The Place Where Everything Begins

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.

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

For the output, in this case, 'Mana' used to create the arrays. He chose a recycling method as a fuel by wasting as little of his mana as possible, and using the mana from inside the trees as the 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 the reason, if he used up all of his mana inside his dantians, he had to take a 3 days rest. It was just too long...

Even though it would have wasted in 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. He 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 very satisfied 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 2 animal leather gloves from inside his backpack. They were just a pair of an ordinary leather gloves made from animal hides.

After placing them on the nearby stone, he started to control his mana from the 3 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 2 hands simultaneously. At the exact same time, same rhythm, same patterns, and with same magic array formulas; he was writing them above the gloves.

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 2 gloves. It looked complex, yet so pretty.

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

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

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

However, this bottle only contained around 10 drops of mana liquid.

It was clear that, this bottle was prepared specifically for this job. And it had been used up until it reached the very bottom of the bottle 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 2 arrays started to shrink down from the size of a football, into the size of a single coin.

Next, the 2 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.

*Pheeeewwww*

Jeremy let out a sigh after seeing that the arrays were done beautifully, then he kept the gloves back inside his backpack.

'Finally, only 3 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, it is very hard for me to sneak in here without anyone noticing. D*mn you!'

This was indeed too little...

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

Despite that, with his everlasting persevere and his 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 for more than 50 times consecutively.

Regarding the 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 were going to be his subordinates soon anyway, at least, they should survive the tutorials and meet him on Ortus.

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 main orb was from the purest gold on Earth that he had custom-ordered from Perth Mint Company in Australia since 3 weeks ago.

Well, the best gold that they could make was 999.999, six nines fine which was 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...'