Sweet Candied Fruit

"Adam brother!" Lena's voice called from outside the door.

Adam put down the cat he was holding. The paralysis curse had already been lifted, and the small wound had been stitched up, but since he had tampered with its vitality, the cat couldn't engage in vigorous activity for a while.

As soon as he opened the door, Lena walked in with a small jar in her arms. "Adam brother, how about we go pick some fruit to make candied fruit?"

"You already finished the candied fruit I brought home last time?" Adam squatted down and pinched Lena's cheek. "And how did you find this jar?"

The head priest had given him quite a bit of candied fruit. After bringing it home, he stored it in a jar and gave Lena a little each day, but not too much at once. He had hidden the jar well.

He didn't expect the little girl to find his hidden stash and eat it all at once.

"Hehehe." Lena hugged the jar, giggled twice, and tried to use her cuteness to get away with it. Then she tugged at Adam's sleeve and said, "Take me to make candied fruit, Adam brother. I promise I won't steal it again."

"Where did you hear about this? And didn't the head priest give you some nuts a few days ago?" Adam shook his head and picked up the empty jar. Making candied fruit was fine, but it wasn't the right season now. The fruit trees in Roa were a bit far from the southern district, so candied fruit was usually something sold in shops.

Especially the ones given by the head priest, which were premium quality. It would be difficult to get that kind of candied fruit.

"I finished those too." Lena seemed to want to bury her head in the jar Adam was holding, speaking in a tiny voice.

"You!" Adam rubbed the little girl's head vigorously. "If you want something to eat, tell me. But we can't make candied fruit right now." He then explained how to make candied fruit and why they couldn't do it now.

"I'll go buy some for you, but you must promise not to steal food again and not to eat too much at once. Otherwise, I won't buy it for you anymore." Adam looked at the sky outside. There was still some time, and the shop wasn't too far away, so it should be fine.

One of the benefits of collaborating with Doug was solving economic issues.

Adam left the house, declining Crow's offer to take him there.

Since getting on track, Adam had more things to do and learn, leaving him with less free time, which wasn't necessarily a good thing.

These days, Adam hadn't gone to bed before midnight, either studying, training, or practicing meditation.

However, life has its rhythms. While meditation and life diagrams are human efforts to modify that, it's better to follow the natural order before achieving full success.

Adam knew that some things couldn't be forced, but he had too many basics to catch up on, so he had to push himself.

Today, with Anthony absent and having made initial progress on his idea, he decided to spend some time on daily life activities.

Walking through familiar streets and chatting with neighbors he hadn't seen in a while, Adam felt his constantly tense nerves relax a bit.

He soon arrived at the shop. Upon entering, he was immediately drawn to someone.

A young man with brown curly hair was staring at the candied fruit in the display case, seemingly lost in thought.

Noticing Adam's arrival, the young man turned and looked at him, a hint of surprise in his eyes, which made Adam instinctively wary.

But the young man simply smiled, turned back to the shopkeeper, and said, "That's the one. Can you wrap it up for me?"

Taking the candied fruit, the young man pinched a piece to eat, his face showing uncontrollable happiness as if he were about to cry from joy.

Brown curls didn't pay further attention to Adam and left with a smile, carrying the candied fruit.

Adam picked up some candied fruit for Lena, but his mood was entirely different on the way back.

"Who was that person? He seemed suspicious." Adam's keen senses had picked up something. The man seemed very surprised to see him.

"With my current state, leaning towards the soul, he couldn't have noticed any traces of knight training in me. He didn't use mental power to probe, so he shouldn't have detected anything unusual about my mental power."

"So, there are three possibilities."

"First, he was simply surprised by my appearance and charm."

"Second, he had seen my information elsewhere or knew me through other means and didn't expect to see me here."

"Third, it's a side effect of the God's Tear ritual."

None of these possibilities seemed favorable to Adam.

Upon returning to the Borku residence, Adam gave Lena a few pieces of candied fruit and then went back to his room to check on the cat.

"Wait..." Adam quickly went downstairs to find Crow, asking him to visit Doug and inquire about some information regarding the church.

"Hopefully, I'm just overthinking." After making these arrangements, Adam returned upstairs and resumed his knight and wizard training.

When Jin arrived, he seemed to notice something about Adam's state and slowed down his teaching, only correcting some of Adam's training issues.

"Mansla recently seems to have a big deal. He called me today to discuss security arrangements." Jin said after Adam finished his training, "If you want to pressure him, you could start with that."

"Just make sure it doesn't affect me. My funds these years rely on this job." Jin looked out the window, lost in thought.

"Can't you do less of that?" Adam looked disdainful. Nearly every day, Jin had a different perfume scent, sometimes cheap, sometimes expensive, depending on when he got paid.

"You're too young to understand." Jin chuckled, looking at Adam with a teasing, knowing gaze.

"If you really want to try, you can go to that banshee. I can assure you, if you ask, she won't refuse."

Adam shook his head, not bothering to argue, and silently made plans.

Given the current situation in Roa, the organization of otherworldly beings needed to be disbanded quickly, forming an elite group, while the rest should be abandoned.

"Otherwise, it could backfire."

Adam recalled information about each member of the organization, their behavior, personal value, and trustworthiness, eventually forming a rating system.

This rating determined who would be abandoned and who would be chosen.

Being abandoned wasn't necessarily a bad thing, and being chosen wasn't necessarily good. After planning everything, Adam noticed that Jin had left at some point, probably to continue his nightly wanderings.

Shaking his head, Adam went to bed.

The next morning, Adam got up early and went downstairs to meet Crow, receiving the information he wanted.

"The sons of man offered the autumn harvest to the god, who on the first day tasted and praised its sweetness."

"The sons of man continued to offer fruit, and on the second day, the god marveled at its fragrance."

"On the third day, the sons of man did not offer fruit, and the god inquired."

"The sons of man told the god that the fruit could not be stored long, for it would rot and become ugly and foul."

"The god chastised the sons of man and instructed them to turn sweetness from the foulness."

"The sons of man followed the god's teachings and discovered wine, jam, and candied fruit." - "Divine Words: Chronicles of Man's Son"

Perhaps because of this, the church's clerics had a particular fondness for food made from fruit, like jam and candied fruit.

In the earlier days of the seminary, most children sent there, including many orphans, were admitted to the annex.

Due to resource issues, those children could only have candied fruit as a treat.

And because of the poor management systems at the time, those children had hard lives, making the sweet candied fruit their only hope.

In a monk's memoir, he even described faith and candied fruit as his last two pillars of survival.

The nobility had a significant influence on the seminary's reforms, but if the seminary had been running well before, even if all the nobility had rallied, they might not have been able to push the reforms through.

"Could that person be a cleric?" Adam frowned, starting to have a suspicion. He turned to Crow and said, "Let's go to the South District church today."