1.1.22 – Baiting With Pumba

“Hakuna Matata, what a wonderful phrase” I said as I dragged two boars behind me. I had meant it when I planned to take a page out of Timon and Pumba’s playbook. Except I did not have a meerkat doing the hula dance, and Pumba would have a rather morbid ending in my case.

The plan was to distract the ants with two live boars that would hopefully put up some fight, giving me a short window to harvest some of the material from the mound. I had wanted to just paralyze both the boars and knock them out. However, my first Lightning Bolt was still a little too strong and I accidentally killed one.

Which led me to a surprising discovery of why no one went on a mass murder spree to absorb Mana Capacity from other humans. I absorbed the Red core from the first boar I accidentally killed and got the following notification as a result.

[You have absorbed a Red Core. You have increased your Mana Core Capacity by 0]

I did not know why the Weave even bothered showing anything but it was not just another 50% penalty like when I absorbed Red cores as an Orange. It was a 100% penalty if you were two grades above. That also explained why someone could not just reach Blue or Purple by making up for quality with quantity.

When I reached Green, I would probably not be able to progress by absorbing Orange cores anymore, and beasts get even more difficult to hunt at higher grades. Not only did they get smarter and bigger, they also got more proficient with the use of their elements. They were also a lot less common than Yellow cored beasts.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I was almost at the ant mound but had to circle round to deposit the boars on the opposite side of where I would approach from. I had checked this morning before I went to hunt the boars to make sure the piece of mound I knocked off was still around.

Apparently the ants had just repaired the section I broke off with new material rather than recycling the old material, which worked well for me. I placed the two boars about one kilometer out, which would give me enough time to circle back to my spot.

I had also divided the two boars into two different locations to hopefully draw out more ants, giving me more buffer time. Hopefully the single boar that was alive would put up some fight before succumbing to the ants.

It had taken me 20 minutes to place the boars, rush through the forest to the other side of the mound, and another 30 minutes before I saw a flurry of activity from the ants. Probably the time it had taken for one of the ants to discover the boars and bring the message back.

I had secured a rope on one of the trees, measured to the correct length so I could swing down and use the momentum to land as close to the mound as possible. I had no idea how Spiderman does this calculation in real time when he swings through New York City.

When I saw that most of the ants near the side of the mound where the broken off piece was had reduced significantly, I jumped off the tree and swung towards my target. I had developed a bad habit of jumping off trees since coming to this world.

At least this time, my jump was more calculated and I landed within three feet of where that broken piece of clay was. I activated Lightning Infusion and dashed to the piece of clay. Maybe it was my footsteps or it was something else, but within seconds some of the ants near me that were heading towards where the boar was, changed direction.

I grabbed the piece of clay with my left as I got within range, and pivoted quickly before dashing away from the mound again with repeated casts of Lightning Infusion. A few ants got too close for comfort so I sent them to meet Pumba with a few Lightning Bolts.

I could not help but grin ear to ear after a few hundred meters and I could not see any ants following me. One benefit of progressing to Yellow grade was my new Lightning Adaptation mutation. It seemed that my body had adapted to being injected with Lightning mana repeatedly and had developed some higher form of endurance against the abuse. I could now use Lightning Infusion to power my movement a lot longer before I would feel the muscle aches.

I was back to the Weeping Grotto by lunch time. I had another sandwich packed, which I devoured in five minutes as I could not wait to get started on testing the insulator. I had thought about how best to use this material while I was preparing the bait for the ants.

I broke off a little bit and tried to mix it with water first, trying to see if it could be softened up to be moldable. Unfortunately, it seemed that it was completely hardened by some chemical process. This meant that I had to take the long route to repurpose it.

Over the next few days, I went through the process of crushing it entirely into a powder form. I had secured some unfired clay from town to use as the base binding agent. Recalling the pottery workshop we did for team building once, I created two clay mixes.

One was just regular clay that would be used to construct the overall battery housing. The second mixture consisted of clay and the ground material I retrieved from the ant mound. Let’s call it the Geomyre clay.

I knew that structurally, the Geomyre clay would not be as strong as regular clay. I had to make the housing with regular clay, let it dry partially, then apply the Geomyre clay on the inside to act as the insulation.

I had made several copies as I knew that my skill with pottery meant that several might crack during the firing process, especially if it’s a home made kiln. I had considered taking this to town to get it fired but did not want to risk people asking questions. And considering there were no YouTube tutorials in this world, a lot of what I did was based on guesswork and my own understanding of how hot a kiln should be.

I remembered it typically took a few weeks for the container to completely dry. While I waited, I had gone back to visit the ants and stole more of their home as back up. I ground them up, made more containers, and kept some extra Geomyre clay just in case I needed to make improvements in the future.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Spring was in full season by the time the containers were ready. I had to get Garrick’s help to question the local potter on several questions regarding the kiln they had. By the end, the potter chased us out and told us not to bother him if we were not going to buy anything. Garrick had only grudgingly agreed to help when I agreed to increase his cut of sale to 25% for the next month.

While I was not swimming in coin like Scrooge McDuck, things were less tight now after progressing to Yellow. I was not sure if it would be considered breaking my promise with Marta but Glimmerwasps were technically considered below my grade. I did not actively hunt them but if I came across lone wasps or a single pair, I could take them out rather easily.

The few weeks of time were not spent in vain as no matter how many muscles I had with my Nature’s Constitution mutation, carrying building materials into the middle of a forest was time consuming.

I had built a small kiln through grilling the local potter for tips, and using locally sourced material from the woods where I could. My only concern was people spotting the smoke from far away, which I hoped they would ignore if it did not happen too frequently.

I had at least 10 containers prepared and dried, into which I could slot the capacitor module nicely, coupled with a cover which I would strap down with leather bindings. The only opening would be the section with the input runes.