?Unfortunately for Toz and Asilean, void magic wasn't as absolute a counter to the Adaptation Trees as Toz thought. It was a shame, especially for Asilean, who noticed it when his two-pronged attack on one of the trees failed.
The void magic only prevented the Adaptation Trees from absorbing the nearby mana. And with enough force, it could also expunge the previously absorbed mana as long as the tree wasn't already finished adapting.
As soon as he pushed the death attribute out of the tree he had chosen, Toz saw leaves begin sprouting almost at once, but there wasn't any other significant difference. Though after a while, the tree stopped rampaging, and it looked like it settled down to absorb the surrounding mana.
Toz snapped a few branches and showed them inside a spatial ring before he helped the cats destroy or pacify the trees. With how difficult it was to destroy them faster than they could regenerate or adapt, it was easier to let Toz and Asilean get rid of the death attribute mana and demonic energy inside in order to put them in their passive state.
After that, Toz experimented a little while the cats rested. But when the cats were recovered enough to continue moving and find a suitable resting spot, Toz sent magic into all the trees before unleashing them upon the battlefield. The only thing he felt regretful about was the fact that they couldn't handle or adapt to combination magic. The trees either rejected or just couldn't adapt to the different types of combination magic Toz tested on them.
But the other trees who adapted to his ordinary elements were powerful in their own regard, so it probably didn't matter too much. It might even be a good thing that the trees didn't adapt to his combination elements.
The battlefield was slowly but surely, being overrun by the Tribe of Death and the combatants fighting on their side. The trees were more likely to encounter the enemies of the human realm rather than the Alliance of Kingdoms. But that didn't mean the trees didn't still pose a danger to the humans.
If the trees adapted to something like his grey flames, Toz was worried that they would bathe the entire battlefield in mana-eating fire that eradicated anything and everything in its path. If that happened and it could be traced back to him due to the bracelet or something, Toz was sure he would get more bad credit than recognition of his achievement.
He wasn't sure if Dyra would still agree to bring him along to the Transcendent Realm if something like that happened, so it was for the best that the trees were limited in what they could adapt to.
Toz and the cats trailed behind the trees while taking it nice and slow. Since the trees cleared the path in front of them from most enemies, they didn't have to search long and hard to find a place they could use to rest. They didn't even need to find a place to rest since they could relax and recover while walking.
Toz had barely done enough to make him pant and was filled with energy, so he kept walking while the cats took turns resting on him or inside the familiar space.
The only reason the cats all didn't rest at once was so that Toz could practice his mana vision and passive training without having to worry too much about their surroundings.
The trees of various elements used their roots to cross the battlefield, so they rooted out things that even hid below ground. But that didn' mean they took care of everything, and there could still be enemies lying in wait to ambush any unsuspecting people.
Toz trusted his senses and reflexes, but the cats didn't want to leave it all to him when it came to surveying their surroundings.
Since it let Toz focus more on his training, he was nothing by grateful.
And he happily indulged in practicing his passive training. He didn't ignore the world around him, quite the opposite, actually, since he wanted to absorb the mana hanging freely in the surroundings. But he was so focused on the mana and nothing but the mana that it would be easy to forget or miss other things, such as enemies setting up one or two ambushes.
But with the cats' help, Toz didn't have to worry, and he carefully began wondering how to go about his passive training.
He had already concluded that using the string method was useful at the moment, but it didn't have enough future potential for him to use it or try to improve it. However, Toz didn't know what method to use instead. The only other feasible way was to try something similar to when he had combined his passive training with his manual training and absorbed all the mana in his surroundings in one go.
Now that his mind was stronger, he might be able to achieve something similar by coercing the surrounding mana. But it only took one attempt for him to realize that it was an impossible method.
Toz's mind was nowhere far from strong enough to control all the mana in his surroundings. If he used his own mana, it wouldn't be a problem to get the mana to move. But he had already tried that once and almost exploded himself. Doing that also prevented him from doing something else, like walking, at the same time.
Toz came up with a few new ways to train passively, but they were all similar to the string method and took too much effort for the mana it gave him. Some of them were exactly the same as the string method, just with a different shape to the mana. Toz naively thought that maybe changing the way he shaped the mana would affect how easily he could manipulate and absorb it. Unfortunately, most attempts were useless.
But there was one exception. The blanket method.
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