Chapter 15 - Jeremy Sucks It Dry (1/2)

Two weeks or so later, at 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.

The man was none other than Jeremy, who had been traveling nonstop since two weeks ago to find the various oldest trees worldwide.

Shockingly, within a time frame of 15 days, he had been to more than five other countries and ended up in the 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 particles it would have.

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

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

That was... increasing his personal strength.

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

But considering that the ambient mana within the atmosphere was too little, causing him to have a meager 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 the mana had appeared on Earth for how long.

Did it appear only two months ago, when he did meditation?

Did it appear ever since hundreds or thousands of years ago?

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

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

That's why...

Around two weeks ago, he decided to check out 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-year-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 unique characteristics exclusively for themselves.

One of those unique traits was that, after a tree grew past 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 resulted in some ancient trees living for more than 10,000 eras, or more than 57,000 years.

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, it would be quite a substantial amount of mana.

Moreover, he realized that he might not be able to 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.

As for the method to absorb mana from those trees, he had to use two special versions of the 1st tier array inscribed one on the tree trunk and another one on a leather cloth of an animal placed on the ground while placing an 'enchanted' glass bottle on top.

For the output or fuel, which was the 'Mana' used to create the arrays, Jeremy chose a recycling method to reduce his mana consumption as much as possible, for he would be using the mana from inside the trees as a power source instead.

Like that, he would be able to absorb many tree's mana within a single day without having to take a break to replenish his mana.

Well, for a reason, if he used up all of his mana inside his dantians, he had to take a three days rest. It was just too long...

Even though it would have wasted an average of more than 50-70% of the mana inside the trees, it was worth it. Something like this would still be better than drying his own mana whirlpools, as Jeremy didn't have enough time to waste on resting after all.