4 Earth

Somewhere deep in the forest at the same time that Nathan and Vin are resting.

A yellow scaled snake covered with injuries and burn marks is slithering in the forest. Trying to find the tree where it woke up.

To its dismay, it couldn't find where it was and couldn't find its way on the other side of the forest.

While coiling around a tree, the snake could absorb energy faster than breathing.

After a while, it decided to try another tree that is at least like its own.

As it raised its head up, it saw a tree similar to the tree it rested in earlier. The shiny white and yellow bark, along with its purple leaf, stood out due to its sheer size. In the middle of the trunk is another snake resting coiled around it.

Without thinking much about it, the snake climbs the tree and coiled around it. Once it curled up, it began to absorb energy given off by the tree.

Due to the two snakes taking energy from the same tree. The amount of energy that the snakes received from the tree halved. This made the fantastic feeling of gaining strength to weaken by half. The change in sensation woke up the other snake high up the tree.

The second snake looked around, trying to find out the reason why the tree weakening.

When it looked down, it saw an unfamiliar part of the wood that wasn't there before when it first woke up. The second snake crawled back down.

The first snake sensed the hostile intent from the other snake and also woke up. It then looked up with killing intent even though tiredness was visible on its face.

When the two snakes locked sights. An instinctive sensation burned up within them, causing them to want to fight.

There is only one tree, and it has only limited energy.

They want it for themselves.

They don't want to share it with others.

From then on, the law of the jungle was born into the new world. For obtaining precious resources, it was either submit or dominate. In more extreme cases, it was to kill or be killed.

At that moment, a light orb floated out both of the snake's head and dispersed.

Both the snakes began to release their killing intent, and the first to pounce was the second snake.

When the second snake pounced, the first snake knew that it couldn't take that attack.

First, due to its fight earlier, it was exhausted; second, its energy absorption was stopped by the human, which he chased for more than 30 minutes.

On the plus side, it already experienced fighting and casting its first spell.

Before the second snake could hit him, he loosened his grip to the tree, causing it to slide back to the ground. It completely dodged the pounce of the second snake.

Once the first snake hit the ground, brown light glowed from his tail and slammed it to the ground.

A glowing brown 8x8 cm circle appeared on the ground where the brown light hit. And from the ground, a spike came out which hurled towards the second snake.

For the first time, the second snake froze as it felt fear and remained where it was.

Due to its first time for the first snake in creating an earth spike, it wasn't sharp enough to pierce the second snake. Still, it was enough to force it out as it flew a meter away from the tree from where it was coiling.

By watching what happened, the second snake gained comprehension of earth magic. By copying the movements of the first snake, it willed the energy within his body to call forth an earth spike.

Another spike shot out from behind the second snake and hurled towards the other.

But the first snake already had its tail glowing brown; it then swung its tail in a half-circle on the ground. From the curved line on the ground, a 10 cm thick curved wall appeared.

Out of the second snake's expectations, the spike it threw broke down while the wall remained up. It only dented the surface a little. It decided to try again and hurled another spike towards the wall.

At the same time, a brown light shot out from the top of the wall towards where the second snake. It moved faster than the snake could perceive it until a 5x5 cm circle appeared below its head.

Sensing a dreadful premonition, the second snake tried to turn around. Still, it was too late, a spike shot out from the ground. This time, it's thinner profile also made it sharper enough to penetrate the second snake's skin. The spike pierced its head where its brain is.

The body of the second snake began to wriggle around.

After struggling for a few seconds, the pierced snake lost all the light in its eyes and died.

The 8 remaining lights within its body flew out of its body. They solidified into white crystals the size of a marble.

Then, the first snake peeked out of the wall. It was already at the end of its wits as casting 3 spells already consumed 84% of its entire mana. Once it saw the second snake unmoving, around it were 8 crystals glowing white. The snake decided to go towards the corpse.

Once the snake reached the corpse, white light glowed from its body and shot towards its head. This made the snake close its eyes and enter a forced void state. When it opened its eyes, it got hungry as it looked at the corpse of the dead snake with greed. It found its snack.

First, the snake swallowed the corpse from its tail towards the neck. It also munched on the head still pierced with the earth spike. After eating the whole dead snake, it then looked towards the 8 crystals on the ground.

When it got close to the crystals, the snake got began to sense around the crystal as if trying to feel something. When it felt the energy coming off from the crystals that are at least 100x stronger than the energy from the tree. It also devoured all 8 crystals.

After its feast, the snake began to feel changes happening to its body. The signals within the snake's brain are telling it that it's about to enter ecdysis, so it needed to hide.

Once it hid inside a hollow part of a random tree, energy began to circulate within its body. Contrary to the snake's expectations, the ecdysis its experiencing wasn't simple. It wasn't just molting its skin, the thickness and length of the snake began to pulse as it increased in length and diameter.

The skin of the snake also began to age, rot, and tear. Revealing shinier and sturdier-looking scales.

The snake began to change at a speed visible to the eye, and its strength rocketed. But, the pain it brought made the snake lay on the ground helplessly in pain.

Even with the pain, it still remained conscious. The snake was aware that if he ever let go of his control of the circulating energy, he will explode.

Once the ecdysis, or rather, the breakthrough ended. The snake finally lost consciousness.

One can feel the changes that the snake experienced just by sensing its aura. It was around 8x stronger and has 16x more energy within it. Its size grew from a measly 1 meter and 8 centimeters in radius into an impressive 8 meters and 32 centimeters in radius.

___

As the dusk arrives, twilight shines towards the purple sky. The foliage is shining a deep shade of orange and the vivid purple trees.

Nathan and Vin, continued their journey as they look for the cave that Vin mentioned. Whenever they see something edible, they plucked the fruits such as a purple-colored peach and yellow berries.

"I can't believe that all those memes are helping us right now," Nathan exclaimed in happiness.

"Memes? What are those?" Vin replied with no hesitation?

"Haha, memes! Y'know those things like sponge gar and stuff."

"What? SpongeBob? Damn, do you also like retro stuff from the 2000s?"

"Hah retro? SpongeBob ended only like a year ago."

"Huh? Did they revive SpongeBob? I thought it was completely done 200+ years ago."

Nathan stared at Vin with an open mouth and a 'wtf' expression. He usually wouldn't even bat an eyelid. But right now they're in a place where magic exists, he couldn't help but doubt Vin. He felt like he shouldn't disregard it too.

"What? Bro don't kid, Last night was July 19, 2019."

Vin sunk into silence for a while before replying, "Uhh… Last night it was December 22, 2284…"

Astonishment sparked within their eyes.

After a moment of silence, the eyes of the two met and communicated, "we'll talk about this later when we settle."

Once the sun completely set over the horizon. The dark night welcomed no moon as pitch-black darkness devoured the vast land.

Nathan, who's currently inside a cave with Vin, is igniting a campfire using magic.

With only the faint glow around their hands as their only light, a hidden terror within their hearts surfaced. Absolute darkness, entities hidden in the shadows, the great unknown. These fears were dug out from within Nathan and Vin's minds.

Not even the calming effect of the glowing lights could completely eradicate the innate fear they are feeling.

"This isn't working," Vin complained.

"No shit, I didn't expect this at all. Black Hole for the sun and no moon, what kind of planet are we in?" Nathan added.

"Ugh, in any case, we still need to make a small fire. The temperature is dropping, and even my thick skin is feeling a little too chilly."

Nathan placed his hands above a stack of twigs and tried to fuse energy to create a fireball. Alas, the small spread of ember could only last for a few seconds against the recently plucked twigs.

"Seems like fusion is only effective for an explosion, if I did that, it'd just blow everything away. But if I tried to burn mana, the heat isn't enough to actually burn the leaves."

It couldn't be helped. No one would actually try to directly use the sun to light up a candle.

"Then how are we supposed to create fire then?" Vin replied as he rolled his eyes.

"We're dealing with this energy the wrong way. We're trying to recreate things that aren't it. While the energy is seemingly omnipotent, we can't actually gather enough to produce stronger flames."

"So, what do you suggest?"

"You," Nathan spoke as he pointed towards Vin. "How do we actually control air and water? You don't actually believe that we just can, right?"

"Uhm, but that's exactly what I think."

"Not exactly, look at me, I gesture with my hand while I talk, but the air isn't moving according to the movements of my hands. There's something else that makes it work."

"Now that you mention it, even though we don't do much, a large amount of energy gets drained from my body."

"Right! Hmm, how about this? You play video games?"

"Yup."

"Then, let's call the energy mana."

"Shit, I have the same idea."

"I know, right! Ok, right now, there are two kinds of mana available to us. One is our internal mana, and the other is the external mana filling the environment."

"Ah, yes, I also realize something. Faint light glows according to what element do the gestures with." Vin spoke as green light emitted from his hands, and the air around began to circle around.

The sight astonished Nathan.

"How are you controlling the wind so well?"

"Huh? I... hmm" after a moment of hesitation, he spoke again. "Don't call this out as stupid, but I imagine it in my head before it moved this way."

Nathan furrowed his eyebrows. With a little bit of skepticism, he copied Vin and started to imagine wind orbiting his hands.

At his call, his hands began to emit faint green light as the air started to circle around his hands.

Nathan's jaw dropped. Excited from the discovery, he lost control of his thoughts, making the wind disperse. The light in his hands remained.

Even without the orbiting wind, he could still feel his mana decreasing.

By his sheer will, he commanded to stop, then the light faded.

Once the light completely disappeared. Nathan looked at the excited Vin with a 'holy shit this is it" eyes.

"The way to control it is very crude, the amount of mana we use for that little command is too much."

"I agree. But, I feel like I understood something about mana." Vin mused.

"What is it?"

"I'm not sure. This is just my guts but, I feel like we're vibrating on a specific frequency that relays our will towards the external mana, which accepts the will. It's as if the external mana is resonating with our internal mana filled with our intention. Vin explained while gesturing and controlling the air around him.

"That's also my hypothesis. There's some kind of resonance happening. I'll try to change my approach."

"I'll try it too."

Nathan and Vin began to imagine a small ball of fire as a faint red glow enveloped their hands.

In the beginning, they could faintly feel the heat between their hands, but that was it. The more they try, the more mana they consumed. Vin could strive for a good 10 minutes before having to rest and recover mana. Nathan, on the other hand, could last 20 minutes due to his breakthrough earlier.

An hour passed, and the night got even colder. Various regions of the forest became lively. Different beings began to panic as they try to make a fire to combat the chill and darkness of the night.

Nathan and Vin kept persevering after a few more tries until Vin slumped to the ground.

"I… I can't go on…" Vin uttered weakly.

"It's fine, try to rest for a while, I feel like I'm really close to it."

"Alright."

Vin sat down in the lotus position. Nathan remained seated with his hands above the stacked twigs.

After continuous heating, the twigs dried up as if it were on the ground for a month. On the parts where it is closer towards the center of Nathan's hands, a faint red glow is visible.

The result thrilled Nathan as he continued to produce heat. He stopped trying to build a fire long ago and opted to produce heat as he didn't need to summon an actual fire. His current Mana pool isn't enough to create pure fire.

Another 20 minutes have passed as Vin began to help Nathan in heating the fire pit. Embers now began to glow, and smoke is flying upwards. At that moment, a fire began to burn at the edges of the twigs.

Vin immediately added dried leaves and twigs while Nathan remained heating things up.

When the fire grew to medium size, Vin began to regulate the air around it while Nathan rested.

They now have a working campfire. It only needs to be maintained.

Outside the cave.

Various parts of the forest began to glow with a warm light as humans and beasts began to fight for the campfire.

Some parts of the forest were baptized with human blood. Other regions have a large number of white crystals littered all over the ground.

Corpses of humans and beasts are scattered as well while the survivors cooped up in the fire pits. Some groups comprised of a single entity. Others formed groups, while others mixed with each other as beasts, and humans worked together to maintain the fire.

Some humans were shrouded by a mysterious light that increased their strength. Some beasts began to change their forms as if evolving on the spot. At the same time, some beast devoured humans and beast alike and entered a hibernation.

Just like that, the first night resulted in the population of the forest dropping down to less than half.