The eye in the tree blinked.
It wasn't human. It wasn't beast. It pulsed like a living fruit, swirling with deep violet and crimson light. Yuzu's breath hitched in his throat. Something ancient watched him through that eye — something buried for ages, now awake.
"You came."
The voice filled the greenhouse like perfume — thick, sweet, and overwhelming. It wasn't sound. It was flavor, speaking directly into his soul. Yuzu felt it tug at something inside him — something he didn't know he had.
— "W-What are you…?" he whispered.
"I am the First Flavor. The Seed That Was Never Harvested. The One that bloomed before the Garden was born."
The blackened tree pulsed again, and its twisted bark began to split, revealing something at its center — a fruit unlike any Yuzu had ever seen. It shimmered with every color at once, constantly shifting: lemon-yellow, berry-blue, mango-orange, fig-purple, and something… darker.
It wasn't just a fruit. It was a presence.
Master Gelmo stepped forward, his face uncharacteristically solemn.
— "This is the Primordial Fruit," he said. "It predates all Fruit Spirits. The scholars buried it here when they feared its power would consume the world."
Yuzu turned to him, stunned. "Why are you showing me this?"
— "Because it called you," Gelmo replied. "And because you have no fruit… you might be the only one who can survive it."
Yuzu's mind reeled. He had gone from being a Zero-Flavor, a nobody, to standing before something forbidden, something that had once terrified the world's greatest cultivators.
— "What happens if I touch it?" he asked.
Gelmo didn't answer.
Instead, the fruit floated from the tree on its own. Slowly, like it had been waiting all this time just for this moment. It hovered in front of Yuzu, radiating a strange warmth.
"Will you harvest me, little one?" the voice asked again, but this time it sounded… hungry.
Yuzu stared at it. He had nothing. No spirit. No power. No place in this world.
So he reached out——and bit into the fruit.
Pain.
No — it wasn't pain. It was flavor in its purest, most violent form.
His senses exploded. Sweetness burned like fire. Sourness slashed like blades. Bitterness curled in his stomach like serpents. Umami roared in his bones like thunder. Something sharp and electric rushed into his veins — and kept rushing, as if his entire body were being rewired.
He screamed, falling to the ground, but he couldn't stop tasting. Couldn't stop feeling. Memories poured into his mind — not his own. Wars fought in orchards. Spirits devouring each other. Trees that whispered secrets in dead languages.
He saw a colossal tree towering above the clouds, crowned in gold. Beneath it, a man wielding a scythe carved from dried mango skin harvested glowing fruit after glowing fruit — each one screaming as it was plucked.
"The Harvester…" the voice echoed.
Then, darkness.
Yuzu opened his eyes.
He wasn't in the greenhouse anymore.
He was standing in a white void. The ground was soft beneath his feet — grass, maybe — and above him stretched an endless orchard sky, filled with fruits he couldn't name. Some were glowing, some pulsing, some whispering.
And in the middle of it all stood a tree.
His tree.
Its bark was gold-veined obsidian. Its leaves were glassy and iridescent. At its base, strange icons floated — skills, or maybe fragments of power. He saw one blink softly:
[Skill Unlocked: Flavor Sense — Rank F]You can taste the auras of enemies and identify their flavor class.
Another flickered beside it:
[Passive: Devourer's Seed]By defeating an enemy, you may harvest their Fruit Spirit. Absorption success is not guaranteed.
Yuzu reached out, and the tree pulsed in response. He could feel something rooting deep inside him — not physical roots, but something metaphysical, spiritual. His Inner Garden.
It was real.
He had a fruit.
But it wasn't like anyone else's.
He woke up on the floor of the greenhouse, coughing violently.
Master Gelmo was crouched nearby, watching silently.
Yuzu sat up, trembling. His mouth still tingled. The taste — that indescribable, godlike burst of flavor — was still fresh on his tongue.
— "You survived," Gelmo said softly. "That… I did not expect."
Yuzu blinked. "I… I have something inside me. A tree. A skill. I saw it all—"
— "Then the bond is formed," the gardener nodded. "You are no longer Zero-Flavor."
Yuzu looked at his hands. A faint sigil now shimmered on the back of his right palm — a swirling fruit design made of glowing threads. But unlike the others, it didn't show a single fruit species. It showed many. And it kept shifting.
— "What… am I?" he asked.
Gelmo stood up slowly. "You're something new. Or perhaps… something forgotten. From here on, you'll have to hide your mark. The Fruit Council would destroy you if they knew you consumed the Primordial."
Yuzu nodded slowly. The weight of what had just happened was too much to fully process. But deep inside, something had awakened.A hunger.
Not for food.
For power.
That night, Yuzu returned to his room, collapsing onto his bed. He stared at the ceiling — still blank — until he blinked, and saw a faint shimmer appear above him.
One fruit.Then two.Then three.
His mural was beginning to form.And it wouldn't stop growing.
Meanwhile, deep in the Nocturna region, a cloaked figure knelt before a black pool of ink-like sap. Dozens of dark Fruit Spirits hovered above, whispering in tongues.
— "It has awakened," the figure said.
From the pool, a voice replied:
"Then the Harvest War begins again."