Jason glances down at his arm where a large chunk of skin was missing. Along the edges there is a blurry black mist instead of a bloody gash and within the wound instead of flesh was a black void with a few silver lines running through it. As he watches, though, the black mist begins to fade as the System tries to re-assert its own definition of reality.

As he had already separated off that nonsense, Jason didn't resist and the mist rolled back towards the center of the wound. Behind the mist was a bloody wound, though if you are willing to overlook the lack of skin, it wasn't too serious. Of course, that isn't how that works, but thankfully for Jason, the entire surface was covered within moments as his blood solidified into an orangish amber-like substance.

It had been a while since Jason needed the more visible benefits of his Living Amber Skeleton, but there was no denying that it was pulling its weight. This really made him excited for whatever his Journey to the Dungeon quest System reward was going to be. After all, while his skeleton and the ritual circle in his lungs were both nice, since he had already completed the optional goal of starring a stat, he would get to choose from three choices.

Sure, going by the quest text the System wasn't going to literally show him the three rewards. Even so, being able to choose from three basic examples was going to allow him greater control over the final result. If anything, it might allow him to choose a reward that will have synergy with his two previous rewards.

Jason stands up and takes a moment to look in the direction the caravan had been going. Not that he expected to be able to spot if someone was sent back to find him, but more just to be certain they hadn't turned around and came back for him. While he didn't know what was up with those people, the guy that seemed to be in charge hadn't looked like one to let stuff like this go.

With a sigh, Jason headed off to find another small pond to observe. The beaver frogs are interesting and he still wanted to figure out how they made so many bodies of water. Sure, the chances of him actually fighting them drops with every new thing he learns about them, but learning more about what is considered natural for this world would be useful.

This time, though, Jason picked a more mid-sized pond to watch. While the smaller pond meant he was able to keep track of each monster, it also seemed to be a slow period for them. With the ponds that weren't small anymore and yet not quite big yet, there was significantly more growth. As for the really big ponds and the lakes?

Jason avoided those as the small beaver frogs got a good big more aggressive. At first this wasn't noticeable, after all, the local critters all knew not to go close. Still, it only took seeing one large deer-like monster being dragged into a lake by a veritable wave of the small beaver frogs for Jason to swear off investigating the lakes.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

So over the next few days, Jason spends his time meditating while watching the lake and letting Lily play around nearby. Behind him, of course. While the beaver frogs in the lake he chose weren't attacking him, something Lily's size might be a different matter.

Jason probably could have stopped on the second day if he was being honest with himself. At that point, he had a working theory for what was happening, but with the third day he managed to really nail down what the beaver frogs were doing, and you know what? It kind of annoyed him.

Their solution to expanding their ponds was at a very basic level, quite simple. The new water itself came from the beaver frogs themselves. Jason was leaning towards it being some sort of water aligned organ. A simple enough answer when dealing with stuff like magic, though since it was actual creation, likely very power intensive.

It was the soil removal that caused Jason to shake his head. The beaver frogs apparently were a species that would receive some pithy name involving yin and yang. Not because of some alignment to fire and cold, but because half used Mana and the other half used Qi.

At first Jason thought of that as a joke comparison, though the more he analyzed the situation that wasn't the worst comparison. In his old world, yin and yang were seen as having been created from the one. So when you take Jason's concept of how NeoRealm developed, Mana and Qi would fill a similar position.

This was especially true in how they could be mutually destructive and the beaver frogs were making excellent use of that dissonance. If they had just been digging out the ponds, there would be piles of dirt or the streams would be constantly muddy. But no, one of the monsters would settle in an area and basically gnaw and scratch up the area, which would fill it with Mana or Qi. Then one of the monsters of the opposite type would come along and do the same thing, except as the two powers interacted, they would destroy themselves and the infused soil.

A clean operation that left nothing behind. Well, almost nothing and that almost made each of the lakes a potential treasure trove for someone of high enough level. Any naturally energized material would resist the undirected infusion of energy and stay intact. That meant that collected in the very center of each pond and lake was a small cache of infused material.

Still not enough to tempt Jason into attacking the beaver frogs, though. Likely only the largest lakes would have any sort of decent haul After all, unless one of the ponds got lucky and came across a vein of infused material, the small amounts of infused material in soil was near non-existent. Otherwise, people would be digging up the ground everywhere to shift out those special bits and bobs. Though Jason vaguely remembered stories of just that happening in more extreme locations like near some of the larger volcanoes. After all, a small shard of obsidian infused with fire mana is going to make an excellent arrowhead for a fire arrow.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.