Fruit Tree and Steel Tree

Blade Tusk did not immediately tell the other Trolls about his thoughts on plunder and war. Before the tribe had truly developed to a certain extent, it would only frighten them.

Thus, for quite a long time afterward, the tribe remained as peaceful as before.

At least from the outside, nothing seemed to have changed. Hunting and gathering continued as usual, and they occasionally held traditional "friendly matches" with neighboring tribes, snatching back some useless "metal-like materials."

Yet that was only the surface. Everything was being quietly transformed.

Within the tribe, the Witch Doctors successively grew strange trees.

Most of them were the previously developed Refrigerator Trees.

A small portion, meanwhile, were Fruit Trees cultivated using derivative techniques from the former.

During their earlier development of Refrigerator Trees, the Witch Doctors had unearthed many plant-related runes. Some of those runes had become tasteless scraps—or even obstacles—in the development of Refrigerator Trees, but that did not prevent them from shining in other directions.

For instance, the portion of the runes corresponding to "fruit."

Plants came with seeds in all manner of forms, and the fruits the Trolls gathered every day were one such form.

The Witch Doctors used magic to spur plants into growth. Once a plant had reached a certain stage, they halted most of its growth functions and redirected the nutrients that would have made it thicker and taller toward cultivating fruit.

That alone was not enough. Under cultivation, the "flesh" of the fruit became large and full.

Meanwhile, the "seed" portion was stripped of much of the self-preservation ability it had evolved in order to adapt to "savage growth."

For example, seeds once needed animals to carry them far away in search of suitable soil, and so had developed structures such as "digestion resistance" and "fur hooks."

But none of that was needed anymore. Once the fruit ripened, it would be harvested at once, and any overly complex seed structure became unnecessary baggage.

Because for the tribe, the matter worth considering was how to cultivate plentiful, bountiful fruit with limited nutrients.

Based on this research, the Fruit Tree was developed.

It seemed that most progress never stood alone.

With the appearance of Fruit Trees, their demand for space became unavoidable. Yet the tribe was already crowded enough; it could not simply conjure up empty land at once.

Naturally, the Trolls turned their eyes toward the forest. They wanted to cut down all the surrounding trees and turn them into charcoal, or slice them all into materials for storage.

But even the existing clearing had only gradually appeared after who knew how many generations of Trolls had successively transformed it. How could they possibly develop the surrounding area in a short time?

No matter how strong the Trolls were, they could not bare their chests and pull out those massive trees that had grown for untold ages.

Thus, the advancement of tools became an urgent need.

The Troll tribe naturally had no saws, but now they had magic. Altering the properties of plants had become possible—at least within a certain range.

Blade Tusk proposed the concepts of saws and axes, and the Witch Doctors created them through "plant magic."

With the new tools in hand, the idle warriors—whose hunting burden had been eased by the Refrigerator Trees—began felling trees with great enthusiasm.

But before long, the warriors began to sense that something was off.

"Damn it, why are logging tools better than weapons? How can that be allowed?"

Once that thought arose, they soon turned their attention toward upgrading their weapons and began making demands one after another.

Previously, their inability to hunt large quantities of food at once was due both to hunting efficiency and to the natural limits of food storage.

But now, with the emergence of Refrigerator Trees, the tribe had made a breakthrough in stockpiling food.

What limited hunting, then, was naturally nothing but pure efficiency.

And efficiency was something that could partly be solved through technology.

Therefore, the warriors' demand for weapon innovation was entirely reasonable and necessary at this moment, and the Witch Doctors naturally had no way to refuse.

So provide them. Throwing spears, greatswords, greatshields, and long spears made from hard wood—whether existing weapon types or newly introduced ones—were produced by the Witch Doctors and distributed.

The warriors received new weapons, and their efficiency truly increased. They brought back quite a bit more prey each time.

But the Witch Doctors soon discovered that weapons differed from tools such as saws and axes. They wore out far too quickly and severely. After only a few battles, scarcely any of the throwing spears hurled out or the swords hacked into beasts remained intact.

There was no helping it. If they broke, repair them; if they were gone, issue new ones. Naturally, this satisfied the warriors, and their enthusiasm only grew higher.

But it was not the same for the Witch Doctors. Once or twice was manageable, yet over time, as their stamina was drained again and again and their time gradually consumed, they slowly realized that the current solution was not viable.

What then? Blade Tusk's way of solving problems had already sunk deep into everyone's hearts: keep researching.

First, they selected a type of tree that was naturally outstanding in both hardness and toughness. Taking its seeds, they began cultivating them from scratch according to different plans.

As they did so, they accelerated its growth with magic while continuously using runes to enhance its hardness and toughness, seeking a balance between the two as much as possible.

In this way, they finally obtained the Steel Tree, as well as the material most suitable for becoming weapons at this stage.

But that was not enough. No matter how exceptional the Steel Tree was, due to the natural properties of trees and the tribe's processing capabilities, the portions suitable for weapons were limited to the heartwood.

As for the other parts, whether because of structural flaws or issues of shape, they could only become scraps.

Thus, obtaining material meant chopping down trees and taking their cores, resulting in abysmal utilization.

This meant the Witch Doctors still had to spend time spurring growth and inducing transformation.

Not only did that take up a great deal of time, it also created several additional processing steps akin to logging out of thin air.

For the tribe, this was worse than simply using weapons directly made by the Witch Doctors.

Faced with this situation, a quick-witted Witch Doctor apprentice, seemingly inspired by how the functional zones of Refrigerator Trees were highly separated, proposed applying the same design philosophy to Steel Trees.

At his suggestion, the other Witch Doctors were suddenly enlightened and made an even more radical change—integrating the weapon-forming stage into Steel Tree as well.

In other words, "Steel Tree" would no longer be responsible solely for providing materials. Troublesome tasks such as polishing and assembly would also be taken over, truly becoming "a tree that could grow weapons."

Thus, under the design philosophy of "avoid making trouble for ourselves whenever possible," the new "Steel Tree 2.0" project was established, and after a period of research, it succeeded.

In Steel Tree 2.0, the strength and toughness of most areas were adjusted back to the range of ordinary plants. Only the trunk was transformed into an "openable growth chamber."

The overwhelming majority of nutrients gathered by the tree would be used to "manufacture" weapons within the "growth chamber."

And once the weapons had "matured," they could be taken out by "opening the door," without harming the tree itself.

This concentrated nutrients in usable, renewable parts, making it no longer a one-shot thing and solving the problem of utilization efficiency.

Furthermore, though it was quite slow, Steel Tree 2.0 retained a certain capacity for growth, allowing it to continue growing taller and thicker over time.

The "growth chamber" would likewise increase its own production capacity as the other functional areas grew, even if that growth cycle would be exceedingly long.

In truth, by this point, the research could already be considered a success for their current needs.

But some Witch Doctors were not satisfied. They set their sights on a new direction—how to make the altered traits manifest in the next generation of plants.