Light And Darkness

“First things first, let’s check the trees again after all this time…”

I was curious about the new skill, but before that, I needed to confirm the trees I had just unlocked.

After all, the trees I could plant would directly become trade goods for the village.

Hmm, as I let my eyes slide from top to bottom, an unfamiliar string of text caught my attention midway through.

Holy Tree and Dark Tree, huh…

“Here goes.”

For now, I used Tree Planting and tried planting them.

The Holy Tree was a pure white tree.

Its bark was white, and it looked a bit like a slightly thick birch.

It was faintly glowing, but not dazzling like a Light Tree.

It was more like the dim, gentle white glow of a magical lamp spilling out.

In contrast, the Dark Tree was pitch-black.

Its bark was so black it looked like it might be made of dark matter.

What was interesting was that it actually generated darkness.

The space around the Dark Tree became murky and slightly dim.

Since this was a reaction I’d never seen before, it immediately piqued my interest.

I decided to plant a few more and investigate further.

It seemed this tree had the power to absorb surrounding light.

That was probably why the space around it grew darker.

When I planted several trees next to each other, the light-absorbing effect became stronger.

Apparently, the power of this tree could stack.

As proof, when I packed several trees tightly together in one spot, the space turned pitch black—so dark I couldn’t even see the trees themselves.

When I tried sticking my hand in, it vanished from sight entirely, like it had been cut out of the world.

It was straight-up horror.

Honestly, I felt a bit relieved when I pulled it back out and my hand was still there.

(Oh—then maybe…)

Since they were unlocked at the same time, I had a hunch and tried the same experiment with the Holy Tree… and it was a perfect match.

Just as expected, the Holy Tree’s effect could stack as well.

When I gathered several together, the light became so intense I couldn’t even keep my eyes open.

It was harsher than a Light Tree.

It might even have been brighter than the flashbang I’d seen before.

These two new trees were, simply put, trees that made things bright and trees that made things dark.

They didn’t have direct combat power or fruit value, but they looked extremely useful.

Like the Element Trees, I could probably find all sorts of uses for them by crossbreeding and turning them into Element Fruit.

For example, I could scatter light to blind enemies, or create darkness to conceal our presence.

This was… going to make expanding the Sandstorm group’s equipment a lot easier.

Getting any stronger than this honestly felt like it might be overkill, but… there was no harm in being prepared for emergencies.

“Alright, then next up is checking the Tree Guardian Beast skill.”