I'm a Crafter!
What met my eyes was a substantially expanded field, alongside a massive boulder—or more precisely, a stone bear statue.
The bear had an inexplicably infuriating look about it. Donning a straw hat and brandishing a crude hand hoe, it directed a saucy wink right at me.
Why does this bastard keep winking at me?!
Field level has increased.
Your bond with the Teddy Bear has deepened.
There it went again! Seriously?!
I told it I didn't want to get any closer to that damn bear...
Still, the longer I stood there staring at it, the more an odd thought crept in.
“It kinda looks a little cute, actually.”
Teddy Bear Statue: Feeds on Iris's love to accelerate crop growth rate.
I wasn't particularly thrilled by the utterly useless first half of the description, but the part tacked on at the end was genuinely useful.
“It's not going to spring to life later like some cartoon, right?”
I gingerly reached out and touched the statue.
The moment the faint aura of life radiating from its smooth surface came into contact with my mana, the stone figure flared with brilliant light, funneling magical energy straight into the surrounding soil.
Crops are growing rapidly.
The medicinal herbs at the back of the patch, which had barely begun sprouting, suddenly surged upward. Thick stems stretched out, unfurling gorgeous, vibrant petals.
Exuding soft wisps of mana, they flaunted a radiant elegance that eclipsed any ordinary blossom—
Or so I thought, before some of the petals, having gorged on far too much mana, began to twist and warp into something hideous.
“W-What the hell is that?!”
The elongated petals broadened, morphing into the grotesque shape of a predatory maw, while a thick, saliva-like slime began oozing from the leaves. Before I could even process what was happening, a thick vine whipped through the air, coiling tightly around my torso and pinning my limbs to my sides.
“Ah... it hurts! Stop, that hurts!”
To ordinary players, this was just a virtual reality game, but for me, it was cold, visceral reality. I could actually feel the pain—agony no gamer was ever supposed to suffer.
I was utterly helpless against the crushing force constricting my waist and lower abdomen. The monstrosity peeled its floral jaws wide, drooling incessantly as it prepared to swallow me whole.
“Y-You crazy bastard! I'm the one who planted you, and you're trying to eat me?!”
This had to be the most humiliating death in all of Estera.
Alchemist Devoured and Slain by Her Own Crops. If a clip of that hit the community boards, the comment section would roast me into oblivion.
“F-Fight fair, damn it! What kind of ambush is this?! I'm a crafter!”
I thrashed and flailed with everything I had, but it was completely useless against the suffocating grip.
Right as my head was about to disappear into the beast's gaping gullet, an alert flashed before my eyes.
The guardian of the field has begun to move!
A sudden shockwave kicked up a dense cloud of dirt, and the vine binding my body snapped clean in two.
“Kyaaah!”
I tumbled into the tilled earth, crying out as a sharp throb shot through my backside. But the jaw-dropping spectacle unfolding before me left no room to nurse a bruised rear.
“T-The statue... it's actually moving?!”
I was treated to the absurd, once-in-a-lifetime sight of a giant stone teddy bear ruthlessly beating the living daylights out of a mutated man-eating plant.
The adorable bear slammed its stone fists down like piledrivers, battering the plant's petals and vines into submission before violently burying its hand hoe into the main stem like an executioner slitting a throat. Feeling as though the entire genre of the game had abruptly shifted into a brutal beat-'em-up, I could only watch the brawl in stunned silence.
With a sickening crack, the statue severed the rest of the stalks, wrenched the root system entirely out of the soil with its bare paws, and hoisted the thrashing monster high into the air.
“W-Wait!”
Seeing the botanical menace about to be launched into the stratosphere, a horrified shriek ripped from my throat.
“My harvest! I worked so hard to grow that! And my field—!”
Wait a minute.
As the plant hung suspended against the sky, a peculiar, familiar aura drifted from its battered core. I tilted my head, squinting in disbelief.
Those petals glowing with faint, delicate mana... could they be...?
Dawn Grass?!
I scrambled to my feet, rushed over to the towering statue, and frantically tapped on its thick stone shin.
Stop! You have to stop!
“Those petals are expensive, you idiot! Stop!”
By the time the plant crashed down onto the grass, it was already as good as dead.
Even though the monster had tried to choke the life out of me mere moments ago, I sat down beside the carcass and began meticulously, delicately harvesting every single petal.
“This really is Dawn Grass...”
I had never seen a specimen of Dawn Grass grown to such monstrous proportions, but my appraisal skill left no room for doubt.
Blue leaves shimmering with the essence of moonlit mana. Feeling the rich pulse of vitality pooled within them, I carefully slipped the bundle into my pouch.
“Consider this fair compensation for trying to eat your gardener.”
Still, to think an overgrown monstrosity of that size only yielded a measly five stalks of Dawn Grass...
What a garbage cost-to-yield ratio!
“And as for you, Teddy! Look, I appreciate you stepping in to save me, but...”
I rounded on the stone bear and pointed an accusing finger at the tattered, cratered mess that used to be my garden.
“Isn't this going way too far?!”
The crestfallen bear statue sank to its knees before me, raising both paws over its head in a gesture of meek surrender and profound self-reflection.
Seeing a towering stone golem cower like a scolded kindergartener made it impossible to stay angry. My defenses crumbled instantly.
“...Fine. You kept me from becoming fertilizer, so I'll let it slide this time.”
Reaching out, I gave the hulking statue an affectionate pat, marveling at the solid, unyielding stone beneath my fingers.
The Guardian is communing with you.
Man, if all this stone were muscle, wouldn't this guy be an absolute stud of a bear?
“Why the hell am I suddenly feeling so lonely...?”
Brushing off the bizarre, melancholic thought, I stashed the harvested Dawn Grass into my inventory, hurried into the cottage, and went straight to the cauldron.
“Right, time to deal with the blue herb and the green herb.”
I pulled the two plants out of my pouch.
The blue herb, which had been screeching like a lunatic ever since I first plucked it from the earth, ducked low and curled its leaves inward the second my fingers drew near.
“I-I'll lose all my medicinal potency if you boil me alone! Let me go right now! Let me grow for ten more years... no, fifty more years!”
As the blue herb babbled in terror, the green herb beside it suddenly swung its broad leaf, smacking the blue stalk with an audible thwap.
“Quiet, fool! For an herb, falling in service to alchemy is an honorable death! Noble Alchemist, please toss this coward and me into the pot together!”
Listening to the green herb pitch its voice with the solemn resolve of a doomed martyr, I gently stroked the blue herb's trembling foliage.
“Whitey put up a huge fuss at first too, you know. But in the end, it was brewed into medicine and saved mon—er, saved lives. Wouldn't you two like to save someone's life, too?”
Yep. A complete and utter lie.
I had simply followed the white herb's obsessive preparation instructions, boiled it down to the last drop, and converted it directly into hard, cold, debt-clearing cash.
“You see? The alchemist is a truly benevolent soul! So please... let us go together in harmony...”
Swayed by the green herb's persistent rallying and my soothing caress, the blue herb finally peeked up at me with hesitant hope.
“T-Then please... be gentle with me. Don't crush my stem... and make sure you slice the leaves like this...”
Watching two magical plants eagerly dictate the exact methods of their own butchering was a profoundly unsettling experience. It felt uncomfortably close to a hitman politely taking notes on a target's final requests in some dark crime drama.
Regardless, both herbs ultimately embraced their noble sacrifice.
Successfully communed with Low-Grade Mana Herb.
Successfully communed with Low-Grade Wisdom Herb.
Deciding I didn't even have the energy left to question the absurdity of these system alerts, I set straight to brewing.
I started by rinsing the green herb in pristine spring water before carefully crushing its root. A refreshing, minty herbal fragrance drifted through the cottage, coaxing a faint smile to my face.
“Man, this smells incredible...”
I set the leaves aside in a separate bowl of spring water to be added later, then brought the cauldron to a steady boil. Next came the problematic blue herb. I handled it with exquisite tenderness, paying attention to every single fibrous rootlet as if bathing a newborn infant.
“I don't even wash my own body with this much care...”
Come to think of it, maybe I really did need to start taking hygiene a bit more seriously. Back when I lived as an ordinary guy, scrubbing myself raw with a bar of cheap soap was plenty. But now that I was inhabiting such a ridiculous, high-maintenance beauty of a body... it probably required proper pampering, didn't it?
Before long, the herbs dissolved entirely into the bubbling liquid, leaving behind an extract that glowed with a luminous, ethereal shimmer.
“Ugh... there's no way in hell I'm drinking that...”
Calling it an 'ethereal shimmer' was being far too generous. To my eyes, it was an aggressive, unapologetic shade of pastel mint. To be precise, it was the exact terrifying hue of mint-chocolate ice cream I used to dread seeing in parlor display cases back home.
“Now, if I just channel my mana into it...”
Adding Mana-Infused Bird Feathers is highly recommended.
When the status window suddenly instructed me to chuck literal bird feathers into the brew, I shook my head in visceral disgust.
“This is a potion, damn it! A potion! Do you have any idea how nauseating it is to choke on random debris floating around in your beverage?!”
Stats and magical properties aside, this was a fundamental violation of culinary decency!
Omitting the feathers will drastically reduce expected profitability.
“Well, why the hell didn't you just lead with that?!”
Without an ounce of hesitation, I grabbed every single feather I had and dumped the whole handful straight into the cauldron.
“Please, let this be a Great Success so I can finally pay off my debt!”
You have granted the herbs' final wish.
The crafter's sentimentality influences the potion.
Right on schedule, a thick cloud of steam shaped like a cartoon bear billowed upward from the brew. It eyed me intently, but instead of the usual flirtatious wink, it raised a paw. A distinct thumb popped out from the rounded pad—an anatomical impossibility for an actual bear—and flashed me an enthusiastic thumbs-up before vanishing into the air with a soft pop.
Bear Mana Recovery Potion × 100
“A Great Success!”
I still couldn't fathom how the hell the quantity variance worked in this game.
If the system was going to be this arbitrary, it should at least display the drop rates and probabilities upfront! Didn't the devs know gamers filed lawsuits over undisclosed gacha rates these days? Ah... right. Not like I could lodge a complaint with consumer protection from inside the game.
“All that's left is bottling them...”
I carefully funneled the murky, light-green liquid—which looked far more like toxic waste than any legitimate medicine—into clean glass vials. Seeing the familiar teddy bear silhouette automatically engrave itself onto each bottle, I let out a wry chuckle.
“You know, staring at it all the time... it really is kind of adorable.”
The cartoonish bear mark that had once filled me with pure revulsion now brought a fond, silly grin to my face.
“Maybe it's surprisingly soft. If a big, squishy, fluffy bear wrapped you in a giant hug...”
I drifted off into a brief, warm daydream until a crisp chime shattered my reverie, prompting an information panel to float into view. I picked up one of the finished flasks.
“Let's see what the effects are...”
Effect: Increases mana recovery rate by 50% for 30 minutes and restores 50% of maximum mana.
I blended two rare herbs and dumped a fistful of enchanted feathers into the pot, and this is it? That's a little underwhelming. Besides, mana? Pure warriors don't even use mana!
Then my gaze dropped to the following line.
Effect: Permanently increases Intelligence by 1 to 10 points upon consumption.
My fingers seized up on the glass.
A potion that permanently boosted base stats?!
The moment something like this leaked out onto the open market, it would trigger utter, cataclysmic chaos across the entire game's economy.
“And... well, I have to test it out myself first...”
The harsh reality of my current situation struck me: my avatar's Intelligence stat was sitting at a laughably pathetic 12.
Besides, an alchemist had a professional duty to inspect the taste...
“Ugh... but this color is a crime against humanity...”
That swampy, pastel mint-chocolate sludge practically screamed poison. I reached for the vial, only to recoil in hesitation, my hand hovering awkwardly over the cork.
“No... I have to drink it. I can't survive this brutal world as a brain-dead airhead!”
Steelessly resolving myself, I popped the stopper, brought the rim to my lips, and tipped the entire concoction down my throat.
Contrary to its abhorrent appearance, an unexpectedly rich, sweet flavor washed across my tongue as the liquid slid smoothly down my gullet.
A heartbeat later, a vicious, blinding agony detonated directly behind my temples, dropping me instantly to my knees.
“Urgh...!”
My skull felt as though it were being cracked open with an iron wedge. Was this a side effect?!
It hurts... it hurts so damn much! I'm not going to die like this, am I?!
I don't want to die again...!
In my past life, I worked hard, lived an honest life, and still got flattened by a runaway truck...
I just want to live, damn it!
My vision rapidly dissolved into a sea of pitch black. Collapsing hard against the wooden floorboards, I completely lost consciousness.