My hand left the satchel, pulling out a long vine that appeared to be a long, flexible, brown branch that was just about the same size as my belt. I channeled my innate mana into it, trying harder to focus on pushing the mana from my soul instead of my body. I had never used my innate mana from my body, as it couldn’t receive any from my soul, but I had mentally imagined it as if it were, impacting my efficiency. Taking it out of my soul was like trying to push it out of my awareness and senses, rather than a physical part of me, but I was able to get enough of it into it to allow it to begin slowly shifting in my hand. Using my Worldspeech in tandem with my innate mana, I commanded the vine, pointing it forward.

“Strangle the beetles!”

With that thought, it rushed forward from my hands to the closest beetle, slithering on the ground like a snake to make its way there. Within just a few seconds, it had reached the first one, quickly wrapping around its midsection where the thorax and abdomen connected. I could see its shell beginning to crack under the intense force, and it sounded like wood being crushed rather than chitin. Its body seemed to take on the properties of its Wood affinity, and from the purple hemolymph, bug blood, seeping out of its sizzling on the grass, I could see where the Poison affinity came in, too. As the one beetle suffered, the other beetles reacted to it by flying over to stop it. With that distraction getting some of the pressure off the hive, I began to channel mana in my hands to cast the improved version of Mana Pollination. This would be the second distraction to save the hive.

It had been two days since I activated Researcher’s Analysis, and the task to complete a training regime for improving Mana Pollination had been completed. The request scroll came undone from the tree, becoming a Knowledge Scroll when I touched it, entering my Soul Library to be accessed any time. The first thing it did was to lay out the different types of Mana Pollination: short, mid, and long range. The closer the range was to me, the denser the mana was with a lot fewer motes of it, and at the longest range, it was the opposite.

The best way to improve the efficiency of the ability now was to begin at close range to mix both extremely dense and very light motes of mana. The more of each with varying ranges I could sustain for long periods of time, the more efficient my mana control became. However, I already knew this from my family's teachings, so the Knowledge Scroll went on to explain the best ways for me to practice, along with detailed guidance on incorporating my affinities and the power of my soul.

Now, as I faced the beetles, I conjured a short-range version of Mana Pollination with lots of light motes and a few dense motes of mana, imbued with potent nature and knowledge affinities. The lightest ones traveled the fastest, while the denser ones lagged behind. From the twenty-three beetles, five were dealing with the vine, which had killed one of them and gone on to another, and the other eighteen had continued wreaking havoc. However, with the mana I was spreading, the lightest motes of it had reached a few of the beetles, drawing them closer to the denser ones, and more began to follow. The first few that reacted had found the denser motes of mana and began to consume them, leaving them distracted. The ones that were following had now sensed the mana and began trying to fight the other beetles for the largest pieces, hungry for the mana they provided. There were now about twelve beetles fighting for the mana, with the remaining six on the tree.

I stopped channeling mana and sprinted around the group to the tree, dashing forward with my spear in hand. As I got close enough, I planted my feet into the ground, conjuring mana into the spearhead to strengthen it, and with my whole body’s momentum behind it, I stabbed at the closest one to the hive. I pierced the back of it, pale yellow organs and purple hemolymph, being pushed outward as it shrieked, moving its spindly legs back and forth to try to resist. The beetle's poisonous guts tried to break down the spearhead, but because of its material and endurance affinity, it had no effect. The spearshaft did get damaged as the poison leaked onto it, but it quickly renewed itself with the mana I supplied to it and became slightly more resistant as it started being broken down again.

Making sure none of the poison got on the tree or the nest, I took the now trapped beetle and flung it off my spear, farther away from the rest of the bugs. With a wet thud, it bounced off the ground and skidded to a halt, lying limply, leaking more poisonous fluid onto the grass as it died.

I heard the buzz of wings as I managed to bring my spear up in time to block the reckless flight of one of the remaining undistracted beetles, preparing myself as the others were close behind. I parried and slashed the wings of the next few beetles that tried to hit me, succeeding with some and failing with others. Stabbing at the ones I could reach easily, I aimed to end this quickly. I knew the rest were distracted so far as I had added something special to the dispersed mana, but I didn’t have an exact measurement of how long it would last.

With that in mind, I took some of the mana I had gathered within my body and began to empower my arms. Unlike the pure innate mana within my soul, the mana I had gathered within my body was less conductive to being manipulated, but was still nature-aligned, so it was better than other forms of mana. While my soul was in the Early Formation rank, my body was in the Early Gathering rank, and my mind was at the basic rank. I had started gathering energy in my body in the last few days, and while I had yet to expand my mana storage beyond 20%, empowering my arms with it was within my capabilities.

As I did so, the scars that went from my skull, across my shoulders, down my arms, and to my wrists began to faintly glow white as I felt the gathered mana enter them easily. Smiling to myself at the ease with which it happened, I stored that knowledge away for later and used my empowered arms to dispatch the rest of the invaders.

As the beetles flew around me, I noticed they were mainly focused on scratching me, and I quickly realized their serrated limbs meant they were poisoned. Due to being distracted from empowering my arms, I had given them an opening, which they took, causing them to make small wounds on my arms and legs that began to sizzle, causing me to clench my teeth in pain. From my childhood memories of identifying types of poison, it seemed the type of poison the beetles inflicted was designed to cause as much pain as possible and to corrode whatever it touched.

I had been in much more pain than this, however. I continued fighting.

As I swung at two that were just out of reach, I channeled my innate mana through the shaft of the spear, which went upward to the spearhead, and out from the top, extending my reach by a foot. That was enough to slash through both of the beetles who had assumed they had dodged out of the way. The remaining ones had their wings slashed, so I was able to stab through one and sweep the other two away to single each out, killing them successfully.

I was breathing heavily by the time I finished, my body and mind not used to combat after so long, but I had done better than expected. My soul’s innate mana stores were around 60% at this point, and my body’s gathered mana was at 30%. I was still not very efficient with mana. I turned around to see where the other beetles were, and I glanced at the vine to see how it had done.

I was surprised to find that it had actually killed 4 of them, leaving 2 badly injured, but in return had lost all its mana and had huge chunks missing. The poison that had spread out had begun to break down the vine. For a moment, I thought of just getting a new one, but I thought it would be better to heal it up and see how my knowledge mana would change it over time. It showed a lot of promise for being the first time I used it. I scooped it up and placed it within my satchel, turning to the remaining beetles.

Looking over at where the rest had been distracted, I saw that almost all of them were completely unmoving, with the exception of a few that were crawling around at extremely slow speeds. I could sense the mana within them had gone still, and realized that my plan had gone a lot better than expected. When I dispersed the mana, I had followed the Knowledge Scroll’s advice to use certain affinities more when using Mana Pollination for different effects. In this case, I used predominantly knowledge mana with the thought that it would overwhelm the beetles’ minds, and it looks like I was correct.

I walked around them, seeing if they would react to anything, but that didn’t seem to be the case. After stabbing through most of them, I decided to leave four alive, with two of them being completely still and the other two slowly crawling around. I tied them up with some other, more flexible and tough vines, placing them in the satchel, which still had more than enough room. I gathered the dead beetles into a pile, away from the nest, and decided to leave them there for now. I then picked up the vine, wiping off the remaining poison with some moss, channeling some nature mana within to heal it, and then went to check on the nest.

A bit of time passed as I finished going over the nest and assessing the damage. Overall, the beetles hadn’t been there long, so they had mainly damaged the tree and the entrances to the nest. The honeybees were doing alright, startled, but ok and the queen was nowhere to be seen, which was a good thing in my mind. I was in no rush to meet her, but in the future, if I could help promote her growth, I would do so to further my goals.

I decided I couldn’t just leave the hive defenseless, and while it was true that the Hive Beetles would’ve targeted the bees anyway, I knew that the nectar I shared with them probably sped up the process. Seeing how well the trick with the vine did, I decided to take a few more vines nearby and imbue them with knowledge mana, too. I kept them dormant for now, but commanded them to awaken if the hive was attacked. Eventually, I would try to set up an alarm system for this area and all the others, but that would take some time.

As I looked at the pile of dead Hive Beetles, I realized that they were most likely from the mountains to the southeast, where Spore’s mother came from. The gigantism they had in common meant that they were at least from the outskirts of the Behemoth Mountains, which was my family’s destination after we had to run from the village, before we were forced to escape into the forest. There was supposed to be a safe haven there for the village, so I assumed some of the survivors went there, but looking at the beetles and what I knew about the Sanctum’s invaders, it might not be safe anymore.

The beetles in this chapter are based off of Hive beetles, which invade nests, eat honey, bee eggs, and anything else they can. Bees don't have a great way to deal with them due to their hard shells and hive beetles can even mimic honeybee's alarm pheromone, messing with their perception of what is going on. They are native to sub-Saharan Africa, but have spread to many areas across the world.

The vine I've referenced in this chapter is inspired from a Strangler fig, which is a parasitic plant that drains trees over time as they grow. They can devastate forests so they need to be carefully monitored, but for someone like Harvoth I thought it was a good fit. Also I like how they appear snake-like, which is cool.

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