Not knowing what to do next I turned to my primal instincts, which admittedly were rather dull - ‘gather sunlight’, ‘spread roots’, ‘germinate’. So … not a lot to do. I decided to spread my roots, because I could feel that there was a rather big deposit of Mana gathered somewhere close by. In what form I have no idea - it could be rocks, or soil or a lake - but as a I am so inexperienced with this new form of energy I am completely in the dark.

Spreading my roots throughout the area, I pierce through the crust of the earth and stab deep through the layers of fire and ice that are beneath the surface. These are almost perfect for my growth - two contrasting elements that can keep me in balance. All I need now is a source of earth and air and my environment would be perfected. Next, I reach out to Aevum with my mind in order to ask him a couple of questions:

‘’Aevum, are you there?’’

‘’Toron - is that you?’’ they replied.

‘’Yes, I seem to be stuck as a fucking PLANT’’ I said.

‘’Well you’re not the only one - do you have any idea what happened as one moment I was happily snoozing whilst you were keeping guard … you WERE keeping guard right Toron?’’ they said with a hint of worry ringing their voice.

‘’*Ahem* … I might of taken a little nap?’’

‘’AND THE UNIVERSE JUST HAPPENED TO START’’ Aevum screamed. ‘’YOU ABSOLOUTE MORON OF AN EXISTENCE. YOU DISGRACE YOURSELF AND ALL THAT KNOW YOU!’’

‘’No need to get your knickers in a twist - I know just the thing to do’’ I said, cowering from the emotions I felt flooding through the connection.

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‘’And what would that be you twit?’’ they replied, their voice rising with each word they spoke.

‘’Help me figure out Mana!’’ I said before promptly cutting the connection and hiding my soul from the attack that was bound to follow.

And follow one did - a fully blown nuke of soul power hit my defences and did more damage than the universe itself did. That was how angry Aevum was, and I realised then that I truly was in deep shit. The aftermath from the *soul nuke* ripped through my soul world, however because of my impeccable defence nothing was harmed - this was simply a way of Aevum venting his anger, he wasn’t truly trying to kill me … I think.

I decided that I would wait for him to calm down before contacting him again and instead focused on the thick gloopy substance that was flowing through my stem and veins. I tried nudging it and got no response … so not a gentle thing like the Ki I used to use. Instead I tried pushing and shoving it, only to no avail. Absolutely no amount of hard mental shoving or gentle strokes. At this point I got annoyed - why couldn’t I do this? It should surely be simple … right?

Turning from my frustration, I settled into a deep meditation and thought back on the beginning of my rise to power - where I created my own cultivation system in order to prevent myself from going mad at the limitless expanse of power available to me. I remembered how it took me aeons to control Ki, and even longer to understand it. Let alone Prana. Yet, I was drawn to one of these memories - right before I fully embodied what Ki truly was, I remembered how I infused my soul with so much Ki in attempt to fuse body and soul. Of course this is a stupid idea as in order to fuse these two together, one must first understand both to the maximum extent before using the mind as a medium in which to bring all three together.

This experience brought great enlightenment on me back then and so I tried to fuse with this ‘Mana’ that was inside of me. Bringing my soul to touch this substance I was racked by an extreme sensation of being burned alive, but frozen to death. Suffocated but also over flowing with blood. This abruptly stopped and I noticed that around the centre of my world, where my fountain resided there was a perfect circle of Mana. I decided that I had just gone through the first stage of this new cultivation system, and since I was the first one, I decided to name this stage ‘Mana core formation’, or core formation for short. This would be the second stage after ‘Mana gathering’ because all plants needed to gather Mana in order to survive. However, I realised a problem with my reasoning - because of my experiences I was able to do this myself, but what about the others - except for Aevum - nobody else has such an advanced soul and mind, and so could not form a core without guidance. This guidance could be anything from a mentor … to a cultivation manual made by someone who had already experienced this - except I was the only one who had.

A well … a problem for later I suppose. Time to take a nap!