VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne

Chapter 327: Fruits of their Labour

"What is that thing? Have you seen one before?" Valerie asked Ren, as she covered her nose with the back of her hand in an attempt to keep the smell away.

He glanced back at her, before focusing back on the threads of ethereal energy he was feeding into the strange black tree.

"I have." He answered monotonously, "This is called a Death’s Hand, or at least it was originally. These two have been corrupted by the same thing that turned a normal creature into that abomination.

Certain races cultivate them, but outside of that they were especially rare. At least they are supposed to be. I won’t bore you with all the details, but essentially their seeds aren’t physical and are carried inside the souls of certain beings.

Naturally souls go away with the Lord of the Dead, so without a way to extract the seed and cultivate it properly, it’s unlikely to sprout nevermind fully grow enough to bear fruit."

Valerie frowned, looking over the horrible tree with the disgusting and putrid fruit, and couldn’t imagine anyone willingly growing such a thing on their property. Then again, it was possible that it had some kind of magical effect that was useful in certain spells or potions, but was it really worth this smell?

She glanced over her shoulder at the other tree that was fully grown and bearing fruit of its own, and then back at the one that Ren was working on, just in time to see one of the fruits wriggle on the branch.

It bulged and wriggled, as if something was trying to push its way out from the inside, which was enough to dislodge the disgusting fruit. It bounced against the ground and rolled to a stop next to Ren’s foot, where it continued to wriggle and writhe, before it exploded into putrid rotten viscera as a heel was driven through it.

Valerie recoiled, using a quick cast shield to avoid being splattered by the viscera, as she watched in confusion as Ren stomped on the fruit over and over with a hateful expression on his face, splattering more and more with every stomp until he ground his heel into it to finish the job.

"That was a little over-dramatic, don’t you think?" Valerie scoffed, letting the gore covered shield fade and brushing herself off. Even if none had got on her, it left her feeling dirty nonetheless.

"I mean what could a fruit possible do to deserve... Woah, no way..." Her chastising attitude quickly disappeared, replaced by wide eyed disbelief, as Ren plucked a flattened piece of gore from the mashed pile. In his hand, held by its tail, was a disgusting little leech. A Sin Sucker.

Valerie’s face paled as her mind connected the dots together, and her eyes slowly drifted upwards to the dozens of fruit hanging from the finger-like branches of the Death’s Hand. Some of them were already starting to softly wriggle, as if they were rousing from their sleep by the death of their brother.

"You mean that this...is a nest?"

"Ding Ding, Give the girl a prize. In the future, these things spread like a plague. Wherever the creatures were, these trees weren’t far behind."

"But you said they were supposed to be rare? How-"

"Did they get so many?" Ren finished her thought, "That is the Billion Ollie question. We never figured that out, in the future I mean. We were too busy destroying them before they could spread more to figure out where they came from or how. There’s something deeper to all of this, I just don’t know what.

That’s why I want to take their seeds for study. Maybe I can purify them, cultivate an original Death’s Hand. The benefit of such a plant would be astronomical in the coming battles."

Valerie winced slightly, feeling a little worried about growing such a thing on her land, and not just for reasons of the smell. But she reluctantly nodded and let out a soft sigh.

"Alright, if you think you can do it and that it could help. But you’re taking responsibility for it. So if anything goes wrong with it, I know whose ass I need to kick. Oh, and maybe you should take some non-crushed samples. Might be useful, who knows."

"Yes Ma’am," He answered with a tone that was dripping of sarcasm, to which Valerie simply rolled her eyes and started to walk away.

However after just a few steps, she heard his voice speak again. This time with a softer tone that almost bordered on genuine and... empathetic?!

"By the way... Um... Good work on the spell circle. I... I don’t know if we could have done it without that." Ren muttered, before clearing his throat and regaining his smarm after that brief moment of madness.

"I mean, I would have been fine, I’ve done this all before. But it was good that we didn’t lose any of you noobs."

"Yeah sure, whatever you say." Valerie laughed, leaving the corpse faced man to his work.

She had a brief talk with Lucy and Elise, who were covering the strange portion of thin air that was randomly spitting out beasts with no rhyme or reason. At least that was what they were doing before Jason came over and distracted Lucy by not being dead.

She was very eager to show her joy and love for him, after nearly losing him to some insane monster from another world. So Valerie sent them away to somewhere more private and took over Lucy’s monster killing duties.

It was really for the best, because the couple had barely moved out of earshot before they started to get a little loud and rambunctious with their PDA.

Keeping her eyes far from the outcrop they had squirrelled themselves behind, Valerie enjoyed the revitalising effect of the mana flooding the air. It filled her lungs with even the shallowest of breaths, helping her source regain the energy she had lost powering the array.

It was for the same reason that everyone else was able to do their respective magic so soon after being sucked dry. Sucked dry of mana, I mean. Not of anything else.

However, as the two girls were standing there, idly exchanging a small amount of chit chat and magical theories, they came to a disconcerting realisation.

Despite all of her effort, Elise could not close the breach to the other world.