Chapter 4 “ensuring water and experimentation”
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Chapter 4 “ensuring water and experimentation”

 

The most entertaining activity in the world, nay existence, manipulating mana and my stupid seed body can’t even last long enough for me to do even a basic perfection of my inborn circuits. So I huff and I puff and I turn my attention away from my newfangled hobby and turn my view back to my roots. My roots. Literally. Oh, well hopefully I can get some valuable experimentation and skill levels out of this! 

I decided to see if there was a difference in root growth depending on my method. First I willed my roots to grow. They did grow just much slower than when I wiggled them and I could feel that it took more nutrients for an unknown reason. Second, I tried wiggling my roots. This resulted in insanely fast growth, in comparison to just willing it, and yet it took less nutrients and less from my water storage. Since I have this wonderful skill called Sense Mana I decided to have a closer look. The surprise was mild only because I knew that plants can’t wiggle their roots and something else must be in play. Whenever I jiggle my roots they take a little bit of nutrients and all the mana contained within those compounds. When I just will it the nutrients flow but the roots don’t absorb any mana. This indicates that I can use mana to substitute vital compounds and survive without them; whereas, for a normal tree not having that compound is a slow death, like nitrogen! My third attempt I mimicked the splits that occur all over my mana flows and turned the final loop back at the end of one of my roots into one. The amount of mana that gushed into my root was very concerning despite the fact that none of it was lost. My taproot did go from a few centimeters to a whole meter within about thirty seconds. I quickly wrenched that flow of mana to a halt and replicated the pattern of circuits all the way down the root. When the surge of growth stopped I looked back onto my mana, nutrient, and water storages. That stunt had blown half my mana, most of my nutrients, and I was down to two days of water. I quickly surveyed the surroundings of my new root and pulled in what my plant biology said was good for me. I was back up to a week by sucking most of the available nutrients around my taproot. With my wanton absorption I also got a hint of water. Assuming hypothetical North is the direction my unborn stem is folded pointing towards this would South-East closer to East and down.So I decided that while I would grow towards this source of liquid life I would not be doing so with my taproot, that I want as deep as possible. So I took one of my tiny hairlike stems, pointing the right direction of course, and I began to grow that using method number 4! With this method I create the entire repeating circuit, the one for this root because they are different for each root, outside the root and then I watch. I, figuratively, stand amazed as the water consumption is less than a hundredth of that of wiggling, the nutrient consumption is less than an eighth of wiggling, the mana consumption is tiny in comparison, and the flow is smoother than I could make it. My root shot out in length not nearly as fast but sustainably. And sustainability was my greatest concern because once I am a tree and no longer easy to eat, being able to continue to grow will become my next greatest challenge.

Method number 4 was the all round winner. Sure it was slightly more mentally straining but the resource efficiency to growth to effort ratio was firmly in the favor of growth and efficiency. Now that I knew the equivalent of magical pre planning or foundation laying was so powerful I decided to do that with all of my roots from now on. My merry little jaunt as a seed with a meter long taproot and a 4 meter long heart root had me giggling at heart. It took another meter or two before my root encountered wet soil and then burst into a small underground tributary. My roots wanted to suck up as much water as possible but I knew that plants could die from excess water. So I made my suction slow and gradual enough to put me out of death by dehydration but not become overly full. With my sudden increase in turgor pressure my tiny stem jerked and began to rise. My stem was stopped unfortunately by some dirt above me.

I implemented my ultimate plan: The Unkillable Tree! The reason why my plan is so ostentatious is that I know a little about trees because I had to get rid of a salt cedar. This tree you have to chop down and then pour poison on the stump within two hours or it will build up a cell layer and just grow back within a year. Obviously I am a sycamore not a salt cedar so my plan won’t work in that aspect but there are many, many trees that can grow back from their roots even if they are cut down and their stump removed. So my plan is to grow deep enough and have enough sub connections that even if my stump is removed my entire root network is still connected and I’ll have stored such massive amounts of nutrients and mana that it wouldn’t even matter. And then I’ll make like a mangrove and just pop up about a hundred miles away from where I was first cut down. There's infinite regeneration from massive stores of nutrients and water, mobility (sort of), and then I’ll just find a way to make myself completely identical to a normal tree to mana senses, smell, taste, and everything else. What else could be needed? Once I train enough I’ll never be found if I don’t want to and even if I do I can just grow back in a new hiding spot. But currently I am still just a smol seed.

But I knew a great way to fix that, digging! It took about a month but all of my main roots were now at least 10 meters long and my tap root dug straight down at least 100 meters. It took a lot of finangling with my secondary and tertiary roots to get them to grow together and then merge but I found out if you just put a joint between the mana flows they merge right together! No messy finangling of splitting the root tip and then having them literally grow into each other and then heal into the other’s flesh. That original operation hurt quite a bit. It hurt so much I got a new skill!

[ General Skill: Pain Resistance has reached lvl 1-20 Rewards +40 fortitude, +40 EXP ]

This notification reminded me to check if I had any other level ups. I did!

[ General Skill: Mana Sense has reached lvl 21-40 Rewards: +20 Mana, +20 Magic, +20 EXP ]

[ General Skill: Control Mana has reached lvl 21-40 Rewards: +20 Mana, +20 Magic, +20 EXP ]

[ General Skill: Regeneration has reached lvl 1-4 Rewards: +40 Health, +40 Fortitude, +40 Growth, +40 EXP ]

Huh that's cool.

Now that I’ve ensured my survival with an extensive root system and direct connection to a water source I’m going to go back to policing my flows.

I knew from prior experiments that tubes work better but what type of tubes? Tubes that are perfectly smooth? Tubes that have the same texture of my xylem and phloem? What about pipes? Which are different from tubes because pipes are measured for both strength of the wall and internal radius whereas tubes are the radius of the outside edge. 

So my experiments began. For simplicity's sake I would start with completely smooth insides and adjust internal radius and wall thickness first. So I chose a random mana flow and put a tube around it. The flow improved greatly just like it did with the first curve. Now I tightened the tube. The edges remained properly in line and the holes decreased in size which was good. However the inconsistent density did not improve. Then I compressed the mana more to the point it was flowing in a space half its original size. This led to all holes filling in but with very loose mana. The circulation speed also increased. Density, obviously, was still an issue and from what I could see the bleeding tail would only be fixed when everything was properly tubed. Wall thickness had no effect.

Next, I tried walls with straight grooves. This caused a massive speed up in mana flow at all densities but it constantly bled mana through the grooves even when I thickened the wall and increased the wall density.

Then, I tried spiral grooves like the corrugated barrel that guns use to increase the accuracy of the bullet. Assuming 90 degrees would be straight I started at 85 degrees. The spiral improved the consistency and density of the mana but it still leaked through the grooves. As I gradually decreased the angle the leakage decreased as well until about 70 degrees where no mana escaped. As I tightened the angle the mana began vibrating and releasing a humming sound. At 1 degree the mana was almost deafening to my senses. In exchange for its supreme vibration the mana moved “slow”. By slow I mean it progressed through the tube slowly but it was really travelling at the same speed it just had thousands of loops to pass through. As I tightened the tube the intensity increased greatly. When I increased the density and width of the wall that also increased the intensity. Adding multiple sets of grooves allowed greater amounts of mana to flow through but it did not affect speed or dispersal. The multiple sets of grooves could be useful when I have vastly more mana but as is it just split the mana equally with every set of grooves.

Then I tried a tube with circles cut into it. Reminiscent of all those sci-fi particle accelerators. This caused all the mana to compress into a single line in the center and launch into the end of the tube. I then adjusted the spacing of the circles. The circles had to be within a certain distance or the flow would destabilize and I would just be using a smooth pipe until it got in range of the next circle. I then tried putting them just in range of each other and while it flowed smoothly it was much "slower". I’ll probably only use this if it is beneficial to have a "slower" mana flow. Pushing the circles closer together results in “faster” mana flow. I continue this until the circles are directly contacting. When the circles directly contact it loses its acceleration properties and just becomes a smooth wall. A mental thumb width seemed to be the best distance between circles. And 1 and a half mental thumbs was the best radius of the circle, with a 1 thumb wall width. The thinnest density I could manage worked best as well.

Now I have to try all of these in a curve and a joint. The straight grooves were just an inferior version of the smooth pipe for both the curve and the joint. The spiral took the curve very well but when it came to the joint I had to disperse the tube it almost exploded! I guess when you think about it spirals can’t split and preserve their curve easily one will always end up with a differing spin to that of the original which from what I can see the mana impacts that new spiral in the wrong direction and destroys the tube creating a messy and dangerous tangle of mana. The mana accelerator version took the curve perfectly but it impacted the edge of the joint and almost destroyed it. When I tried again this time with a stick out from the middle of the joint and an adjustment to the circles to pull the mana apart it split perfectly with some minor momentum loss. Now the real question is whether these tube types will work on one of the joints where there are multiple splits in a single area. The smooth tube was still the same, the straight grooves were still inferior, the spiral groove almost killed me again, the no-alteration accelerator once again hit the edge of the tube, and the altered accelerator used wedges within the tubes and connections to split the mana into the new accelerator fields within each exit tube. The accelerator was once again the best option.

But there was another question on my mind, these were all shapes and inscribed tubes but what if I used a tube with the same texture as my water veins. You know the ones innate to all plants. If this ends up being more efficient than my stupid sci-fy manaccelerator I’m going to cry. Well the xylem and phloem have different textures so I’ll have to try both.

Let’s see the xylem has slats and holes between its cells and the whole point is they conduct water and are strong so when the plant grows the xylem will die and provide a central support structure, the heart wood. So I try that with slats and little hooks within the tube and shaping it to flow the mana like water. It did work, it was superior to the smooth, spiral, straight, and basic accelerator but it didn’t perform as well as my advanced manacelerator. The phloem works by having sieve tubes, which are made of stacked, elongated cells, with holes between each tube and each stacked cell where they use microbiology to transfer the sugars, minerals, and other nutrients (my highschool education gets foggy here). There are also many other fibrous cells and hard irregular cells within the phloem. The other fiber cells are used to allow the phloem to flex and the irregular hard cells are there to allow pressure and other compression to not damage the phloem. 

The phloem method was superior to the xylem method but was still slightly inferior to my mana accelerator. I stared and I grew frustrated because I have previously been rewarded for following my plant biology to that lends credence to the idea that using the phloem somehow would improve my methods. I altered the walls between the grooves to match that of my phloem method and the efficacy greatly improved. I stared further. Almost all plants use both xylem and phloem, both are necessary outside of some specific families (of which trees are not part of), so I need to use both. I tried to texture the inside of my cut rings into the shape of the xylem. This made my previous altered mana accelerator look like a smooth wall tube. When I swapped for xylem to be the space between and phloem to texture the rings the mana hugged the wall instead of travelling in the center as a line. Both had perfect (from the extent my mana sense can detect) flows, identical speeds, identical densities, no holes, and no leakage. Since they were identical other than mana flow placement I would need to decide which one to use and where. Xylem is my heartwood phloem is everything else. When in doubt follow biology.

[ General Skill: Pain Resistance has reached lvl 21-30 Rewards +20 fortitude, +20 EXP ]

[ General Skill: Mana Sense has reached lvl 41-60 Rewards: +20 Mana, +20 Magic, +20 EXP ]

[ General Skill: Control Mana has reached lvl 41-60 Rewards: +20 Mana, +20 Magic, +20 EXP ]

[ General Skill: Regeneration has reached lvl 5-10 Rewards: +60 Health, +60 Fortitude, +60 Growth, +60 EXP]

I still haven't made the spreadsheet to catch all the stat, experience, and lvl ups so you'll have to deal with that for now. I'll just go in and edit the older chapters to make the EXP right. Or maybe not I really don't want to do that so I'll just make it right in later chapters and say ignore the EXP in the first 3 chapters.

P.S. Here is the real skill EXP and stat boosts. Next chapter will have the updated status sheet. Also thanks Lynderup for bringing to my attention the EXP issue!

P.P.S. The copy paste from my spreadsheet should work but sorry if its ugly.

Spoiler
Skill Name Salt Resistance Pain Resistance Mana Sense Control Mana Regeneration Decoding
LVL 1 30 60 60 10 50
EXP 1 465 1830 1830 55 1275
Health         100  
Mana     60 60    
Magic     60 60    
Fortitude 5 60     100  
Intelligence           100
Wisdom           50
Charisma            
Deception            
Artistry            
Magic            
Growth         100  
[collapse]

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