Chapter 20: Chapter 20 - Experimentation (2)
Before he picked his trial ability, Alex thought he'd ask some more questions, since the system seemed to be particularly talkative today.
'Are there any consequences to giving an ability a trial run?'
"Existing trials cost 8 mana each."
'How much is the force output reduced?'
"Force is reduced by a factor of 3."
'Yikes.'
'Is there anything else I should know about trialing abilities?'
"There is a 4 hour adaptation period where the user's soul is unstable, and they will be unable to use mana."
'Why are you answering my questions?'
Alex was once again greeted with silence.
'Fine, be difficult, see if I care.'
'Let's trial liquid water.'
In response to his request, he felt an aching sensation start deep in his chest as he felt the loss of his mana, immediately after the loss of mana finished, a new sensation took its place leaving him with the feeling of someone running a flaming hot knife across his skin, except the knife was made of pure mana. Dropping to his knees, Alex started screaming.
'Why was there no warning on this bit?!?'
'Fucking bastard of a system.'
Any coherent thoughts quickly evaporated, leaving only agony, and Alex thrashing on the ground. After around a minute of torture, the pain abated, leaving him a sweaty mess.
'Well that was exciting.'
'I guess I'll work out while I wait.'
He spent the next few hours working out, and slowly distributed some of his stat points over the next two hours.
[Honor System]
[Name: Alex]
[Existence Tier: 1]
[Ability: Water Control]
[Ability points: 1]
[Mana: 246/(254->246)]
[Soul Force: 4441]
[Strength: 10->25]
[Endurance: 20->25]
[Dexterity: 15->25]
[Vitality: 75]
[Resilience: 15]
[Cognition: 15->30]
[Perception: 25->30]
[Available stat points: 24]
He prioritized cognition the most, as he felt it would likely help him most with his ability use and combat. He was intentionally leaving resilience low, as it actually inhibited how well he could work out - the inability to damage the fibers would significantly inhibit growth. At the end of the two hours, having run out of things to do, he took a nap.
On waking up, he returned to his bucket, where he filled it with water, and began his testing again, casually pushing against the bucket. By his estimation, it was around 50% easier to exert the same level of force than last time.
'Not bad.'
It was time for Alex to set off towards his next goal. He wanted to head downstream, hoping it would lead to an ocean or lake, as he wanted to fight creatures and gather strength in an area where he could make full use of his water control.
He estimated his base fitness level would put him pretty close to most elites, he estimated that without his stat distribution, he'd be able to run 15km in around an hour. With his stat investments, all this had increased proportionally, and he could now maintain a speed of around 50km/h for an hour.
He hoped that this speed would allow him to travel a good chunk of the way along the river before nightfall. By his estimation, the base of the mountain to the south was around 200km away. He brought a few items with him, his flint, spear, deerskin cloak, deer stomachs, and dagger; everything else could be ignored. He would fish for food.
Setting off, he raced along the riverbed, running at a casual pace of 35km/h. He'd prefer to go faster, but the rocky footing inhibited his speed substantially. Little happened of note along his travels, and he made it roughly 150km south before he decided to set up camp for the night. He'd caught a few fish, which he was now roasting over a fire he'd made. For water, he was just hovering a ball of water over the fire, letting it boil, after which he'd float it over to himself and drink it.
He didn't prepare anything fancy to camp with, and just climbed up into the branches of one of the trees. There Alex made himself a nest of sorts by flattening and bending a bunch of branches before draping his deerskin cloak over himself as a blanket. He extended his water senses in a 20m radius around himself, cranking up the level of detail heavily, if anything passed through the area, he'd know. He then dropped into a cautious light sleep.
Alex was suddenly awakened from his sleep by something shooting through his water senses. He took less than a second to wake up and become alert, his eyes unfocused and dull, but it was enough time to register a blur, rapidly closing on his location.
He rolled out of the tree, putting the trunk between him and the creature, as he tumbled to the ground, spear in hand. In mid air, he managed to untie his three deer stomachs, readying his water for battle. This feat wasn't even particularly impressive at his stat levels, as his cognition made the descent almost painfully slow in comparison to how fast he could think - gravity was constant after all.
Twisting his torso at the last moment, he landed on his feet, gazing up at the creature now perched where he'd been sleeping. The first thing he noted were two glowing golden eyes, split with vertical dark slits - cat eyes, the next thing he noticed was the bulk of the creature, along with the patterning of its fur. This was either a jaguar or some type of leopard.
'You have the high ground, kitty cat, don't expect me to come to you.'
"I'm good at catching fish if you'd like to negotiate?"
In response the cat leaped out of the tree, shooting down at him like a cannonball, to which Alex nimbly jumped backwards, watching as the jaguar landed in a crouch, ready for another assault.
"If you keep this up, I'm going to make a fur coat out of you."
The jaguar then pounced for the third time that night, and Alex had a brief moment to admire the lithe body of the animal as it twisted in the air, paws extended, ending in razor sharp claws. It truly was a beautiful killing machine.
As the jaguar reached the peak of its arc, Alex scooped a ball of water upwards, slamming it into the top of its torso, causing it to rotate upwards, off balance. Now, instead of flying at him head first, it was flying belly first, and he used the opportunity to drive his spear through its chest.
Feeling the spear flex aggressively, he immediately became nervous - not another one. Fortunately, it survived the impact and he breathed a sigh of relief, before releasing his grip on the spear and slamming both remaining balls of water into the jaguar, using the momentum to shift him away from the cat, and dropping into a roll, avoiding its pounce.
With his increased cognition, his ability to time the impacts had become superb, leaving only a fraction of a second between stabbing the jaguar and throwing himself away from it.
He'd also noticed something else in this fight, he'd again lost control of his water as soon as it collided with the jaguar.
'Is it something to do with their mana concentration?'
Coming out of the roll, he turned to face the jaguar, dagger at the ready for any further funny business. Fortunately, it seemed he'd managed to gore the cat quite well with his spear, and it seemed to have died pretty much immediately. He noticed blood starting to pool beneath the cat and his face contorted with a frantic expression.
"My coat!"
He exclaimed, before rushing over to the cat, and using his water control to pull away the blood - he couldn't have his coat getting all covered in blood. As he did this, he realized something new - manipulating jaguar blood was exhausting.
'Is it because it's jaguar blood, or because it's not human?'
'I never tried this with any of the murder chickens.'
Shrugging, he gave up thinking about it.
'Add it to the todo list.'
After 15 minutes, the jaguar seemed to have stopped bleeding, and Alex sighed.
'This is not how I was supposed to be spending this night.'
'Not only do you interrupt my beauty rest with your attack, but now I have to spend time skinning, and maybe even cooking you.'
'So selfish.'
He began the arduous process of skinning the jaguar, it took over an hour even with his improved dexterity and control, a dagger was not exactly designed for skinning an animal.
Finished, he reviewed his new rug - he'd changed his mind partway through, it only had minor bloodstains. He then draped his new rug over a low hanging branch before returning to stare at the rest of the carcass.
'What am I going to do with you?'
'I really am not mentally prepared to go through another binge eating spree.'
A flash of inspiration hit him, and he remembered to check something important, cutting into the creature's chest with his dagger. There he noted another marble, its light almost blinding in the darkness. Smiling, he added it to the stomach along with the other marble which he'd not yet consumed.
Then he bent down over the corpse of the creature, where he placed his hand, and proceeded to drain it of mana. It wasn't elegant, and was far less efficient, but he really didn't have the time to process and cook an animal this big. After he finished drawing out all the mana within the jaguar, he grabbed the corpse, before walking it a good 10 minutes into the forest, where he deposited it regretfully.
He wasn't particularly happy about having to waste perfectly good food, but someone in the forest was bound to enjoy it.
Returning to his camp, he refilled his deer stomach's at the river, and did his best to clean his rug of all the blood. He then used his water control to pull off all the little drops of water, immediately drying it, before he climbed back up into his nest with it.
'I've now got a blanket with an S rank intimidation factor, maybe I can sleep in peace now.'
He set his water sense back up, before returning to sleep. This time, he managed to make it to morning without being interrupted.
Waking to the scene of leaves above him, he was briefly startled, before remembering where he was. Making sure he had all his belongings, he hopped out of the tree, and set off again down the river.
After another three hours, he managed to reach the base of the mountains, the river seeming to etch a path down the middle of them like a big scar. The path at the foot of the mountain was covered in a thick mist, so thick that he felt he could scoop it out of the air and hold it in his hands. Alex groaned quietly to himself, as he approached the mist - this was definitely going to be troublesome.
Were it not for his water sense, he'd have been utterly blind, fortunately it told him exactly where the river was giving him a solid path, so long as he stayed within a reasonable range of it. Additionally if he focused, he could use the mist to vaguely paint an image of the surrounding area - it being water vapor and all.
As he made his way through the mist, he noticed an increasing sense of unease permeating the air, eventually transitioning into an outright sense of dread. The mist had become thicker, if that was even possible, Alex noted that he couldn't even make out his hand unless he brought it to within a foot of his face.
As he paused to examine his hand, he heard a loud slithering noise a few meters behind him, seeming to come from multiple directions at once. Whatever it was, it seemed to be relatively close, and he estimated that this was a large creature, spanning over 30 meters.
'Fuck no.'
Alex immediately took off at a sprint along the river - he wanted no business with whatever that was. He didn't stop running until he felt the sense of dread fade into minor unease, at which point he breathed a sigh of relief, pausing to catch his breath.
'I knew this mist would be trouble.'
'No going back now.'
Continuing along the river, It wasn't long before he was greeted by the sound of fierce rushing water - it was a giant ass waterfall. He tried extending his water senses, but the waterfall extended far beyond his range, seeming to travel endlessly into the abyss below.
One thing that was interesting was the thick column of mist that seemed to rise up from the base of the waterfall. Alex guessed that this was somehow the source of the mist between the mountains, though such behaviour was incredibly strange, as to his knowledge this was not how mist behaved.
'Maybe the drop is so far that the water is reaching terminal velocity and just vaporizing into mist?'
'Still weird.'
He noted no path or real way down the surrounding mountains, this area looked to have been hollowed out by the flow of water, and it was sheer drop down the cliff. Leaning out over the waterfall, he extended his senses, pushing off the falling water, where he felt himself begin to float.
'Good.'
Satisfied that he could float even on the water pouring down the waterfall, he began formulating a plan.
'This is an incredibly stupid idea.'
'Not like I can turn around and go back.'
'But somehow, I'm sure it will work out.'
'I sure am glad I'm not scared of heights.'
Alex then proceeded to throw himself into the air before the waterfall, diving into the abyss.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Butter_Boy9000
Butter_Boy9000 Again reduced output as I'm busy fixing earlier chapters.
I re-wrote chapter 2 today.
I also have social obligations this weekend, so I may end up missing a day once again.
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