The Place Where Everything Begins

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.

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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.

Right now, standing while taking a look at the process of mana attraction from the ancient tree. Jeremy was delighted and fascinated with the 100 ml glass bottle, which was filled more than half by now.

'Ahhh... My precious...' Jeremy thought indulgingly to himself.

Meanwhile, when he was waiting for the mana extraction process. Jeremy started to put out two animal leather gloves from inside his backpack. They were just a pair of ordinary leather gloves made from animal hides.

After placing them on the nearby stone, he started to control his mana from the three dantians and bring them into his index fingers on each hand.

Right after that, he started to write magic array formulations on the air just a little bit above the two gloves.

Surprisingly, he was using two hands simultaneously, inscribing the runes above the gloves at almost the same time, but with the same rhythm, patterns, and magic array formulas.

At the same time, the surroundings were being accompanied by a sonorous mumbled incantation with an unknown language from Jeremy.

More than 15 minutes later, when Jeremy finished inscribing and chanting. Two beautiful special tier-1 arrays were now floating quietly but dazzlingly above the two gloves. It looked complex yet so pretty.

If some mages from Ortus were to see this amazing sight, they could only think of one thing.

That was... it was a great art of a great array practitioner.

Right now, Jeremy suddenly brought out another glass bottle with the same mana liquid inside, similar to the one on top of the array.

However, this bottle only contained around ten drops of mana liquid.

It was clear that this bottle was prepared specifically for this job. Moreover, the liquid inside was used up until it had reached the bottle's very bottom already.

Then he opened the bottle's lit and pour a drop of mana liquid onto the center of each array.

Miraculously enough, after receiving a drop of mana liquid, the two arrays started to shrink down from the size of a football into the size of a single coin.

Next, the two shrunk arrays started to rotate slowly and moved down even more slowly onto the palm of each glove. Until, they stuck on the gloves' palms, and the dazzling light of the arrays disappeared, leaving behind only tiny spell arrays on the palms.

*Fwuu...*

After seeing that the arrays were done beautifully, Jeremy let out a long breath, and then he kept the gloves back inside his backpack.

'Finally, only three pairs of gloves left to be done...'He thought to himself.

Right about now, the mana extraction process was also going to end soon. At last, after a lengthened journey, Jeremy felt very relieved that finally, he could be able to take a rest because this one was the last.

However, upon the operation was done, Jeremy frowned and cursed.

'F*cking d*mn old tree, you only give me a quarter of a drop of mana liquid. What a stingy old tree; don't you know that it is very hard for me to sneak in here without anyone noticing. D*mn you!'

That amount was indeed too little...

The process of collecting mana liquid on Earth was such an arduous job.

Despite that, his everlasting persevere and money-burning method to travel around the world in 2 weeks were still fruitful.

From his calculation, this amount of mana was more than enough for him to breakthrough into a Journeyman Mage class more than 50 times consecutively.

Regarding real motives of his over-collecting of mana liquid were because he wanted to create a staff for himself for the upcoming tutorial, and he wanted to gift 'them' some survival measures inside the tutorial.

They would be his subordinates soon anyway; at the very least, they needed to survive the tutorials and meet him on Ortus first.

As for the materials to craft a staff?

Some bits and parts were mainly from the trees that he had been visiting, some other miscellaneous parts were from animals' hides, and the central orb was from the purest gold on Earth that he had custom-ordered from Perth Mint Company in Australia since three weeks ago.

Well, the best gold they could make was 999.999, six nines fine, which was considered the purest gold ever produced on Earth, refined for the first time by the Perth Mint Company in 1957.

And Jeremy had just ordered them by spending more than 300,000 US dollars as the technique and rush price.

'The gold orb and the shield should arrive in a few days.'

Jeremy thought relievedly.

'What a tiring long trip, it is finally time to go back...'