Delilah and Roy were drawn to the cave.
After reaching its entrance, they stopped simultaneously.
"The treant from the swamp had said that its master was in seclusion. Could it be inside this cave?" said Delilah.
She had many reasons to believe that the master of the tree monster was guarding the treasure inside the cave.
It wasn't in seclusion. It was merely using that as an excuse to stay close to the treasure for some reason.
She also suspected that the tree monster was stationed at the entrance of the left path by its masters to stop adventurers and beasts alike from venturing inside and finding the cave.
"Maybe. It does not hurt to be vigilant." Roy said as his eyes narrowed.
He focused on what he was sensing. He picked up three different kinds of energy fluctuations. The strongest one was coming from him, while the weakest one was coming from Delilah. The last one belonged to the treasure inside the cave.
According to his sixth sense, there wasn't any person beside them in the vicinity.
It seemed like they were being paranoid.
There was no danger inside.
'No! I shouldn't readily believe in the judgment of my skills.'
'Maybe there's more to it than my skills can detect.'
Roy's mind was full of thoughts. This was a world of swords and magic. It was full of unexplainable wonders. There were runic stones and soul shards that could grant amazing abilities to anyone lucky enough to possess them. Who's to say there's no counter to his sixth sense and sixth eye skills?
Maybe there was a monster inside the cave, but it had the ability to escape the detection of his sixth sense.
Roy thought he was relying too much on his sixth sense. It was making his initial senses dull. The encounter with the tree monster highlighted this problem.
At that time, the weirdness of the situation was hard not to notice, and the clues were spread out to him, but he didn't realize he was in danger until his sixth sense warned him.
It was time to stop blindly depending on his sixth sense and put his eyes to use.
"I can't see the inside of the cave clearly."
Delilah frowned. The cave had two kinds of rock formations naturally formed over the years, and it was obstructing her vision.
"I got this," Roy said.
His sixth sense allowed him to locate anything that radiates energy. His sixth eye allowed him to see through illusions. And his X-ray eyes were the best. He could see through obstacles and focus his eyes on what really mattered!
The X-ray skill was activated as he looked inside the cave.
Delilah saw his eyes blurring up. His eyes fogged up, and when the fog died down, his velvety black irises that were like a bottomless well reflected a view completely different from her expectation.
The stalactite hanging from the ceiling and the sides of the cavern and the stalagmite rising from the floor were the only thing she saw when she looked inside the cave. However, they were transparent to his eyes. He saw through them like they weren't there and got a clear picture of the cave.
There was a small tree at the very end of it.
Three fruits were hanging from its branches.
Two of them were like dry persimmon. They didn't look juicy, unlike the last one, which had the shape and thickness of a vine gourd and looked as bright as the full moon. It was emitting rays of pristine light that were bypassing the rock formations and dashing out of the cave.
Roy's pupil dilated when he saw it.
"What did you see?" Delilah asked when she saw his intense reaction.
"The Seven Stars and Three Blessings magic fruits. They are what I have been looking for," Roy replied. "I was expecting to find only one, but there are three."
The source of these fruits wasn't mentioned in the novel. He was, however, lucky enough to see it for himself.
It was called the Dusk Tree!
According to the information extracted by the system from the mana network, there weren't many dusk trees left in this major world. Catching sight of one was considered extremely rare as they could be counted on two hands. They were less than the empire's realm lords.
It takes thirty years for a dusk tree to grow its first branch and another six years for it to grow its second and third branches.
When the second and third branches of the dusk tree are formed, it will bear its first magic fruit, which grows out of the first branch.
When the magic fruit is close to maturity, the dusk tree will bear two more fruits.
The dusk tree he saw had three fruits. It meant that one of the three fruits was close to maturing!
He looked at it again and noticed six and a half stars on it. The stars signified how close it was to ripening. The growth cycle of the seven starts and three blessings magic fruit was seven years. Every six months, it would gain half a star mark. After seven years, it would mature.
It hasn't matured since it only had six and a half stars. If it were left to grow on its own, it would take around 4 to six months. Before that time, it needed the support of the dusk tree, or its development would come to a halt.
However, Roy knew a way to make it mature without the dusk tree. It was revealed to him when he analyzed it and got its background information.
It would mature in just a month if he fed it pure mana.
Pure mana was mana without any impurities.
The mana of a mage or a beast couldn't be said to be pure, as it was littered with impurities.
There were mana meditation techniques that could filter out the impurities, but even the best one, which was the treasure of the empire, could only filter out 90% of impurities from a unit of mana.
Roy was lucky as the meditation technique he used to step on the path of magic was created by Ninam.
He was able to absorb mana from nature without breathing in impurities because of it.
Thus, his mana was pure like crystal clear water, and he could use it to nourish the seven stars and three blessing fruits.
He gave the cave another look and discovered that the dusk tree was being guarded by a twenty-year-old aura beast.
At first, he thought it was just a corpse. It wasn't leaking any energy, breathing, or showing any sign of life. But from the intensity of its gaze, Roy realized that it was looking to kill them but just waiting for them to step inside and fall into its trap.
It had hidden itself well in the cave that was mostly submerged in darkness and partially illuminated by the magic fruit.
However, the 20 years old aura beast could've never expected that its opponent had eyes that could see in the dark and see through any obstacle.
'It's unaware that I know it's there. I should take advantage of this and see what it is up to.' Roy thought.
"There's immense danger inside. Just stay here and wait for me to deal with it. If you want to help, look for a chance to sneak attack it from a distance after I pull it out of its hiding spot."
His short and direct order sounded directly in Delilah's mind. She turned to him and saw that he was looking at her with a calm gaze. She gave him a head nod as if to say she understood, and he courageously stepped inside the cave, his eyes brimming with battle intent.
