That was an acceptable loss in his eyes.
Ves proceeded to buy the fruit and pop it into his mouth without any further delay.
"Alright, here it comes!"
He sat down and completely focused on absorbing and integrating the influx of alien knowledge!
It was not as much knowledge as he thought. The so-called ritual altars weren't that complicated from a technical perspective.
The orvens engaged in sacrificing their own kind from the beginning of their history.
Back when they were ordinary savages that roamed their primitive planet, the chieftains and the other leaders of the various tribes came up with a brilliant new method of punishment.
Instead of wasting a life by executing an orven, why not try to put him on a funny-looking stone altar and try to siphon away his strength?
This was how the practice of ritual sacrifice came about. Somehow, the chieftains and their lackeys managed to discover a way to make it work, and proceeded to refine the altars from that point onwards.
The context and form of ritual sacrifices changed many times throughout the history of the orven race.
It started out as a more productive form of execution, but slowly included voluntary sacrifices.
There were plenty of brainwashed lower caste orvens who were completely willing to dedicate their lives to the higher castes they regarded as gods!
When the orvens reached the stars and spread throughout the Red Ocean, they also began to sacrifice other intelligent alien races on their altars.
The results were largely mixed. The feedback provided from involuntary sacrifices tended to be less… lower in quality. The feedback provided by alien beings was even more mixed.
In any case, the orven race was one of the few indigenous races of the Red Ocean that had mastered an effective form of empowerment through sacrifice.
It took advantage of certain traits that were unique to orvens to enable a relatively easy method of spiritual cannibalization!
Not only that, but the orvens also managed to transform it from a taboo to a widely accepted practice within their society!
"If something like this happens in human space, the Big Two will come down so hard that nothing will be left of the perpetrators!"
Ves didn't feel tempted to create an Orven Ritual Sacrifice Altar for himself at all. Its mechanisms fundamentally clashed with his own principles.
His purpose had always been to foster mutual benefits. While the mechs he made could certainly be used to harm fellow humans, this was the natural course of internal competition.
An altar made by the orvens was much more nefarious. It not only harmed the population, but also corrupted the would-be god that acquired power without working for it. Ves found it surprising that orven society could still remain stable when led by degenerates who were drunk on power!
"Maybe I am being too judgemental of them. This fruit hasn't told me much outside of how to design and build one of these altars."
He turned his attention towards the form and function of these altars.
The more advanced and sophisticated ones possessed many different parts and mechanisms, but none of them were important. They mostly attempted to automate the sacrifice process, limit any complications and clean up the mess once the ritual was complete.
"What is truly important is the spiritual design."
Ves came in touch with true alien spiritual engineering this time!
It was the most valuable gain of this enlightenment fruit. Not only did he obtain a substantial amount of knowledge in spiritual engineering, but also included a lot of helpful theories that explained spirituality from a systematic perspective!
The orvens had their own measurements and classifications of spiritual energy. They developed their own understanding of spiritualities, though they also mixed in plenty of superstition as well.
The knowledge was not complete, though. The fruit only granted theories that directly related to the altars and nothing more.
"It's enough. I can't expect much from a fruit that costs just 25 Ascension Points."
Ves gained the most from the enlightenment fruit when he combined everything he learned with the knowledge that he already possessed.
As Ves tried to reconcile everything he learned with his existing foundation in spiritual engineering, he found out that there was a considerable overlap.
He already figured out a lot of truths by himself. He just gained a different perspective on the same topics.
Though he still managed to learn a number of new theories and insights, he did not gain the ability to create a lot of weird and powerful alien artifacts.
He just became really good at making Orven Ritual Sacrifice Altars.
"That's not entirely true. I can also adapt what I've learned to make other stuff!"
While Ves appreciated much of what he learned, one of the most relevant gains from the fruit was teaching him what divine artifacts might be and what made them so important!
"If I assume that an Orven Ritual Sacrifice Altar is comparable to a divine artifact, then it is way more than just a totem!"
In order for the orven leaders to obtain a channel where they could receive sacrifices, they first had to make a sacrifice of their own.
The most serious sacrifices entailed chopping off a limb that would subsequently be merged into the altar!
Although not every altar had to be made this way, the other methods were all inferior.
"Creating an altar is like creating an incarnation that is locked inside a solid object!"