Chapter 10 - King of the weak

It took Adam a long while to get a fire going. He found that using his blade claws to strike against one another produced a small spark. With his augmented strength and reflexes, it didn’t take that long for the blades to constantly produce a few sparks. The main trouble was getting the vegetation he had brought up to his cliffside to actually catch fire. They would probably burn fine in a hot campfire but it wasn’t good for igniting it. He had found some dry-looking mushroom things growing on some odd-looking trees on his way back from the pond and luckily, the mushroom was dry and flammable enough to work as tinder. He simply broke the mushroom into smaller pieces and produced some sparks above it till it caught. When he fed the whole mushroom to the fire, the flames turned a strange yellow color and carried a faint smell of caramel. He tried not to breathe in the fumes, not knowing if they could cause issues for him, and continued to add more strange and unknown dry-looking plants and leaves to the small fire. He purposefully made it right outside the cave entrance in order to have a safe place to retreat to if something flew or crawled to investigate the smoke. When the makeshift campfire looked healthy enough, Adam went to get his stash of sloth monster meat. He once again started at the thighs as he carved slices of meat from the creature and pieced them with the strongest stick-like branches he could find. Most plants would bend and fold so it was actually really hard to find something resembling a normal wooden stick. He only had three of the solid blue sticks so he planted all of them on the ground at an angle so that they would dangle their ends over the fire in order to cook the meat he had attached to each of them, similar to roasting marshmallows.

It took a while to finish smoking the meat, but it paid off. The meat tasted really great actually, especially compared to eating it raw. It was similar to smoked salmon rather than red meat. The food was the best thing he had tasted since the coconut heart fruit. The scenery barely changed so he had no idea how long it had been since he woke up from his mana overdose coma. The darkest period seemed to be over though. He couldn't wait for the sun to come back. It wasn't very cold but the constant ghostly scenery was starting to get to him. The noises seemed to be endless in the dim and foggy jungle. The predators in the denser parts of the jungle must be quite large judging from the occasional sounds of destruction he would hear way off in the distance. The jungle itself was unknown to Adam in many aspects. He had spent a lot of time in the tropical forest but never really felt like he was in any immediate or severe danger. He had only encountered one thing that he was always on the lookout for, and that was that terrifying giant centipede that had chased him all across the beach. He still couldn't believe he had escaped that thing back then. He now had a grey core and with it, came some instinctual warriness from other inhabitants of the jungle. He had discovered that most creatures on the outskirts of the island rarely even had cores thanks to his mana perception. It would actually have been quite annoying since he couldn't see them approaching. Luckily, they could somehow sense that he wasn't an easy target and stayed away from him. He noticed a few bat-like creatures with wings like normal bats but also smaller wings on their legs. They flew and glided from the treetops but never came too close to him. Only one of them had a core and it seemed to be the leader. He was practicing his mana missiles at the time and resisted the urge to fling his spell at it. He may need to kill other beasts in this world to survive and grow stronger but he refused to go around and exterminate local wildlife. They were much like him after all, doing their best to survive as weak magically deficient beings on the outskirts of a very dangerous jungle. He hadn't found anything around the outskirts he had been exploring that had anything other than a black core. That lizard was the only exception until he came along and ruined it's winning streak. It appeared that growing one's mana core is a numbers game. If you have a black core, you need to consume many other black cores to grow but if you have a grey core, the number of black cores you need is multiplied by a significant amount. Most creatures would only bother hunting beasts with the same or higher mana cores.

That lizard was pretty weak but excelled at surprise attacking weak prey. It must have killed hundreds of black cores in order to get as strong as it was. The only reason why it didn't seek out stronger prey was because even a black core could kill it if given the chance. In the game of magical evolution, this guy was even worse than Adam. He lamented his weakness when he first arrived and even after getting his core and being strengthened, he knew he still couldn't compete with the likes of the giant falcons flying overhead or the freaky centipede that almost ate him. Until he summoned his courage and ventured out into the deep unknown of the dark jungle. Driven mainly by an unwillingness to lay back and die and his raging hunger, he discovered the sloths and how easily he could handle them. He hunted a huge lizard with much higher magical capabilities and his confidence grew. Adam wasn't stupid enough to think he was the top dog in the jungle, he simply understood that he currently stood at the apex of the lowest-leveled part of the jungle. And that was fine for him, at least for now. He would need to venture further in order to hunt stronger beasts but having a safe spot to call home was his main goal. He had so much to learn about his magic and he didn't think most creatures were as lucky as him to advance so quickly. He would need to develop real ways to protect and defend himself in his safer part of the island before putting his training to the test on dangerous creatures.

But before more training on developing actually useful offensive spells, Adam needed to check out that special tree he had been avoiding. Its value was immeasurable but that was the reason he never went back. Something terribly dangerous must be up with that tree, if not then all those fruits would have been eaten by now. It was such a bizarre-looking tree and he didn't see anything else even slightly similar to it after his exploring. He guessed it had to do with one's core so he decided to put his theory to the test and finally see what was up with the mysterious broccoli tree. He wouldn't go getting too close himself this time since he now not only had a core, but an evolved one at that so based on his current theory, that would be very bad for him. Instead, he went to look for his old pals, the sloth monsters. He did feel a little bad about using them for his experiment but he had already killed and eaten them so he is basically their natural predator in their eyes, might as well make the most of it and kidnap one of them. He didn't throw a rock this time since he didn't want a repeat of the last time. He instead powered up his new mana missile spell. The spell wasn't very strong and the white spheres of mana he could conjure would dissipate quite easily when thrown away. This time however, he simply pumped more mana into the ball and compressed it into a tight white sphere. It would now be able to stay as hard as a rock even when thrown far away. Of course, the power behind it was limited so even if it would not break down for several minutes, he couldn't send it far enough for that to be useful. What he wanted was for it to be as strong and dense as a rock but with the ability to hit its target without issue.

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He was going to try to knock it out with a mana missile to the head but instead had a better idea. He summoned and condensed a second ball and had them both fly straight up towards the feet of the upside-down sloth monster he had been spying on. The missile hit their respective targets with the force of a rock being thrown by a strong human. Nothing that would explode its feet but enough to get it to lose its grip from the treetops and fall onto its back on the jungle floor. Adam pounced on the confused fallen creature and bashed it on the head as it was trying to get up. Considering it was only an early black core, he didn't use much strength but winced when he heard a loud cracking sound. He had underestimated how much stronger he had become. Having grown so fast with the fruit and light affinity grey core, Adam never really had time to adapt and experiment with the strength and capability of his new superhuman form. The sloth lay limp on the ground with an indent at the top of its skull. Adam was now feeling even more guilty since he didn't want to kill the guy, and would have let it go anyway after knowing if the broccoli tree was safe to approach. With the opinion that many hunters have about not wanting to waste any part of their hunt to respect the fallen prey, Adam decided not to harass the poor things friends anymore and simply took the dead sloth with him. He would test it on the tree but he didn't expect anything to happen. He could simply have another barbecue when he got hungry again so nothing would be wasted.

Adam made his way back up the beach and towards the cliff side but instead of heading into his cave, he turned left and followed the stone walls into the depths of the jungle. He continued until the stone's cliff was no longer visible over the sea of trees and continued on. When he got to the small path that led to a clearing, Adam stopped and used his claw blade that he now had permanently tied to his side with some long rope-like plant. He cut down a long length of blue vine and tied it to the sloth's waist. He approached the circular clearing and halted before stepping into the open. It looked as though that entire area around the strange lime-colored tree with dotted dark green leaves, was part of its domain. Adam was about to find out how it protected its miraculous fruits from would-be thieves. He grabbed the sloth by its two arms since he didn't want them to swing back and slice him when he threw it. He sent mana into his muscles and spun the body around himself as if he were a hammer thrower. After turning in place for a few seconds and with the sloth having reached a rapid speed as it orbited around him, he let go and watched as it flew into the clearing and continued straight for the large tree…

And absolutely nothing happened. The silence was deafening as the sloth landed at the base of the lime-colored trunk and bounced like a ragdoll for a few moments until it simply lay there. Adam was looking intently at the dott-shaped leaves. “So no poison or acid being sent towards the closest mana core? I kind of expected it to be some sort of mana core triggered poison within a certain radius, but I guess not”

He didn't walk forward quite yet however since he finally got a good look at the closest fruit and noticed a striking difference. The last time he was here, it was daytime and the tree looked like a broccoli with heart-shaped blue fruit hanging high up in its branches. Now that he was here during the day, the tree was a whole lot creepier and the fruits seemed a whole lot brighter. They were now not only lightly humming a pale blue but were practically glowing as if someone had decorated the tree with some sort of heart-shaped lanterns which had somehow all been turned upside down. They seemed a lot brighter than before and not just because the sun had gone down. A thought then suddenly came to him. When he drank all the sweet water inside, the blue glow of the honeycomb-patterned exterior disappeared. Were these fruits not ripe perhaps? If the sweet blue jelly cherries he found in the fruit were the result of the liquid, then that meant that the fruit might have only been ripe when they exuded a strong blue glow and were meant to be devoid of any liquid, only the much denser mana fruit's inside. It made him re-evaluate trying to pick one again. If he could get his hands on a ripe fruit then a single cherry might be enough for him to advance his core to middle. Hell, he might be able to evolve his core again simply by carefully consuming this fruit. That would mean he didn't have to go find more dangerous monsters to hunt for their cores. He could just do what he did before to advance his core… Just with more precautions than before. He decided to conduct one more test before stepping forward and claiming his ticket to higher power. He pulled back the dead sloth with the long vine he attached it with and started infusing its core with mana.

One of the big reasons he wanted a living beast to test against the tree was because a mana core becomes inactive when the user dies. That’s how it can be absorbed by others. Mana seemed to be intrinsically linked to the person that formed the core. He couldn't ever control mana that came from another being's core. The user’s wishes and willpower shape the mana of the person. If the person dies, the core is left with no directive, it always does stuff even when not being directly controlled, like absorbing ambient mana to replenish reserves. When the person or beast dies, so does the core. It doesn't decay or dissipate but it becomes completely inactive, like a heart stops beating upon death, so does the core. If the tree only attacked creatures with mana cores, then having an inactive mana core is no different from being a harmless rock. If Adam temporarily infused his own mana into the creature's core however, then the core would be forced onto activity by the very nature of its mana. He wanted to trick the tree into thinking this was a living mana beast going after its fruit but unfortunately, the sloth monster didn't have a light affinity. In fact, it didn't have an affinity at all so no reaction came from the core. Taking inspiration from his mana missile practice, Adam pushed mana into the corpse to locate its core and started forming a mana missile around it. His goal was to simulate an active core with his own mana.

He was constantly pumping mana into the body in order to get its form to light up in his mana sight and then another idea hit him. Since this wasn’t a living being anymore, he could use the mana he pumped into the sloth in the same way as he did in his own body. Namely grabbing pieces of the core and dragging them to his own to be devoured. That idea suddenly overtook Adam’s entire concentration as he almost forgot where he was and why. He used a string of mana to grab a morsel of the sloth's core while it was still inside its body and he pulled it towards himself and into the palm of his hand where it slid down along his pathways and disappeared into his core. It was so silly and obvious in hindsight. What was the point in cutting out mana cores and physically swallowing them when he couldn’t physically touch the energies inside anyway? Not to mention swallowing something that had been lodged inside a creature was pretty gross even after being washed in the small freshwater pond. The only downside was that some of the core’s mana would dissipate on the long trip from one body to another. It was a minor issue however as the amount of time saved far outweighed the slight loss in the quantity of absorbed mana. He was ecstatic at this incredible breakthrough but knew that it was only possible thanks to his grey core’s new ability to control mana in a limited way outside of his body. He almost continued to test the limits of his new discovery and absorb the rest of the core when he felt a sudden sense of danger at his back. He dove to the left and rolled over and out of the way as he produced his blade claw and turned to face the powerful foe that had come. Adam was confident in hunting anything in the outskirts of the jungle but he was currently further in than usual and feared the worst. Adam focused on the area he had just been moments before and his eyes widened when his opponent came into view.

“Oh shit…”