Chapter 5 - Mana beast

With the coconut heart gone and along with it, his only source of food, Adam was equal parts angry and scared. The fact that his fruit was gone meant that some creature must have stumbled upon his cave or been attracted by the fruit somehow. This means that at some point when he was slumped against the cave wall, completely unconscious and defenseless, only tens of meters away, an alien creature had climbed up the cliffside and entered his cave. He suddenly felt lucky that he decided to leave the fruit where it was and moved to the back of the cave for the added darkness when he took his nap, since it was likely the only reason he didn’t wake up screaming with his body being devoured by an oversized insect or a giant bird. Thinking about it further, the birds seemed a lot louder and more active now that the sun had finally gone down. Could the thief have been one of them? It would explain a lot since they would have had a hard time getting into the cave but could have easily snatched the coconut heart from the entrance, leaving Adam to sleep undisturbed in the back. If the culprit was something smaller that could fit inside the cave, then his shiny middle-grade mana core would probably have been a nice snack for any predator that could have reached his defenseless body. The chances of the flying predators being responsible was the most likely scenario. They must be taking advantage of the dimmer light to hunt their prey and my fruit was simply an easy target for them.

Adam was feeling pretty terrible right now. The excitement he felt about having upgraded his core was quickly washed away by a feeling of helplessness. The only food and water he had discovered was the coconut heart and now it was gone when he needed it the most. Not to mention the fact that the dim blue light probably meant that it was hunting time for all the jungle's predators. Even if he got lucky and made his way back to the strange broccoli tree and grabbed another fruit, he would only be painting a target on his back once again. Except this time he probably wouldn’t get away like last time since now he had an upgraded core and from his hypotheses, that makes him a perfect target for predators. Adam also didn’t know why the beasts didn’t simply eat the fruits from the tree directly. He now knew how magical they were, so what reason did the beasts have to stay away from the strange tree?

Adam was dreading what he had to do, as it would most likely be the most dangerous thing he needed to do since arriving here. He needed to find food and water that didn’t only contain concentrated mana like the coconut heart. If the stronger mana beasts couldn’t get the coconut fruits, then his chances of doing so again now that he had a core were close to zero. Before he ventured out in hopes of finding breakfast, he once again inspected the changes to his body. Judging by how slowly the sun had moved since he got here, it had likely been several days since he fell asleep. The fact that he hadn’t lost all his body weight or died of dehydration meant that his mana core was doing more than simply making his muscles stronger. Since his body must have been strengthened when he slept, he looked down at his body and was shocked to see how defined his muscles had become. Adam was never a very muscly person as he never went to the gym, nor did he care about his appearance. He lived a tough life to begin with and spending his free time sweating in the gym was not an appealing offer. His social life was not great and apart from making the occasional work friend like Paul, he mostly kept to himself. Without a girlfriend to impress or a social image to uphold, he mainly ignored his appearance but still made an effort to eat healthy when he could. The gym lunatics would go mad with jealousy if they could see him now. He went to sleep as a normal-looking guy and woke up as a bodybuilder. His abs were now clearly visible and his whole body just felt lighter. He stepped outside of the cave to stretch his legs since the cave's roof was rather low and uneven.

Adam stretched his body and immediately noticed how flexible he had become. He could never touch his toes before but now he was able to do so with a little effort. His entire body had bulked up slightly but he probably would look even stronger if he hadn't been starving. Jumping on the spot, he found that he could now jump much easier and higher than before. This would be very useful for outrunning any danger from the jungle. Adam was feeling more confident now with his newly gained strength, but after some quick shadowboxing, he reminded himself that anything he had seen so far could annihilate him. Despite his wish to stay in the cave and learn how to control his mana, he knew that if he didn't get some food and water for his upgraded body he would be in serious trouble. He felt hungry when his early-grade core had strengthened him in the beginning and with such drastic changes, he would need to eat a lot more than usual. Before he could come up with an excuse for himself to stay in the safety of the cave, he set off down the cliff as silently as possible and kept his eyes and ears peeled for ambush predators and flying death monsters alike.

He tried to remember where he had previously gone but the fact that the sky had changed and the plants along with it, the entire process was made a lot more difficult. The sounds of the jungle were also a lot more pronounced and numerous compared to before. Until now the cries and calls of the wildlife had been a constant but ultimately low background noise. With the sun gone, every single noise sounded like a guttural scream to Adam as the predators were most definitely out hunting. He didn’t dare make his way through the jungle to get to the strange mana tree and instead decided to investigate some of the noises. It would be dangerous, but even being out here was putting his life on the line. He would rather get some information on what kind of creatures were lurking in this jungle, and better protect himself from them since they were currently announcing their locations with all the chaos going on. He located a couple of roars close to the beach, and decided to sneak up and take a peek at what was going on. The noise sounded like a fight and someone was losing by the increasingly desperate sounds being made by one of them. After carefully moving towards them for a few minutes, he found the source of the noise. By the time he got close enough to lay eyes on the creature responsible for the deathly howls, it had already succumbed and was now lying lifeless on the ground. The creature responsible for ending its life was nowhere in sight. It was lying motionless on the ground, barely illuminated by the light of the planetary rings since the jungle’s canopy was obscuring the corpse. Adam stayed crouched behind a bush as he analyzed the scene. The fallen prey was a small grey furred creature that looked a little bit like a cat with a head reminiscent of a monkeys. Its front limbs were longer and skinnier than its bulkier back legs. As he looked closer, it actually resembled a koala but with the more agile build of a feline. After a few more minutes to make sure the predator had left, he crept out of his cover and quickly but quietly made his way to the creature. It had a large bite mark around its head and lower back. On closer inspection, he noticed its claws were like slightly curved blades. It had only one claw on each limb of its upper body. Its feet however were similar to a cat's with four toes, each with a smaller retractable claw. He didn't dare stay much longer because even now, he was pretty sure this dead fella was part of a pack and was simply the unfortunate victim of some confrontation which was probably ongoing somewhere not too far away. He didn't want whatever killed this guy to come back and find him, so he grabbed it by the arms and angled its twenty centimeter blade claws away from his body as he slung it over his shoulder and made haste back to the beach.

Despite its small stature, the furry creature was surprisingly heavy. Adam couldn't really make a guess as to how heavy since he hadn't really acclimated to his new and improved body. He guessed that he had the strength of an athlete right now with his upgraded core as he was restored to peak personal condition when he got his core to begin with. This got him excited to upgrade his core again since it would probably truly bring him to the level of superhumans. As these thoughts were going through his mind, Adam tried pushing some mana from his core and almost tripped when the core actually responded and released a small pulse. He quickly regained his balance and readjusted his dinner back onto his shoulder. The fact that the core had actually responded to his mental prod was a huge change from when he tried before. Back when he was absorbing the blue cherries, being able to focus on which place had the strongest pull towards his core was the most he could manage and any attempt at controlling the core was ignored. Could it have been because his core was overloaded and unable to both absorb all the dense mana within him as well as expel his own. It does make sense, but it's also possible that a middle-grade core is just easier to control. Redoubling on his vigilance, Adam made his way onto the beach and continued straight for his cave. He needed food and this guy was all he could get. He was thinking about how to cook it over a campfire like he had seen on those survival documentaries and really hoped it wasn't poisonous. It didn't appear to be, but he couldn't exactly make deductions about this place with earth knowledge. Nor could he get any wood for a fire. Adam stopped in his tracks as the question of how to cook this guy brought with it yet another shit storm to ruin his victory. He just found food but this jungle doesn't have any normal wood to burn or even any way to make fire. He could try to smash two rocks together with his added strength but all the stones he found up until now have been the same grey and they were more likely to crumble than make sparks when hit.

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Back when Adam was first exploring the jungle, he spent a while trying to get a stick or rock to use as a weapon but nothing worked. The branches were usually made of some rubbery material that he had no way of cutting and even if he had a machete on hand, what would be the point of a bending dark green rubbery spear against the centipede?

It didn't take him long to make his way to the cliff. He located the ledge he had to climb to get to his cave and flung his dinner up first. By now, Adam had come to terms with what he had to do. In his state, it was getting hard to move and every time he did, his stomach felt like it was about to consume his organs. He was out of time so even if he could make a fire, he was too hungry and felt too weak to even attempt it. Instead he moved the body towards the cliff's wall while on his little fairly flat ledge to try and blend into the rest of the cliff. He didn't want to go into his cave, as what he had to do would definitely make a mess. In his weary state, he almost got up to get his sharpened stone when he stopped and stared at the creature's arms. Adam would have laughed if he had the energy to do so. The twenty centimeter long claws of the beast looked a lot sharper than some blunt stone and was exactly what he needed. Adam took a deep breath and grabbed the first arm of the beast and brought it to the wrist of its second arm. The claws looked like knives except they were a little curved and rounded at the wrist. The tips were flat, with the middle of the claw being much thicker with slightly rounded edges to the point that only the bottom side was sharp. Its curve wasn't as extreme as a scythe but not as straight as a normal knife either. As he looked at it lying upside down, he noticed that it's mouth was actually below it's eyes. Adam was confused as to what sort of fucked up creature this was, until he realized it's entire body seemed to be upside down. It must have used its feet to walk around the tree tops like a bat, its claw arms were used to cut leaves or whatever the hell this guy was cutting and stuffing into its face. It all seemed to make a lot more sense now. After his mind had processed the probable uses of its visible features, he brought the first claw down onto it's second arm to remove it from its body. “You won't be needing this anymore buddy so can you give us a HAND?” It didn't take too long to cut through once he located the wrist joint and cut through it. The entire blade seemed to be some sort of bone claw as it was a dark color but so was it's bone. With the newly separated claw, he moved to the other end of the creature to get access to its muscly legs. He really wasn't looking forward to eating raw meat but if he had too, he would eat the thighs since they at least had visible muscle. Using his new knife, he made a light cut on its leg and was surprised by how easy it was to skin. He removed a large section of the skin and furre without issue. Adam was truly starving and when he saw that pale pink meat, he didn't think to question if that was normal and instead cut a small strip of meat out and swallowed it without hesitation. Half because he didn't dare try to taste the raw meat in case it was revolting and half because he couldn't control himself.

Adam sat there, leaning against the wall of the cliff that extended high into the sky and expected to start throwing up or getting a stomach ache. The meat was an alien monster’s and he had just eaten it raw. But nothing bad happened. In fact after a few seconds of waiting his only response from his starved body was a growl from his stomach telling him he has to be joking if he thinks that small piece of meat was enough to satisfy him. He got to work cutting piece after piece from the beast thigh but always made them small enough to swallow without chewing. In order to not taste it, he focused on controlling his core and was surprised to see that foreign mana had entered his body and was being absorbed into his core. Just like his pathways though, he couldn't see the pieces of meat in his stomach, only the cloud of mana that was concentrated in lumps where his stomach was. Adam focused on his core and how it acted to absorb the beast mana as he tried to manually control his core to only absorb specific clumps. This was no easy task as it was akin to controlling one's heart beat instead of letting it do its job on its own. Adam barely registered the fact that the available meat on the beast's thigh was running out since he was concentrating on controlling his mana core. He moved over to the second thigh to begin working on it while almost on autopilot. Not even the hunger was really getting through to him anymore as his main focus was to absorb the mana clumps. He was actually devouring the mana much faster than with the fruit, which went to show how mana-dense that fruit truly was. This meat was definitely infused with mana but it looked and felt different than the fruit's. This mana was much less compressed and was lighter than the fruit's. It was almost white whereas the fruit's mana looked more greenish. The core was also not having a tough time at all with it as it didn't seem to need any time at all to digest it. He was even able to send out pulses of mana immediately after having sucked a piece of the meat dry which would not be possible before. Either his core had truly gotten a massive upgrade, or this beast's mana is fundamentally different from the fruit's.

By this point, Adam had nearly eaten both legs to the bone and was absorbing the mana faster than he could get more meat down. His hunger had gone quiet and his core was much easier to control. He could now control what part of his body the pulses would be sent to and what effect they would bring. He was experimenting with boosting his muscles in between cutting off pieces of meat and was able to marginally increase the strength in one of his arms by pumping mana into it. When he was eating, he was able to dictate which pieces of mana to absorb first and how fast. The mana in the meat may not be as dense as the blue cherries but still started spreading across his body a few seconds after being consumed. When he was finishing picking the leg clean, he tried to focus on restraining his core to see what would happen. His core was the storage room for his mana so what would happen if it didn't suck in the mana but instead let it roam free. He observed it for a few minutes until he came up with another theory about his magic. When he upgraded his core while unconscious, he did so by jamming a bunch of mana into his body that his core struggled to digest. Being in intense pain at the time, he didn't have the patience to observe much about what happened but he guessed that the highly dense mana spread across his body since his core couldn't keep up. This would have saturated his body in mana, just like when he first formed his core. When it reaches a certain level of mana saturation in his cells, something happens that triggers a sort of miniature mana black hole in the center of his body and forms his mana core. By that logic, if the same process were to happen again then that second implosion of mana would merge with the core and cause its mana capacity to be drastically increased, therefore upgrading the core. Adam was also pretty sure that that wasn't the normal way to do it since the amount of pain he was in was no joke. It didn't hurt like that when he formed his core so he guessed that having his muscles already pumped with his mana somehow interfered with the second mana implosion process, if not for the soothing and healing effect of the fruit, Adam may have seriously crippled or even killed himself. He was once again reminded of how precious that fruit must have been, since this new mana had no such effects. Now admittedly, this is only a theory based on incomplete data, but he felt like this was a real close guess as to what happened. The real question now is how to safely upgrade his core without causing black holes to form within him. Returning his mind to the world, Adam finally observed what he had been doing while focusing on his core and the taste of blood in his mouth finally registered. He always enjoyed solving puzzles and mysteries. If he had the opportunity to get higher education then he might have become an engineer. That is to say that Adam was always very good at hyper focusing on certain tasks or problems while ignoring everything else. In this case being the alien monster he had somehow carved up and picked to the bone from the once thick legs to the beast's lower back and shoulder. He had no recollection of ever skinning and craving up the creature's main body but apparently he did. He felt full now and the taste in his mouth almost made him gag. It was most foul to say the least. Imagine the slimy texture of frog meat mixed with the intense odor of beef. The fact that the meat was raw only intensified the potent smells and taste of the beast's flesh. Adam was about to get away from the thing when he realized something important. This creature was a mana beast since its flesh was saturated with mana. Does that mean that it too has a core? Adam turned it over onto its half carved up back and used his new knife to make an incision in the middle of the beast's body. The sight wasn't pleasant but his eyes burnt with the desire to find the truth. He had just carved up and eaten this beast raw and wouldn't let something as trivial as rummaging around in it's guts stop him. Eventually, he found what he was looking for. A small black pebble that looked just like his own core if a little smaller and darker.

This was it. The answer he was looking for. This was how he would upgrade his core. He just had to figure out how to use it first.