Chương 52: Experiment

Blick followed the river south for another three weeks. He had went separate ways from the couple after the maps were copied. They went up river cautiously to report back to the gate camp. Blick was very use to saying goodbye to people so when they woke that morning and took down camp it was a quick process to show them how to roll up their hammock and show Dax how he usually strapped it to his back. Then Paris rolled the two maps and tied them to herself and with a wave they disappeared into the jungle.

Hopefully they would be able to convince the people after him to let it go. They had definitely not made any promises about it. Both had come from noble families but that didn't mean much when the force most dedicated to catching him would inevitably be from another kingdom. It didn't matter much to Blick. He had a goal in mind for both travel and cultivation. He hadn't made progress on the solid layer, but he had gotten much more comfortable with moving the drops around.

His next project would be to try and make a few more just to absorb and see if strengthening his body overall would help. That seemed like a crazy idea to his two companions when he described it, but he was trusting the man who made gates to other worlds wouldn't have lied to him about making a core with only five drops. There had to be a method and he just hadn't found it yet. While he was walking along the riverbank about a week ago two of the yellow and blue birds found him and landed on his shoulder.

One was absolutely massive for its species. Blick reached up and funneled a small amount of mana into the small beast. It had become a habit during the week of walking. He would feed the bird bits of meat and berries and it stayed closer to him than the rest. Honestly it was probably keeping the others of its kind away as it was much larger than them. After a week of steady mana dosing he noticed it had completely stopped flinching when he gave it mana so he started giving it larger doses.

The theory about animals not being able to form multiple drops had him very curious about how big they would need to grow in order to form their own solid layer. If those wagon sized cats had a solid layer, would the logic follow in other species? There was no real way to see inside someone else's core so this was a best guess based on power and speed. One of the cats was more than a march for one human with the same cultivation level.

Blick found a blueberry bush near the riverbank on the fourth week of travel and crafted himself a lower back pouch with an open top to carry it around like he had before that giant bird grabbed him. As he was reminiscing about the chaos of that situation he had a realization that a bird large enough to pick him up existed.. and that meant the bird beside him pecking at a small pile of berries could in theory get large enough to carry him too. Blick took a day off from travel to spoil the bird.

Constant food with constant mana infusion made the bird grow to nearly double its size in a single day. This had detrimental effects on the poor animal unfortunately. It was stronger and larger but like when Blick had advanced too fast it became unused to its size and strength. The bird was absolutely clumsy and being a bird it wasn't the smartest animal. It took nearly three days of Blick carrying it around before the thing flew again for the first time.

It let out a loud, shrill squawk when it managed to take off successfully and flew larger circles around him for the next two hours. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. For the next month he would give the bird half the attention he had that day and see how large it would become. In the mean time he was digging up tree roots at random and pulling in as much mana from a tree every hour or so. Doing this granted him nearly a drop every two days.

He could focus all his attention on the task and gain another five drops in just a couple of days if he really wanted to, but that wasn't his priority. Every drop he made after number five was absorbed almost immediately into his body to spur his own growth. A single drop was hardly noticeable as it spread randomly and unevenly across the body. He felt the drop disperse through his body in a cool tingling sensation close to the time he created his core.

Much less traumatic as he was stronger and much more use to mana at this point. The cool sensation focused deeply around his core and dispersed into the closest tissues before fading completely from his senses within minutes. The small benefit would hardly be noticeable. Now he understood why people here didn't just dump all their drops into their body. A noble may only collect maybe 20 drops over their entire life and they routinely used 10-12 to create their first solid layer.

They were too valuable to waste for such little gain. But Blick had opened his meridians years in advance of the people here. He could pull so much more at a time. That coupled with his understanding of the plants holding mana stores meant that he would be able to amass a stockpile of 20 drops in just a year. Maybe less if he focused on finding mana dense areas. That was part of why he went south to the mine town. There was a chance that some form of mana deposits remained and he would be alone in looting it.

Pretty soon he realized that the large bird was eating far more food than Blick could actually give him each day. The cooking was almost doubled as the large bird grew to stand well past his waist in height. He took a break from traveling to try and teach the bird what animals to hunt and which to avoid. The bird was not a predator so it didn't naturally seek larger game. Surviving its entire life till now on berries, nuts, and bugs hadn't giving it the skill set to hunt real animals.

Blick made a guess that when small animals absorbed too much mana they grew to a point that nuts and bugs couldn't sustain them. This would either lead to them starving or adapting. It also probably lead to more of the stronger mana beasts having a leaning towards predatory behavior. That matched with what he knew of his hoe world. Everything large enough to eat a person would inevitably try. That made him look sideways at the animal that was a little more than half his size.

Would an otherwise calm animal become violent? Or was that a product of the lack of food or socialization? Blick squinted his eyes at the potential death he was raising.