Chapter 51: Rejuvenate

Eren looked down at his pockets. On the opposite side of his acupuncture needles, depleted sunspores laid bent and stacked.

Celeste gave him weird looks after seeing him pick up the broken sunspores on the ground, but otherwise she stayed quiet. Another one of his weird quirks, she must have probably thought.

He had a hundred sunspores, almost all of which were already spent up.

They were broken, but not useless. A car does not lose its value because it was out of fuel. But it seemed in this world, no one knew how to operate the gas stations.

Eren did, thanks to the eclectic knowledge of the Immortal Library of Ræzoň.

He knew the technique to imbue these broken sunspores with Ræzoň to replenish its light.

These hundred ’broken’ sunspores could become good as new. And he’d use them to purchase the Skyward Herbs he needed for the Physique Accelerant Paste.

From his estimation, each of those bowls contained about six leaves of the Skyward Herbs in total. So if he were to base the price of the herb on the price of the bowl, which was five sunspores, then he’d need to purchase the equivalent of a hundred soups.

He needed that paste desperately. The requirements to open the third and fourth Primary Meridian was months of arduous and rigorous training. The paste would skip that entirely.

I have to get a lot more sunspores though...

He looked down and took one of the limp sunspores in his pockets.

It had completely lost its color. Completely pale, with the stem broken in an angle.

Discreetly, he covered the sunspore with his hand, putting it almost directly in line with his meridian.

Then, he let Ræzoň flow from his Dantian, straight towards his palms like roots nourishing a tree with water.

But instead of it Reinforcing his fists for a Primal Strike, it now wrapped around the stem of the sunspore, imbuing it with red particulate matter.

The vertical striations in its stem soaked up Ræzoň. Absorbing it. And soon, color returned to its bulbous cap. Now, it had returned to a vibrant red.

And the stem, which was broken, had now straightened up completely.

He had rejuvenated this sunspore!

The best part of it all was the fact that he didn’t expend much of the Ræzoň in his Dantian. He barely used up a single drop of it to rejuvenate this sunspore.

Rejuvenating about 10 sunspores was roughly equivalent to a single Primal Strike. So, if he were to rejuvenate the entirety of the hundred broken sunspores in his pockets, he would still have enough left over for him to use over the course of the First Test.

As he ate his Skyward soup, he rejuvenated sunspore after sunspore. The flickering flames of the campfire made for a good mask for the natural light emitting out of the newly rejuvenated sunspore in his hands.

He took his time. The first sunspores took him about ten seconds to rejuvenate. But as he got more familiar with the technique, his hands moved faster. His Ræzoň moved with more efficiency and haste.

Fifteen minutes later, a hundred revitalized sunspores lined his pockets. Eren had become a rich man.

"Have you guys tried to venture towards those tunnels?" Celeste put down her soup on the ground.

Sierra scratched her head, ruffling her wolf-style haircut. "We... we haven’t. It’s not like we won’t, but... we’d just feel more confident if we were more prepared. And we’d hope that we’ll discover an easier Burrow, hahaha."

"Don’t worry! Should we practice our Reinforcement again?" Celeste suggested.

"Good idea!"

While they were busy practicing, Eren took this opportunity to survey the area in search for a Skyward Herb supplier.

He didn’t have to look for long. An entire line of people walked out of the tunnel, carrying a bundle of Skyward Herbs on their back. He only needed to follow where they’d end up.

"Who’s that guy?" Eren asked Abe.

"That’s Pang Cai," the burly man said with incredulity. "You live under a rock or something?"

Eren heard that name before. Cai. a famous surname that popped up here and there during one of the commercials on TV.

They were one of the four Prominent Families here in Los Medes, alongside the Lindbergs.

And from what he knew, the Cai family owned a lot of businesses in the country. Their presence was felt all around the Awakener market, primarily dabbling on resources. From something as simple as soap to pills to screws. You name it, they probably had their hand in it.

At least, that’s what he heard. The United Governments keep a tight lock on information like that, after all.

Pang Cai was a plump young man. Chubby, one could even call him.

He had a black, slicked back hair curving upwards in a straight line at his neck. Well, at least where his neck should be. The skintight body suit that all examinees wore did no service for Pang Cai’s figure.

He reminded Eren of one of those sumo wrestlers back in the days. Were they still present here today?

And like sumo wrestlers, Eren could tell that Pang Cai was someone who didn’t have any lack of strength. Underneath those fatty flabs in his belly, he could sense an even stronger set of muscles that allowed him to move swiftly despite the permanent weights that he carried around daily.

With his weight, Pang Cai should struggle to even walk. But as he received the bundles of Skyward Herbs, Pang Cai jumped in delight like a bouncing ball.

"What’s he doing with all those Skyward Herbs?"

"Earning tons of sunspores, that’s what. He’s who the chefs source their Skyward Herbs from. Practically has a monopoly on it, that rotund bastard. Sorry, I don’t like nepo babies."

Eren laughed. "We’re of a similar mindset, then. How did he get a monopoly on it? Did he stumble upon an entire forest of skyherbs?" Eren asked.

Abe scoffed. "Well, his goons did."