Chapter 147: Fruit of Metamorphosis - VI

"To me, Reazue!"

Kuvie, sensing Reazue’s peril, called out in haste. A flutter of lively green wisps of light swirled around her, outlining several magic circles on the ground. Viewed from afar, these magic circles and the vibrant green light depicted a beautiful, handmade flower arrangement.

A 5th-Circle variation of a famous Nature Magic spell erupted.

[Wild Growth]!

Vines, writhing outward like tentacles, exploded out from beneath Kuvie’s feet. All of them were surrounded by a vibrant green glow, intercepting Reazue as he fled.

—Hummm!

The moment Reazue sped into the embrace of Kuvie’s magic, the vines began wilting at a speed visible to the naked eye, handing over all of their life force to rejuvenate the Werebat’s husk-like body.

The sheer magnitude of blood that Reazue sacrificed allowed him to touch upon the initial stages of A-Rank, bursting forth with unprecedented power.

Of course, such an action came at a price, and he would have been crippled if not for Kuvie’s timely assistance.

Still, his fractured skeleton had been on the verge of crumbling. Despite the Nature Magic that embraced him, an unending barrage of sharp pain assaulted every part of his body.

No limb or organ did not scream in indignation at the abuse they had been subjected to.

Any more and he may just find himself existing as a puddle of flesh and blood, incapable of maintaining a distinct physical form any longer.

"Kuvie...!" Reazue gritted his teeth and yelled, feeling the realignment of a few of his ribs. "The stairs!"

The Satyress nodded, her expression dire as she poured mana into her Nature Magic.

The looming grasp of death haunted her heart.

An emerald magic circle the size of her palm appeared above her hand, and a small pea was born out of thin air.

Kuvie turned over her palm just as Reazue dashed past her.

5th-Circle Nature Magic.

[Spore Cloud].

Even before the pea fell to the ground, it had already begun to grow and blossom. Another emerald magic circle appeared beneath Kuvie’s feet.

5th-Circle Nature Magic.

[Sudden Spring]!

A toxic, virulent violet hue rushed towards the falling pea. The B-Rank aura the 5th-Circle spell exuded underwent a sudden change.

Rising by half a step, Kuvie enhanced her Nature Magic with more Nature Magic, boosting its effects to grasp at any speck of hope she could. Thankfully, Nature Magic had a compounding trait, making it easier for spells to be stacked upon each other layer after layer, like a tree growing outward and gaining more and more rings.

What once was merely B-Rank...

—WHOOOSH!

Rose half a step to grasp the realm above.

A wall of flowers rose from the marble floor, forcefully taking root despite the nonexistent soil. Instead, the marble was sapped of all of its minerals, turning brittle and desolate. Its inherent traits were turned into the sustenance of these flowers without regard for structural integrity at all.

Kuvie’s eyes flashed with amazement, surprised by the amount of nutrients that the <Spore Cloud> spell had been able to siphon from rock.

’Is there something special about the materials used to build this tower?’

She couldn’t help but consider this for the upcoming chase, jumping down the stairs to run after Reazue and the staggering Gron.

Meanwhile, the A-Rank Hydra’s six-fold breath attack arrived upon the wall of flowers.

—Sizzle!

—Splash!

Electricity roasted the flowers, turning them into dried husks in an instant, before being reduced to ashes in the next.

Flames and corrosion went hand in hand, melting a hole through the thick wall.

However, <Spore Cloud> had never been a magic spell meant for defense.

Instead.

"...."

As its name suggested, a cloud of spores suddenly flooded the entire floor. The explosion of paralytic particles had happened unnaturally, as if the rest of the room had turned into an extension of Kuvie’s plants.

After all...

Certain traits present in the marble floor and the stone brick walls were suitable mineral nutrients that could feed plant-based races. Kuvie, having no connection to the central towers of the City of Arenas, wouldn’t have known of this fact.

However... it was also easy to guess.

The top floor of each central tower literally gave birth to a Fruit of Metamorphosis.

A fruit.

Growing from the tower itself.

Any competent individual who investigated such a phenomenon would tend to suspect the application of Nature Magic first, before anything else.

With such a suspicion in hand, they would soon realize that the central tower, and by extension, every province in the City of Arenas... were all living beings. Each province corresponded to an unnatural and primordial form of plant life, having survived from the volcanic period of the planet and cultivated into the City of Arenas by the Primordial Dragon Empress herself.

...The latter portion would be discoverable only by the most erudite and obsessed scholars out there—as well as Aventine—but it should be enough for one to suspect the inclusion of Nature Magic in the construction of the central tower.

** *

"The Living City of Hispe being beside the City of Arenas is no coincidence."

—Sizzle!

Watching the blood evaporate off the <Sword of Light>, Aventine scanned the central tower beneath his feet.

The tower of the White Roar Clan had been annihilated by his 7th-Circle Fire Magic just a few days earlier. Now, it had been reborn in the blink of an eye—and it was even capable of bearing the Fruit of Metamorphosis.

Such an unnatural reconstruction would only make sense if the central towers—and every province of the City of Arenas—were all capable of some form of self-maintenance.

Aventine hadn’t confirmed it back then, but there was a reason why the Empire’s Guards easily accepted the resources he’d taken from the 16 Claws. Looking deeper into it now, he realized that they probably used those resources to catalyze the regeneration of the central tower, as well as any buildings destroyed during his calamitous rampage just a few days back.

In that moment before they attacked, he had simply opted for the most optimal choice to avoid irreconcilable conflict.

Hindsight now told him that such a split-second decision had been correct.

"Hmmm..."

Closing his eyes, Aventine sensed the situation of Gron and the others. Upon seeing that Kuvie had torn off a chance of hope from the corpse of despair, he relaxed.

’I can have a bite of this Fruit of Metamorphosis, at least.’

The other two were already being taken. Unfortunately, it truly was difficult to monopolize everything.

Though those at A-Rank and below could not counter him, those who’d undergone Evolution and rose to S-Rank did not need to do so directly.

With sheer experience, they’d restricted his movements—though it was partly due to some coincidental bad luck on his part...

It was an effective scheme.

’Leaving behind a bunch of enchantments really isn’t enough to solve everything.’

Quantity could not solve everything. Aventine’s gaze even discovered a few mechanical <Traits> that could bypass all of his elemental spells slumbering in the bodies of Afira’s subordinates.

As for Arvishue’rre’s Minotaurs...

Aventine looked down, momentarily admiring the severed limbs littering the floor.

Every capable Minotaur had put up a decent fight, allowing him to hone the methods of his blade.

With this encounter, Aventine had grown a little more familiar with his abilities.

’Still, there are a lot of things I have to add.’

Walking over to the Fruit of Metamorphosis hanging at the center of the spacious room, the winds picked up. Small, spiraling gusts of wind lifted his body into the air, allowing him to reach out and—

—Snap!

With a twist, the basketball-sized Fruit of Metamorphosis was plucked off the central tower’s stone branches. No longer bathed in immense radiance, it looked exactly like the mangoes on Earth, if not only more crystalline—akin to a medium-polygon depiction of the fruit in question.

Admiring the Fruit of Metamorphosis for half a second and brought it close to his lips.

Then, without hesitation...

—Crunch!

A crisp, mouth-watering chomp sounded as Aventine took a hefty bite. The fruit’s outer layer crumbled from the slightest bit of force from his jaws, and its juicy flesh melted like ice cream in his mouth.

"Ugh—"

Aventine felt a faint sting throughout his gums. Having skipped using [Absolute Awareness] to determine every small characteristic of the Fruit of Metamorphosis to avoid spoiling himself of the experience of his first taste, he hadn’t expected the fruit to be ice-cold.

’Negative 13 degrees Celsius...’ Aventine bit into the fruit again. ’And a consistency of ice cream with an outer shell made of hardened candy...’

This fruit felt incredibly unhealthy.

But the moment Aventine devoured the final piece of the Fruit of Metamorphosis, his intuition stirred.

"Hm?"

[Absolute Awareness] cloaked his own body, rapidly documenting the similarly rapid phenomena occurring throughout his body. Everything, from his soul and his cells to his mana and the Mana Cores he’d formed in his advancement as a mage, was being driven forward on the path of Evolution.

It was a small redirection at the moment, akin to someone tapping a spinning top in the direction they hoped it would go—a rather futile attempt, as the top would surely continue moving with the influence of its angular momentum.

However, it was a start.

"Which is good enough for me."

It was then.

The Gaea System’s signature gleaming blue screen appeared before his eyes.

[Congratulations, Hunter Aventine Tidea, on consuming a Fruit of Metamorphosis and taking your first step towards Divinity!]

[What part of your existence would you prefer to sacrifice?]