Letting the heart of the game decide

After looking through the list of fruits for a couple of minutes, John simply decided to let fate decide. There was a 'Random' choice on the bottom of the list, so he decided to simply hit it as often as he had to select all the fruits it could bear right now, which turned out to be five different fruits. As he had selected the fruits, there was now a translucent outline of a small tree in front of John's eyes, seemingly asking him where he wanted to put it. Seeing as how most of the island was empty except for some grass, he decided to put the tree on the opposite side of the garden, near one side of the mansion.

Once he confirmed the placement, the tree immediately sprouted out of the ground, and it didn't take more than ten seconds for small fruits to appear on the tree. Some of them looked pretty standard while others looked a bit more... odd.

Hanging from the tree now were green apples, a pineapple, some peaches, a purple fruit that looked like a star, and a blood red fruit that looked a bit like a dragon fruit. Picking the fruits and looking into his inventory revealed some things about them:

Apple
Eat 3 apples to gain the status 'Well-Fed' for 2 hours.

Pineapple
Eat a full Pineapple to gain the status 'Well-Fed' for 1.5 hours.

Peach of Immortality (young)
Young fruit hailing from the gardens of the Jade Emperor. Rare delicacy.
Fully consume to gain 2 seconds of immortality (similar Bonuses will add time).

Star Drop
A naturally enchanted fruit, imbued with the power of the stars.
Fully consuming this fruit will give 3 permanent MP. Effect can be applied [Level] times.

True Dragon Fruit (Fire) (young)
A real fruit originating from the Kingdom of Dragons. Highly nutritious, Dragons will gain a lot more sustenance and power from these fruits.
Fully Consume to gain the abilities of a Dragon for 15 seconds. Powers depend on the color of the fruit. Eat half of the fruit to gain the status 'Well-Fed' for 5 hours.

Most of these fruits were amazing! Sure, a simple apple and a pineapple weren't bad, but in comparison to the more magical fruits, they seemed very much like duds. But the mystic fruits were simply great! The dragon fruit also supplied something to him that he had no idea how he would deal with otherwise: food for the dragon.

Taking out the dragon fruit and splitting it in two, John laid one half of the fruit on the ground for Thorn to eat. John had decided to call the pup that because the electric abilities reminded him a bit of the Norse god Thor, which he mostly only knew thanks to the new wave of superhero movies, only adding an 'n' because of the spiky horns and the jagged scales on its back.

The flesh of the fruit was colored a bright white with black dots, like the mundane dragon fruit that was found on Earth. As he took a bite out of the flesh of the fruit, he was assaulted by a taste that he had not expected.

Bacon.

It was a bacon-flavored fruit! Holy shit! How could a fruit taste like greasy, fried bacon? He had no idea how, but it didn't change the fact that the fruit he was holding in his hands had the same taste as pig strips. The Abyss really was a weird place... But, then again, this fruit was somehow from the Kingdom of the Dragons, so why shouldn't it be possible that it tastes like meat? Most, if not all, dragons are carnivores to John's knowledge, so why shouldn't a fruit from their land taste like bacon? Maybe the various types of dragon fruit also had different tastes? Maybe the Peach of Immortality doesn't taste like a peach as well? He wouldn't try that now though, that effect seemed like something that could potentially save his life... or maybe he could refine that to something better...

That gave him some thoughts. Could he extract essences from these fruits? Would the magical fruits have special essences in them? He would have to check that once he had some more of them so that the Extract Essence ability would be more effective. But for now, he was satisfied with his smoky fruit, and Thorn apparently was so as well!

Once he was done with the fruit, he could feel the effect of the 'Well-Fed' status. He felt pretty satisfied and full, only enough room to eat the rather small Star Drop fruit as well. Where the dragon fruit was surprising because of its weird taste, the Star Drop was less surprising but very delicious nonetheless. It tasted sweet with a hint of sour, very refreshing and invigorating. He would probably use the effects of these as quickly as possible and then either refine them to something better or store them until he had the capability to do so.

That begged the question: How would he store them? Calling up Sarai on his interface, he quickly asked her, "Is there a good way to store fruits on the Nexus like these here without them spoiling? I could place them in my inventory, but that would be overflowing at some point."

The AI shook her head to that, "In its current state, the Nexus is not capable of storing these fruits effectively. I will, however, look into possible ways to store them. Should I take a look into the Abyss Auction as well?" to which John then shook his head.

"Nah, it's fine, I'll look into the Auction myself probably. Could you make sure though that the drones will harvest this tree once it bears fruit again? I want to make sure that the tree can bear as many fruits as possible." Then John checked his wristwatch. The lunch break was almost over; he had to get back to school soon, even with the slight temporal difference in the Nexus.

Sarai nodded to John's request, "It will be done, Master. I will add it to the daily routine of the maintenance droids. I'll also instruct them to water the tree every so often." As she said that, John was already back in his school uniform and was walking through the central room of the mansion. He took a quick stop in front of the Mana Well and dumped about 100 points into the well. No need to waste half of the mana he was regenerating by simply over regenerating when only half of those points would actually end up in the well.

Thorn followed John all the way down to the terminal room, where John had to physically stop the little dragon from following him. "Sorry, buddy, but I can't take you with me where I go... This place doesn't like dragons, so it's much safer for you here... I'll be back soon, okay?" Thorn's answer was a sad whimper and a weak nibble, but it was obvious that the dragon had understood him.

The toilet cabinet that he returned to looked exactly the same as it did when he left (no surprises waiting for him this time). Once he was out of the bathroom, the bell rung, signaling the end of the lunch break.

Methodology really wasn't John's favorite subject. Sure, he could see the merit of learning how to properly research things and how to write proper papers, but thanks to his new abilities, this seemed highly redundant, especially because he could look up anything he wanted on the interface that was on his vision right now.

John was one of the first people to sit down in Mr. Landcliffs classroom as the constant flow of students left the cafeteria. As he put up his notes and his pencils to make it look like he was actually paying attention, a hand rested itself on his shoulder, "Hey man, haven't seen you all day. Where's Astrid? Have you two been hitting it off yet?"

John turned around, and he could see that the one putting his hand on his shoulder was James Callaway, the new student he had saved from a beating yesterday. Well... kinda... apparently Frank then went back to finish his job, evident by the bruises James had on his face and the sling he had to suspend his other arm.

"Oh, hey James, seems like our schedules didn't match up that much today, yeah. Astrid's at home, apparently she's sick again... And no, I haven't been 'hitting it off' with Astrid. I just knew her sister, which is why we started to talk. And how are you doing? Did Frank do all of that?" John felt kind of bad as he looked over James' state because he was pretty sure that at least part of that was his fault seeing as how he humiliated Frank to an extent. Sure, falling over your own shoelaces wasn't that bad, but for someone seen that high in the hierarchy of the school, it was more than usual.

James simply waved him off, "Ah, I'm fine, just a bit of a scratch. And the arm will be fine in a couple of days according to the nurse. I am thankful though that Frank doesn't seem to be at school today. Getting beat up two days in a row doesn't sound that enticing..."

John's chuckle brought a smile to James' face, "I can totally get that, I used to be on the receiving end of the beatings... I guess Frank wanted a new punching bag."

By now, most of the room was full of students, so James said his goodbye for now as he went back to his seat.

As John didn't really bother to listen to the teacher's explanation about how to properly use Wikipedia, he instead went back into the Abyss auction and checked various things.

The first thing he checked was how much he could sell the magical fruits he had come into possession for (not even dealing with the mundane fruits) and was surprised to find out that the true dragon fruit would be worth up to half a million in a ripened and mature state, depending on the coloring of the fruit. The star drop was not quite as pricey at $25,000 and the peach apparently was worth around $150,000 in a mature state. The young fruits John had right now were still worth a lot with $18,000 for the dragon fruit and $8,000 for the peach, but in comparison, it was nothing to the mature ones. But John could see that the market for these fruits wasn't that requested, showing him that there were only a single digit amount of purchases for each of the fruits in the last 3 days.

The next thing was looking for a magic refrigerator. It was pretty likely that he wouldn't be able to afford one, but he at least wanted to check what the market had to offer. There were some different models, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. There were temporal confinement fridges, ones run by ice elementals, pocket dimensions, and various other things John had no idea how they worked. Most of them run on mana and would need to be recharged regularly, but some of them seemed to be self-sufficient. The cheapest one, a used safe with a personal pocket dimension with moderately high time dilation and an automatic disinfection was listed with a price of $36,000. Still way too high for John, but at least he had something that he could sensibly get, maybe even by the end of the week.

John decided to put the Spear of Armageddon up for bidding, just to see either how little the spear would be worth or how little people would read the actual description. The system told him that, in the case of an auction, John would keep possession of the item until the deadline for the auction is over and then he would give up the item, after receiving the money minus the fees.

John wanted to see how high the price would go if he made the auction go until midnight tonight.