Improvement

“N-Nadja, what have you been doing lately…?”

“Hmm? …Well, let’s see…”

I asked, half exasperated and half fearful, and Nadja answered cheerfully.

“First, I continued the training we’d been doing from before—fighting desert monsters without my help. Before, even when Dan and Meg teamed up, it was difficult, but with Woody’s Element Fruits, we finally managed to do it.”

Considering the possibility that Nadja might not always be around, they had indeed continued training so the group could function without her.

Apparently, once I provided the Element Fruits, that plan bore fruit.

“There was that problem where the effect wore off after a while, right? How did you get past that?”

“Ah, after trying various things, we found that rubbing the bark strongly made the magical effect reappear. So now we always give the soldiers both the fruit and its bark as a set.”

“S-such a method… I did think you were trying out a lot of things, but still…”

“Yes, we experimented with sap, snapping branches—anything we could try without damaging the tree too much.”

“I see…”

When she had asked to enter the orchard, I’d wondered what she wanted to do.

But she had been testing to see if other parts besides the fruit could be used.

Until now, it was always the fruit that had helped us, so maybe I’d focused on them too much.

And while I never realized it, Nadja had discovered new possibilities.

“So that’s what the soldiers were doing earlier…”

“Yes, we drain the magic first so they can be carried, then distribute the Element Fruits. The higher-ranked ones also perform safety checks in advance.”

Wow… they were really organized.

It was just like the army Father used to describe.

Actually, come to think of it, they were technically our army too.

A group of soldiers was an army—even if the purpose was self-defense rather than war.

“Now that you mention it, I do have one question… Isn’t it dangerous if the bark itself retains magic power?”

Aira’s doubt was the same one I had.

Since rubbing the bark and fruit together brought the magical effect back, wasn’t the bark dangerous?

But apparently, there was no risk.

It seemed the bark of Element Fruits had the property of storing magic inside.

Like serving as a kind of magic tank.

“If that’s the case, then perhaps it really isn’t impossible to master the Element Fruits…”

Since you didn’t have to pour in magic—just rub it right before use—the usability rose sharply.

And since the soldiers had no trouble handling them, there was no doubt the strength of our village had improved greatly thanks to the Element Fruits.

To have trained the soldiers to fight this well with Element Fruits…

I truly owed Nadja a great debt.