Chapter 12: Mana sight

  Gaia World, 4 Days After The Shattering

  After long minutes of fast walking interspersed with bursts of running, Pawel was winded and exhausted.

  His legs were burning with exertion, and even the insignificant wound on his hand had become more aggravated by the rapid movement.

  Despite his efforts, he wasn't out of danger yet. He could hear animals fighting, or running away in the distance all around him, but actual encounters were more sparse now. He didn't get any more opportunities for easy kills, but luckily, every time he met a group of tadpoles, they were chasing after something else.

  After several times of having clay tadpoles just run right next to an unmoving Pawel, completely ignoring him, he was pretty sure that they had no hearing or smell, and only react to movement. Having fought a couple and witnessed how they act, Pawel decided that the clay monsters weren't so bad, unless in big numbers.

  Sadly they were not the only danger around.

  One time he came across several tadpole monsters fighting against some kind of aggressive predator animal – or perhaps it was also a monster?

  Either way it was furry thing shaped like a wolf, reaching up to or even above pawel's waist when on its fours.

  It was covered with brown fur of different shades and some black spots here and there.

  The animal was furious, absolutely refusing to give the clay tadpoles any ground despite facing seven of them.

  It had lightning fast reflexes whenever one of the monsters jumped, it just smacked it away.

  Pawel did not stay to witness that fight's conclusion.

  With only his tiny hatchet in his hand, even clay tadpoles might be troublesome, and that predator was a death sentence if it fancied attacking him.

  That was around ten minutes earlier, now Pawel had put significant distance between himself and the wolf-cat-predator and he was too tired to run anymore.

  He half-rolled, half-walked into a shallow basin in the ground, surrounded by a group of trees and thick bushes giving him some cover.

  For a few minutes, the exhausted man only breathed and relished in the bliss of not moving anymore.

  After he had already steadied his breathing, his brain started analyzing the situation.

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  The only sustained injury was practically self-inflicted from breaking his spear, so he now needed a new weapon, and also to somehow deal with his cut hand. Trying to make a new spear while surrounded by enemies probably wasn't the best idea, even if they were deaf, but perhaps he could do something about the injury?

  Pawel reminisced about the purple mist after the clay tadpole despawning.

  " I should have gotten some power from that" – he whispered to himself

  The setting wasn't perfect for meditation – with all the action going on in the distance, but the earthy smells and gentle rustle of leaves above somehow eased the relaxation phase, the forest's familiar scents grounding him amid the chaos.

  He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and cleared his mind. It didn't take long for traditional breathing techniques to transform into focusing on new senses.

  Pawel directed his mana sight inward and immediately noticed some gains.

  All over his body, he sensed something that gave impressions of a green-colored, sparse haze, pulsing gently within him, warm and vital, like the essence of growth itself.

  Nature affinity mana, he decided

  Carefully, he tried to guide it toward the cut on his hand, attempting to do the same thing he had done earlier when fighting off the fever and possible poisoning. The mana flowed toward the wound, gathered around it, lingered there, and produced a faint sensation of warmth. It did something—a little bit of healing, similar to what he was used to from before—but then it simply stopped, idling without further effect.

  Pawel kept trying for several minutes, pushing and guiding the mana, but nothing changed.

  Then realization struck him.

  Before, he had been focusing on fighting a disease or poison. What he wanted now was different. The ability he had used before simply was not applicable to closing a cut and repairing damaged tissue.

  With that in mind, he tried again, this time giving the mana a new intention.

  The sensation was deeply frustrating. It felt as if he were trying to grab and move something ethereal using sheer mental effort—something that kept slipping through his grasp. But after repeated attempts, something finally clicked.

  A large portion of the mana inside Pawel suddenly began to dissipate, seeping somewhere deeper into his soul. Instinctively, he understood that this was necessary.

  When the process ended, he found that he could now direct the remaining mana much more precisely. It began to seep slowly into his wound, gently working its way through the damaged flesh, and—hopefully—starting to mend it.

  Once healing had begun, Pawel realized that he did not need to struggle with it so much anymore.

  From this, he learned something important. Even though all the energy inside him had been the same color—perhaps belonging to the same affinity of magic—there were actually two different kinds of it. One kind had been consumed or absorbed to grant him the ability to do something new with the other.

  Now that he did not need to wrestle so much with the internal mana flow he directed a portion of his attention outwards with his mana sense.

  The most dominant presence was, unsurprisingly, green mana. It looked almost identical to the mana inside him and felt the same, which led him to call it nature-affinity mana. It gathered around living things, sometimes flowing gently between them in greenish, river-like currents. It resonated with what was inside him, yet he knew instinctively that it was not his. It was untamed.

  Because he was resting in a terrain depression, Pawel also sensed something beneath him. Underground, there was a brownish type of mana—rigid, unmoving, and distinctly foreign to him.

  Above him, high in the sky, he sensed a light-blue, ethereal mana. It swirled and danced rapidly, completely indifferent to his presence. Pawel knew without doubt that he had no connection to it at all.

  Then he noticed something else.

  An orange, wire-like presence with an almost corporeal feel slithered its way into the basin where he was hiding. It was very thin, with its length reaching much past Pawel's senses in the direction of the anomaly. It moved its tip with intent, seemingly trying to reach Pawel and trying to connect - he somehow knew its intentions.

  The sight of it filled Pawel with revulsion. He nearly broke his meditative state as panic surged through him. Desperately, he reached for his own mana, trying to do something before the orange wire reached him.

  But he never got the chance.

  His instinctive reaction—his fear, rejection, and emotional recoil—seemed to smack the thing away. The orange presence recoiled and quickly lost interest in him, wiggling away and increasing distance quickly. Pawel observed his surroundings in concern that the wire thing might return, but it faded out of his mana sight range and never returned.

  Meanwhile, most of his remaining mana had been used up, so he left meditation, exhaling sharply.

  “Right… enough doodling around,” Pawel said to himself as he broke out of meditation.

  “Time to go before it gets completely dark.”

  Before leaving his hiding spot, he pulled out his flashlight and checked his wound.

  It was no longer bleeding, but the cut was still there. It was hard to tell whether it had healed at all under the blood scab.

  "Well, if it is healing, it is not going to do much for serious wounds" – he mumbled in disappointment, rebandaged the wound and moved on, disappearing into the fading light.