"I used to be a plant"

Tim may be the busiest stingray out there right now, as he wholeheartedly accepted to be part of the blistering mana sect! He was to be very busy soon, because Marlo introduced him to a lot of things today, regarding magic, and he wanted to try out everything that was available!

He wanted to merge his powers together, for example, just so he could hopefully spend less mana on them. That was a good idea, however, Marlo instructed otherwise.

He said, "Timothy, let me say that I'm glad you joined our sect, but, please don't rush things. Power merging requires 500 points of decent quality mana, it's really expensive, so don't merge your powers unless you're absolutely sure that you'll need them that way."

"Oh, I need them." He said.

Tim wanted to merge his flaming fins ability, with his recently acquired, shivering blood ability. Both of them were great individually, but when he used them together, there was a resulting dual effect, which seeped his mana twice as fast! He'd lose eight points of mana every second, and that wasn't affordable whatsoever, especially since he needed a whole hour to replenish about the same amount of points! Bottom line, he needed a loophole, and power-merging may be it.

Anyway, he didn’t talk about specifics with Marlo because he didn’t trust him so much. Instead, he asked a couple of one sided questions.

He asked, "I need to merge a couple of my powers, Marlo. How long do you think it would take to upgrade my mana quality, huh? I can only generate low quality mana, and that's probably not good enough to merge things."

"Oh, it's not. It looks like you haven't even reached the second level of mana quality, which is called rustic mana… and with that considered, you won't be merging your powers anytime soon. However, I can help you get there." Marlo followed along.

"You can, huh?" Tim asked.

In actuality, he only wanted help from the system, regarding mana, so he didn’t want to adapt any external ideas. However, he was willing to hear out what the other said.

Marlo added, "You just need to fill up your mana pool, and then, I'll give you a spell to cast on yourself. You'll either explode as a result, or you'll start gathering up rustic mana! One can never tell, so I hope you're lucky."

Tim thought this idea over afterwards. He really wanted to start gathering up better quality mana, however, he didn’t like the idea of simply exploding. No one would like that, as in this world, there were a lot of things to look forward to, rather than just die! He didn’t want to die, so as he nodded along to what Marlo was saying, he also waited for any word from the system’s side.

The system did not disappoint, as she followed along quickly, and said. [Marlo is somewhat correct, Timothy. That is one way to upgrade the quality of your mana, however, you can also buy the upgrade from me, which is a far safer option. It all depends if you want to be patient about this upgrade or not, but, if you want to be cheap about it, then you can take the dangerous, spell-casting route, the one that Marlo offered.]

He did not answer to that immediately, no. Tim was thinking about his options here, and he was also listening to Marlo as he spoke. The reef shark had a lot to say, and eventually the conversation led to something good; He wanted to introduce Tim to a bunch of other stingrays!

He was really enthusiastic about the latter part, because in this new life, he never saw a stingray before. Anyway, as for the mana levels, he made a simple decision! If a mana upgrade wasn’t available in this new set of upgrade options, then he’d choose whatever was closely available!

In his head, it was less dangerous to risk an explosion, rather than to spend time gathering up thousands of system points, just to advance towards the upgrade that he wanted. The system didn’t give him the upgrades that he was curious about, no.

Instead, she aligned the upgrades based on what Tim needed the most, and in other words, he’d need to work a lot, just to get to the super interesting, rustic mana upgrade! He was not willing to wait that much.

Anyway, about ten minutes later, he met a few stingrays. He was happy about this, especially since he noticed that one of the stingrays looked exactly like him! He saw a bluespotted ribbon-tail ray, and he couldn’t be happier about it!

Tim eyeballed the said stingray, and then asked. “You look like me… a lot like me, are we brothers?”

“You mean am I your sister? I’m a girl.” The other emphasized, and furthermore she added. ”Also, no we are not related. I used to be a stinging nettle plant, erg… about a hundred years ago. I assumed the form of a stingray only recently.”

“Gosh, you’re old.” Timothy expressed himself, carelessly.

What he said was a bit offensive, but in his mind, he had complimented the lady. It wasn’t easy to survive in this world, and he couldn’t even imagine how a plant could shapeshift to begin with, so what he said was purely meant as a compliment. However, the other understood his words differently.

She said, “There’s no need to call me an old hag, sir… yes, I am old, but age doesn’t matter much nowadays, does it? In fact, it is my understanding that age never mattered! There are immortals flying above our heads, after all, so please, don’t be rude.”

Tim then bickered with the other for about five minutes, but eventually, they agreed that what he said was meant as a compliment. He didn’t mean any harm, and now, since they put that topic aside, the team of seven stingrays (Tim included), could focus on what mattered the most; Magic!

Apparently, this specific team of stingrays were on a mana root hunt, since they too were pretty weak, and needed to be overloaded with mana in order to progress. They were a collection of the weakest members in the blistering mana sect, and it was time to change that!

The little old lady that Tim talked to, who went by the name of Ortana, was pretty weak too! Her mana was as weak as Tim’s, it was level one (low quality), and she urged to change that. She had been powerful enough to shapeshift multiple times throughout her life, but that damaged her mana quality quite a bit, and now she was looking to fix that.

Collectively, these seven stingrays had a goal now, and they were willing to follow it with every ounce of willpower they got. Marlo gave them the directions of where a cluster of mana roots may be hidden in, and now, they had to follow these directions carefully, if they were to reach the said cluster! Attention to detail was key, if they were to succeed.