I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 29 - Meditative pancakes

[Congratulations, Timothy, you found mana roots.] The system announced, [This means that you successfully completed your fifth, system given task, and won 100 points as a reward! In total, you’ve accumulated 670 system points.]

“Nice,” He thought, though he wasn’t as excited about the points this time around.

He was still depressed over the death of so many stingrays, as in a weird way, he considered them human, and such deaths shouldn't be taken lightly. Overall though, regardless of how he had been sandwiches between fireballs earlier on, this had been a pretty decent day.

Tim got what he wanted. They found a cluster of mana roots, and although the roots were mostly depleted now, there was still enough mana for him and Ortana to share. They were to play nice about these remaining properties.

Him and Ortana were the only remaining survivors within that group of stingrays, and although this part was depressing, it served as a solid lesson! They shouldn’t fight over mana, not while they were this weak and frail at least, as they were very killable, and therefore they had to be rational.

Tim was scared of death nowadays, and today he was especially frightened, he thought. “Man… death is weird. If it wasn’t for my rotter bite, I’d be a burnt pancake by now. I keep surviving because of luck, there ain't no refusing that, so I hope that there’s a system upgrade, one which would give me even gooder, er… better luck. I’d spend two-thousand points on that if I had to, no second thoughts. Can’t afford to make any more mistakes, I’m still so fucking tiny!”

Safety was key, for multiple reasons, as even mana didn’t tolerate weak creatures. The mana could be as punishing as this realm’s name promised, as it had its complexion that weak creatures could not comprehend; It pushed Bob towards insanity, and the punishment didn't stop there either!

Mana, in a way, had punished every other stingray within the group that didn't have enough mana, or skill to fight for themselves, there was no ignoring that fact! Mana, and the gods were very punishing!

With that in mind, these two lone survivors had to play nice with each other, they had to be cooperative. They survived for a reason, so they had to respect both their good luck and the will of mother mana. For that matter, in order to prevent any possible complications within this harvest, they avoided the roots by a whole couple of meters! They didn’t want to get too close to them, as it would be dangerous to do so.

Tim could feel the intensity of the mana within the roots from two meters away, however, the mana had less of a grip on him now, than it had on Bob the stingray earlier on. This was due to a couple of reasons!

The mana roots were weaker now, as a start, and also unlike Bob Tim wasn’t as dumb as a frying pan. He wouldn’t be as influenced by greed, regardless of the circumstances.

With that considered, although he felt the power within the roots, he remained idle. As for Ortana, she was way older than him, so she maintained an even better composure near the roots. She was pretty calm, and even though she was a stingray, she started meditating thoroughly!

Once Tim noticed that, he started taunting her. “Oh, you can’t remember my name, but you can suddenly meditate?”

“I was a plant,” She answered, “There wasn’t anything else for me to do before.”

Although the situation was a bit comical, she was practicing something useful. The idea was to remain calm for a while, because it wasn’t quite easy to absorb hundreds of mana points in just a few minutes. Some may even consider that pace to be unnatural, which served the point, she had to remain calm!

Timothy wasn’t nearly as calm, however, because he was torn between two trains of thought right now. He still felt hung over the recent slaughters, as this couldn’t rest so easily on his conscience. That aside, he was also obsessing over the increasing numbers of mana, very much so!

The system flashed these tiny, computer like screens in front of his eyes, and these screens showcased the increase of mana. He got a hundred points within two minutes, which didn’t sound good in comparison to what Bob had received, but this amount of mana was still great. It was far larger than what he could muster up in an hour, and with that said, his utter lack of calmness was understandable.

At some point, he couldn’t help thinking. “I wonder how much mana I’d get if the root hadn’t been chewed up by that fucker Bob. Hell, I’d probably get two-hundred points a minute, if I got just a little closer to the roots right now…”

Tim wasn’t about to get closer, as he wasn’t that stupid. He understood the risks, and had agreed to split the mana with Ortana as well, so he didn’t plan on moving a single muscle right now. However, the prior point still stood; He was not calm, and he practically felt torn by all of the excitement!

With that considered, Ortana was far more progressive than him. Under the same time-bracket, she absorbed twice the amount of mana points, and then she wanted to put them into use. She was not greedy either, so she swam away from the mana roots, as soon as her mana pool was filled to the brim.

She then said, "I'm gonna go try to upgrade my mana quality, please try to do the same when your pool is all filled up. Later on, I think we can squeeze a couple more points out of the roots, it should be possible, so like, don't die, because we have a good thing going for us here. Also, if you're done upgrading before me, somehow, please wait for me, Thomas. We'll harvest what's left of the roots, together, don't be greedy."