"Chen Yan... if I eat this, will I get stronger?"
"If this is what it takes to get stronger..."
"Mmm! It's warm... so this is what it tastes like."
Chen Yan's pen smacked against the desk with a sharp crack.
"What have you been saying all this time, you weirdo? You're making it sound all wrong!"
Inside the Grandmaster Class's private classroom at Imperial Martial University, those terrible lines shattered the solemn atmosphere.
Sitting opposite Chen Yan was a chubby boy whose specially made extra-large uniform was stretched to the limit.
Hou Ze.
At that moment, he was holding a bright-red fruit streaked with faint golden patterns. He looked ready to face his death, as if he were holding a deadly poison rather than a priceless treasure.
The students in the nearby seats hadn't gathered around, but every one of them had their ears pricked up.
Chen Yan rapped his knuckles against the edge of the desk, unimpressed.
"Eat it or don't. If you don't want it, give it back. I'm only letting you have it because we're desk mates. I might not even sell it to someone else, no matter how much they offered."
The fruit had come from the first harvest of the spirit tree in the Scroll World.
To keep its true nature under wraps, Chen Yan had given it an utterly plain name: Foundation-Cultivating Fruit.
The name meant "building a foundation and cultivating one's essence."
"I'll eat it! Who said I wouldn't?"
Afraid Chen Yan might change his mind, Hou Ze stuck out his neck, opened his mouth wide, and stuffed the fist-sized red fruit in, skin and all.
"Mmm..."
With a laborious bob of his Adam's apple, he swallowed the fruit.
The next second,
Hou Ze's round face turned the color of liver.
"Water... water..."