Red frowned. “Couldn’t it be dangerous?”

Reinhart shrugged. “Well, it’s a spiritual plant, so of course it can be dangerous. I don’t see why the creator of this trial would put something like that in here, though. Aren’t there monsters already?”

The boy wasn’t convinced. “How can you presume to know what the creator of this trial would or wouldn’t do?”

Reinhart looked stumped for an answer. “… I guess I’m touching it first.”

Red sighed. “Do as you wish.”

The knight’s response was to walk ahead towards the tree, passing through the incorporeal motes of light. The man still seemed to be on the lookout for any lizards hiding in crevices or holes, but none jumped out at him. They were all dead, and only eggs remained in the chamber. Red confirmed as much through his crimson sense.

“There’s something else here too.” Reinhart said as he approached the spiritual plant.

The man crouched down and picked up an item in his hand, showing it to Red. Actually, it was a handful of items.

The boy felt his heart skip a beat. “Spiritual stones.”

There were four of them, to be exact.

“And an even number of them too.” Reinhart said with a laugh. “Here, take your share.”

The man tossed the stones at Red, who grabbed them in surprise. He looked at the knight with suspicion.

Reinhart smiled. “What? We are allies, right? So we split the loot 50-50.”

Red nodded. “I suppose so.”

This was already one tenth of what he needed to exchange for that pill for Rog. The thing that surprised the boy the most was that the danger he needed to go through to acquire these was much lower than he expected. And it wasn’t kept inside an ornate box either. Was it really going to be this easy?

Reinhart dragged him out of his thoughts. “Now stop standing around and see if you can find anything else.”

Red nodded. After a thorough inspection of the den, though, the boy found nothing other than a bunch of eggs and some animal bones - presumably the lizard’s food.

Reinhart also found nothing else. “I guess it’s only the tree now. Watch my back, will you?”

“Why?” Red frowned. “I thought you weren’t worried.”

Reinhart looked as if he had just been wronged. “Hey, I just said I didn’t think it was going to be dangerous! I didn’t say I wasn’t worried about it!”

Red sighed, but he just nodded his head in the end. He didn’t know what help he could provide the man, but he would keep an eye out just in case.

Reinhart approached the tree with slow steps. Its branches stretched very far from the main trunk, and soon enough, the man found himself below the tree canopy.

“Oh, I can feel it.” Reinhart said. “This thing is brimming with Spiritual Energy. Never seen such a rich plant back in the forest.”

Red remained silent, observing the knight’s actions.

“There’s no leaf litter at the feet of the tree.” the man said. “Maybe the dead leaves dissipate into light too.”

The boy couldn’t offer the man any insight on this matter with his limited knowledge of spiritual plants.

Reinhart didn’t wait for his answer either. He stretched his hand, brushing his finger against one of the tree leaves.

Red watched in anticipation.

The plant offered no reaction, however, and the man didn’t fall down clutching his hand in agony either.

“Feels like a normal leaf.” Reinhart said. “But I can feel some spiritual energy flowing through it.”

The man seemed to be answering questions that Red had never asked out loud in the first place, but the boy wouldn’t complain. The next thing Reinhart did was try to pluck the leaf off of the branch.

It came off without a hitch. However, a few seconds later, the leaf simply dissipated into multiple motes of light, phasing through the man’s hand.

Reinhart shook his head in disappointment. “Like I thought. The fruits are probably the same.”

“Why do you say that?” Red frowned. “Aren’t fruits meant to spread a plant’s seed?”

The knight nodded. “You’re not wrong. But some Spiritual Plants might have some rare conditions for their fruits to spread, and it might even require a special kind of monster who can harvest it safely.”

This was the first time Red was hearing about it. What surprised him, though, was the fact Reinhart seemed knowledgeable on the subject. Spiritual plants had many harvestable parts, but as a rule of thumb, fruits were generally their most valuable component, much more so for trees like this one. It was where most of the plant’s essences were condensed, after all.

“We won’t know until we try.” the boy said.

Reinhart sighed. “I suppose you’re right. But first, let’s check the rest.”

The man did a thorough examination of the tree. He studied the trunk, through which spiritual energy was being constantly moved. He dug at the earth, trying to discover how deep the roots went. Then he tried to cut a piece of the tree bark off, but to his dismay, his weapons didn’t make so much as a dent in the tree, even as he applied his entire strength behind the blow. This was also the case for the branches, even the thin ones. As much as they bent under his strength, they refused to break off.

After a series of failures, his gaze finally wandered back to the fruits.

Reinhart looked over at Red. “I guess now’s the time.”

The boy nodded. There were only three blue round fruits hanging from the branches - a smaller number than most normal fruit trees yielded from what Red knew. Still, this was a spiritual tree, after all, so it wasn’t surprising it would behave differently.

Reinhart approached one of said fruits. He grabbed at it and felt its surface. “Oh, I can sense it, lots of Spiritual Energy on this one. It’s pretty soft too. Feels like I can squish it with my fingers.”

“Don’t do that.” Red said.

The knight laughed. “Hah, don’t worry about it, kid. Now, for the real test.”

With one swift movement, Reinhart pulled the fruit off the branch. At first, there was no reaction. However, a few seconds later, the fruit started to dissipate into even more motes of light, until there was nothing left in the knight’s hand.

“Well… Shit.” Reinhart had an ugly expression.

Red also couldn’t stop himself from feeling disappointed. “So, we can’t extract anything from this tree?”

“Sure doesn’t look like it.”

Silence followed the man’s words.

A few seconds later, Red sighed. “Let’s leave then. No point in wasting time here.”

“No.” Reinhart shook his head. “Not yet.”

“What do you mean by…” Red trailed off as he saw the knight move towards another fruit.

Reinhart pulled the branch down, getting to eye level with the fruit.

Then he took a bite out of it.

Red almost couldn’t believe his eyes. The knight ignored him, though, and continued to chew and swallow pieces of the fruit.

Reinhart had an expression of satisfaction. "Delicious!”

The fruit, now having a big bite mark on it, started to dissipate into motes of light. The process, however, was far slower than before, and Red assumed this was because it was still attached to the tree.

Reinhart panicked once he saw this, though, and took another bite out of the fruit, in a hurry to chew and swallow it. Soon enough, there was nothing of the blue plum remaining, and the man patted his belly in satisfaction.

Red half-expected motes of light to float out of the knight’s body, but that didn’t happen either. Still, the boy was in a state of disbelief as he stared at the man.

“Are you stupid?” he asked.

“Sometimes.” Reinhart shrugged.

The danger of eating an unknown spiritual fruit couldn’t be understated. Even the most beneficial fruits could contain so much energy that a normal person might explode upon swallowing them, and a lot of them contained some kind of poisonous substance to humans. It was why alchemy was so important - they separated the good and the bad out of these plants, and condensed all the beneficial properties into medicine.

Even Red, who had little experience with these matters, knew how dangerous it was to eat spiritual fruits raw. It was why Reinhart’s decision baffled him to no end.

“Why?” Red asked.

The knight smiled. “We have to take a risk, don’t we?”

The boy didn’t believe the man. In fact, he thought Reinhart might be hiding something from him. Maybe he knew what plant this was, and that it wasn’t poisonous? If so, why the need for theatrics? No, that wasn’t likely.

So, why? Was he really just stupid?

A grunt came from the knight. “Something’s happening.”

Red frowned and examined the man’s body. He could see nothing out of the normal, though.

Reinhart sat down into a meditative stance. “Spiritual Energy is moving through my veins.”

The boy had guessed as much. “What is it doing?”

“Nothing that I can tell- Wait, it’s rising! It’s- Ugh!”

The man grunted in pain, gripping at his head. Suddenly, the man let out a scream, and at that exact moment, a blue light came out of his eyes. Then it disappeared just like that, leaving Red baffled.

Reinhart, for his part, was scratching his eyes. “Gods, what is this itch?”

“Something came out of your eye.” Red said. “A light.”

Reinhart looked up at him. “Huh, what do you…”

The man trailed off, a dazzled look on his face.

Red noticed this change. “What is it?”

Reinhart blinked a few times. “The motes. They disappeared.”

The boy frowned and looked around. The motes were all still there, occluding much of their view of the chamber.

“I still see them.” Red said.

“You do? Wait, why is everything still so bright?” Reinhart scratched his chin in thought. Then, a few seconds later, a smile came to his face. “… I understand what happened.”

“Really?” the boy was unconvinced.

“Yes.” the knight nodded. “The fruit is a reward like I thought… It helps me see in the dark.”

Red was even more skeptical, and the knight noticed the look on his face.

Reinhart laughed. “Don’t believe me, do you? Come, I’ll show you.”

The boy hesitated, but he still followed the knight. They walked to a dark section of the tunnel, at which point the man told Red to put out his torch, which made the youth hesitate again.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be at the other side of the tunnel.” Reinhart tried to assuage his fears. “All you need to do is write something on the wall and I’ll read it to you in the dark.”

In the end, Red agreed to his proposal, but only because he could still sense the man’s position with his crimson sense. The knight walked over a dozen meters away from him, and the boy finally put out the torch and they now stood in pitch black darkness.

Then, like Reinhart had instructed, he used a knife to carve a word in the tunnel wall - a word he knew how to write by heart. He had barely finished writing it when the knight’s voice spoke in response.

“Moon.” Reinhart said.

Red almost couldn’t believe it. “… How?”

The boy knew people who had opened their Five Senses vein had better vision than most. That didn’t mean, however, that they could see in pitch black darkness. Not even monsters could, in fact. They had to have at least a small amount of light to use their eyes, such as moonlight, for instance. Creatures that could navigate in true pitch black darkness used senses other than their vision to move around.

So Red knew Reinhart shouldn’t be able to do it.

“It’s the fruit.” the man said with a smiling tone. “It was probably why it was there in the first place.”

The boy started to believe in his explanation. Still, he maintained some degree of skepticism.

“So, are you going to eat it?” the knight asked.

He lit up his torch again and looked over at Reinhart. “What about side effects?”

“You can watch me and wait for a bit.” the man shrugged. “If I die, then you should probably not eat it.”

The knight’s words seemed genuine. However, that raised another worry in Red’s mind. “… Why are you telling me all of this? You could have just kept this information for yourself.”

Reinhart burst out in laughter. “Why, kid? Because we are allies, of course!”

Red frowned. He was past believing these words.

“Okay, okay! I admit it!” the knight threw his hands up in defeat. “I’m just doing this because I want to make use of your detection abilities, okay? Since we met earlier, I knew you must have some way of detecting enemies. I mean, you were able to instantly recognize me! I confirmed that in our battle against the stag and earlier when we were climbing to this hole. So, considering how useful your power is, why would I be stingy and keep this fruit only to myself when you could save my life in a pinch?”

It did not surprise Red that Reinhart had discovered this. He had left plenty of clues behind by the way he acted and some of the things he said. It would have been weird instead if Reinhart didn’t suspect anything.

Now that the knight admitted to his ulterior motives, Red actually felt more at ease. However, he wasn’t completely trusting of Reinhart just yet.

“Then we’ll wait.” Red said. “If you don’t die from that fruit, I will consider eating it too.”

A wide smile formed on Reinhart’s face. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”