Chapter 11

They were herb bushes and the berries on them glowed with such intensity in his Magic Focus that they were almost blinding. Adrian involuntarily blinked away tears and studied what he had stumbled on. There were fifteen plants, none of them coming up beyond his knee. Only the ripe ones were valuable, but there were around forty of them and with one look Adrian knew that the previous guardian of the place must have been apoplectic when it vanished on it.

Zuaqliaq Berries

These berries are considered a treasure for most species. They have a variety of uses, including to create artificial cores, enhance existing cores or increase physical and magical resistance when formed into a paste.

They looked like blueberries but were nigh on indestructible unless they had been soaked for twenty days in an acidic mixture.

Adrian could only guess how valuable forty of them were, and he missed Jaracol. The interface would have been so excited to have found these. The tiny plants represented ten thousand years of growth and it at least answered whether the willows had been grown in the Alpha event or teleported in. It was the second. The entire grove, complete with this treasure, had been dropped here.

Without its guardian.

Adrian looked at the month-old claw prints. They were everywhere. They were a similar size to the Bird’s footprints, so it was a creature that was at least that large. The thin grass had grown over all the indentations. It had been months since whatever that guardian was had landed in the clearing. A monster that had been protecting zuaqliaq berries! Forty of them. Something as powerful as the Bird would not have been able to protect it. The Bird would not have been close to being strong enough.

The guardian was not here, and its treasure was. There was so much he could do with forty berries, complete his poison pathway and use a concentrated paste to bump his magical and physical resistance, and he would become nigh on unkillable. With a zuaqliaq berry-enhanced skin, those fangs would have bounced off. Hell, even Steve’s sword would only hurt him through blunt force damage. As for magic, nothing at the expert-level would be able to touch him and even master-level magic would be reduced to creating minor burns.

Given where his world was, he would be close to invulnerable. Or he could enhance his core or use them on his kids. For them, he wasn’t sure if the skin or core upgrade would be better.

Choices.

Adrian’s hands trembled. He watched them shake while he picked the first berry. Excitement and fear. Logically, he knew the guardian was not there, but he still expected it to appear in a flash of energy to protect its garden.

Nothing responded, and this find was his. The system had not known, Jaracol had not directed him. This was just luck. The berry twisted off easily. That single berry was something that would interest a class one monster, such was its potency.

Adrian chuckled. Arguably, these berries were the most valuable plant in the Alpha universe and they required no skill to harvest. It was as simple as bending down and flicking them off the stalk. You could not stuff it up.

There were so many options. They could also create an artificial core. Both internal like his air core and external as the cornerstone of a great magic working. A single berry could be shaped to direct a magic array that could protect a town. It would become the brains that could sustain the spell, increasing the effectiveness by an order of magnitude over the more traditional options, excluding willing sacrifices of course. The berry could make the shield ten times stronger just by its presence.

While he daydreamed he mentally went through what else they could be used for. Twenty prepared would grant semi-immortality when the berries were tasked with continuously regenerating each individual cell.

That would stop him from ageing. Then with the others he could go down the path of the Bird and continuously enhance strength, agility, healing, magic and physical resistance. If he had two hundred…

Then Adrian laughed at himself.

If he had two hundred! So funny, there were forty-three in his bag of holding and that was incredible.

A fortune.

Jaracol had not engineered this… Probably… Adrian wasn’t going to discount his manipulation even from this distance. After all, he had given him this scouting ability.

“Thank you.”

The willow was still burning, but all the lower branches had fallen off and the other willows still stayed away.

Battle wraith.

A chain of twenty steps and he was jogging beside the group once more.

“What was it?” Jules asked. He said nothing. “What the hell have you got now? Adrian, I recognise that look. What was in the grove?”

“I am going to do some more gathering.”

“Hey.”

She tried to grab him.

Step.

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