17
For the past week, Hunter Forum had been like a house in mourning.
The reason was simple.
The specialty of Area 4, the “Thundercloud” shop, had emptied its sales stand again....
The grief of the C Grade hunters, in particular, was beyond words.
└ Ah, Boss, seriously, lol. Did you retire just because you made some money?
└ Fact: If he sold that many 100-coin items, that is over 200,000,000, so I would slack off for a while too.
└ Ah, please... Yesterday, I went hunting without Elixir (True), got chased by a Mana Sugar Bear, offered it a jar of sugar water, and barely got out... Take responsibility, sob.
└ But is it not annoying to carry around a whole bundle of sugar water? If you keep sweet dessert-type items in your inventory, it is convenient when you need to run away... There are lots of decent F Grade desserts. Dubaing Chewy Cookie, for example.
└ Cookie Man, please read the room....
However, the despair did not last long.
After a one-week gap, the Thundercloud shop resumed business as if it had been a lie.
And with,
overwhelming quantity!
└ What? Wow, is 30 Elixirs (True) real?
└ It doubled! It is still hard as hell to buy, but still, this is something... Brother Thundercloud. Did you Rank up or something?
└ Holy shit. C Grades, gather. We do not know when it will drop!
└ Double production of Elixir (True) is insane, lol. I bought 5. Now our whole party can hunt while chewing jelly!
└ No... If he releases this much, is he telling ordinary consumables makers like us to starve to death? Please, have some business ethics....
└ If you are mad, why do you not Rank up and double your output too? Why are you throwing a fit? If you curse him and Lord Thundercloud goes missing again, I will chase you to the ends of hell and shove a Korean melon up your ass, got it?
└ Th-That is a bit....
The market had, in every sense, fallen into the “Thundercloud Shock.”
Not only C Grades, but even the prickly B Grade rankers had started dominating the field with purple jelly in their mouths.
Other consumables with ambiguous effects piled up as dead stock.
A blessing for combat-types,
and tyranny for production-types!
That tyranny did not even end there.
└ Heeey!!! Fuuuck! The ordinary elixirs are up too. The ordinary elixirs are uuup!
└ Holy shit, what is with the quantity? 200?
└ The price went up to 10 coins?
└ Do you only see the price and not the quantity? It is 10 coins for two!
└ Huh...you are right? It is a two-pack!!
└ He is selling the 6-coin single bottles as two for 5 coins each!
└ Anyway, the only people who buy just one are the ones who failed the open run, so is a two-pack not just welfare?
└ It is welfare. Welfare!
└ Brother Thundercloud... Seriously, just what are you...sob.
└ Praise Area 4’s saint, Radiant Thundercloud!!
The forum was covered in praise, and competing businesses wept blood.
└ I am an active production-type Awakened. Thundercloud seems to be making up properly for taking a month off, but that will not last more than a few days either. Why? Because continuing to produce that much is close to impossible.
└ Yeah, agreed. It is not like he is the “Engineer” or anything.
Engineer, the S Grade hunter of Hyeonmu Shelter.
In the early days, the E Grade Steel Arms he had scattered had once lined up Awakened like this as well.
Engineer, who used to release one per week, had suddenly started pushing out three times the quantity back then.
It was learned later that when he had Ranked up, he had luckily learned the job skill, “Industrial Revolution”....
└ Could Thundercloud not be the same? He probably has a job skill!
└ Even so, double is probably the limit. Do you think Thundercloud is the Engineer or something?
└ You secretly seem to be hoping Lord Thundercloud fails.
└ ...Honestly, lower-grade production-types probably all think the same thing, right? No, he is taking too much....
But the next week, and the week after that, the production volume did not decrease. It only remained consistent.
200 elixirs and 30 Elixirs (True) per day!
Not one short, not one extra.
└ Wow... He is just churning out 200 and 30 like rice cakes, is he not?
└ Where did the bastard who said it would not last long go?
└ That bastard deleted his post and ran, lololol.
└ Delete-and-run is hilarious.
└ Ah! I was going to curse him out properly!
└ Just do it here, lol. Are you watching, production-type?
└ Wow, then does that mean he is on the same level as the Engineer’s early days?
└ Not the same level. Engineer was only triple, while Lord Greatcloud is 13.3333 times!
└ Did Elixir (True) not only double? And what is 13.3333?
└ I am talking about the ordinary elixir. It is insanely impressive!
└ Are you an F Grade scrub?
└ Are you a C Grade son of a bitch?
Like that, the theory that Thundercloud was a bubble, which had almost risen to the surface, vanished even more emptily than a bubble.
Even after that, the mass sales march of Krushvalbi Elixir continued.
Until one month passed, and then two months were filled!
At this point, people had only one question.
How could elixirs made by an individual by hand pour out as though stamped out by a factory?
└ From what I can see, rather than a skill, Thundercloud seems to have used the money he earned to expand his land. Otherwise, it makes no sense for him to maintain 200 elixirs and 30 Elixirs (True) every day for a week. Anyway, good for you all. I, an A Grade, do not benefit much, but I will watch you. Whether you climb all the way here or fall before you do. Heh heh.
└ A Grade Celestial Dragon bastard, good work coming all the way down here to posture.
└ What do we call posts with no proof???
└ Believe it or not. May you all live like that forever~
“Gasp....”
But unlike the mood on the board,
the person in question was trembling at the fact that had pierced his lungs.
“No, how did he know?”
That he had built a factory?
He had.
And it was a 330-square-meter, cutting-edge druid factory that was running extremely well!
As a result, he had become able to produce more than 200 Krushvalbi Elixirs, when 15 had once been his daily limit.
He also produced 30 Elixirs (True).
200 elixirs per day, 1,000 coins.
30 True Elixirs, 3,000 coins!
The coins he earned per day totaled a full 4,000 coins.
Converted into money, that was 40,000,000 credits!
If he did that for a month, it was 1,200,000,000 credits!!
If he did that for a year...?
“Wahahaha. Money, money is multiplying!”
He had also sold the ordinary elixirs at 10 coins for two.
F Grade hunters praised it as welfare for their sake, but the actual reason was something else.
“Because it is easier to count the money!”
Good heavens.
Lowering the price because it was easier to count the money?
Such money-wasting at this level!!!
“Wahahaha!”
Ki Ja-hyeon had become rich in one stroke, with an annual income of 14,400,000,000.
But the reality was...?
“Haha....”
Whirrrrrrrrr.
He was clinging like a cicada to a specially made glass jar larger than himself, mechanically infusing natural mana into it.
Whirrrrrr~
“Ha... It takes in so much....”
It was an enormous glass jar, so large that Ki Ja-hyeon could not fully wrap his arms around it even when hugging it with all his might.
Inside that massive jar, hundreds of Krushvalbi and liquor were devouring Ki Ja-hyeon’s natural mana like feed.
That was right.
His earnings had increased more than tenfold,
which meant the process had also increased more than tenfold....
Right now, he was somehow getting through it with his body, but if he wanted to increase production, he needed some groundbreaking method.
A few methods he had used in his previous life immediately came to mind, but....
“Well, a situation where they can be applied will come eventually.”
For now, this was enough.
He was earning enough money.
It was not as if selling elixirs from the farm was the only thing making money either.
Let us not be impatient.
Money was only a means, after all!
Yes, money was a means.
In his previous life, he had often heard that there were things money could not do, things money could not buy.
Of course, in a dystopian world like this, most of the time....
“If you cannot buy it with money, you simply do not have enough money...!”
Because of that, Ki Ja-hyeon had to earn more money.
In that sense, since he had finished making the elixirs,
it was time to make Elixirs (True).
In the past, when Ki Ja-hyeon had not had a Spirit Tree, he could only make fifteen Elixirs (True) per day. Even if he wanted to make more, once he passed the sixteenth, his mana would bottom out, and he would collapse while foaming at the mouth.
‘That was all because of mana depletion.’
His rate of use had been greater than his rate of recovery!
But now that the Spirit Tree was standing firmly beside him, things were different.
Over time, Ki Ja-hyeon’s Spirit Tree had purified the entire area and achieved 100/100, so everything within a 500-meter radius of the Spirit Tree had been purified, making the mana concentration in the air very dense.
On top of that, Ki Ja-hyeon had set up his base right next to that very Spirit Tree!
He could use mana like water, and as a result, not fifteen, but thirty. No, if he made Elixirs (True) all day, even sixty would be easy.
Of course, that did not mean he made sixty.
Thirty per day was exactly right.
“I need a personal life too, you know?”
Was this not all something he did in order to eat and live?
Although he had become properly greedy for money in this life, the more things became like this, the more work-life balance was essential!
Like that, all the elixirs to be listed tomorrow were completed, and he entered the System to set up scheduled sales.
In other words, everything he had to do today was roughly finished.
“Hmm, it is already this late?”
Now it was time for a walk!
Ja-hyeon roughly shook off his work clothes and headed to the warehouse.
That place had already changed so much that calling it a “warehouse” felt embarrassing.
Fwoooooosh.
The 330-square-meter land had already turned into a lush purple forest, and between the stems of the Spirit Tree covering the ceiling, Krushvalbi mushrooms were blooming like the Milky Way.
Luminous light intense enough to overcome even sunlight.
A dreamlike scene even the half-elves of his previous life had never seen was unfolding in real time inside a warehouse of roughly 330 square meters.
Meow!
Woof, woof! Woof!
Thunder, with his silver nose, and Cloud, with his silver eyes, who had been napping under the Spirit Tree, slowly rose.
“Want to go for a walk?”
Woof! Woof, woof! (Walk. Lots of walk!)
At Ja-hyeon’s suggestion, Thunder excitedly stomped his short legs, but Cloud, a territorial animal, shook his head as if it was too much trouble.
Then he dug his claws into the smooth silver trunk of the Spirit Tree and began scratching away.
Whoa.
“......Hey, that is an S Grade baby Spirit Tree! Do you really want to use it as a scratching post?”
Myaaang! Hiss! (So what?)
“You little brat, now that you are a spirit beast, you have gotten arrogant, have you?”
Regardless of what Ki Ja-hyeon thought, Cloud merely glanced at Ja-hyeon with an indifferent expression, then focused on clawing again.
“Well, cats are territorial animals.”
As expected, going for walks with dogs was the standard.
Woof!
Ja-hyeon hummed as he began his walk with Thunder.
.
.
.
The air on the outskirts of Area 4 was clearer than ever.
And for good reason. Clear air now overflowed within the 500-meter radius of the Spirit Tree.
Woof, woof. Woof! (Walk, happy. Master, happy!)
“Heh heh heh. You little guy!”
In truth, before Awakening, he had rarely been able to take Thunder out for walks because he had been earning a living as a porter.
As a druid, he knew better than anyone that a dog was happy if walked at least twice a day. But had life ever been that easy? Ki Ja-hyeon had always lived with that guilt in one corner of his heart.
But now?
Whenever he had time like this, he went around the neighborhood!
Ki Ja-hyeon was healed,
and Thunder was even more healed!
Every three steps, Thunder looked at him and tried to match his stride with Ki Ja-hyeon’s.
A considerate, rejuvenated dog!
That creature’s tail was also spinning briskly, as it had in his younger days. No, even more vigorously than back then.
The silver nose whose color had recently changed shone adorably every time sunlight reflected off it.
Who could call this creature an old dog?
It was a situation where one could not help smiling just by looking at him.
On the road where he walked with Thunder, passersby looked at the two of them as if they found them fascinating.
“Mom! What is that?”
“That is called a dog. Cute, right? It has been a really long time since Mom saw one too.”
There were a mother and daughter who passed by saying that,
“Whoa, amazing! It really looks like a companion animal!”
“If its nose was not silver, I would think it was a real animal!”
“It is a real animal, you little ones....”
“Oh my!”
There were also middle school girls hopping around and squealing,
“Oh my, a dog?”
and an elderly grandmother he met while passing even grew red around the eyes.
“What a blessed-looking little thing... When I was young, creatures like that wagged their tails in every alley... Now...now I do not know when I will ever see one again.”
The grandmother tried to take out a precious snack she had kept in her pocket, then met Ja-hyeon’s eyes.
Normally, eating things like this would not be good for its health, but,
“He eats anything just fine.”
Now that he had become a spirit beast, the creature’s stomach accepted anything well.
“Young man, you are blessed. Living with such a precious life.”
An unfamiliar sight, maddening cuteness!
Thunder, who was receiving every kind of cuteness in one body, wagged his tail even more. So much that it seemed he might fly away at this rate.
“Well, of course.”
In the dystopian world inside the Shelter, the luxury of owning a companion animal was not something just anyone could enjoy. Because of that, everyone liked it, found it fascinating, and most of all, since Thunder enjoyed those gazes, he came out for walks like this often.
Of course,
“Oh, that one looks damn tasty.”
not every gaze was kind.
Halt.
Ki Ja-hyeon stopped and looked toward the place the voice had come from.
There was one man there.
At a glance, he looked like someone who lived only for today.
Perhaps he had said it to be heard in the first place, because even after Ki Ja-hyeon stopped, the man did not stop his mocking snicker.
“What? What are you going to do if you glare at me like that?”
In the past, this would have been a situation where a fight broke out and everything became a mess.
Whenever such situations came, the one who avoided them was Ki Ja-hyeon, who had many things to protect.
But now, things were different.
Of course, that did not mean he would physically do something.
He merely,
staaaared.
He simply looked at the man very steadily.
‘......!’
The man who had asked what Ki Ja-hyeon would do if he glared like that had his eyes tremble.
Even before Awakening, the druid’s clear and transparent gaze had become doubled in its unique atmosphere after he Awakened.
‘Fuck, what kind of eyes are....’
It was not because he was afraid.
Those eyes were like a mirror that, despite having a pitch-black background, illuminated even his insides.
It was only that his own image reflected in those eyes looked far too miserable....
“A-Ahem!”
Since he knew what he had done wrong in the first place, all he could do was cough a few times and flee.
“That guy lived nearby, right? What a sewage-colored bastard.”
Thinking that even a person like that was thoroughly benefiting from the Spirit Tree made his stomach twist.
Just as Ki Ja-hyeon’s mood was about to worsen like that,
“Hyung!”
a lively voice came from far away.
It was a boy with a bright expression.
And behind that boy was the boy’s father, leaning on crutches and trying hard to catch up to him.
“Oh, you are full of energy today too, are you?”
“The weather is nice! I have been feeling good lately! Did you know? This time, Dad was the one who asked to come out first!”
“Haha... Hello. The weather is nice.”
“It really is. Is your leg doing well?”
“As you can see...hahaha. It is getting much better.”
Ja-hyeon smiled brightly at those words.
A father and son he had met several times during his recent walks.
In fact, this was not even the first place he had seen the boy.
Ja-hyeon ruffled the boy’s hair and mischievously whispered into his ear.
“Hey, your dad still does not know you used to pickpocket, right?”
“P-Please, anything but that....”
“Heh heh heh.”
Seeing the boy’s thoroughly frightened expression, Ki Ja-hyeon chuckled.
That was right.
The night before he Awakened. The pickpocket brat who had bumped into him as he tried to enter his house and then been badly caught was this very kid before his eyes.
As it turned out, he had lived here on the outskirts of Area 4.
His father had been working hard as an odd-jobber to earn money and feed them, but in a hunting ground, he had suffered metal poisoning, endured it with cheap antibiotics, and then the wound had worsened until he was in a situation where his leg would have to be amputated.
Of course there was no way they had the money to buy a mechanical prosthetic body.
All the money they had saved had gone into medicine, and so the boy had pickpocketed....
“I-I washed my hands of it...!”
“Right, kid. You have to live honestly if you want to turn blue.”
“...Pardon?”
But the boy’s father was standing now.
His recovery had suddenly improved, and he was no longer using cheap antibiotics either.
And right now, he was in the middle of rehabilitation exercises with crutches.
It was nice to see father and son laughing together.
A miraculous story.
But that was no miracle.
If there was anything one could call a miracle....
“My existence itself is the miracle, right? Heh heh heh!”
That was right.
The Spirit Tree’s air purification ability had already filled up to 100/100, affecting every house within a 500-meter radius.
That man starting to walk,
the coughing woman next door regaining her smile,
and even the hateful hunter from earlier, who strutted around while coughing up spit, growing arrogant lately because his earnings had improved, were all thanks to Ki Ja-hyeon’s Spirit Tree!
“Well now... I ended up doing something good for the neighborhood residents, did I not?”
That said, advertising that all of this was thanks to him felt a little wrong.
In the first place, if others found out this fact, would it not create a situation where only the landowners here died of happiness?
Of course, there was not no way to transplant the Spirit Tree elsewhere, but finding another base as good as this would be annoying too.
More than anything....
“That man would have to cut off his leg, wouldn’t he?”
The sight of the father and son disappearing with the father limping away looked pleasant.
A smile had appeared on his face without him realizing it.
Without deliberately smoothing that smile away, Ki Ja-hyeon made up his mind.
“I will let myself be taken for this much of a sucker, then!”
That did not mean he liked simply keeping his mouth shut and doing good for others either.
On top of that, there was a clear reason to sift through the residents here.
‘Because this Spirit Tree is special.’
In any case, if word spread, it would only be a matter of time before land prices here rose.
Before that, he had to move.
Flash!
Ki Ja-hyeon’s eyes shone.
Old houses of Area 4 reflected in his clear eyes.
To the eyes of a capitalist druid, they looked as if they were built of gold.
***
The real estate office he went to immediately after that.
Ki Ja-hyeon, who had not forgotten Kim Cheol-hyeok, the man who had helped him a month ago, found his house on the map before his eyes.
Then he picked up a compass,
screeeeech!
and turned it.
A circle with exactly a 500-meter radius!
Pointing to that circle, he said,
“From here to here. I will buy all of it!”
Kim Cheol-hyeok was dumbfounded.
‘The c-crazy man has returned...!’