Chapter 629: Precious Fruits

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu

The eighth year of the Dawn Generation was destined to be a difficult one. Astonishing news kept popping up everywhere. But, one of the biggest news flashes right before the demon wave was rather surprising.

“The wood spirits have begun selling two new products, ‘Dusk Fruits’ and ‘Dawn Fruits’. Each fruit is sold for the price of 500 Justice Points. Each fruit is worth ‘five years’. Each person is limited to purchasing only five Dawn Fruits.”

It was only natural that this new advertisement would become headline news. When even time was a purchasable product, that would be truly a precious treasure without tangible value.

There had always been legends about the Fountain of Youth, Elven Tears, and other such time-related mystical treasures. I had also seen the real versions of such treasures. However, it was incomprehensible how a time-related treasure could become mass-produced.

The wood spirits’ advertisements also explained the limitations of their age-changing fruits. The Dusk Fruit, which would age an individual by five years, had no limits on how many you could purchase or eat. You could eat enough to end your life if you really wanted. However, the Dawn Fruit, which was capable of making a person younger by five years, could only be eaten five times in a person’s life. Otherwise, that person’s physical body would collapse, and they might instantly die.

However, this was more than enough to make human rulers go crazy…

Five times five years of life with this fruit was simple math—it would extend a person’s life by twenty-five years. For ordinary humans, this would be equivalent to one-third of their lifespan. For any ruler, this would be a continuation of their years at the peak, along with a way to receive the highest glory and best historical rating as they would remain rulers in this upcoming Holy War!

With the current Justice Points exchange system, 500 Justice Points was the equivalent of the points you would receive for killing five Legend ranked demons. An adventuring team ranked Gold at average would be able to obtain 500 Justice Points in approximately one year by working hard at several major battles. When this amount of work could obtain an extra five years of life, it wouldn’t be expensive at all. In fact, it could even be said that it was ridiculously cheap.

At this moment, the exchange rate for gold coins to Justice Points reached the highest it had ever been. The amount of gold coins that could purchase 500 Justice Points would be enough to purchase a noble title in a medium- to small-sized human kingdom. Despite this, there was nobody willing to sell their Justice Points for gold.

Meanwhile, I laughed out loud upon hearing this news when I reached the meeting location.

“Has she finally succeeded? This is just in time.”

As I previously mentioned, the wood spirits’ Forest of Dreams was a place that had the power of Creation through Amelia. However, the wood spirits’ creations were only limited to fruits and plants. The fruits and plants would also only have buff or debuff effects on the living who consumed them. Previously, the wood spirits’ most popular and expensive items were their fruits that could permanently increase an individual’s base stats.

Due to certain reasons, I had long ago requested Amelia to research a fruit that could change the age of an individual. I had provided her with cell division, genetic, hormonal, pituitary gland, and all sorts of other scientific research topics from my original world that were considered nothing more than ridiculous concepts in this magical world. Regardless of the fact that I was no expert in any of these fields, Amelia would be capable of rewriting the laws of reality itself within her Forest of Dreams. Her will would be capable of changing the dimensional laws there as she was the Creator Goddess of that dimension. Even if these seemingly ridiculous scientific concepts were incomplete, they could still become real if Amelia forced them to become real… Although this sounded ridiculous, this was indeed the most common research method of mages who followed idealism. They were quite skilled at creating something from nothing.

However, the finished Dawn Fruit product definitely didn’t have the same effects as in the wood spirits’ advertisement. There were many treasures out there that could forcefully extend someone’s lifespan, but not a single one would destroy your physical body if you consumed too much. However, it was indeed true that no ordinary human with an ordinary lifespan had obtained an undying body just from using a time-related treasure.

This was because the aging of one’s mind and soul would be even more incurable than the aging of one’s physical body, and the latter would begin to reject an overly old mind and soul incompatible with itself. In the end, the final result would be that the physical body and soul would separate. That would mean either becoming a powerless spirit unable to control their physical body, or a living astral spirit that constantly and uncontrollably suddenly left their own body. None of the lords in fairy tales who tried so hard to find elixirs of immortality had ever met a happy ending.

That was why the advertisement saying that the Dawn Fruit could only extend your lifespan by 25 years wasn’t a complete lie. 20 years would be a change in generation. Any individual’s worldview, common sense, and basic knowledge would mostly be formed in the first twenty years. The soul would be stable in this time period. The longer after that, the more likely it was for problems to appear.

Actually, it was possible for arch druids, master alchemists, and arch priests to accomplish the feat of forcefully lengthening someone’s lifespan by 20 years. Many people indeed did such a thing. However, those who did this all met with tremendous consequences.

Of course, if you were capable of resolving the most troublesome issue of your physical body’s lifespan, these other problems were also resolvable if you were willing to pay the price. The easiest method of all would be to have those rulers learn martial arts or magic to a certain extent. If the person’s soul and physical body had high affinity for each other and were both stable, there would naturally be no problems.

However, the fact that everyone being undying would break the Cycle of Reincarnation would mean that the resource balance in Eich would be broken, along with other troubles, which meant that no even slightly intelligent individual would try for such a thing.

“The Dusk Fruit that’s capable of adding five years to someone’s age? Is your problem now curable?”

Harloys’ smile was filled with vicious intent as she glanced knowingly at my crotch… Damn her, what was she trying to say!?

“Damn it, I didn’t have this developed for myself, I don’t care about such a thing at all! Really! Hey, hey, why are you all looking at me like that? I truly didn’t develop the Dusk Fruit for myself!”

Everyone else’s looks of sympathy infuriated me. I had truly been wronged!

“Fine, fine, everyone realizes that you just wanted to grow taller…”

I was rendered absolutely speechless. I hadn’t developed this Dusk Fruit in order to grow taller, as a time bracelet would be far more effective than any secret shoes… Ptui, I meant that I would never wear secret shoes as I didn’t need such a thing!

“…Forget it, I’ll just directly tell all of you. I had the Dusk Fruit developed for the sake of the Dawn Children. Perhaps I’m doing things prematurely by pulling up the seedlings to help them grow, but it will still be much better than the seedlings dying while they’re still seedlings.”

As I previously mentioned, many heroic spirits had been reincarnated, leading new lives in the current Dawn Generation. Many of them had already shown their talent, and they were now renowned as the Dawn Children. However, even the oldest among them would only be a little kid of seven years old. They would be forever physically limited at that age… And even with their previous life’s knowledge, the physical body would affect personality, so the young children wouldn’t have the same courage as their previous heroic selves, and even with their past lifetime’s accumulation, a young physical appearance would make them unconvincing to others.

This time, I had the Dusk Fruit developed for the sake of the Dawn Children. In my opinion, rather than having these reincarnated heroes helplessly remain as young children… When considering the current situation in the mortal plane, their childhood would likely be extremely bloody. It would probably be better to help them to slightly better be able to control their own fates.

The Dawn Fruit was the most attractive new product on the surface. Although life-extending items were precious and expensive, they could still be found for sale on the market every few years. However, nobody had ever tried to sell a product that would age you before… as nobody would want to die earlier.

However, the Dusk Fruit was something absolutely necessary to my plans. The human Dawn Children would grow up and mature in a few more years, but what about the elves’, dwarves’, dragons’, and other longer-lived species’ Dawn Children? …A seven year old elf would be nothing more than an infant in elven years. Would you count on an infant to become a swordsmaster who could defend you? Do you think that an infant dragon the size of a puppy could toss out forbidden spells?

I had previously considered using the Curse of Aging in undead magic. However, I later discovered that this was using negative energy to forcefully age a body, which would permanently inflict serious damage upon both the physical body and the soul. This meant that right from the very start, all undead magic spells would be no good for what I wanted. I would have to find someone from the Nature Faction to help me develop something which could age people safely, with no negative consequences. But, I truly had few contacts in the Nature Faction. In the end, I tossed this task over to Amelia’s Seven Virtues.

Last time I saw the Seven Virtues, I had asked about this, but heard that there were no results yet. It would seem that they had only recently made a breakthrough in this area. (Much later in the future, Roland finally learned that Amelia had forgotten about this completely until the Seven Virtues reminded her about it, so she finally started working on it and instantly managed to succeed.)

“Right, everyone, loan me some of your Justice Points. I’m going to exchange for some Dusk Fruits,” said… Little Red, not me. She had a delighted expression as if she couldn’t wait.

I suddenly felt like the heavens were so unfair. Why was it that Little Red always benefited the most from my schemes?

But right after this, her expression turned sour. Although it was still currently impossible with the Justice Points system to directly trade Justice Points, it was possible to exchange for an item and give that item to someone else. Unfortunately, Little Red had just learned that none of us had any Justice Points to spare for her.

“I exchanged all my Justice Points for books…”

That was Margaret. The Gods’ treasure trove of books had attracted countless mages to exchange for them. That would truly be a bottomless pit. The ancient magical secrets had emptied out our mage’s wallet.

“I spent them all on eating, drinking, and having fun. I still have seven Justice Points, who wants them…?”

We all directly ignored Adam’s words. None of us was counting on him. This was not only because he was the type to instantly spend any money he had, but even more because any time that he had enough money, Margaret would surely clean out his wallet.

“…”

Little Red herself was also quite poor. She had never grinded against weaker monsters for Justice Points before. How could a prideful dragon like her possibly work so hard at something so menial?

In the end, she focused her attention on me. Considering how often I would meet enemies and my past accumulations, it seemed most likely that I would have the most Justice Points out of any of us.

I proudly raised my head and smiled.

“Indeed, I have two thousand or so Justice Points, but… I’m going to use them to buy secret shoes! I don’t even have enough for myself!”

I then broke out into uproarious laughter. It was her fault for previously laughing at my height! Did she really think that I would forget how she laughed at me before? I hadn’t laughed enough back at her yet, so there was no way I was going to let her return to adult form!

The vicious dragon revealed her teeth and started breathing flames as if she was trying to threaten or rob me. However, I fearlessly used my trump card.

“Besides, one Dusk Fruit will age someone by five years. Dragons take even longer than the elves who require two hundred years to reach adult age. The more powerful the dragon, the slower they will reach adult age. So at a slight estimate, even if we sold you off, we wouldn’t be able to afford enough Dusk Fruits to help you reach adult age again. You should instead try to eat some more and grow faster.”

[System notification: Little Red is currently inhaling a deep breath. Hurry and dodge, hurry and dodge…]

Sheesh, was telling the truth something that would get fire spat on me these days?

“Wait, I have an idea! We could rob… Yeah, you could rob other dragons!”

When considering the dragons’ overall power level, this would definitely be the fastest method to earn Justice Points. But with my understanding of red dragons…

“But, to my knowledge, those guys didn’t try to earn any Justice Points themselves. Even if they have something they want to purchase, they would also try to rob others…”

“Are you an idiot? You’re the Dragon Queen. Just order them to earn some Justice Points and then rob them.”

Just as we were planning on how to make a huge profit, someone surprising suddenly spoke up behind us.

“Actually, I have some Justice Points. My demon servants in the mortal plane earned them for me.”

Didina was actually the one who spoke up here! Didina, a ruler in the Chaos Abyss, actually had Justice Points, a currency only used in the mortal plane?

“Even demons are starting up smurf accounts and international trading in this day and age?”

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