He had time to fix that; now that he wasn’t struggling to survive he could spend some time on it. He wanted to test if he could gain mental stats as well as physical ones through mental exercise. To do that he needed a mental task and he had the perfect thing in mind. Casting his eyes about he saw a small branch from the tree he had felled laying on the ground not far away from him, he picked it up and activated mana sight. The world shifted and the colours of mana where back, looking at the branch in front of him he could see the mana in it, it was a light green in colour that seemed to make the branch slightly glow. Gar added observe to mana site and everything focused more in his vision. He could see the mana spiralled up the central branch with a small portion splitting off and spiralling down each branch that came of the main branch, spiralling along getting weaker until it just got to the end and ran out. Gar sat following the mana along each branch trying to find were the mana was being used. It was only when he noticed that each and every needle touched the spiral of mana did he realise what was happening. A miniscule amount was being divided into each needle along the branch, in such exact measurements that all of it was used just as it got to the end of that branch
“Observe levelled up Observe level 4”
He hadn’t seen it at first but each needle seemed to hold a tiny store of mana, watching the needles closely Gar realised it wasn’t just the light green colour mana there was another kind as well it was a light yellow almost white colour mana. It was then that Gar realised the branch, despite being separated from the tree, was still alive. It was photosynthesising or do plants still do that in this world, Gar was guessing it was taking in some kind of light mana. Now he knew it was alive he could see more signs of it , the mana in the branch was flowing weakly it seemed to be trying to bring in more mana where it was cut off but it wasn’t doing very well at it. Careful study led Gar to the conclusion that while this branch was alive it was also slowly dying. He was torn between watching it die and understanding what happens and trying to save it to see what changes that makes, a moment of indecision was solved instantly when he looked up and noticed the discarded branches all over the place, he had been so focused on making his shelter he hadn’t been particularly tidy.
Deciding to be a bit more scientific with it Gar gathered six similar sized branches which also had a similar strength glow of mana, bringing them all to one side away from the rest of his stuff Gar laid three of the branches out on the ground, the other three got the cut end buried in the soil. They were set with a branch laying on the ground in front of each replanted branch the first pair would be his control so he would do no more to them just observe, the next pair he watered them and planned to continue to do so, the final pair he wanted to add nutrients to the soil so as well as watering he gathered the scraps and entrails from his butchery that where already starting to rot and he added them to the soil at the third pair. With the preparations set Gar spent some time examining the mana flow in each of the branches, it fascinated him. Despite being all from the same tree there was no uniformity across the branches they all had as far as Gar could tell a similar amount of mana but it was more densely packed in some then others, it seemed to flow at varying speeds, the coils of the spiral pattern it made as it moved through the branch where sometimes further apart sometimes closer together, Gar was starting to want some paper and a pen to take notes. He had never been a particularly studious person but this was magic, real magic he wanted to know everything he could about it.
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Once he had spent a good deal of time watching the mana flow in the branches Gar started tidying up the area, this was going to be his home for a while so he wanted to keep it nice. The branches were split into several piles near the rest of the trunk, small, medium and large thickness branches he figured he would also continue to strip the needles of the branches leaving just the wood as he had found the needles just caused lots of smoke when added to the fire and where in the way when he wanted to make something. His next job was to gather up all the rotting bits around, scraps of meat and entrails, the squirrel skin he had forgotten about which had started to smell, a number of axen pods that had started to rot. Having gathered them up he was unsure what to do with them, his immediate thought was to bury them but the dirt wasn’t deep enough here on the ledge and he didn’t want to have to climb down to deal with it every time. For now he took them to the furthest corner of the platform and just dumped them off, they hit the ground bellow with a wet splat. Then he came to the bones of the badger they were pretty clean particularly those that he had boiled, so he decided to pile them up to one side figuring many things on earth used to be made from bone so he might find a use for them.
The badger fur was a bit more difficult to decide what to do with, the fur wasn’t particularly soft and despite its time laid out in the sun it wasn’t completely dried out and had already developed a bit of a smell. In the end he decided it was worth keeping for now even if only to test ideas for how to do better with any more skins he might get. Thinking with no time like the present Gar started on a new idea for it, if the sun wasn’t going to dry it out enough then he needed another heat source. Fire was out, putting it to close and it was just going to get burned or cooked and that wasn’t what he was looking for, what about the smoke though, it might work, with a hide he was going to have to throw away if he didn’t do anything he decided to try it. First he built a frame to hold the hide stretched out high above the fire well away from the flames but still catch the smoke. Once it was set in place Gar built the fire and let it burn, it wasn’t really making much smoke. In an attempt to produce more smoke and get another job done Gar started stripping branches of their needles and when he had a good bundle, onto the fire they would go as he went back to stripping needles. It was actually a relaxing way to spend the rest of his day, by the end he was just chucking in each handful as he stripped them off just to watch them burn. A dinner of nuts and boiled pods and Gar went to bed.
