Chapter 3

After picking up what both elementals dropped I returned to my new home.

My body hurts, my hands burn and I think I have cracks in my shoulders. It's because of this kind of thing that I don't like to fight, I always end up losing somehow.

*SIGH*

Well, at least I beat them both and got my... breakfast, lunch, dinner? Maybe. I don't know what time it is and I haven't kept time, so I'll ignore everything and just eat.

After dropping everything on the floor of my new home I realized that I don't know how to eat. I don't know how elementals eat, so I just put the "Cores" or "Hearts" near my mouth, I don't really remember what they are called. Bring them close to me and try to suck the air out and see what happens.

And... It works! Now that I know how, I'll simply absorb the power contained in both "Elemental Cores". I'll call them that until I remember what they're called... If I remember at all.

As I "ate" I saw some sort of mist or light or something like that being absorbed by me. The sight was intriguing but I'm sure it's the fifth element. In fact, maybe it's what in the game would be called "Experience"... That would explain why the characters could grow so fast. Anyway, what I was absorbing not only made me stronger, but also satisfied my hunger. I hope it lasts.

After eating all the energy from the "Cores", I started to check the other elements that had fallen. Some "Elemental Essences" which I guess are part of the elemental's body imbued with enough elemental power to survive the collapse of their bodies, perhaps.

To be honest, I'm just making this up. I have no idea why this hasn't disappeared, but considering this is a world with magical energies, maybe I'm close to the answer.

I tried to absorb their power like I did with their "Cores" but I couldn't. So I started trying to remember what these things were for in the game.

I don't really remember what was created with this, but objects were created with these "Essences".

I watched for a while longer and then I thought of something.

Maybe I can use the essences to reshape my body, add them to my body or something like that. I can't make objects with this, because I don't know anything about making objects, so we'll see if it works for me.

I grabbed an "Essence" from the earth elemental and placed it on my somewhat cracked shoulder. My hope was that it would somehow work and heal or repair the affected area.

And... It worked! It's amazing that it did. I thought it was possible and if it worked... Well, at least now I know I can recover faster this way.

I used some more essences on my shoulder to finish recovering, as each essence repaired the damage, but not completely. It was almost like cement, it filled in the cracks, but since there wasn't enough, not all of them.

Each "Essence" recovered an area about the size of a ping pong ball, more or less. But the elemental had dropped several, about 15. After a while both of my shoulders were in perfect condition again. At least the most perfect state a rock can be in.

With the 5 I had left I tried to fix my hands. They were still burning, so I used some on my palms to try to alleviate some of the burning. With the 5 I had left I was able to alleviate and fix some more burned areas of my hands, but there were still places where I was still burning. The hands of an elementalist are very big, I guess it was obvious that I couldn't heal them completely.

After using all the "Essences" of earth, I started to think about how the "Essences" of fire would help me. But since I'm not a fool, at least not that much, hahaha. As I said, since I'm not that dumb, I'll keep them somewhere in my "house" to use them some other time. For now I don't want to experiment with the essences and possibly increase my burns.

I dug a hole in one of the walls of the cave and placed the 10 "Fire Essences" of fire inside. In short, I made a shelf to put my stuff on.

After finishing all that I asked myself, what do I do now, and I honestly had no idea. After some time of staring at the "Essences" on the "shelf" for a while, an idea came to me.

Can I use magic? I mean, as far as I know, elementals use magic, elemental magic, but they use it. I'm an earth elemental, I use earth magic, but how do I use it, I'm not sure how really. In the elemental fight they were both fighting melee and the only magic I saw, I saw it so close I couldn't get a good look at it. It was that fireball straight at my face.

I can only try as they do in the novels, take a deep breath, calm myself and try to feel the energy flowing through me.

Calming down as much as I could I tried to take a deep breath, but I realized that I don't breathe, so that part doesn't count, so I decided to ignore that for now. I closed my eyes or something and focused on feeling my body. After a while and longer than I thought I could concentrate, I could feel what I think I'm looking for.

Now, I guess I should try to get that energy to gather in my hands and imagine something, the simplest thing would be a ball of dirt. And... nothing happened. Well, I guess dirt balls don't work.

*sigh* well, I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. I'll try again, but now I'll try to keep the power in my hands.

I concentrated again and thanks to discovering that energy running through my body, it was easier to find the will to try again. I moved the energy to my hands and held it and then tried to shape it, this time I imagined a smaller stone ball.

And... I failed again. I don't know where I'm going wrong, but it's not hard for me to move that energy. *Sigh] It can't all be a victory. I'll try to focus again on training my control over my mental powers.

I decided to start with a method of concentration that I used when I was in my other life. I was to breathe slowly. First, inhaling slowly for 5 seconds, then holding for 3 seconds and exhaling for 5 seconds. Since I can't breathe to keep my concentration focused on my breathing, I will have to change it to something else. I gave it some thought and decided that I would start moving the energy flowing through my body and concentrate it on different areas of myself every so often.

I focused and began to move the energy, which, by the way, I think is mana. I made it go through my whole body and that's it.

...

Some time later, I stopped doing it. I don't know how much time passed, but it did help me relax a lot. I didn't know what else to do, so I just did that, for what I think was about an hour.

When I got bored I stopped. In my current state of mind I decided that I would try to sleep, if that was even possible.

I "closed" my "eyes" or something like that and tried not to think about anything. In my current state of mind it wasn't difficult and I fell without realizing it into a kind of awake-sleep state. I was thinking at the same time I was "asleep". Kind of like a shark or an ant would do, I guess. I also have no idea if elementals enter this state when there's nothing to do, or if they just stay active and moving forever... Something I'll know when I decide to stalk some elemental from afar, if I don't get bored while watching it, of course.

When I "woke up", I think it had been a day or so, I started trying to concentrate on trying to move the mana throughout my body. There was nothing else to do besides training and exploring, or in the case of elementals, fighting.

After doing it for about an hour, I think, I stopped. When I was about to go out again, I checked my body and realized that my hands were as good as new.

Come to think of it, I don't remember when my hands stopped burning. I can attribute the recovery to me "sleeping" or my mana training. Whatever the case may be, it wouldn't hurt to look into it when I get hurt in combat again. Too bad for me, but I know that combat is the only other thing to do here besides training, and even worse is that I need to do it whether I want to or not to increase my power and survive the apocalyptic chaos that is coming soon.

I need to gain basic control of my mental protection before it comes too late.

*Sigh* I hadn't thought about that. Now, this gives depression, if I can't increase my strength and control over my powers, I'll be a dead elemental for sure, or even worse and end up being controlled until I die. The pressure increases because I don't know how much time is left for his arrival...

*I need to calm down, worrying won't get me anywhere. I need a plan, a good plan.

I will start by giving myself a short term goal and for that I need to know what I need and have at hand. I need to control at a basic level my powers, with a higher level of importance mental protection. I need more power to face more elementals and ironically get more power by eating them, but to take advantage of it I need a basic control of my body power.

In short, I have 2 medium term goals and I should add a short term one, learning to fight as an earth elemental or more like learning to cast spells of my element. So my goals are:

Short Term (1 Goal): Learn to cast elemental spells

Medium Term (2 Goals): Gain control over my powers (Mental, Bodily)

With that in mind, I wrote it on the cave wall in front of the shelf, chalkboard style.

Satisfied with myself for being able to set goals, I chose to go out and explore the surroundings. Maybe I could find other elementals fighting and take advantage of the situation.

...

After a while I was watching a battle of a few dozen elementals in the distance. There were so many of them, I didn't dare to get close and get attacked, so I decided to watch them fight, especially the earth elementals. I was waiting for one of them to cast a spell, but all I saw was a bare-knuckle team fight... I don't even understand why the fire elementals attack the earth elementals only with blows.

...

Some time later, a LONG time later, Star W *cough*, the fight was winding down and both sides had suffered some losses. The elementalists who won would momentarily eat their spoils and then continue fighting with their comrades against the elementalist the other was fighting.

It was all over when both sides withdrew. So I went over to observe the terrain and see if I could get some of the leftovers. Fortunately for me there were a lot of "Elemental Essences" that were not collected and 4 "Elemental Cores" that were left on the field. Well, useful "Elemental Cores", the rest were depleted of edible energy and only the leftovers that couldn't be devoured were left.

As I didn't have a way to carry all the loot, I had to make a box with a big stone, to which I made some holes that I widened to be able to gather everything. I made 2 holes where I would put separately the essences of the different elementals, which were only earth and fire, so as not to mix them. I don't know what would happen if I mix essences, but for now I don't want to know.

As fast as my slow stone body would allow, I gathered all the essences I had found and put them in the stone "box" I had made. I set off as fast as I could for my "home" and was relieved when I was inside.

The site of the fight was a bit far away, but still close enough for me to realize that my current "home" is not very safe. I'll either have to move or make it safer... Both options are dangerous, since I don't know where I am and if I move, I wouldn't know where I'd have to go... In short, I'm trapped.