As cathartic as a screeching outburst would be at this juncture, Sora is still here to win. If he's made a mistake, it was not questioning the assumptions he brought with him from Earth. When in doubt, go fishing.

He picks up two orange berries and feeds them to the fairy.

Yum!

"So, where did these berries come from?"

"Why? Interested in a bag of them to use later? I'm sure we could… work something out."

"Tempting," says the part of Sora that's keeping track of the tone of the discussion. "But I am curious where they came from. Crops don't have magic, at least on the farms I've seen."

"Huh? They're everywhere around here. Or, do you mean— yeah, everyone keeps telling me that humans are stupid, I don't know why I expected you to know. Here, look."

She picks up one pink berry and one orange berry. They fill each fist, like a human woman holding a pair of apples.

"See how they look similar to each other? That's because their plants came from the same plant, a few decades ago. We took clippings from the pink berry bushes that were good and unique, grew lots and lots of them, and then we bred them all with each other to get new ones! That's where new types of people and animals come from too. Isn't that cool?"

Sora is incapable of feeling insulted by the fairy explaining trait inheritance to him like he's a toddler. Mostly because he already feels maximally bad.

Hopefully. He doesn't want to imagine what eating the second berry would feel like.

He redoes the count in his head

He needs to eat two more of the light pink berries (7 = 2² + 2¹ + 2⁰) to stay the course. Still no way for the fairy to win unless he gives up, and giving up isn't in 『____』's repertoire.

… that might be workable.

"Pass me two of the pink ones," he says, and stands up.

Standing up is an ordeal. He continues to not feel nausea or pain, but the distress is overwhelming. Part of the reason he's still functioning is the firm belief that nothing will help, because if curling up into a ball and whimpering had even the slightest chance of helping he would be curl up and whimper.

Once he's up… everything is still terrible. But at least it's terrible and he's on his feet. That's progress.

The fairy takes off, fluttering after him at head height with two of the light pink berries cradled in her arms.

There are a lot of unrecognizable plants out here. In addition to the square-leaved trees there are reddish mosses and mauve lichens, flowers with emerald petals and rainbow stems, and grass that grows in a disconcerting shade of yellow-blue. Among them are bushes dripping with berries, including some in familiar light pink and pastel orange.

"You're not thinking of forfeiting, are you?" the fairy asks playfully. She alights on Sora's shoulder and holds the berries out teasingly.

Nom nom nom. In addition to the horrible malaise, Sora now also feels even less connected to reality. This is really doing wonders for his motivation.

"Just wanted to see for myself," he says. He runs his hands through the vegetation, pulling vines out of the brush to take a closer look at the berries growing on them.

"Back in the day those berries were nothing special. We had to breed 'em for spirit channels wide enough to store magic in, and then we had to breed 'em for the right kinds of spells. Most of the time they ended up too nasty to eat."

"Gosh, must've taken years."

"You would not believe how hard it is to give plants magic," the fairy agrees. She flutters off his shoulder and alights on a nearby shrub. "See this one? Used to be completely mundane. Thirty generations later, now they're useful as reagents. Not even magic yet!"

"It's not even a human repellent!"

"I know. Nobody ever appreciates it either. Last time I showed my garden to an elf they said I wasn't doing real magic! You don't have to flirt with boundaries of the Covenant to do real magic, but nooooo, all they care about is screwing with each other as hard as possible."

"I knew there had to be magic berries out here that weren't designed to be hazardous."

She snickers. "You're not gonna find them by accident! If you really want I'll give you some of the good stuff when we're done, as a memento. Or we could share…"

Yeah yeah yeah keep talking.

"Have you decided which pile you want to take from?"

"I think I'm gonna take more orange ones," she says. "Then – let me guess, you're gonna take more pink ones, right?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, if I eat the black one, then you'll eat some of the pink ones until there are the same number of pink and orange left. That makes me lose. If I eat some of the pink ones, you'll eat orange ones until orange plus black equals pink, and that makes me lose too. So I'm going to eat some orange ones, so that – ah, wait, you'll just eat more of the pink ones until pink plus black equals orange. Right?"