Toz felt the juices and sparks that squirted from the fruit tickle his mouth as he bit down on the fruit. The sparks were a shock to Toz, and he was about to reflexively spit out the fruit. But before he could do that, mana welled into his body through his mouth. The fruit pulp melted in his mouth and turned into lightning attribute mana that surged through his body and mana pool.
The fruit was gone before Toz had time to savor the feeling of his mana being refined. Although his lightning mana was only improved by a fraction, it had happened by eating a fruit. Toz felt it was a shame that there was only one fruit and that it was so small, but there was nothing he could do about it except maybe use lightning magic to grow a branch as Scrael had done.
Toz looked at the reactions of Scrael and Lucy after he finished sensing how much his mana had progressed. It looked like Scrael had experienced a similar sensation as Toz but less effective. Considering she was at the fifth level while Toz's lightning mana was at the fourth level, it wasn't strange. For every new level, more training is required to make the same amount of progress.
Lucy, on the other hand, was coughing and spitting out the slice of the fruit he had tried eating. Unlike what had happened with Toz and Scrael's pieces, Lucy's slice didn't melt in his mouth and came out in chewed-up pieces drenched in saliva.
Toz was slightly worried when he saw the sparks travel between Lucy's whiskers and his fur, which had once again gotten puffed up due to the electricity. But it didn't seem like Lucy was in pain, only uncomfortable, so Toz got rid of the static and lingering lightning mana for him.
After getting rid of the last remaining bits of the fruit in his mouth and the source of the lightning mana, Lucy looked a little better. Though, he glared at the fruit scraps with anger before attacking them and tearing them to shreds that ended up scattered over the ground.
Since Lucy was in a bad mood, the others carefully took their distance and scattered.
Toz and Scrael started looking for fruits in the other places Scrael had made branches sprout with her lightning mana. Nil and Mindle started looking around where they had used magic to create stuff, to see if a similar phenomenon had happened anywhere else.
When Lucy finished stomping on the fruit scraps and calmed down, he left to check on his shadow figurines.
While he was walking around, seeing if any of the other branches Scrael had made was about to grow fruit, Toz wondered about the phenomenon they had just encountered. Even if the fruit only marginally improved his mana, any object or material that could improve mana without needing any training was extremely precious. And if the Void Forest part of Treblor Forest had the capability of producing fruits like the one they had just eaten, there would be way more people interested in it.
While Toz might not have been given access to it because the level of his Explorer's Badge was lacking, it still felt like most people that entered Treblor Forest did so because there were lots of things to find, not because of the guaranteed payday that bringing back a magical fruit as Toz and Scrael had eaten, would give the explorer that brought it back.
As far as Toz knew, the only differences between the island of void trees he and the cats were on and the Void Forest of Treblor were the size and the wildlife.
But Toz didn't know enough about the forest or the trees to draw any kind of conclusion. All he had were guesses. Maybe the Void Forest did grow such fruits, but they were just more valuable than he thought, and people paid good money to keep it a secret so they could keep the fruits for themselves.
After looking around almost the entire island, Toz and Scrael each found one branch growing a leaf.
However, compared to the other three, they had found greater success.
Nil hadn't found anything different with the things he had made. Lucy claimed that the shadow figurine of him had grown larger, but none of the others could tell if there was a difference.
Though, Mindle was pretty sure that the flames on her wooden flame had changed slightly.
With the discovery of the trees growing in strange ways due to the influence of the mana from Toz and the cats, another item was added to the group's daily routine. Aside from training, defending the island against void beasts, reinforcing the island, and eating, they regularly checked the products of feeding the trees with their mana.
But even after several approximate days, the tiny branches that Toz and Scrael had found barely changed. They tried giving one of the branches even more lightning mana, but that just led to another branch sprouting nearby.
Since most of the branches had been created at almost the same time, Toz found it weird that there was such a discrepancy in how fast they grew. But like with most things on the island, there wasn't a need to rush since they had practically all the time in the world.
After waiting some time, the next thing that grew wasn't the lightning fruit. The tiny wooden flame that Mindle had created had really changed slightly, and as time passed, those changes became more and more apparent.
The tiny individual flames had slowly started getting a more refined shape and had begun resembling leaves wrapped around each other in a flower bud. Although slight, the air around the wooden flame had also started being filled with fire attribute mana. The heat and light coming from the tiny lump of fire-shaped tree had also gotten stronger.
More leaves in the shape of flames grew, and the bud got slightly bigger, but there were still no signs of the bud blossoming just yet.
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