Civitas awakes with a headache.
He blinks a few times, only to be greeted by a small Window.
Mana over-usage? Civitas confusion only lasts a split second before the memories come back to him.
“I passed out because I used too much mana, didn't I?”
Civitas asks hesitantly.
[You absolutely did because you arrogant brat thought you'd know better than me, didn't you?]
Gabriel sound upset.
“Well I guess you were right”
He answers dejectedly.
[Of course, I was right. Now eat your cold, stale wolf meat and let it be a lesson to you.]
Gabriel's arrogant tone makes Civitas want to say something against it, but because he is obviously in the wrong, he swallows it down.
Even harder to swallow down will be the dirty wolf meat he just picked up. He considers reheating it with flame magic, but discards the idea since he has to preserve strength for hunting. Instead, he only cleans some dirt and debris off the meat, using the water stream flowing through the cave.
After getting most of the dirt off, he bites into the meat. It's hard and bland, but it should fill his stomach, which is the only thing he really cares about, since his hunger grew incredibly strong. He must have been asleep for a while to have developed this great of a hunger.
“How long was I unconscious?”
Civitas asks into the empty room, addressing no one specifically. One of them will answer for sure.
{We're also not sure because our awareness of the surrounding world is tied to your consciousness to some degree, but I'd say about 6 hours.}
At least he got some sleep, Civitas figures.
While continuing to eat, he tries to circulate mana once more. He is not planning to use it in any way, he just wants to get more familiar with the feeling, in hopes of not randomly passing out again.
While doing this, he notices his fatigue reducing a bit, wherever he circulates a bit more mana, so he starts recovering his fatigue using mana circulation.
{I'm glad you figured this out yourself, but watch out, recovering like this also consumes mana. Using this for slight fatigue like this shouldn't be a problem, but the healing of wounds would consume more than you can handle right now.}
“Alright, I'll be careful.”
Civitas pays more attention to what they have to say now, that him ignoring it backfired once already.
After a few minutes, he ate up his bland breakfast. He then gets up, drinks a bit of the stream water, checks his status window, to see if his mana ability really increased by one, which it did, and then gets ready to leave.
Civitas plans to hunt something a bit bigger today. He gained a bit of combat experience from hunting the wolves before and his stats increased significantly.
For a while, Civitas sneaks through the cave system, avoiding every animal and monster because most of them were still far too strong for him, or in a group.
Then, he comes across a larger cave room. There, he spots two giant boars digging in a patch of dirt. To Civitas, they seem like suitable opponents.
He observes them for a bit and formulates a battle plan in his head. They are standing side by side in a way, which makes it difficult to approach their sides or front to deal a sudden lethal blow.
Instead, Civitas decides to impede their ability to move, by slicing at their hind legs.
He sneaks up on them as silently as possible.
He gets to a suitable striking position without much of a problem, these almost two meter tall pigs probably do not expect anyone sneaking up to them.
Finally, he strikes at the legs of the right one, with a clean slash he severs the tendons.
He tries to strike at the other one as fast as possible, but the loud squeaking noise of the hurt boar alerts the other one, and it turns around a lot faster than Civitas expects.
In a split second, the left boar turns around, and Civitas' strike, aimed at its legs, only shallowly scratches its flank.
Suddenly, he is face to face with the beast. It lunges at him with its tusks. He instinctively dodges to the right, only to land right next to the other boar.
In the heat of battle, he forgot the other boar, which only took longer to turn around because of its hurt legs.
Now it's already in striking position and while finishing its turn-around, it smashes its tusks into Civitas' flank.
*Thud*
The dull impact launches civitas a meter into the air and a few meters back. He hits the floor and keeps rolling for a few meters. He gets up as fast as possible, but by the time, he is back to his feet, the uninjured boar is already charging at him. Not only that, but he has difficulty breathing, his ribs feel broken, and his vision is blurry. In a last ditch effort, he throws himself to the side, dodging the boars charge by a mere few centimeters.
Since this might be his end any way, he promptly starts circulating a bit of mana to the spot he got struck in.
{Be careful! Don't overuse it!}
With her warning reminding him once again, he only circulates the mana for long enough to make the pain subside a slight bit.
He hears the thundering strides of the boar charging at him from behind, but by now, he got his breathing back in line and the pain lessened enough for him to power through it.
He quickly assesses the situation. One boar is charging at him from behind, and the other one slowly makes its way to him from the front right.
An idea quickly springs to life in Civitas' mind.
He turns around to face the charging boar. He waits patiently for it to get closer.
At the last moment, Civitas jumps to the right and while dodging, he kicks the boar in its head.
This won't hurt it, but it will alter its direction.
The giant boar is too late to notice where it's headed.
With its giant body and fast speed, it does not manage to steer away in time, and the other injured boar cant move fast enough.
Their tusks hook into each other.
The head of the charging boar, which tried to steer away, gets yanked to the side, throwing it off balance.
It topples over and comes to a sliding halt.
Civitas runs after as fast as possible and aims for the now exposed throat of the lying boar.
The other one also got knocked over and coupled with its already injured legs it struggles even more to get back up.
With a strong slash, Civitas slices through the throat of the beast.
With a gurgling squeal, it nears the end of its life.
But now isn't yet the time to celebrate. Civitas quickly approaches the trashing other boar.
Since it is not a danger to him right now, Civitas waits a few moments for the boar to leave an opening, in its panic-stricken thrashing.
Then with another similar slash, Civitas slices through its throat.
Having done his work, Civitas collapses at a near cave wall.
*Pling*
That was the sound Civitas wanted to hear. And just as he expected, the boars were a lot stronger than wolves and gave just as much more experience points.
He quickly opens up his Window, loses not time and quickly distributes the points.
This time, he put a lot more points into mana, since it played an important role in his victory today.
With the mana being able to heal him to some degree, it will be very useful soon.
He starts using his newly improved mana right away and this is the first time, he could directly feel the difference in ability points values.
He can feel his mana being twice as strong and his control over it is even smoother.
Likewise, he starts recovering by circulating it.
But he can quickly feel his mana start to reduce. Before he gets close to fainting, he stops. He needs to wait for his mana to recharge.
But this awakens a new question in Civitas.
“Are there any ways to speed up mana recovery?”
{There are a few. However, they are restricted to certain species. For example, us demons can either get mana from harvesting the souls of living being, or from absorbing strong emotions of sentient beings.}
[Us Angles recover mana by meditating or being prayed to. There used to be another method, but… I won't talk about this]
The last thing, Dorminil said seems like the most feasible method to Civitas right now.
But another question comes to Civitas mind first.
“How come, if dragons are so strong, that you aren't ruling over everyone yet?”
<*Grrr* there are two main reasons for that. As I just said, Dragons absorb mana at an incredibly fast speed. But the dirty, corrupted mana of demons is like poison to us. And if we are surrounded by it, we can't stop absorbing some of it. And the other reason is our low number. Each adult dragon might be able to fight thousands of Angels at once, but we only have about 200 fully grown dragons. That's because dragons are born rarely, since the circumstances must be perfect, and dragons age very slowly.>
“Huh, but to me, this sounds like the demons should have an advantage?”
{Sadly not because, albeit the demons being the most numerous, the average demon is weak compared to angels or dragons, and we are very weak to the angels' holy powers.}
“So let me summarize this, the dragons could defeat the angels, the angels could defeat the demons and the demons could defeat the dragons? This sounds like a complicated power balance.”
[Yes, moreover, you also have to consider our positions. This 'rule' you just came up with does not work on us three, since we are too strong. Each of us three would have been able to wipe out any of the other two factions. But I couldn't just go over and fight against any one of them because I would leave my home unprotected from the other one.]
“Do you have any Idea, what your absences will do to your factions?”
They all stay silent. Civitas can already image what this means. They have no idea. The general balance should be preserved because of the peculiar power triangle, but anything more than that is unsure.
“Alright, I get it. Let me get some meat from those pigs and let's head back to our little home room. I want to do some more hunting today. The day barely begun.”
Like this, Civitas brought some meat back to the cave.
He rested for a few more minutes and then got back to hunting.
That day he received a lot more experience points. He hunted a few more Orc-boars, whole packs of wolves, and now he stood just before a turning point.
He was about to find out what evolution meant to him.