Chương 431: (424) 6.38. The Scientific Method

The next morning, after a quick use of Dream Walk to let his friends back in Terra know he was still alive and kicking, Vin found himself doing something he'd never really done before. Monster hunting. Naturally, as it came with the job of wandering the many fragments of Edregon, Vin had probably encountered a wider variety of monsters than practically anyone else he'd ever met. That said, he never went out of his way to hunt down monsters, they always came to him.

But if he was going to get a handle on whatever this new Capstone of his did, then he wanted to get the chance to actively practice with it in the field. Not to mention he was still a bit unnerved about the possibility he was permanently stealing emotions from people. He figured testing some of the many facets of his Capstone out on a monster was probably safer for everyone involved rather than asking any of the dwarves or elves to act as test subjects for him.

With that in mind, after a quick breakfast, Vin left the Burrow and began wandering around the dwarf's hilly fragment as he hunted down a monster. He found it mildly entertaining that as soon as he was actively trying to find a monster, it seemed as though there weren't any to be found. But eventually, as was the nature of magic, he came across one. And what a monster it was. New monster discovered! 200 exp gained. The monster looked like a giant, extra-long centipede.

Coming up to Vin's knees and stretching back longer than a school bus, the monster trudged up and down numerous hills all at the same time as it hunted for a source of magic to feast upon. Vin didn't really have anything against bugs, as he'd shared countless nights with them during all his time roaming around as a vagabond back on Earth, but even he shuddered at the sight of the monstrous centipede. There was something about bugs that, while fine at a tiny scale, just felt horrific when blown up like this.

Alright, test number one… Taking in a deep breath, Vin vented some of his mana, but in a way he hadn't tried before. Rather than letting it ooze out of his body in all directions, he aimed with a hand and focused, similarly to how he'd seen the apprentice do during his test. With that in mind, he managed to fire out almost something like a burst of mana, sending the mass of it slowly drifting off to the side and toward the monster.

The longer the mana drifted through the air, the more of it that dissipated, but Vin had managed to vent a concentrated enough amount of it that it was still largely intact as it approached the monster. The centipede's head snapped up as it detected the approaching mana, and the monster rocketed forward far faster than Vin had expected it would be capable of moving.

Raising its front portion of its body up like a snake rearing to strike, the centipede lashed out, chomping its mandibles down on the mass of mana and dispersing it. Remaining far enough away that the centipede couldn't sense him, Vin vented a few more bursts of mana, watching as the monster hungrily went from one to another, never seeming to grow annoyed at the fact that its mandibles struck nothing but air. Though I suppose that makes sense…

Monsters aren't going after people specifically, after all, they're going after the mana radiating off of people. They're driven by the desire to consume and disrupt mana. Satisfied with his venting practice, Vin moved onto his next test as he attempted to draw mana into himself, specifically from the area around the monster. Here he ran into his first snag.

It seemed there was a pretty clear limitation on how far out he could reach with his attempt to pull mana into his core, and the monster was definitely too far away. Realizing he was going to have to get up close and personal with the giant bug, Vin sighed as he started walking forward. The monster clearly didn't have very good eyesight, but it picked up on his own mana before long, and it screeched as it raced toward him.

Vin watched as the long monster sprinted in his direction, and he didn't move a muscle even as it reared up on its back half again. It wasn't until the centipede struck forward, aiming to chomp him in half that he moved." Stone Wall," Vin said, raising a dense wall of solid rock in front of him that the centipede's face crashed right into. Before the dazed monster could recover, he continued." Entangle. Enhance Gravity."

The grass around the centipede's feet stretched up with explosive growth as it wound itself around the dozens of available legs, and the gravity around the monster tripled, causing it to crash to the ground. Once he was certain he had the monster contained, Vin scratched his chin as he walked around his Stone Wall, gazing at the struggling monster. It felt weird to capture one instead of killing it, but he supposed he wasn't the first person to attempt such a feat.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Devin and the elven Tamers had to have trapped monsters as well, seeing as they managed to tame them. I imagine their own efforts probably involved either traps or other tamed creatures rather than magic, but the end result is still the same. While long and not all that friendly, the centipede was still only a regular monster rather than an elite one.

Vin's two spells working in unison were more than enough to keep it contained and pinned down, though they were actively drawing mana from him faster than his natural regeneration. Which was exactly what Vin wanted. Venting a little bit more to be safe, Vin focused on the monster before him, before taking a deep breath and drawing on the mana of his surroundings. The hard, packed earth of the flowing hills. The slight moisture in the chill morning air.

Even the color green from the grass he was actively using to subdue the monster. All of it flowed into Vin, filling his core with new sensations. Along with the deep, burning hunger to consume and assimilate everything around him. Vin gasped, nearly losing his hold on his spells as he leaned back against the wall he'd created. He stared at the struggling monster in shock, not having expected such a powerful, all-encompassing emotion to come from it.

Though the more he went over the sensation in his mind, the more he realized he'd actually felt the exact thing before. Gazing at the Worldeaters with Beyond the Veil as they flew around in the bottom of the sky fragment had felt almost identical to what he'd just picked up from the centipede. The fact that a twenty-foot-long centipede and an epic monster the size of a small mountain range shared functionally identical desires felt a bit strange to him, but there was no denying what he'd just experienced.

Venting a bit more of his mana, Vin pulled more mana back into him, refilling his mana pool and experiencing his surroundings in a new way a second time. Again and again he did this, going through the motions just like he had while talking to the Whisperer. Only this time, he was the one fully in charge of when he lost and gained mana. Vin kept this up for a solid couple of hours, waiting until the sun was high overhead before deciding that was probably long enough for his purposes.

He'd managed to both get in quite a lot of practice with his new techniques and alleviate the worst of his fears at the same time, which made him feel a lot better about what he was doing. For starters, whatever he was taking from the environment around him when he drew in mana was either replenishing itself faster than he could draw on it, or he was taking such a miniscule amount of it that it didn't matter anyway.

After spending the majority of the morning and afternoon breathing in his surroundings, nothing had actually changed. Vin put his incredibly high focus to the test, examining the world around him at the end of his experiment. The grass was just as green here as it was farther out. The packed earth hadn't grown any softer. The air had gotten a bit warmer, but that was obviously just a natural effect of the sun rising in the sky and warming things up.

Similarly, the monster before him hadn't grown any more relaxed or less eager to try eating him. Vin had experienced its unending hunger time and time again over the past few hours, but it still tried its best to break free from his spells. With that in mind, Vin could make a few important conclusions. First and foremost… In theory, he'd never run out of mana ever again.

Now that he was a Friend of Mana and capable of drawing on it like this, so long as Vin had a moment to gather his focus, he could pull mana from his surroundings. The fact that he could draw mana from seemingly anything, from emotions to colors of all things, meant that unless he was in a literal void of nothingness, there was mana for him to borrow from. Second was the confirmation that what he was doing wasn't inherently dangerous to anyone.

That much he'd already assumed, as he figured the Whisperer would have warned him before he accidentally gave the dwarves or elves mana cancer or whatever he'd been afraid of, but it was still nice to confirm with his own two hands. And lastly, he hadn't imagined the weird way he'd known things about the room the elves and dwarves were partying in long before he'd gotten to it.

Similar to how the Whisperer had mentioned his annoyance being carried by the mana up to her and waking her from her nap, or how he'd been able to feel the merriment contained within the feasting room, Vin was able to feel the monster's own anger and hunger, even when he put a few hills between them. This aspect of his Capstone was the strangest one, because it seemed incredibly selective.

Seeing as he was capable of drawing on mana from anything, Vin felt as though he should be gaining some sort of passive sense from everything around him, all at once. Instead, it felt almost more like he was only receiving what the mana itself wanted him to receive. I guess it is called 'Friend' of Mana… Though having to trust in the surrounding mana to alert me to certain things is a bit of a strange thought.

All in all, combined with the slight improvement to his spells, Vin was pleased enough with his newest Capstone. He would have been happy just being given the ability to replenish his mana pool on his own, so all the added bells and whistles were just icing on the cake as far as he was concerned. And the biggest, sweetest blob of icing he was excited to discover? The Capstone affected his spell making as well.

After finishing off the monster with a point-blank, empowered Stone Shot to the head, Vin jogged up into the sky with his cloud stepping before slipping into Introspection and attempting to weave together something simple just to experience a minor runic backlash.

Yet to his shock, as he purposefully connected his mana to the runes and created an intentional backlash, his body subconsciously vented the mana away from his core and out into the world around him, not only protecting him from any potential harm, but not even breaking his concentration and forcing him to restart either. Vin had the feeling that any serious, lethal backlashes would probably contain more mana than he could reasonably vent, but still, one thing was for certain.

His newest Capstone was the gift that kept on giving.