Chapter 15：Jeremy Sucks It Dry (1/2)

2 weeks or so later...

Nighttime in eastern California.

A man was currently standing nearby a grotesque looking ancient tree. The tree didn't have a single leaf, it had only dried branches protruding out randomly all over its upper part.

'So, this is the last one...' The man thought while taking a look carefully at the tree.

The tree was named Methuselah, the oldest non-clonal tree known to the public.

As to the man, he was Jeremy who had been travelling non-stop since 2 weeks ago to find the various oldest trees around the world.

Shockingly, within a time frame of 15 days, he had been to more than 5 other countries and ended up at USA, his own country.

As for the reason he had been visiting the numerous trees whether it be clonal or non-clonal trees was because...

The older, the tree was. The more mana energy particles, it would have.

This one simple fact was one of the basic knowledge about mana.

Since 2 weeks ago, when Jeremy finished 'baptizing' the last group of people, he had thought about his next courses of action and tried to make them aligned with his main goal.

That was... increasing his personal strength.

The only way to achieve his goal was to advance into a Journeyman Mage class which was the last substage of the class 1 True Mage.

But considering that the ambient mana within the atmosphere was too little, causing him to have a very low chance of successfully advancing into that stage.

Thus, he had to find an alternative way to advance.

He had thought about countless ways and possibilities that could be possible on Ortus, but sadly, only one way was the most plausible in his current situation.

Anyway, he still could not guarantee that this method would be a success or a failure, because he didn't know that for how long had the mana appeared on Earth.

Did it appear since hundreds or thousands of years ago?

Or... Did it appear since the world creation?

There were too many questions and variables within the hypothesizes. Nevertheless, he had to start doing something to grow his strength anyway.

That's why...

Around 2 weeks ago, he decided to checkout the various ancient old trees on Earth whether they had the accumulated mana within their bodies or not.

And surprisingly, Jeremy finally found some specks of mana particles within a one hundred years old tree inside a walking park a couple of blocks away from his house.

Usually, on Ortus, most of the old trees would develop some special characteristics exclusively for themselves.

One of those special traits was that, after a tree grew pass a certain period, it would be able to absorb mana particles from the ambient atmosphere instinctively to prolong its life with its mysterious means. That caused some of the ancient trees to live for more than 100,000 years. (Universal time of course)

However, those cases only happen on Ortus...

As for Earth, the planet where there shouldn't be any mana existed. Those trees shouldn't be able to live that long, but somehow they had survived since the last ice age which was more than 10,000 years ago until this very day.

And that made Jeremy felt very suspicious...

So, he decided to check out those trees conditions, and he found out that they indeed contained the mana within their bodies albeit very little. But if they were to be combined together, it would be quite a substantial amount of mana.

Moreover, he realized that he might not be able advance to Journeyman Mage with the current mana density on the Earth's atmosphere.

So, he had decided to visit and collect the mana particles from the oldest living trees whether it be clonal or non-clonal trees from around the world instead.