I desperately wanted to see the cherry tomatoes harvested, but time was money.
I gathered samples of Mark Two’s secretions and Dokdoki’s poison, along with ten carrots just in case, and left the dungeon.
“Even after staying up all night, I feel perfectly fine.”
I could only be grateful for the superior stamina that came with being Awakened.
Thanks to that, I was able to return to Yongsan.
“Yeongseong hyung!”
“What the?
Two days in a row?
Now that’s unusual.”
I placed the samples of Mark Two’s secretions and Dokdoki’s poison on the counter, together with one of the carrots I’d just harvested.
“Could you have these analyzed for me?”
“Analyzed?
Of course.
But what’s all this about?
Didn’t you say you were going into a dungeon?”
“It’s because of my quest, that’s all.
I went in and came back out.”
“Hmm.
You’re sure nothing’s wrong?
You’ve suddenly started acting completely unlike yourself.
That’s why I’m worried.”
“I’m fine.
Thanks for looking out for me.”
Yeongseong studied me suspiciously for a moment before examining the things I’d brought.
“So what exactly are these?”
“This one’s slime secretion, and this is poison.
And here’s a carrot I found in a dungeon.”
“Slime secretion and poison, fine, but a carrot?
They have carrots in dungeons?”
“Take a look.
You can tell at a glance it isn’t an ordinary carrot from Earth.”
“The color is unusual, I’ll give you that.
You want all three thoroughly analyzed?
It might take a few days.”
“Yeah.
Oh, and do you happen to know anyone who’s an expert on slimes?
Even some information would help.”
“Sounds like you got saddled with a nasty quest.
I’ll ask around.”
“Thanks, hyung.”
Perhaps because he could see how cheerful I was, Yeongseong chuckled and carried the samples into the back room.
When he returned, I had one more favor to ask.
“Hyung, could you get me some seeds or seedlings?”
“You mean the kinds that come from dungeons?”
“Exactly.”
“I think we’ve got a few here somewhere…
Wait a minute.”
He said it would only take a moment, but then spent ages rummaging through the shop.
He seemed certain he had some, but because he rarely bought or sold them, he’d forgotten where he’d put them.
“Haa.
Sorry, Gyuseong.
I could only find this one.
I’ll look for the others later, and you can pick them up next time.”
“Oh, even this is great.
What kind of seeds are they?”
“Well, what was the name again?
It was…
uh…”
The seeds were packed in a transparent pouch.
There weren’t many, perhaps two hundred or so by my rough estimate.
“Oh!
Embergrill!”
“What’s Embergrill?”
“As far as I know, it’s a herb first discovered in a dungeon.
The guy I asked to analyze your samples gave those to me.
As you can see, they haven’t sold.”
“So it’s a herb.”
That was unexpected.
Did it count as a spice, or perhaps as medicine?
“Not what you were looking for?”
“No, I think these could be good too.
I know hardly anyone brings seeds and seedlings out of dungeons, so I’m grateful for whatever I can get.”
“I’ll find some other kinds before you come back.
Shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Thank you, hyung.”
While Yeongseong made calls to his contacts about slimes, I searched for information on Embergrill.
“An aromatic herb that can also be used medicinally, huh…”
This might actually be a gold mine.
According to what I found, people used the entire Embergrill plant rather than picking individual leaves.
It was like lettuce or napa cabbage: you planted it once and harvested it once.
“That’s a bit of a shame.”
If I could keep picking the leaves, I’d be able to harvest it repeatedly, but that wasn’t possible.
Then again, Leila, which I was growing in the dungeon, was also a root plant, so it was finished after a single harvest.
“I’ll have to save seeds from what I grow.”
Since I was already buying seeds, I decided to pick up plants that could be harvested repeatedly as well.
Knowing how much the slimes ate, crops that gave only one harvest were a bit of a burden.
“Strawberries, eggplants, and cucumbers?
Something like that?”
While I searched on my phone, Yeongseong finished his call and came over.
“I’ve put in the analysis request.
You should get the results next week or the week after.
I’ll send you the information on slimes by phone.”
“How much will it cost?”
“Forget it.
Why would I charge you?
It’s someone I know, and they’re doing it for free too.”
“Come on, how can that be?
You helped me out last time, and now you’re doing this too.
“I’m telling you, it’s true.
If you don’t believe me, want to speak to him yourself?”
Yeongseong held out his phone, then sent me the slime information.
“Anyway, once you’ve made it big, you can buy me a meal.”
“You’ve got it.
Thanks, hyung.”
“Ugh.
You’re making me cringe.
If you’re done here, get going already.”
He really wasn’t very good at being honest about his feelings.
I left the shop, bought the other seeds I’d been considering, and picked up a portable ladder.
“Phew.”
I hadn’t bought fleeceflower root seeds.
Instead, I bought the root itself.
‘Fleeceflower root takes far too long to grow.
Even with Mark Two speeding things up, I can’t wait for something that normally takes years to mature.’
I spent every won I’d received from selling my potions last time, plus the tiny amount I’d saved on top of that.
I was broke again, but my heart felt full.
“I’m back, everyone.
Oh!”
The cherry tomatoes had already been picked and stacked neatly in piles.
They shone with the same strangely translucent luster as the carrots, and they were beautiful.
“The size looks normal, though.”
Unlike the dungeon carrots, which had been much larger than their ordinary counterparts, the tomatoes were about the size of regular cherry tomatoes.
“Let’s see.
There’s no way I’m counting all of these individually.”
They were normal in size, but the quantity was astonishing.
I made a mental note to buy a scale someday and estimated the harvest.
“Hmm…
Isn’t this a bit much?
Maybe a hundred kilograms?”
One harvest had yielded roughly a hundred kilograms of cherry tomatoes.
Since I’d planted a hundred tomato plants, that meant each had produced around a kilogram.
[Mana-Infused Cherry Tomato LV.1]
Contains a faint amount of mana.
When consumed, grants poison resistance for 3 minutes according to the user’s mana capacity.
Afterward, permanently increases poison resistance by an extremely small amount.
“It’s an item.”
This time, the effect was poison resistance.
Come to think of it, I should have waited a little longer and taken some tomatoes to be analyzed with the carrots.
“Well, I’ll have to go back there anyway.”
That wasn’t what mattered most.
Now that I had both carrots and tomatoes, I could finally make fruit and vegetable juice.
I’d always been able to obtain the fleeceflower root somehow, so I wasn’t particularly worried about it.
I immediately ground up the carrots and tomatoes and mixed them together.
“This probably won’t count, right?”
Surely the quest wanted juice made using Liquid Synthesis.
Simply mixing the ingredients couldn’t be the answer.
[Awakening Quest: Offer a Tribute]
Gather and submit the specified items.
Mana-Infused Fleeceflower Root: 1/1
Homemade Mana-Infused Fruit and Vegetable Juice: 0/5
Just as expected, the counter hadn’t moved.
I drank the failed carrot-and-tomato juice in one go.
“Ahhh!”
[Your eyesight is enhanced for 3 minutes…]
[You gain poison resistance for 3 minutes…]
Even though I’d simply mixed the two ingredients, both effects remained intact.
That was another discovery.
“You can’t just mix potions and keep their effects, but it works with this?”
Potions only preserved their combined effects when I used Liquid Synthesis.
This vegetable and fruit juice, however, retained the effects even when I mixed the ingredients normally.
I wondered if that could become a profitable business idea, then instinctively picked up a cherry tomato and popped it into my mouth.
Pop!
“Mmph!”
I’d already gotten a taste of it in the juice, but an extravagantly sweet and tangy flavor flooded my mouth.
It tasted as precious as the jewel it resembled.
“Whoa…
I don’t think I can stop eating these.”
My hand kept reaching for more tomatoes.
The carrots had been delicious too, but these seemed almost addictive.
Squirm…
Squish!
The slimes watching me wriggled as though protesting that I was the only one eating.
Unfortunately, my mouth was so full of tomatoes that I couldn’t answer.
Gulp.
“This is incredible.
I’ve got to sell these!
I absolutely have to!”
I was so excited I could barely put a sentence together, but it wasn’t because of the money.
The flavor was so astonishing that I almost felt a duty to let other people experience it.
“I should set some aside for my family.
But don’t I need some special way to store these?”
At that moment, the new-recruit slime approached me and started wriggling.
“What?
What is it?”
Squish!
Squish!
“Are you saying you can take care of them?”
Squirm!
I had no idea how it planned to preserve harvested crops, but surely it had some method in mind.
“All right.
I’ll leave it to you.”
Squirm!
Dokdoki, which had been watching, approached and began helping the new recruit.
“Hmm.
That looks a little strange, but I guess they wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t work?”
Well, I would wash the produce before eating it anyway.
That much shouldn’t matter.
It was certainly better than letting everything rot.
“Cooldown, hurry up and end already!”
All that remained was for Liquid Synthesis to become available again.
* * *
Inside a building in Guro District, Seoul, people hurried back and forth.
The building belonged to the Ara Hongryeon Guild, one of the five largest guilds in South Korea.
The guild’s Awakened were organized into departments according to their fields and responsibilities.
In the research department, Kim Seunghyeon was grumbling about a request that had arrived out of nowhere.
“I’ve got the time, but what a pain.”
As he muttered to himself, he held samples of slime secretions, an unidentified poison, and an unusually shaped carrot.
The person Choi Yeongseong had asked to analyze them was none other than Kim Seunghyeon, an Awakened researcher who was making a name for himself at the Ara Hongryeon Guild.
“If it wasn’t a favor from Department Head…
no, from Yeongseong hyung, tsk.”
Despite his complaints, he couldn’t take his eyes off the carrot.
A researcher by nature, Seunghyeon felt his curiosity ignite at the sight of a carrot supposedly brought out of a dungeon.
“Would it really hurt to have just a little taste?”
It might be poisonous, or it might carry some unknown infection.
Still, the carrot’s enticing aroma kept making his mouth water.
“I’d better put it through the machine first.”
He barely resisted the temptation and began analyzing the three samples separately.
About thirty minutes later…
“…What is this?”
His voice was trembling ever so slightly.
Whether from excitement or fear, even he couldn’t have said.
“Something like this exists?
Is that even possible?”
Seunghyeon had checked all three items, and every set of results had left him stunned.
“These are slime secretions?
Impossible.
I’ll need a much more detailed analysis.
And this poison…
it takes a while to activate, but it’s guaranteed to cause paralysis?
Can that result be right?
I’ll put this aside for further tests too.”
With one unbelievable result after another, he finally turned to the carrot.
“Improved eyesight based on the consumer’s mana capacity?
From a carrot, not a potion?
That’s absurd!”
He had even detected faint signs that the effect might include a permanent improvement in eyesight, although detailed analysis would be needed to confirm it.
The whole research department had been working frantically to develop buff potions lately, so it was no wonder Seunghyeon was beside himself after discovering something like this.
“Hah!
Where on earth did that hyung find these things?”
Just then, someone called out to him as he was absorbed in his work.
“Hey, Seunghyeon.”
“Oh?
Team Leader Hanul?”
“You look completely out of it.
What have you been staring at?”
“You know Yeongseong hyung in Yongsan, right?
He asked me to analyze these things, so I was taking a look.”
“Guild work is already keeping us busy enough to kill us, and you’re doing odd jobs on the side?”
“I just wanted to clear my head for a bit.
But…”
Noticing Seunghyeon’s hesitation, Kang Hanul, leader of Team Two in the Ara Hongryeon Guild, sensed that there was more to the story.
“But what?”
“This was a personal favor, so I don’t know if I should say anything.”
“You know Choi Yeongseong’s my friend!
It’s fine, it’s fine.
Just tell me.”
“Then could you take a look at this?”
“Hm?”
Hanul examined the data sheet and shrugged.
“I can’t read this sort of stuff.”
“This is a poison.
It takes quite a long time to activate, but it works almost one hundred percent of the time.”
“What?
Now that could be useful.
The head of research recently asked us to capture a few trolls.
Using this would make it easy.”
“And this carrot…”
“Right, it certainly looks strange.
It’s not a model, is it?”
“No, it came from a dungeon…”
Crunch!
Before Seunghyeon could finish explaining, Hanul took a bite.
Seunghyeon had already confirmed that the carrot was harmless to humans, so there was no danger, but he was still startled by the man’s fearlessness in eating it without listening to the explanation.
“Mmm?
MMMMM?!”
Crunch, crunch!
Hanul made strange noises as he chewed, then took an even bigger bite.
A status window informing him that his eyesight had improved appeared before him.
“Team Leader, how is it?
Did the eyesight enhancement activate?”
“It’s delicious!
This is unbelievably delicious!
Where did you say you got this?
Choi Yeongseong gave it to you?”
“W-well…”
“Seunghyeon, I’m heading home early!
Wahahaha!”
“T-team Leader?
Wait…”
Through an unlikely chain of connections, the slime farmer had just acquired his very first customer.