Hex Trees

Shawn POV

After that Havoc, it seems that the station has given Perseus some respect, Minerva's name truly is famous in the sorcerer's world, and Askren, the president of Tiger Academy's student council is just as famous, they're pretty much the best prospect for any guild to hire as they got the most potential to be the next level 9s.

Both of them are guaranteed to be in the level 7 range in the future at least, which is not something anyone can just accomplish in their lifetime.

For the next 2 weeks or so, we've helped catch some petty criminals here and there while getting some magic tips from the 3 wizards, especially the captain who has given us both handwritten notes on how he learned to master the basic and regular talisman, there's even his notes on how to make a wand.

Currently, he's taking us to see a small farm of Hex trees, the tree responsible for making a lot of equipment in the sorcerer world, wands, talismans...I think there's a technique for dipping your equipment in the juices of its fruits so that you can just use your weapons to cast spells instead of taking out a talisman for each spell, wasting valuable time as a split second can kill you.

But currently, it's a bit...well, they need to apparently handle the juice with a certain undisclosed technique cuz it might damage their weapons, but I think we haven't reached that far in our textbook yet, after a 20-minute drive, we arrived at our desired location.

The tree's bark looks normal, it's brown in color, but the leaves are white, and its fruits are spherical in shape and dark blue in color, kinda resembles a children's drawing where people just draw a circle in the tree's leaves and call it an apple or fruit.

We got out of the car and we head to the farm, it's not that protected since apparently, the trees are just that durable, you need sorcerers of a certain level to harvest it, and if harvested incorrectly, the tree might lower in value.

"I know that the fruits look quite irresistible, but please don't eat any of them." the captain warned "Not because I mind you eating in a time of learning, but because it's hard to clean up bits and pieces of your body once you explode."

"I thought they were just poisonous."

"Oh, that depends on the purity of the fruit, you see." the captain answered "These ones are low-grade ones, the lower the grade, the more deadly they are, these ones will kill you, and even I can't cure explosion into a thousand bits."

We then got to the farm and studied the trees close up, low grades or not, they basically look the same, and lower grades ones are easier to study, we were even given a small piece of its bark and leaves to study while we sat close to the tree.

"It's really harder than we thought." Perseus commented and tried to crush the bark we were given under his feet

"Well even if that bark was chipped off, it's still in somewhat pure form, it hasn't been made into paper yet, and even then talismans are hard to tear after it's been so processed."

He then used the leaves as some sort of talisman substitute and tried to cast a spell, it worked, but it was very brief, he then gathered a bunch of them and ball them together before injecting his mana into that ball to the point where it's almost exploding.

He then directs me to use magic to hit the ball into the air, I obliged and once the ball reach a certain altitude, it exploded into a small blue firework show. Perseus then sat down and experimented with the sample bark using his mana and everything as I watched.

I gave him some of mine and just watched him work, he's more of an expert than me when it comes to magic, his 'walks' are something that trained him early, I barely tolerated it at first, but at some point, I just learned that I can't stop him.

His 'walks' is him basically going out doing vigilante work, I don't necessarily agree with it as vigilantism undermines the justice system and trust in the rule of law and the government's ability to protect its citizens. It can also lead to a culture of vigilantism, where individuals take matters into their own hands, further destabilizing society, something that humanity doesn't need if we want to stand against the angels.

And by just taking crime down, it'll temporarily suppress them at best and can probably interfere with police work as he may accidentally interfere with the collection of evidence or witness statements, making it difficult for law enforcement to piece together what happened and who is responsible.

Heck, it probably even can lead to contamination or destruction of evidence, making it more difficult for law enforcement officials to build a strong case and secure a conviction.

But, he promised me that he's mostly on a stakeout for angels, we don't have any sorcerer nearby, and he doesn't necessarily trust the danger level assigned to our town after the incident that killed our brother.

I can understand that sentiment, last time, our town was designated safe, and yet...an angel much stronger than our brother appeared, an angel so strong that our brother didn't even stand a chance, help took too long to arrive, and he died by the hands of that angel.

Perseus wants to help make sure that help will come if no other will, he'll stay up and sacrifice his sleep to keep an eye on angels, I don't know what he's accomplished so far or what he has done while he's out, but at least it helped him learned magic quicker than everyone else.

The captain then approached us and tell us of a stray angel who was on its way nearby, about a 40-minute drive a way, and we were to help fight it, so we rushed back in the car to head for the angel.