Chapter 1093 The trail of mana "Dao seed of mana manipulation and Dao seed of nether manipulation?" Liam pondered various things as he stared at these two little terms. What was dao? What does this mean? He fully did not understand the implications of these terms and their significance, but he could probably guess what happened. It should be because of his fight to protect the world tree sprout and his manipulating nether and mana at the same time that this had popped out. To understand what really had happened and what exactly he had gained, Liam tried to go through the system notifications. Just like he expected, there was no notification of any experience gained. Instead, there were simply two notifications that had popped up about the dao seeds. Surprisingly, the level up notifications came immediately following these two notifications about the dao seed. Liam raised his brow, staring at this. He knew exactly how difficult it was to increase levels after 20 or 30, but he had gained about 100 levels at once, and it seemed like this was directly related to these dao seeds. Perhaps this was the right way to increase one's strength after a certain point? That did not sound right. One cannot improve without combat. Though Liam did not know what exactly this was, he could vaguely tell that it was related to understanding mana and nether better on a deeper level. But this understanding would not come without combat. In fact, he wouldn't have received these dao seeds without even knowing what they were if he weren't in that life or death situation. The right way to go forward was definitely a mix of both. However, this brought up another question in Liam's mind. What about his soul manipulation? More than manipulating mana or the nether, Liam had spent more time manipulating souls. He had a soul army to boot and had even successfully managed to heal his soul several times. Then where was the dao seed of soul manipulation? What was he lacking? Liam took out a high-grade healing potion and drained it into his mouth. He had purposefully allowed the pain to run rampant in his body, as it was helping him wash away his guilt and anger, but now he needed to think and rebuild everything that was broken. He was not done yet. Liam felt a wave of warmth spread across his body. It repaired the small cuts and bruises that adorned his body, but it did not do anything to repair what was broken. Liam also did not expect this to happen. The healing potion did not alleviate any of his pain. All he got was a minuscule amount of relief. He then took out some of the world seed water and drank it in big gulps, followed by slowly chewing a high-grade beast's meat. This gave him another minuscule amount of relief. The world seed water then started doing its work by slowly nourishing his body and repairing bits and pieces of it. Liam closed his eyes and used the momentary relief the world seed water provided here and there to examine his body more closely. His face darkened as he took a look at everything. Or rather, nothing. His body was completely totaled. One half of his body was wrecked by mana, and the other half was wrecked by nether. All of his mana pathways were burned to a crisp. Liam did not even have nether pathways to begin with. The energy had simply run rampant in his body, leaving damage and scars in its wake. Liam did not think that his body was damaged to this extent. At the moment, he could feel the dense swirls of mana present in the air. This world he was in was extremely rich in mana. However, inside his body, there was barely a trickle of mana flowing through, and that too after he had put in tremendous effort to do it. He tried to summon his soul minions but nothing was happening except for the searing pain in his soul ripping him a new one. This was not going to cut it. He was basically crippled, as he was now. He needed to repair his soul, body, and core. He was also mentally exhausted. The elixirs and recipes in his possession were not good enough. Perhaps something related to the world tree would have worked, but all he had was world seed run off water. And that was not working. Liam sighed and stood up. He looked at the draconian princess, who was still lying unconscious. He swept her into his spatial artifact. Now it was time to find out just where the hell he was. Everything else had to wait after that. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞 Liam looked around, trying to see if there was some clue as to where he was. The system notification also did not say anything about that. He briefly paused and studied his surroundings. He seemed to be in the middle of a forest, basically in the middle of nowhere. He started walking. Liam expected to find something, perhaps a beast or even the goblins from before so that he could get some idea, but to his luck, there was absolutely nothing that came his way. However, after walking for some time, he noticed a strange occurrence. The mana in the air was not the same. It was very subtle, but he was walking in a mana gradient. The further he walked, the thinner the mana became. It was not very noticeable, but with Liam's attunement, he could sense the small, minuscule shift. Liam stopped and then started walking in the other direction. This sort of mana gradient had to be caused by something, and now he was moving toward whatever was emitting that massive amount of mana. He continued drinking the world seed water in his possession, each sip nurturing him a little. His stats were slowly recovering, though they were not close to what they should be. Hours passed by and the mana in the air was starting to become thicker and thicker and soon enough, Liam arrived at the source of this immense amount of mana.