“So, we’ve gained an external consultant as an auxiliary member, haven’t we?” After Alen left, Annelie repeatedly examined the profile in her hands, finding it somewhat unbelievable.
Following some negotiations, Alen had essentially become a half-member of the club.
Why only “half”? Because he wouldn’t regularly participate in club activities, as he needed to focus on his own research. However, if the club required assistance, he would provide help. Officially, he was designated as a consultant.
“This isn’t bad. Honestly, I prefer it when members can take it easy and don’t have to sacrifice their personal priorities just to fit in,” Thilan remarked as she sipped her refreshing floral tea, her gaze resting on six seeds left on the table.
The Purple Pomegranate Seeds (Outstanding Gold-Grade) could grow into magical plants, but they had extremely demanding environmental requirements. If cultivated correctly, they could produce fruits with magical effects—the Indigo Purple Pomegranate.
As part of the exchange after Thilan’s teachings, Alen had gifted these six seeds as a token of gratitude.
“While the Purple Pomegranate tree itself is quite small and doesn’t take up much space, it requires a highly stable Aijeka Particle (magical energy) environment. If the magical energy fluctuates or is disrupted by other factors during its growth, the fruit’s quality will significantly degrade, yielding only Bronze-Grade Crimson Pomegranates,” Thilan explained as she consulted the data, leaning on her hand while observing the seeds before her.
“In low-concentration magical environments, its growth is incredibly slow, potentially taking decades to mature. In high-concentration magical environments, the highly active magic can easily trigger other anomalies, altering the surroundings.”
“The library’s database indicates that to grow it successfully, the soil and environment must first be cleared of all other organisms—such as fungi, weeds, insect eggs, and the like.”
“Additionally, its growth must remain undisturbed by these elements throughout its lifecycle.”
“So, essentially, it needs a sterile environment?” Annelie asked, stepping closer to inspect the six seeds.
“That’s correct, but that’s just the basic requirement. What’s crucial is that it must also receive the glow of the sunset during its growth.”
“This is because the magical fruit of the Purple Pomegranate condenses the twilight glow of the setting sun into a unique ‘concept.’”
The terms extraordinary, magic, and spell are used to describe Aijeka Particles and their effects because these transcendent abilities and phenomena do not follow scientific laws but rather adhere to the laws of concepts.
A concept is a mental construct that emerges as an imaginative abstraction from real-world phenomena. Although it does not truly exist, it profoundly influences relationships among living beings. Examples include friendship, nation, loyalty, beauty, and so on. These concepts often do not exist independently but are intertwined with various entities.
The most common example is celestial worship—such as the sun, moon, and stars. In the primal myths of various peoples, the eternally burning sun in the sky was regarded as magical and unique. Naturally, many imagined concepts were attached to it, such as strength, burning, heat, and so on.
As a result, many magical fruits, creatures, minerals, and other materials that enhance personal strength are associated with the sun.
The fruit of the Purple Pomegranate also draws from the concept of the sun, specifically the gentle twilight glow of sunset, which it absorbs and solidifies into a unique magical energy. This gives it the conceptual property of making life stronger.
The condensation of magical energy is the condensation of a concept.
Scattered magical energy is weak and mutually interfering. To consolidate it, a concept must be invoked.
Beyond the sun, people’s perceptions of certain animals in primitive life also formed concepts, such as lions and poisonous snakes. Lions are often associated with strength and ferocity, while snakes are linked to poison and cunning. These associations can even lead to secondary concepts, such as lions symbolizing sovereignty and snakes representing wisdom.
If one wanted to create a magical potion to grant charm and regal demeanor, they would likely need materials extracted from lion-like beasts. Similarly, to temporarily gain quick thinking, materials from snake-like creatures would be indispensable.
The natural world is diverse, of course. Beyond lions and snakes, there are many analogous concepts, such as elephants and hawks. In certain regional myths, elephants symbolize strength, while hawks represent wisdom, and they, too, can yield corresponding effects.
The concept of strength is like a lock, and many keys—such as the sun, lion, or elephant—can open it. Among these, the combination of sun and strength is the most fitting, undeniable, and powerful.
Without life, Aijeka Particles are like ordinary dust, incapable of altering the world in any way.
However, with the emergence of life—and consequently, thought, imagination, and fantasy—Aijeka Particles gained the potential to change everything.
They are the perfect medium, capable of projecting mental imaginings into reality and making them manifest.
The ability of thoughts and imagination to influence reality is the origin of all transcendence.
Yet Aijeka Particles are inherently weak. Pure imagination alone is unlikely to produce any noticeable change.
But what if thousands of Aijeka Particles were gathered, aligned, and directed by a unified thought or will to influence reality?
That is the first step in creating a transcendent core: gathering sufficient Aijeka Particles (magical energy), organizing them into a stable structure, and making them readily usable.
Such a transcendent core is still primitive, with limited and inefficient capabilities. To specialize in a particular field, beings began to refine their Aijeka Particles further, giving rise to different transcendent sequences.
From the original Primordial Sequence, these sequences evolved and diversified into today’s nine primary sequences: Nature Sequence, Blade Sequence, Light Feather Sequence, Spirit Particle Sequence, Dragon Sequence, Decay Sequence, Tide Sequence, Blood Eye Sequence, and Primordial Sequence. Each has its own unique traits and areas of expertise.
Even selecting a sequence is not enough. To further enhance magical energy’s influence on specific fields, transcendents refine their core structure to form inscribed patterns. These patterns allow transcendents to manipulate certain concepts and domains with extraordinary power and efficiency, creating abilities such as fire, durability, water flow, and atmosphere. Advanced cores can even generate more abstract conceptual patterns, such as traversal, memory, time, or dreams.
Returning to the topic, cultivating these six Purple Pomegranate seeds requires the glow of the setting sun, which is indispensable but also unpredictable.
Even when the same seeds are tended in the same way and exposed to the same sunset glow, the resulting fruit can vary in quality. This unpredictability is the greatest obstacle to the cultivation of such rare and magical fruits.
“According to the current data available in the Grand Library, the best approach is still to cultivate on a unified and large scale, and then classify the harvested fruits by quality,” Annelie said, looking at the data projected on the screen of her desk.
“The probability is a bit low though—about 200 to 300 plants are needed to produce a single high-quality Indigo Pomegranate. Most of the others are just the Bronze-Grade Crimson Pomegranates,” Thilan noted, her eyes scanning the data below.
Annelie pursed her lips. “So Allen was just brushing us off, huh?”
“Probably not. He said this is a strain he’s been researching and improving recently, with a much higher yield rate than those on the market,” Thilan replied with a shake of her head.
“Let’s plant them first. If it doesn’t work out, we can just treat them as ornamental plants for the club activity room.” Annelie chuckled. She had originally planned to buy some potted plants, but now she could skip that expense entirely.
Without expectations, there would be no disappointment. She didn’t hope for high-quality fruits; even low-quality ones would be nice, just to let the members and herself have a taste.
After experiencing many things, Thilan now viewed life with a more relaxed attitude. She no longer pursued the so-called best, the first, or perfection.
Simply living well, free from undue grievances and suffering, was already the greatest happiness. Why burden herself with needless worries? Was tonight’s dinner not delicious? Was the bed uncomfortable? Were the games unfun? Were the little animals not adorable? Was the place she was going tomorrow not exciting? By shedding many self-imposed shackles, life could be light and carefree.
A person develops perseverance largely when they receive plenty of positive feedback, and the process isn’t painful. If enduring something brings nothing but suffering, it’s destined not to last.
They prepared six flowerpots, sterilized them, planted the seeds, and covered them with custom glass domes. Then the two placed the pots on the windowsill of the activity room.
“Even if we use the simplest and most basic methods, as long as they grow, we won’t consider it a loss,” Annelie told Thilan.
The recruitment of new members continued. Who would the next new member be?
…
Night, Southern 1st District, Water Rat Zone module.
A steel-styled hovercar stopped at the alleyway entrance, its headlights flickering slowly, illuminating the figure at the alley’s end.
The man’s coat and clothes were tattered and disheveled, marked with dried blood, scorched edges, water stains, and dust. In the torn areas, dark red wounds could be faintly seen.
Laser beams might pierce flesh, but their high-temperature burns instantly cauterized wounds, preventing infections. It sounded like some dark joke, but in his desperate situation, he could only think of such humor to ease his taut nerves.
Grid took a deep breath, activating the extraordinary core within his body to suppress the pain radiating from his limbs. Tightening his grip on the hilt of his sword, he lifted his gaze to meet the advancing burly man.
Short gray hair, a square face, muscles and a physique seemingly chiseled from steel—this man resembled a construct of iron. Despite the sweltering summer, he wore a wide trench coat, one hand carrying a smoking, cooling laser gun while the other flexed, his thick knuckles emitting the sound of bones grinding together.
Stopping five meters before Grid, the man halted, standing still as he addressed the cornered youth.
“Where did you hide the item?”
“The item? What item? You mean yourself?” Grid replied with a smirk of mockery.
Unfazed by the meaningless taunt, the man’s cold expression remained unchanged. He simply repeated his question.
“You know what I’m asking. I’ll ask again—where did you hide the item?”
“And if I refuse to tell you?”
“I’ll make you talk,” the man’s tone was steady and unyielding.
“Tch, scary, huh? Haha.” Though Grid’s words were mocking, his trembling legs betrayed his fear. The man before him was undoubtedly capable of fulfilling his threat.
The burly man, known by the codename “Iron-B7300,” was infamous in Southern 1st District’s underworld. No one knew his real name, but his codename often surfaced in discussions of the underground. Cold and efficient, he accepted highly dangerous missions with an impressive success rate. These days, he was handsomely paid, working exclusively for large corporations.
After rapidly weighing his options, Grid finally steeled himself. His pupils contracted, and he lunged forward, his body springing like a black wolf. Drawing the sword from his back, the hilt emitted a burst of brilliant blue light, its particle stream illuminating the alley with a blinding radiance. The glare caused blind spots to appear in Grid’s vision.
Swinging the powerful energy blade in a downward arc toward the burly man’s head, a cascade of sparks and sharp, cracking noises erupted. Without pausing to check the man’s condition, Grid turned and bolted for the alley’s exit.
But just as he thought the man might be dead or gravely injured, an unyielding iron hand emerged from the sparks and light, grabbing Grid’s shoulder. The hand yanked him back with immense force, slamming him against the wall.
His head struck the wall with a dull thud, and Grid slid to the ground like a rag doll, rolling a few times on the dusty surface. Despite the searing pain, he struggled to reach for the hilt of his energy blade to continue resisting.
A heavy iron boot stomped down, twisting with force, shattering both his wrist and the blade hilt, leaving his hand grotesquely deformed.
“Ahhh—!” Grid screamed, clutching his mangled hand, his body curling like a shrimp as sweat poured from his forehead.
The iron hand grabbed him again, pinning him against the wall.
“Where did you hide the item?” The burly man’s voice was as calm as before, his one mechanical eye zooming in and out, seemingly evaluating Grid’s response.
“I… I hid it… cough, cough… Why should I tell you? You promised me a reward for getting the ‘Three Pointer Workshop’s’ secrets. And this… cough… is the reward?”
“The data you provided wasn’t worth that reward,” the man replied.
“Enough! Do you think I’m a child?! If I handed everything over, you’d give me nothing! What could I do—sue you?!” Grid retorted.
“You’ve already received the first payment. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been able to afford that equipment.” Iron-B7300 gestured to the shattered hilt at his feet.
Although struck by the energy blade, his skin, reinforced with high-strength alloy fibers, remained largely intact, with only a shallow one-centimeter cut.
“When processing the second payment, the data you submitted failed verification. The company concluded you weren’t truthful and issued a warning.”
“But you ignored it, demanding full payment before revealing the critical information.”
“For a time, Edess Academy shielded you, giving you a rare opportunity. But you didn’t realize how precious that was, instead trying to negotiate.”
“You don’t understand the rules of Southern 1st District. Such behavior isn’t tolerated. The company doesn’t accept threats or mid-deal changes.”
“That’s why they sent me.”
“I’ll ask one last time—where is the item? ‘Three Needle Workshop’ has tightened security since your operation and suspended new product development. Even though this decision caused their stock to plummet, they’ve held firm.”
“This is highly irregular, which means they’ve likely lost something critical.”
“Now, for the last time—where is it?”
As the man finished speaking, the cold barrel of his gun pressed against Grid’s temple, its heat seeping into his skin.
“I… I…” Grid gasped, his words caught in his throat. Suddenly, he lashed out with a desperate kick.
“I’m not some stray dog!” he roared, a mix of fury and fear in his voice. His cry betrayed his despair and fragility.
But unlike a hero from legend, Grid did not turn the tide with his defiance. Instead, the burly man caught his leg, hoisted him, and slammed him to the ground, rendering him unconscious.
The alley fell silent, the echo of Grid’s earlier cries abruptly cut off.