Toz had no idea how long he and the cats had been drifting around aimlessly in the Void. The only way they had to measure how much time had passed was by how many times they had eaten. But even that wasn't reliable since they ate at infrequent intervals.
At the very least, Toz was certain they had been stuck in the Void with only themselves, trees, and void beasts as company for several months. It had been long enough for Toz to get all his elements to the fourth level.
Their tiny island of trees had also started getting pretty luxurious. While not quite large enough for a village, the available space was definitely comparable to a mansion and the land the mansion was built on.
The large forest was effective bait as it attracted more void beasts. But all the void beasts drawn to the forest were hostile and not interested in creating an ecosystem on the island. Toz and the cats didn't mind since they enjoyed the peace and quiet. But they were worried that the only existences in the Void would be ill-intentioned and destroy their island if given the opportunity.
While the trees hadn't lured in any truly strong beasts, Toz did not doubt that there were high level void beasts in the Void. He and the cats had simply been lucky that they hadn't yet met one.
With their strength now that two, almost three, of them had learned spells, Toz and the cats were confident that they could deal with most beasts at the medium level as long as they didn't have strange abilities that rendered the group's attacks useless.
But a high level void beast could be the thing that would end Toz and the cats' journey through the Void. However, it would be useless to do nothing but worry about it when they had all the time in the world to grow stronger and reach the point where even high level beasts won't pose a threat to them.
And aside from training, there wasn't much else to do on their island. Toz and Nil were still constantly expanding the island and reinforcing it in various ways to make sure it could hold up against the beasts they encountered. Toz was also doing various experiments by mixing his mana as he made different objects.
A chair grown from mostly shadow mana tended to lose its solidity, putting the one using the chair on the ground. Branches made from a combination of fire and lightning and metal were effective sources of light. A branch made from lightning and metal was too bright and not soft enough for anyone to enjoy its glow. Only lightning didn't have the power or stability to function as lighting.
Toz was still pumping his sword full of mana, compressing and making it as dense as possible, so he hadn't gotten the opportunity to try that out yet. Although, he was beginning to wonder if he even should feed it to the trees. The black metallic surface with flickering lights of orange and purplish-white was beginning to look impressively stunning. The combination of four types of fourth level mana being squeezed into a shape slightly more than a meter with two edges and a handle had created a stunning weapon. And every time Toz repeated the process and reinforced the sword with even more mana, the depths of the colors and the blade deepened.
Since it was made of mana that Toz was in complete control of, he didn't need to sharpen or maintain it. No matter how much he used it or how worn it got, Toz only needed to use his magic, and it was good as new.
Toz didn't really want to sacrifice such a good and sharp sword to the trees when he couldn't be certain of the result. But the time he spent reinforcing the sword left him with a lot of time to think about it in detail. Eventually, he concluded that even if the trees created something useless by absorbing the sword, it didn't matter. He could just make another one.
Creating the sword didn't require rare materials or difficult techniques, only mana and time, the two things Toz couldn't run out of. But he still wasn't completely satisfied with the sword's strength. If he was going to do it, he would do it properly and give the trees a masterpiece, not some half-finished overgrown kitchen knife.
With Toz focusing on his sword, Nil on reinforcing the island, and the other three on training or mastering a spell, no one noticed the small change that had begun affecting the island of trees. More specifically, the areas where Toz and the cats had played around experimenting with how the trees reacted to their mana.
The tiny branches that Scrael had made were the first to exhibit signs of independent growth, that wasn't because of someone injecting mana into the wood.
At first, a single light purple leaf sprouted halfway up the branch, and then sometime later, a bud slowly began growing at the end of the branch. The bud was originally dark purple leaves, but as it slowly grew and began blooming, the bright inner layer was exposed, revealing a tiny fruit. The tiny white ball looked more like a berry, but without anyone noticing, it grew larger and deepened in color, gradually turning into a purple fruit the size of an ordinary apple.
The color of the fruit darkened, and the surface smoothened, turning into a glistening purple. And as time passed and the fruit continued growing, tiny white sparks, barely more noticeable than a hair, began flitting around the fruit's surface.
Since the fruit had been growing at a corner of the original forest where Scrael had been experimenting out of sight from the others so they wouldn't see how badly she felt she was doing, none of the cats nor Toz noticed its growth.
However, during one of Lucy's patrols he had started doing to keep watch over everything and see if anything had approached their island, he felt a disturbance in the surrounding mana. Since it was about as much of a disturbance as the wind from a bird flapping its wings, he didn't bother informing the others and started looking for the source at once.
With Lucy's sensitive perception, it didn't take long for him to find the purple fruit.
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