"Withering alone is too wasteful, though."
What Ves sought was not to cause the Elegant Rage's targets to decay and cause their energies to disappear.
Instead, he wanted his Woodsap mech to gain the ability to harvest those energies and power up her own attacks.
Ves rubbed his hairless chin in thought. "It would be nice to obtain a more comprehensive enlightenment fruit that can make up for this absence, but… do I really need to spend more AP?"
Cultivation techniques were alive. There was never a single absolute right answer on how to do stuff.
Ves already became accustomed to absorbing the knowledge contained within different enlightenment fruits, but then went on to tinker with the different theories and techniques to produce different outcomes.
He was confident that if he absorbed this particular enlightenment fruit, he could 'complete' the process by figuring out a mechanism for the Elegant Rage to absorb the energies lost by the plants that were withering on a wide scale!
The premise to all of this was that the so-called withering curses did not destroy all of the juicy wood energy that the plants originally contained.
Ves frowned a bit. He was not quite certain whether this fruit would give him the building blocks he needed to turn the Elegant Rage into a true nature predator.
He decided to postpone his decision and look for other suitable fruits.
Several minutes went by as Ves inspected a lot of fruits that weren't relevant to the current situation at all. The only ones that interested him a little more were the ones that promised to teach him various darkness-related cultivation methods and techniques.
As much as Ves felt personally interested by them, it was hard to impart any of the techniques to the Elegant Rage, so he skipped the over.
In the end, Ves couldn't help but return to the Evil-Breaking Peach Wood Sword Manual and the Introduction to the Withering Curse.
They presented two completely different ways to break the current situation.
The Evil-Breaking Peach Wood Sword Manual was obviously an upright and honorable way to empower the Elegant Rage.
The Introduction to the Withering Curse likely contained a lot of underhanded, dishonorable and maybe outright evil techniques!
Yet that did not stop him from taking the latter seriously.
Of the two choices, Ves felt a lot more drawn to the Introduction to the Withering Curse despite the fact that it did not present a complete ready-made solution.
As Ves weighed his decision, he ultimately decided to reach out and pluck the Introduction to the Withering Curse Fruit.
"I need this more than the other."
It was related to both the wood and the darkness elements. It was a thoroughly negative method that was also related to ominous concepts such as death and decay.
As Ves held a wrinkled and half-rotted purple fruit in his hands, he did not show any sign of disgust as he bit into it and ate all up in a couple of quick bites.
Before the dry and awful taste of the fruit registered on his taste buds, he winced as he received an abrupt infusion of knowledge in his brain!
The changes came and went quickly. Ves instantly mastered the basics of a small collection of withering techniques.
"How wonderful. I didn't know how vulnerable life can be to a cultivator who knows how to manipulate life."
Ves' horizons had widened now that he became burdened with greater knowledge. His understanding of the negative side of life had expanded enormously, making him feel that spending those 77 Ascension Points was the best decision he had made!
Among the most useful lessons he learned from the fruit was to learn how to cast curses.
These were particularly dark and underhanded means of manipulating or attacking enemies.
Ves recalled that during one of the later waves of the epic tribulation of the Dominion of Man, the Bloodfire dreadnought confronted a massive mirror beast that managed to bypass everyone's spiritual defenses and cause them to turn against each other.
Back then, Ves completely remained ignorant how the mirror beast was able to fool so many entities, up to and including Caramond and Furia!
Now he knew. The god beast excelled at casting curses that affected the entire crew and other life forms of the Dominion of Man.
By intermittently showing up and presenting its cursed mirror at the dreadnought, the lightning manifestation of the powerful beast refreshed its curse.
"When it comes down to it, a curse is a more indirect and subtle means to attack a target."
Just as Ves suspected, they were completely useless against an opponent like the current tribulation manifestation, but it was possible to cast the same curse to a large swathe of weak and vulnerable targets!
It was so easy to cause a lot of harm as long as he was willing to pay a price!
In fact, if Ves wanted to, he could use the knowledge he learned from this fruit to make a lot of people in a city sick!
"It is no wonder that demonic cultivation has become so persecuted by the mechers and fleeters! The capacity to do harm is too great!"