get that in order.

I had a feeling that with a few pounds of gold we should be able to make a portal stable enough. Or rather, we could because of all that I was bringing to the table. My capabilities of directly observing the space tearing, nudging space, and the perception field to be able to properly focus and project images on the other side gave us a big leg up. Still, even with all that, I failed to see any way to send anything physical over without the precision and mana handling that gold could provide. Any lesser metal would overheat and warp the runes in no time.

My mind goes to the mines hundreds of miles away. All of the silver, with the three interspersed deep steel mines. Although we had only taken over the territory of the closest deep steel mine, it was enough for our purposes.

I pull a tread of my Qi, a much more precious and limited resource while Aspen handles the droves of mana the rabbits provide me. Their population and stats were slowly growing and I usually didn’t need all the mana so I exported what I didn't use trying to strengthen the market for Pando’s coins, but no matter how much mana I had available, portals were black holes that sucked in everything without a thought.

The replenishing mana this time however goes entirely to the roots as I have one goal in mind: Expanding.

Aspen alone could do a lot, but his way of working was also not what I needed here. He was more suited to other endeavors, like surrounding the HLZ and reaching all the villages in the instance. At least all the ones without mages actively fighting our ‘incursion’. If I moved stealthily or I pressed the issue with brute force they could do little to stop me, but I didn’t want to take either option. It’s not like I can stay awake 24’o 7, and I don’t need to cover every single square inch of the instance, just every other square inch.

I wonder how long expanding to the middle of the HLZ will take. I have already taken most of the low-hanging fruit by seeding all around it. But expanding by simply growing the roots with mana would take forever. My gut was already all twisted up in knots at the lack of response on my incursions of the HLZ. For as much as I had yet to see any signs of it, one of these days the system was bound to surprise me. Everything but physically entering the HLZ or making large tunnels had gone too smoothly and I do not trust that.

I pick half a dozen different spots as I try to split my attention. Though this is not the tremendous task of pushing multiple perception fields out, just extending six streams of Qi. Each of them heads into a long tendril extending into the HLZ, all incursions some 10 kilometers deep that the watermelon cannon helped make.

Aspen pulls more and more until he is at 10 mana a second which complements my deft touch and limited stores of Qi with a bit of oomph to help thicken the roots after I push forward with new growth. Growth that the restlessness of Qi kicks up a notch and becomes almost alive as I let it loose on new ground.

Qi does not like to be contained.

Though it is not intelligent, not even in the biologically reactive state of normal plants. Qi is simply an energy form that while lacking a will of its own, reacts as I do to many things.

A small and select reflection of pieces of my being, the tendrils of Qi rage against the containment extending the root tendrils faster and faster. I’m almost dragged forward by it faster than using all my system skills inside my mana range had been before the trial.

It seems that every other second I’m extending a full meter as Aspen just tries to keep up.

I choose to keep going on the places that are deepest inside the HLZ, some of which as a good 10 kilometers tendrils.

I pace the ground at a decent clip, soon completing a kilometer beyond the furthest I have reached. The single minded pursuit simply heads without an obstacle, but with each inch forward, the impending hammer gets heavier and heavier in my mind. Even if this slight fear was always in my heart, why didn't I ever take action and expanded like crazy inside the HLZ?

Ohh, wait I was doing a dozen other things equally important before.

Adrenaline rushes my veins as I gallop forward finding nothing, but without stopping and purposefully extending my perception field in search of the other shoe. It would be folly to assume there is nothing.

The beasts could somehow detect my intrusion and it was so very rare for them to cross anywhere that I could sense. Unless I had my undetectable, but ultimately limited perception filed out it was impossible to sense them.

The efforts slow a lot as I start paying full attention to my perception field, though even as I develop my capabilities, despite the fact I had reason to believe that my field had nothing to do with the system, there was simply too much that I didn't know. It could only come from me given that its size and shape are an exacting copy of the inner world even when Aspen used it or I used it through his extensions.

I shake my head and just explore the new tendrils back and forth without finding anything interesting at first glance, so I go back to the main job. Hours stack on top of each other and the straight lines which have advantages of their own become meandering paths as I start following my gut in the search.

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I learn and try to make use of all my senses of nature, even if the system was the one that designed this place as a computer would, months had already passed and nature was starting to take hold and alter the terrain to suit its needs in small ways.

Tracks that beasts followed, the underground water and subtle signs in the way trees grew.

Even in the ‘sterile’ environment of the system, nature was beginning to find a way, which for some reason sparks in my heart and warms me up.

Go nature.

I switch my strategy back and forth. From simply keeping to near the soil, then much deeper, making use of the existing flora, then avoiding it at all costs. I change who I’m in small ways, my mental images trying to impart what I want in my pursuit, not trying to grow beyond the level 99 skill ‘cap’, but trying to expand my underlying capabilities make it go faster.

I learn to leverage my increased stats in this small way, something that is only possible to the extent that I’m doing because of my new resource. Although Mana would already have seen a decent increase in capability, it was nothing compared to Qi.

In the end, instead of complicating things, I find that proper maneuvering, adopting select roots from trees, and connecting with my roots while initially slightly slower, have enough advantages to see me doing more and more often. And any small damage that my lightning pass make on the existing flora was quickly healed by Aspen as he traveled behind.

My mind expands and Ideas begin to flow. I go to 8 then 10 tendrils and even beyond. Though it is not like I split my mind in ten, it is closer to dragging my fingers with foot long glue on nails through sand while drawing meandering paths.

They don’t add all that much mental strain though it does reduce how precisely I can guide their path and there must be a limit to the number of mental fingers I can use.

I feel Aspen’s new spheric brain growing several nodules, like mini-brains of his own. Tendrils half a meter long reach for the edge of the soup that formed when he took control of it. So far he had grown barely a percent back to suit his needs.

I still can’t get over how convenient this skill is. It provided something beyond what I could have hoped and my gut was telling me that it had more mysteries to uncover.

It may not have the depth that One Step Towards Connection from my main class may have, but it did not lack in breadth in this area and while all the knowledge that came with it the first time was gone, I already discovered a few key things like the proper mindset to make the most key part, the brain of m avatar.

This exercise goes on for an hour.

About 14 kilometers inside the HLZ, without me, finding anything actually meaningful, but given how little area they cover, that is not wholly unexpected.

In a flash, a tendril is gone. Cut pretty much in half at a particularly fragile point. I frown, but just push more Qi in the direction and move to reconnect it, the moment that I do so, it is severed again.

Sending my perception field out, I’m surprised by a creature standing near the tendril. Not close enough that I can feel its weight on top of my roots, but still well in the range of even the most basic of perception fields.

“A goblin.”

Clad in rough leather armor better than what most others wore and wielding a decent short sword, I think for a slip second. Letting go of the other tendrils for the moment, I concentrate on just this one. I reach for a tree, given this is an independent root. I touch a single tree at first, then two and grow from there. All side by side, inside their small networks, a dozen tendrils interlinked with each other and advance on the spot the goblin I stand guard over. It takes him a moment to realize something is wrong, but when he does, his uneasiness is so obvious, that it is impossible to miss. I cross the second ‘line’ into the HLZ that he has been trying to enforce for all of 5 seconds, but I don’t relent.

I watch him closely with the perception field, something that doesn’t interfere with my use of Qi or even takes much mental effort for a single small area like this. He pulls his short sword and with a quick trust, an invisible blade of mana passes through the ground and severs one of my roots, then another, and another.

“Interesting.”

Without Qi, I would have a much harder time dealing with this, as I notice him moving the second and third in a much more effective method than the complicated methods Mages from other villages use against me.

Instead of simply going forward. I sever all but a single one of my roots and even withdraw the mana and Qi inside to avoid their detection mechanism.

The small enemy, likely a level 100 plus, from its stringy muscles and sharp movements, halts and looks at the only active connection. He runs a few meters to the side no longer caring that he is stepping over the roots and severs this last link. But even as I continue growing roots elsewhere, I flisk a root switch, without even using any Qi and another place becomes a real connection.

I can almost see him no longer just amused at my antics, but nearly twitching from anger. The dozen redundant paths spread over some 50 meters wide and making use of the existing root network become his nemesis, but while there is just a single enemy that is only so fast, I don’t have to worry about anything.

Ten mana blades, twenty, 147 if my count is to be trusted and finally he runs out of mana. A simple resource.

I grin entusiaticly at my success. Over a hundred minds back me up, all doing their best to support me with plenty of mana to spare.

I think of keeping my current pace, but that sounds unwise. Instead, I hold most of my power back playing along, not pushing beyond what he can do, but it takes him just 5 minutes trying to stick his sword on the ground trying to stop me to realise that the game is up. I do my best to encourage his efforts and make them seem more effective than they actually are, but while a mana blade takes a few seconds, covering meters of the ground with each swipe, without a platoon of goblins, they would have no chance to overcome me.

He moves away and I try to follow him. He heads in for some fifty meters to the south.

A curse comes out of his lips and he turns nearly 90 degrees from his original heading. I company him for as long as I can, in the last second, I send my Qi to the crazy space cannon Merlin made in the inner world and press the button, pushing tens of thousands of stored mana points and about a hundred Qi.

A storm shoots out of a cannon, extending the perception field for a second or two, and to my delight, I see him turning slightly again, though only a few degrees north.

The mana runs out, and silence returns to the inner world. Back to my normal self, with not enough mana in the correct batteries to try and pulse it again, I let a sigh.

Well, at least I got a heading, now it is just time to make use of my knowledge and prepare for the next time.

Though if the system was calling its minions to help… Perhaps I could do the same. I still hadn’t figured out how to remote control the avatars from this far away, and so many of my skills in that platform would be gone, but with a little tinkering, I should be able to connect seeds to avatars that I grow on-site and that will give me unprecedented mobility and capability at this distance.