16
The upgraded Cloud looked around.
Hisssss! (Rule the territory!)
There had been something bothering him for a while now.
That scrap of a tree that had suddenly sprung up!
Ki Ja-hyeon had been pouring all his care into that tree.
He did not like it.
A grudge he had endured only because he had been weak just moments ago!
As if that grudge had awakened, Cloud began charging in blindly.
Seeing that, the dog Thunder sprang to his feet.
Woof, woof! (Friend! Together!)
Had the energy of his prime, hidden inside his old body, welled up? The creature, who found everything except eating bothersome, simply charged blindly after his young friend.
The charge of two creatures strengthened after eating spirit fruits!
“Hey! What are you two doing!”
It happened before Ja-hyeon’s shout could reach them.
The two slammed their bodies into the trunk of the Spirit Tree at full speed, and the newborn Spirit Tree was....
THWACK! CRASH!
Perfectly fine.
.......
It was so perfectly fine that even Ja-hyeon, who had been trying to stop them, looked dumbfounded.
“...Well, of course.”
Thinking about it, this was right.
No matter how newborn and babyish it was, a Spirit Tree was still a Spirit Tree.
It was only natural that not even a single scratch appeared on its smooth silver surface.
Meanwhile, from the adorable noses of Thunder and Cloud, who had flopped over on their backs, twin nosebleeds trickled down.
Myaaang...! (Hierarchy...!)
Woof...! (Acknowledged...!)
“Whew... You two really get along. You really do.”
Ja-hyeon sighed, approached the creatures, and stroked their heads.
The creatures were probably stronger than other dogs and cats.
Since they had eaten spirit fruits, had they not become around three or four times stronger?
They were probably guaranteed to become back-alley Lu Bu, at least.
However,
“You two suck at fighting in the first place... Do you really think that changes just because you ate one spirit fruit?”
The base was the problem.
Even if a twelve-year-old old Welsh corgi and a bratty grade-schooler of a cat became three or four times stronger, that was all.
It was the same principle as multiplying 1 by 3 and still only getting 3.
Of course, if they grew up while receiving more of the Spirit Tree’s energy later on, who knew what would happen? But that time was not now.
Myaang....
Woof....
The creatures looked sullen, but?
They were cute.
And though they were weak now, they had become spirit beasts instead of ordinary animals.
“This Spirit Tree has to get stronger for you two to get stronger too. So stop acting arrogant and protect that thing. Got it?”
Even as he said that, he could not help smacking his lips.
“Tsk. Honestly, I should’ve been the one to eat them......!”
The first fruits of an S Grade Spirit Tree!
If he had eaten them, Ja-hyeon’s stats and Rank might have shot up all at once.
He would be lying if he said he had no regrets.
But in a corner of his heart, there was also a part of him that was happy instead.
“You’ll live a long time now, right?”
Birth, aging, sickness, and death were, in every sense, natural laws.
A truth no one could avoid.
In his previous life, Ki Ja-hyeon had been able to accurately predict someone’s remaining lifespan.
This person has two years left, that dragon will die in forty-one years, and so on.
In this life, the ability had been heavily nerfed, but if he made a rough guess, it was generally close.
In Ki Ja-hyeon’s eyes, Thunder had had about half a year left.
Now, it was different.
Ja-hyeon’s hand swept over Thunder’s entire body.
Firm muscles different from yesterday, and sagging flesh that had become taut.
Even the dry fur that had lost much of its shine to age had become as fine as silk.
His lifespan had increased.
“Twenty years should be easy now, right?”
There was no need to even mention Cloud.
His body had already been in its prime.
No, since his body had still been in its growth period, both of them had plenty of possibility to become stronger.
Their beginning was this humble, but as time passed, they would grow into Ja-hyeon’s right and left arms.
“Let’s go a long way together. My babies!”
Truly, many things had happened today.
He had moved, infused natural power into the land, planted the Spirit Tree that had suddenly appeared, and turned his companion animals into companion spirit beasts.
But there was still too much night left to end things here.
Ki Ja-hyeon brought over a large bundle of boxes.
Inside them were the Krushvalbi he had raised in the underground storage room of his former house.
The size of the old underground storage room had been around eighty-three square meters!
This place was a full 330 square meters.
Simply calculating, he would need four times the amount of Krushvalbi to cover this entire place.
Now, even if he planted them densely, the mushrooms would grow well, so it would probably be filled tight with about eight times that amount.
Of course, to do that, he had to increase the amount of Krushvalbi eightfold.
In the past, it would have doubled in one week, quadrupled by the second week, and only become eight times larger in the third week, allowing him to fill this 330-square-meter place.
But now, production had quadrupled.
Which meant...?
“I can somehow make it work within a week, can’t I?”
The time needed for normalization,
one week!
Then there was no reason to hesitate now.
He would plant them starting now!
The faithful crop that had earned him 400,000,000 credits in the basement.
He would plant Krushvalbi!
He had already mastered the work process in the basement.
The process of mixing fertilizer into fertile soil from the vegetable garden and arranging the Krushvalbi fungus with precision.
“Right. Let’s start! Heh heh heh!”
The first dystopian “druid-style production factory,” built on the outskirts of Area 4, began construction like that.
By the time the crescent moon that had risen in the western sky completely disappeared to the opposite side,
a faint but unmistakable luminous light was radiating from the ceiling of the enormous 330-square-meter warehouse.
***
Meanwhile,
at Hyeonmu General Bureau, which oversaw all of Hyeonmu Shelter’s land, taxes, and mana concentration,
WEEEEEEEE!
What broke the peaceful silence was a shrieking alarm....
“Wh-What! What is it!! Hot! Hot!”
Hot black liquid spilled from a cup and soaked Director Oh Man-sik’s shirt.
“It’s been so long since I had coffee...!”
But he had no time to care about that.
Such a sudden alarm almost never rang unless it was a disaster-level incident.
And soon, someone came in.
A woman who looked like the very image of an elite, wearing horn-rimmed glasses.
It was Supervisor Han Do-hee.
“D-Did something happen? Did an A Grade dungeon appear or something?”
At Oh Man-sik’s words, Supervisor Han Do-hee shook her head.
“It is not A Grade. It is a mana wave equivalent to S Grade.”
“Wh-What!”
“And it is in Area 4.”
“Damn it!”
Oh Man-sik sprang to his feet and shouted.
“Air raid alarm, air raid alarm! D-Declare emergency martial law immediately and send the Area 4 Special Task Force...!”
“It stopped.”
“...What?”
Only then did Supervisor Han Do-hee hold out the graph.
A mana wave that jutted out sharply like the last breath of a dying patient. After that, a straight line like silence continued.
“What? Supervisor Han, how does an S Grade wave disappear in one second? What kind of nonsense is that?”
“What kind of sound do you think it is? It is the sound of decrepit equipment screaming for us to kill it!”
SLAM!
“Hieek!”
A bundle of documents struck the desk.
A clear act of insubordination!
However, the director, whose dependence on her was high, could say nothing and merely flinched.
“Director, have I not been telling you for half a year that we need to replace the equipment? Did I not also tell you that things like this would happen often because the equipment is old? And ta-da. Look. A situation where you are shouting about air raid alarms has happened, has it not?”
“C-Cough...! It c-could be real...could it not? Maybe something is happening?”
Director Oh Man-sik tried saying that pitifully, but,
“There is no way an S Grade mana wave would suddenly appear and vanish like premature ejaculation. If it were a real S Grade, half the Shelter’s defensive barrier should have been blown away by now.”
“Right...is it? No, still, p-premature ejaculation...? From a grown maiden like you.”
When his pitiful excuse(...) no longer worked, Director Oh Man-sik let out deep sighs.
Supervisor Han Do-hee had not originally been like this either.
She had been gentle, and there had been a time when she had looked at Oh Man-sik with respect in her eyes too. Truly.
However, the more incompetence he showed, the more that gaze had gradually changed into what it was today.
“I will fix it. I will secure the budget! But you know how the higher-ups have been tightening the budget lately. So for now, reboot it and put it in the report as ‘equipment malfunction.’”
“...We have been doing nothing but rebooting for six months now.”
“Ah, there is nothing else we can do!”
After she left like that, Oh Man-sik, left alone, let out a deep sigh.
The data had spiked a few times before, but the equipment had never malfunctioned this violently, and now it had come to this.
“Damn it. I guess it really is broken....”
Saying that, Oh Man-sik took out stomach medicine by habit and swallowed it.
Did he want to be doing this?
No, what was he supposed to do when the budget would not come out no matter how much he twisted his entire body?
“If I show this data as evidence...?”
But he soon shook his head.
The higher-ups probably knew the equipment was aging too.
The higher-ups were also tight on budget, so there was nothing that could be done.
“Bury it. Bury it!”
Having made his decision, Oh Man-sik picked up his teacup again.
The cup that had held precious coffee was empty, just like his surroundings and connections.
***
At the same time.
Hyeonmu Shelter Rank 13, the guild “Family.”
Among the large guilds numbering in the hundreds, the head of this bizarre group, which threatened the top ten with only thirty elites, was Kang Cheol-jin.
An Area 2 penthouse, where other high-level guild masters squeezed their way in no matter what. However, Kang Cheol-jin did not want to crawl into a place like that and break his bond with his Family, so he lived in a close-knit household together with the guild members of Family.
The farthest edge of Area 3. This place, where the entire view of Area 4 could be seen by looking down, was Family’s resting place.
In this precious place, Kang Cheol-jin was grilling meat.
Whirr~ Whirrrrr~
Each time the mechanical arm grilling the meat moved delicately, it made a quiet sound.
The members of the guild Family waited for the meat like baby birds.
Kang Cheol-jin smiled faintly, sliced the fully cooked meat, and shared it with those family members.
No, he tried to.
SHWIP—!
The mechanical prosthetic body holding the meat spun like the wind.
“Screeeech!”
The body that had turned into a horizontal slash cleanly cut in half the plate held by his second younger brother.
“Ah, come on. What was that, leader! Why are you trying to kill someone!”
“Uh...uhh. Sorry. I am sorry! No...uh...!”
“Seems like an implant malfunction.”
“I told you to change it ages ago, didn’t I? God’s Hand? That one seemed good!”
“You lunatic, is our brother S Grade? He would need to be around that level to equip it, would he not? We are not at that level yet. Heh heh heh!”
The others tried to ease the awkward atmosphere with awkward jokes.
While feeling grateful to them, Kang Cheol-jin could not smile along.
Because of the chills that had climbed up his spine.
‘What...was that just now?’
His S Grade skill, “Danger Sense,” had activated just now.
‘Something extremely dangerous has appeared.’
His gaze could not leave some point in the pitch-black darkness on the outskirts of Area 4.
‘Should we run? Should I take everyone and run even now?’
But the hair that had stood on end all over his body calmly settled back down.
The sensation that had been ringing an alarm also returned to normal.
Kang Cheol-jin blankly activated his skill manually.
It was a convenient skill that had protected him automatically like just now.
Even when he turned it on manually and examined the surroundings, he did not feel anything as intense as before.
A malfunction of his skill?
“...I must be getting old too.”
“Boss, you are pretty old.”
“No matter how old you get, you must not kill us, all right?”
“Shut up and hold out your plates.”
“Eyy, how am I supposed to hold anything when I am too scared....”
“Krahahaha!”
He could not dampen the mood of this long-awaited company dinner with “real meat” any further.
Swallowing the bitter taste in his mouth, Cheol-jin began serving the grilled pork belly again.
His skill did not malfunction again.
***
.......
On the outer edge of the garbage heap from which Hyeonmu Shelter could be seen in the distance.
Even deep beneath the abandoned land humans called the Scrap Metal Graveyard, there existed something covered like a blanket by waste oil and heaps of sharp scrap metal.
A beast whose entire body had been torn apart in the distant past after a desperate, bloody battle with humans.
Since that day, the creature had never once opened its eyes, and had been waiting for death with the cold heaps of scrap metal as its shroud.
But then,
CRACK—!
The creature’s eyelids, which had been stiff for long years, flew wide open.
With a snap, its massive eye turned toward the direction where the humans’ home was located.
The beast’s senses stood on end.
It was not mana leaking from a rift, nor the impurities emitted by humans.
It was clear, clear life force itself, something it had never once felt in the mountain of scrap metal, an overwhelming vitality that made even its bones tremble.
It wanted to eat it!
Grrrrrrrooooooooar!
A cry after a long silence.
The beast’s massive body heaved.
The enormous body that would surely cause a tectonic shift across this entire area if it rose was trying to rise like that.
Using strength it had not even known it still had, it resolved to burn its final spark.
However,
that sweetness vanished as if it had been a lie.
The will that had briefly leaked out vanished at the same time.
CRASH, CRASH, CRASH.
The heap of scrap metal poured down.
Buried beneath it once more, the beast’s eyes closed again.
The reaction of something that whetted its appetite had vanished.
What filled the heart hope had left behind once more was only emptiness, death it had already accepted, and the agony of enduring the time until that death arrived.