Isaiah stopped sliding as the formation beneath his feet deactivated. He spread his mana to sense the environment but mainly focused on his sense of hearing. His ears perked up as he was able to identify the source of the sound of water coming from the northeast.
He didn’t rush towards it, instead slowly approached it, opting to walk rather than use his movement technique. He didn’t know all the beasts that lived in the Deathsand Desert, and there might be few that could use sounds to trick their prey towards it.
The reason he wasn’t as careful when approaching the manticore before was due to his senses picking it up before it had even entered his vision. Also, it didn’t help that water sounds in the middle of a desert where even the winds didn’t blow were suspicious.
As he moved over the tall dune, he saw a paradise-like oasis stretching wide beneath him. It extended wide, encompassing a vast area. Isaiah spread his mana to sense anything a miss with the suspicious water formation before him.
“How interesting, my senses aren’t picking up anything wrong.” He put his hand on his chin as he pondered, “What could have caused this water mass to appear here?” Isaiah knew that the logic of his prior universe couldn’t be applied here 1:1 due to the existence of mana, so he was excited to learn the circumstances that caused the formation of this oasis before him.
He let himself off the dune’s edge as he slowly slid down, simply due to its angle and the sand beneath him, without the use of formations. He took a look around his surroundings.
There was a huge body of clear water where one could see each grain of sand beneath it. The lake was surrounded by various tropical trees that seemed to have adapted to the desert’s climate.
As he inspected his surroundings, suddenly, his eyes shined as he moved towards a tree. “How lucky, I found Sandborn Fruits.” He climbed the tree’s body and attempted to pick a single fruit from it. “Ho? It seems to not budge.” While he wasn’t applying loads of strength, he was still surprised that it didn’t budge.
He applied real force this time before it finally broke free from its stem. Isaiah let go of the tree’s body, letting himself land on the ground. Now that he was grounded once more, he examined the Sandborn Fruit closer.
It had a blue, transparent thick shell, with lines across it from top to bottom, each line segmented the fruits into segments. Shining blue juice could be seen swirling inside it due to the transparent shell. The juice inside definitely looked mouth watering.
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“I have high hopes for this.” A light blade appeared on Isaiah’s index finger, and he cut the top of the shell open. He then sipped the juice inside it.
“Wow, this is above even my expectations.” The taste was just like its smell, overwhelmingly sweet to the degree that the sweetness burned his tongue as he drank it. He then proceeded to down the entire juice contained within the fruit.
The moment he downed the juice, he started to feel a burning sensation in his mana flow. He closed his eyes and sat leaning onto the tree as he activated his vortex mana technique.
The vortex, coupled with the burning sensation in his mana flow, made for an incredibly fruitful inner mana refinement session, “Hoho, this fruit’s juice provides roughly 5-10% increase in inner mana refinement efficiency. I might have to start farming from here on out.” He laughed, but part of him was serious.
He picked up the shell he had dropped and shined his light into it. He could see a group of seeds hugging each other at the bottom of the fruit, each of them glowing with warm blue light. Isaiah encapsulated the seeds with his mana before he carefully removed them from the bottom.
He opened his backpack’s front zipper and got a tube which he put the seeds inside, never stopping providing a slight amount of his mana to them for a moment, “I’m lucky I attended to that Noble Auction.” He had learned a lot of high-class information there such as the requirements to keep various mana items safe.
Mana fruits were one of the things he learned about, helping him harvest Sandborn Fruit’s seeds. Sandborn Fruits had no real price in the market due to, whoever found them using them for themselves at the first opportunity. It was a fruit beneficial to all who found it, so it never appeared on the market.
While 5-10% might seem minuscule, if you stretched that to years, you would gain months' worth of free progress. Isaiah picked up another fruit, cut its top off and got into the lake to relax. He floated above the water with half of his body submerged in it, his mana acted as a straw as it guided the juices of the fruit to his mouth.
“This is heaven sent in this hell-like weather.” As he was relaxing, enjoying his time, a butterfly headed his way. While unusual to see one in the desert Isaiah sensed no danger and let it land on his nose. It didn’t say for long as it wanted to flap its wings to fly away but Isaiah’s Aura hit on enveloped it, cousin it to freeze in its place.
Isaiah picked the motionless butterfly up with his free hand and examined its behaviour under his Aura. “Hmm, such a mysterious force, Aura. I own it but have little clue regarding its origins.” He removed his Aura’s pressure from the butterfly and let it fly again after it regained its senses.
He noticed it now moved like an idiot, flapping around and sometimes even falling to the ground. Only after a while could it fly like normal once more, “I wonder if its as simple as it looks, or is there something more to Auras.”
He shelved that thought for now, deciding to explore it further in the future: “I should investigate the source of this oasis.” He hadn’t forgotten the question that had intrigued him the moment he saw the oasis: How did it originate?