….

"on…. ohn… John!"

John was having a peaceful slumber. He heard some vague noises in the background, but couldn't bother to get up to check what was happening.

Smack!!

"Oww! Why the fuck did you slap me!"

"Your fucking boner was poking me in your sleep! I was squashed beside you inside this tree trunk, and you want to use your little Johnny to violate me!"

"Shut up dude, it's just a natural reaction. All adolescent guys experience this frequently."

"Ever since you saw that monster, you've acted strangely. Don't tell me you were thinking about the monster when you summoned your Johnny."

John paused for a moment, and had to think for his answer.

"To be fair, I imagined what the monster would look like if it were a woman. I am willing to bet that that monster was a female."

Kano was visibly shaken, and he shook his head and proceeded to stare at his poor friend in disbelief.

"Ew, you are a fucking degenerate. I'll just stay away from you whenever you are near a monster you like."

"Sigh... Kano, you truly do not have romanticism."

"You're just weird."

The two fellow retards continued bickering as they continued their usual business. They trekked for at least 8 hours a day, trained in between breaks, ate fruits for their three meals and slept in tree trunks during Nightfall.

Three days passed by quickly as they repeated the same process. John was able to make some minor discoveries during his cultivation. He discovered that the pale green aura that appeared around him when he cultivated was actually mana that had been influenced by the surroundings.

Perhaps because the location that he cultivated at was in a forest, the attribute of the mana absorbed was wood element, or at least he thought so.

 

'If my assumption is correct, a fire related environment would provide fire elemental mana, and a place near large ocean bodies would provide water elemental mana, so on and so forth. I will need to travel to prove my theory right.'

However, it was precisely because the mana he absorbed wasn't pure that he had concerns. He did not know whether he had an affinity with the wood element, so he couldn't haphazardly absorb it into his body.

The reason why he came to realize that there were elemental affinities was because he tried to summon every single elemental spell that he knew without incantations. The wind element was the only one that activated, and he knew that this was his elemental affinity.

'I'll probably need to travel to high altitudes to absorb wind natured mana. There must also be a way to purify elemental mana and elemental condensed mana, because I need to get rid of the wood natured mana already condensed in my mana core.'

John went into deep contemplation and tried multiple methods to purify the wood mana in him like further condensing the crystallised wood mana and more, but it inevitably didn't work.

He then moved on to other problems like his physical fitness. He clearly felt his physical strength improve when he circulated mana through his body, and wanted to test if he could permanently enhance his muscles.

Woooong

Pale green aura started to surface around his body, and he absorbed it. Instead of bringing it directly to his core, he let it spread throughout his entire body. To his sadness, the mana simply dissipated without enhancing his body.

'Hmm. Maybe I can try moving some crystallised mana to a specified muscle group?'

After multiple failures and attempts to shift the crystallised mana to his arms, he decided to try one last time.

He concentrated deeply and circulated his breathing. This time, he tried actively visualising the crystals being broken off of his core and starting to shift around his body. Now, he could feel the crystals attempting to move. 

Crraack!

The crystallised mana was broken off the core! However, what accompanied after was an excruciating pain in his chest. 

"G-guh!"

Because the mana core was something akin to a living being's life force and existence, having part of his already small mana core chipped off served to inflict extreme pain onto him.

 

He slightly panicked and wanted to link the chipped crystals back to the core, but it couldn't work at all. After several attempts of fixing it and failing, he sighed and gave up.

Begrudgingly, he thought of shifting the crystals to his arm to see if it could possibly strengthen it, since his original goal was to enhance his physical body in the first place. As he moved the crystals, he experienced even more pain as if needles were traversing his body. He gritted his teeth and continued the process, all the way until the crystals were spread evenly throughout his arm.

"Phew.."

A sigh of relief was let out after he thought the process was successful and over, until he felt his arms pulsing. He could feel the muscle fibers in his forearm biceps and triceps absorbing and wrapping around the mana crystals. Some crystals were even ingrained into his bones. This process took a short 3 minutes before it was done.

As usual, after the experiment, he got up and started shadow boxing to test out whether he actually got stronger. He got into a boxing stance, and as he did a jab…

Whoosh!

His fist exploded outward at a greatly increased speed. It was a refreshing feeling for him.

'Woahh. Is this how boxers feel in their peak conditions? This feels great. Imma punch a tree next.'

As promised, he launched a fist towards a nearby tree. A resounding boom ensued as the fist crashed into the tree trunk. When he retracted his punch, there was a big dent inside the tree. Throughout this experiment, he barely felt any pain at all.

'Holy fuck! I'm a fucking monster. Give me a second to destroy Kano.'

"Hey Kano! Come here for a moment, I need you to help me with something."

"Hold on, let me finish my training first."

A few minutes later, Kano walked to him full of sweat.

"What do you need?"

"Let me arm wrestle you."

"Again? I just destroyed you a few days ago, and you want to be embarrassed again. Fair enough."

They laid down onto the ground and assumed arm wrestling positions again. Their hands clasped each other's, and started counting.

 

"1, 2, 3!"

Boom!

To both of their surprises, John instantly won the match.

"Hahaha! I am too fucking strong!"

John started jumping around with glee like a monkey, and started laughing like a maniac. Kano was simply dumbfounded and was just staring at his right hand, unable to process what just happened.

‘Tsk… just as I thought that physical training can bridge the gap between me and John… Is there really no other way to become stronger and independent?’

Kano started pouting and the victor realised that he might have gone a tad far with his taunting and celebration. John walked forward to the lying Kano, squatted down and started patting his back. He looked at him with a pitiful gaze, and started spouting spiteful words.

“Sigh… don’t worry, I’ll take care of your daily needs in this world from now on… hehehe.”

The loser, unable to suppress his resentment and anger, grabbed John and started trying to grapple him. John, who was caught by surprise, was able to easily shrug off by using his strong arms and started running away.

“You dog!”

However, Kano started sprinting towards him and was actually able to catch up quickly. He pounced forward and caught him, proceeding to straight ankle lock him.

“Ahh! Owowow! Time out!”

John tapped out, and Kano finally released his grip. John knew that he was in the wrong for constantly taunting him, and that Kano would not seriously hurt him too, so he just conceded. 

“Sigh.... just you wait. I’m going to find a way to become stronger.”

“As you wish, milord.”

The two of them exhausted a relative amount of strength from all the arm wrestling and sprinting, so they had to take another break before the trekking continued.

This time, John attempted to conduct another body check. After testing out his body and learning that everything remained as per normal other than his enhanced arm, he moved on to spell casting. He attempted to chantless cast a wind bullet, but somehow it didn’t work.

“Wind bullet!”

.... Nothing came out either.

He continued chanting other elemental spells, anything that he could think of, but to no avail. In the end, all he could do was to muster up a small chunk of mana around his body.

‘...Did my cultivation downgrade? Was it because I broke off some of the condensed crystal in my mana core, causing it to backtrack? Hmm, that’s indeed a reasonable assumption. I should be careful of my actions next time, because I wouldn’t want my cultivation to downgrade any further.’

RUSTLE RUSTLE….

The rustling sounds of leaves and bushes resounded very clearly in John’s ear. He immediately got into high alert, and gripped his spear. With his newfound power, defending against a monster would be much easier. The pair grouped up together, and started discussing the phenomena that happened just now.

“Kano, did you hear what I heard?”

“You mean all the rustling that happened just now? If so, yes.”

“I think there might be a lot of monsters. We should conduct a bit of investigation and try to look out for them.”

“Alright.”

After half an hour of extensive scouring, they still couldn’t find any monsters or anything suspicious. 

“This is strange. We couldn’t find any monsters within the vicinity, yet the rustling sounds of the trees and bushes were so loud. We could even see the branches shake too. Maybe it’s the forest itself that was moving? Just kidding.”

“I also think that it’s the forest itself. I have a bad feeling about this, and we should head out of this forest as soon as possible. We cannot afford to be nonchalant like this anymore.”

With that said, they hastened their steps and started travelling through the forest near the river again. 

During their travel, they met a few small monsters over the course of 5 hours. John was able to kill them off easily with his fast arm speed and spearing skills. This time, they took the corpses of those monsters, because they realized that fire magic was available, and John planned to recultivate back to the second stage, make fire and eat meat again, since meat provides a substantial amount of mana compared to fruits. Kano may experience stomachaches again, but looking back at the trend, he would eventually develop more resistance the more he ate, so he didn’t need to care too much about him.

When they decided to rest, the sun was starting to set too. John popped several fruits into his mouth, and started cultivating again. After a short duration of an hour, he felt his mana crystal breakthrough yet again. It seemed that it’s easier to breakthrough since he had already done it once before.

He immediately chanted ‘Fireball’, and a small fire lit up on his hand. He went around to destroy the bushes at a rapid pace, set up a campfire and proceeded to cook the animal meat. There was the flame rabbit, komodo-sized lizard, and a flightless fat purple bird.

After roasting up the small monsters, they were then eaten with delight by John, while Kano was hesitant, but still ultimately decided to chomp on it. The former immediately received a fast recovery for his mana, and the latter started squirming in the ground after 10 minutes of digestion. This time, Kano took 20 minutes to recover from mana poisoning, which was a significant improvement from the previous time he ate meat.

With that, they found a tree trunk to sleep in, and the day was soon over.

….RUSTLE RUSTLE…..

Kano was the first to get up to the strange sightings that were happening all around the vicinity. This time, he was able to see all the trees and bushes shaking their leaves actively. He initially thought that the monsters were the one who did it again, but he could not detect any signs of life form through his peripheral vision.

“This is getting kinda funky and scary man. Dancing trees and bushes??”

He proceeded to wake John up and updated him on what happened.

“Mmm… see, this incident can either be one of two things. Firstly, the forest could be trying to greet us because we stayed here for an extended period of time, and wish to communicate with us. Then, we can be friends! Either that, or this forest is getting angry for cutting its bushes and eating the fruits. If that’s the case, we’re going to be one-tapped by this huge ass forest.”

“I see. If you put it that way, the second choice has the highest chance of happening. We’ve been doing whatever we want in the forest, so it might be angry. But, what we can do is outsmart the forest. Since it is going to try and attack us anyway, we might as well do several tests and see what will happen if we actively make it angry, right?”

“I see that you have a reverse-IQ idea. For now, our main objective is to remain alive for as long as possible, not fooling around in a forest where danger is prominent everywhere. Fooling around will resume once we reach somewhere safe, or once we’re strong enough.”

With that said, they continued their hours of trekking yet again. John would use his mana sense to sweep through the surroundings like a radar, and detect any monsters.

As usual, during their rest times, John continued cultivating and testing out his physical abilities, while Kano continued training diligently. The latter never skipped a single day of training, and his body was getting more and more refined. Although his strength increased by just a slight margin, it somehow feels like the air around him was sharper, as mentioned by John. It might have been a placebo effect from all the exercises and the feeling of progress, so Kano completely ignored his comment as he thought that he was just trying  to comfort him.

Once in a few hours, the entire forest would start rustling, but nothing happened to them. They began lowering their guards unconsciously as this incident had done nothing but exhaust them mentally. 

The sun was starting to set. The sky turned to a burning orange color, so it was a signal for the both of them to find a trunk to rest and sleep. They both agreed on not using a firecamp anymore as doing so might possibly agitate the forest. After finding a suitable tree, they continued their individual activities as per usual, and John strengthened another part of his body. This time, he decided to extract the mana crystals off his mana core, and direct them to his legs. While he had already done it once before and was prepared for the pain, it was still unimaginably painful, causing him to sweat profusely.

Furthermore. The legs are also the farthest body parts away from the heart, making the travel distance the longest, and the most excruciating. Regardless, after a good 30 minutes, he was able to infuse the mana crystals into his legs. When he attempted to stand up, he actually leapt off the ground from sheer strength. 

‘Holy fucking shit! The feeling of power and speed coursing through my legs is extremely good, especially after such a painful process.’

Out of excitement, he forgot all about the plan of not disturbing the forest as much as possible, and tested his kick on a nearby tree. He unleashed a powerful kick, and his shin bashed into the tree trunk with potent force.

Boom!

Splinters of wood flew out from the impact. After retracting his leg to check the damage done, he was able to see one chunk of the trunk missing! The kick was much more powerful than the punch, and his shin only had a numbing pain instead of a broken shin. He celebrated this ‘victory’ in his mind and started jumping around in excitement.

Krrggkggkgkk…

While he was distracted in his celebration, the tree he kicked started creaking and rustling softly. The upper part of the trunk started bending forward and looming over John. He was unable to see the environment clearly since it was already getting dark during his body strengthening process, and did not notice the strange movement.

‘Hm? Why did it suddenly become much darker?’

However, he was able to notice something strange when he observed that he could not even see his own hands now. He tilted the chin up, and muttered.

“O-oh, my god, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to hit you, I was just testing my newfound skills…”

He took some time spouting some nonsense and explaining the logic behind his actions to the tree, but the tree would only go lower and lower. John couldn’t endure the pressure of the looming tree anymore.

“U-uh, as I was saying, the act of implanting muscles with their mana core’s mana crystal must be prevalent in this world since-”

As he was speaking halfway, he started sprinting away at a neck-breaking speed, trying to escape from that single tree.

However, a different tree that he was running towards started manipulating its roots and attempted to trap him.

“Heh, your puny little roots can’t catch me! I already dealt so much damage to that one tree I’m sick of sparring with it!”

As if understanding John’ speech, the tree roots suddenly started to move at a faster pace, like they’re trying to prove him wrong. Indeed, it did prove him wrong.

Whaam!

John was smacked into the ground, and fainted from the shock and damage. All of the aforementioned stunts actually only lasted for a short 10 seconds. Kano couldn’t even help John, because the timeframe of the battle was too fast and quick. He went to the direction of the noise with his spear, and found him lying down on the ground. That particular tree’s roots were entangling around John’s body at a slow but steady pace.

“John!”

Kano gripped his spear tightly with both of his hands, and charged over in an attempt to cut off the tree roots. 

Wham!!

The spear slammed into the coiling roots, and it was able to pierce through relatively deeply. However, the root continued moving, and started shifting the spear away. Kano held his stance and continued gripping the spear tightly. However…

Crack!

The spearhead broke off. Kano, who was slower than John after the latter’s body refinement, could not outmaneuver the tree roots, and got caught too.

“Fuck… are we going to die like this yet again?”

Right as he was starting to fall into despair, he heard a crackle of thunder from the skies.

BOOM!

Red streaks of lightning descended from the sky, and utterly decimated the roots. The lightning streaks, though fierce and wild, were able to cleanly destroy the roots and free Kano and John without hurting them.

A bountiful and gorgeous woman suddenly appeared from nowhere and slowly cat-walked towards them. John, who was freed from the tree roots, looked up and opened his jaws in awe.

‘W-w-woah, she has horns and a tail! She’s clearly not a human. Also, the way she walks kind of turns me on… I think I’m in love.’

Despite the way John was fawning over her, she looked at them in disgust, as if they were a waste of her royal time and an annoying sight to see. She opened her peachy mouth and said with a sexy voice.

“Disgusting insects.”