Special tree that bears special fruits that restore mana.
Production Lv 10 - 17.5 hours
Durability: 90/100
As expected, those trees had statues and they gained levels by growing, but since they were five meters tall, they already had reached the limit of their growth. Still, Billy could improve that. Speaking of improvement, the guys that were transporting the tress were carrying some bags in their wagon and they were always trying to hide it from Billy, probably because the trees didn't have any fruit right now. Instead of that, Billy was thinking about how the trees could bear fruits while they weren't on the soil. Speaking of that, Billy decided to hide the trees in the same groove as his hideout was. However, he had no sneak around at night to do so. Again, the guards looked at him suspiciously, but since he had Edward's permission, they didn't ask anything.
"I feel a bit bad about being this secretive with my family, but this is for the best," Billy thought.
After doing some tests, Billy learned that the production effect was something all trees could have, but naturally, only trees could have it. Still, those special trees worked in a different manner. They used all their energy to bear a single fruit at a time and it was kind of weird to see them growing in fifteen hours.
Nevertheless, Billy quickly made them reach level twenty-two and their production speed increased by ten percent. It seemed a bit counterproductive to use his mana when he wanted them to recover his mana, but that was an investment.
"As of now, my skills to recover mana are a lot better than the trees, but… I will be satisfied once they reach a level where they recover my mana at the same rate as my rings," Billy nodded to himself.
Thus, his daily routine of going to his hideout started. Billy did a morning marathon at his too speed across the area to make sure that anyone pursuing him would lose sight of him eventually. While that was exhaustive, it also bore some fruit…
You learned the skill Dash.
Increases your movement speed by one percent per level.
It was weird that only now Billy learned that skill when he dashed toward enemies many times. The bonus was quite small, but it was fine from Billy's perspective since it was a passive skill. In any case, while Billy was improving his trees, he also began to buy some crap weapons here and there to dismantle and then reforge them. It was much of a pain to refine ores and using that method, Billy saved some time. Even though he saved some time, he still had to use plenty of energy to make forged weapons melt… the temperature necessary to do that was insane.
"That is normal, I suppose…" Billy said and then frowned when he realized that he was missing something. "Come to think of it… I need molds to use on the new shape of the weapons."
Billy tried to give them shape without buying the molds since he didn't want to make anyone realize what he was up to and the result had been quite… unsightly. So, he had another crazy idea, couldn't he just forge weapons by using magic? Irons and other ores should be considered part of the ground, after all. Still, how the heck could he make dirt turn into metal? Billy already made Earth Bullets as hard as possible, but they still were made of earth. It has been a while, so Billy didn't remember much about chemistry and what differences some materials had. He knew that their atoms' composition was important, but his magic couldn't control such small things.
After a while, Billy wondered if it would work by combining the other elements, but that didn't make any sense. Now that he thought about it, he could enhance weapons with mana, but he couldn't change their shape. So, perhaps it was impossible… that being said, when Billy tried to infuse his mana in the melted metal, he got a response. The heat increased… he tried again, this time, considering that the metal was also part of the earth and once again he got a response. He managed to move the liquid, but he would need a lot more mana.
"I guess I will have to buy the tools the avoid wasting too much mana… at least until I can produce metals with my mana," Billy rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
It took him several weeks for Billy to buy all the tools necessary and he also had to use all his remaining money for that. It was quite sad to be dead broke again. Still, he could see the edish fruits for one silver coin each, so it was fine. But he only used those to recover his own mana and level up trees up to thirty… and now they could near fruits after twelve hours.
"Hehe, at this rate, I will have another grove filled with those trees…" Billy smirked.
Billy realized that he will have to eat a lot of those fruits… that seemed a bit troublesome to reach that level. Regardless, eventually, Billy managed to produce the items that he wanted, but as expected, even though he only bought crap, he still made even worse items. Only after the skill reached level ten, he made some progress...