Chapter 62: Fifty-Seven

The counting took longer than Jet expected. Nobody wanted to rush while handling something valuable enough to justify the blood covering the valley, so Adesewa assigned four people to inspect the Palladium Tree while everyone else secured the island.

Each fruit was examined for battle damage before its stem was carefully cut. When the last branch had been searched twice, the final number was confirmed at fifty-seven mature Palladium Fruits. Even Cassian stared at the arranged harvest with an expression that made it clear the number exceeded his expectations.

The fruits were placed individually inside padded preservation cases brought for harvesting an Origin Treasure. Their white surfaces continued glowing through the transparent lining, each fruit releasing enough Mana to make Jet’s skin prickle.

Nobody discussed distribution yet. Adesewa had already made the rule clear: secure everything, leave the valley, then settle shares according to their agreement. With fifty-seven fruits available, however, Jet found himself calculating anyway. Even a fraction represented extraordinary wealth.

Work spread across the battlefield once the fruit was secured. Monster Cores hovered above corpses throughout the valley, and teams moved methodically from body to body, collecting each Core and recording which group contributed to the kill.

Harvesters followed with knives, saws and reinforced containers. Horns were removed, venom glands sealed, useful hides stripped, claws bundled, teeth extracted and valuable organs preserved.

The five peak Lessers received particular attention, while the two Regal Coil Lions became operations by themselves. Their scales, fangs, mane spines, claws, blood and Greater-ranked Cores were worth fortunes.

Jet and Frey helped where needed, although neither touched anything without a harvester recording it. By the time the work was finished, packs had swollen and sealed containers were stacked along the island.

The valley looked worse after harvesting than after the battle. Skinned carcasses exposed red muscle, blood darkened the grass, and severed parts had been organized for transport.

Nothing useful was abandoned simply because the Palladium Fruits were more exciting.

Eventually there was nothing left to collect. The work was finished, but the real problem had only just begun. Now.

One by one, the Walkers returned to the island.

Jet stopped beneath the Palladium Tree with Frey beside him and looked upward. Without its glowing white fruit, the tree appeared strangely bare, yet the Mana surrounding it had not vanished.

Blue light continued flowing through veins beneath the smooth silver bark, and translucent leaves shimmered overhead.

The roots disappeared deep into the white stone of the island, some as thick as Jet’s torso before sinking below the surface. Nobody needed a System notification to understand what they were looking at.

The harvest was valuable.

The tree was worth far more.

Fifty-seven Grade Three Palladium Fruits represented millions upon millions, and depending on who wanted them badly enough, perhaps considerably more.

Each fruit possessed the ability to help an Awakener at the peak of a Star Rank complete their advancement without the dangerous instability, harmful residue or damaged Mana pathways that could accompany less reliable methods.

Guilds would compete viciously for something like that. Wealthy families would empty accounts. Powerful Awakeners stalled at a bottleneck would pay prices that sounded irrational to anyone who had never stood one step from becoming stronger.

But fruit could be eaten only once.

The tree could produce another harvest.

Nobody knew how long that would take, what conditions it required, whether removing it would kill it, or whether Palladium Trees could survive anywhere outside the environment that created them. None of those uncertainties reduced its value.

If anything, they made the living Origin Treasure more dangerous. Whoever controlled the tree controlled the possibility of future Grade Three Palladium Fruits.

Frey finally broke the silence. He rested one hand against the pommel of a curved sword while looking up through the silver branches. "So what exactly are we doing with the tree?"

Nobody answered immediately.

Jet glanced around the island.

Twenty-seven members of Adesewa’s Raid Team stood around them, some injured, some exhausted, all carrying weapons. Until now the operation had possessed simple objectives. Kill the monsters. Secure the fruit. Harvest what they could. Those objectives had aligned everyone’s interests.

The tree did not.

Humans were complicated creatures, but sometimes their thoughts were painfully easy to calculate. Everyone on that island wanted the Palladium Tree. Perhaps not literally for themselves; most understood that carrying a twenty-meter tree through the Thousand Boughs was absurd.

But they wanted ownership, access, a percentage, future fruit, money, Guild leverage, or whatever else the tree could become. Everyone also knew that everyone else wanted those same things.

Marcus rubbed his beard before saying, "Leaving it here isn’t an option. We walk away and someone eventually finds it. Maybe tomorrow, maybe six months from now. Either way, we lose it."

A woman near the rear shook her head. "And moving it could kill it. We don’t know what the roots are feeding on beneath this island. For all we know, the pool is part of why it formed."

"Then we secure the valley," another Walker suggested. "Establish a permanent camp and rotate guards until we understand it."

Cassian looked around the devastated basin. "With what manpower? We just announced this location to half the forest. Even if no Walkers heard today’s fight, monsters did. Holding an exposed valley indefinitely would require more people, supplies and defenses. The more people involved, the less secret it becomes."

Someone proposed selling the location to a major Guild and negotiating a percentage of future harvests.

That suggestion lasted perhaps ten seconds before three people pointed out the obvious problem: once a powerful Guild controlled the valley, enforcing any private agreement would become considerably harder.

Another suggested informing Zenith Citadel’s governing authorities, only for Marcus to ask how many officials could learn about a Grade Three Origin Treasure before the information reached every major organization in the Citadel.

Ideas continued coming.

None survived scrutiny.

Jet remained mostly silent while listening. The problem wasn’t merely transportation or ownership. It was trust. Every solution required someone to possess information that everyone else had to trust them not to misuse.

Gradually, something changed in the atmosphere around the tree.

People began looking at Adesewa.

Not openly at first. A glance while someone else spoke. Eyes shifting toward her whenever an argument stalled. Then another. Jet noticed because he was doing the same thing.

Adesewa had barely spoken since asking for suggestions. She stood near one exposed root with her bronze spear beside her, listening calmly while everyone debated. Golden blood from the Regal Coil Lions still stained parts of her damaged armor.

She was also the strongest person present.

That fact had mattered during the battle.

Now it mattered differently.

Jet felt the tension beneath the group’s apparent relaxation. Hands weren’t reaching for weapons. Nobody was spreading into fighting positions. These people had fought together, bled together and, in many cases, apparently known one another for years. Cassian trusted Marcus. Marcus trusted Safiya. The veterans trusted Adesewa enough to follow her against two Greater-ranked monsters.

But trust had limits.

A Grade Three Origin Treasure was the sort of thing capable of discovering those limits very quickly.

If Adesewa decided the Palladium Tree belonged to her, who exactly would stop her?

Jet considered the question seriously and disliked the answer. She had killed two Greater-ranked monsters alone. Against ordinary Lessers, one swing of her spear had reduced creatures to mangled flesh.

Even if every Walker on the island attacked simultaneously, numbers alone did not guarantee anything against a 3-Star First Generation Awakener with decades of experience.

Frey had grown quieter too. His posture remained loose, but Jet knew him well enough to notice the subtle change. Neither of them believed Adesewa intended to slaughter her own people. Belief, however, wasn’t certainty.

Adesewa’s eyes moved slowly around the circle.

Perhaps she understood exactly what everyone was thinking.

Perhaps she had been waiting for them to understand it themselves.

She coughed softly into one fist, and the scattered conversations faded almost immediately. Marcus stopped speaking. Cassian turned toward her. Safiya lowered the waterskin she had been holding. Within seconds, every person beneath the Palladium Tree was watching the Raid Captain.

Adesewa rested one hand on her spear and looked up at the silver branches before returning her attention to the group. Her expression remained composed, but when she spoke, there was enough weight in her voice that nobody interrupted.

"We can keep arguing about who should control the tree, where we should move it, or which organization we trust not to take it from us. None of those solves the real problem. Before we decide anything about the Palladium Tree, we need to make sure this valley cannot leave the people standing here."

Cassian’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Marcus went still.

Jet noticed several older Walkers exchange looks, as though they already understood where Adesewa was going.

Frey leaned forward.

Adesewa surveyed them once more before saying, "Why don’t we form a Red Seal?"