#10. vs Monster Wolf
#10. vs Monster Wolf
Lee Eun-ha let out a sigh at the foot of Jirisan Mountain. She knew it was stupid. She knew it was reckless. She knew she was being a burden. But still — she had to check.
Had the last thing I saw been a dream, or real? Had that slime really saved me? Or had I imagined the whole thing? The uncertainty gnawed at her until she couldn't stand not knowing.
She was aware it was wrong. And that it might be dangerous. But... she'd made what preparations she could. So, just for a little while.
Let's just go as far as the spot where I collapsed last time. With that thought, Lee Eun-ha slowly began to climb Jirisan — but not before sending a text to someone, the events at the hospital still fresh in her mind.
***
[Experience Points at maximum. Lv.6 → Lv.7]
After hunting all night, I'd reached Level 7. And when morning came, the bear showed up right on cue.
"Grrooowl~"
The creature asked if I'd slept well, and I answered with a sharp "Woof!" By now, it had become a familiar routine.
Well, no harm in sticking together. The bear ambled off in search of its own meal, and I used my D-rank Detection to scope out edible animals. We didn't get in each other's way.
What bugged me every time I leveled up was mana. It did go up, but not by much. I was Level 7 now and it sat at 15. That worked out to about 2 per level. Mana 15. Compared to that woman from before, it was nothing.
Wasn't there a better way? Something to boost mana... The only thing that came to mind was some kind of spiritual medicine, but where would I suddenly get something like that in Jirisan?
If I got stupidly lucky and found wild ginseng to eat, sure, my mana would rise, but what were the odds? That line of thinking didn't last long.
'...Is this for real?'
[Ginseng consumed. MP increases by 2.]
[Ginseng consumed. MP increases by 3.]
There was no wild ginseng, but there was regular ginseng. It was true that farmed ginseng fell short of wild ginseng, but time was money — no, time was a brute.
[54-Year-Old Ginseng: Planted for cultivation but left unharvested for decades.]
After the dungeons and monsters appeared, the farmer must have had no choice but to abandon the field. Maybe because it had been sitting there for fifty years, the mana imbued in it was substantial.
Ginseng planted by humans and nurtured by nature for fifty years? I couldn't pass that up.
"Grrooowl? Grrooowl?"
The bear was the one who'd led me here. It was damn clever, almost like it understood human speech. While I'd been reluctantly settling for medicinal herbs instead of true elixirs, it had gestured for me to follow and brought me right to this spot.
Even back when I was human, I'd never actually eaten ginseng root. The closest I'd come was red ginseng candy. Maybe the stuff in samgyetang, though I couldn't swear to it.
After sweeping through the ginseng field, my mana jumped all the way to 30. There were plenty of roots, but there seemed to be a cap on how much the same type of medicine could raise it, because it stopped going up. I had plenty left over, so I decided to stash them for later.
When I hit Level 7, I'd grown a little bigger than a Shiba Inu. One more level, and I might stand a real chance against the Warg — the Monster Wolf. It was time to start pinpointing the thing's location.
As you'd expect from a D-rank skill, Detection's range had expanded dramatically — to a full five kilometers. It combined Heat Detection and Presence Detection, creating a sensation in my head like a minimap being drawn. Naturally, the detail varied with distance; within about a kilometer, I could pretty much tell what something was.
That made things somewhat safer. It wasn't quite like the mana detection that hunters used, though. And, coincidentally, my own mana was growing by the day.
By the way, if you had enough mana, you could do almost anything. So why did skills even matter?
'Efficiency.'
It wasn't that you couldn't detect things with raw mana without a Detection skill, or that you couldn't shape armor out of mana without Mana Armor. It was just that having the skill dramatically boosted performance and cut consumption. Which meant more skills and higher stats were always, always better.
Everyone in the novel, including the protagonist, was blind to their status windows and levels. Skills like Appraisal existed, but even those couldn't reveal stats. I was the exception. Not that they were stupid enough to think something didn't exist just because they couldn't see it.
In the first place, the System in this world and the System helping me were two different entities. The novel's System hadn't had anything like a consciousness.
[......]
The questions I'd been shoving aside — What exactly is the System? — threatened to spill out, but the System didn't answer. I hadn't expected much anyway.
"Grroooowl!"
The bear's cry snapped me out of my thoughts. It was holding something weird in its front paw — a truly bizarre-looking creature. It looked like an insect, but half snake and half bug. I didn't know every plant and animal on Earth, but the idea that something like this lived in South Korea was, well...
The bear thrust the bug toward me like a gift. I tilted my head, wondering if it was edible, and used Observe.
[Dragon Bug: The weakest monster and the larva of a Fairy Dragon...]
Despite being labeled a monster, it didn't look the part at all. If it was a monster, then eating it should give me experience points. I was about to try —
"......?!"
It suddenly exploded.
I felt a surge of déjà vu. I was sure something like this had happened before I gained vision. The thing that had detonated on me back when I was a Lesser Slime. Wait — if it was going to explode, shouldn't I have gotten a warning?
[Dragon Bug: The weakest monster and the larva of a Fairy Dragon. Detonates in a mana explosion when stressed.]
[Length 2.5cm] [Height 0.6cm] [Weight 6.2g]
[STR 2] [AGI 2] [VIT 3] [MP 17]
...Ah. I'd dismissed the window too fast. This is why you're supposed to read Korean all the way to the end.
A mana explosion. With that kind of power, it could seriously hurt a person. Probably wouldn't kill them, but they'd definitely get burned. Tiny, but nasty.
Before I'd eaten the ginseng, my own mana would've been even lower than the bug's. Seeing its mana score, I couldn't help but think: monster really is a monster. Anyway, what was I supposed to do with it? Eating it probably wouldn't boost my mana... As those thoughts ran through my head, I heard voices.
"Hey. Isn't that a Warg?"
"Dumbass. What kind of monster hangs out with a bear? That's obviously a cub."
"Looks a little different, doesn't it? Wanna try and catch it?"
"Don't. Quit screwing around and focus."
The voices were so quiet I almost wouldn't have caught them, but I heard everything clearly. They hadn't shown up on Detection... A chill ran down my spine. If I'd been a little more careless, they might've grabbed me and killed me right there.
...Taken years off my life. If not for the bear beside me, I'd have had to run — and there was no guarantee I could've gotten away.
"Grrooowl?"
I was getting more help from this bear than I'd realized. While I played the part of a cub and slipped away, the Dragon Bug scurried far off. That was a shame. I'd been planning to leave Jirisan once I devoured the Monster Wolf, so I might never get another chance to eat one. If I could see a Dragon Bug just once more before then, that would be great, though that seemed unlikely. With only 17 mana, it had set off a pretty impressive explosion... and that got me curious.
'How am I even supposed to use mana, anyway?'
Using skills was easy. I just thought about using them and it happened naturally. But mana wasn't a skill. There was no way I could instinctively wield something I'd never even possessed before.
...I had no idea. I'd never had it before. This felt like something I'd need to chew on a while longer.
"Grrooowl?"
While I was lost in thought, the bear had climbed a tree and was lapping up sap. I had no idea when it had scrambled up there — it was surprisingly agile.
Done with its quick snack, the bear lumbered back down. It had climbed up in big, confident strides, but descending made it cautious. Isn't climbing up supposed to be harder? I left the grunting beast to itself and pushed on.
It would follow on its own anyway. So without much thought, I kept hunting for prey until noon. The result:
[Fear of Baemsagol (Warg {Unformed}) Lv.7] [EXP 6131 / 8932]
Even after putting in the work, I still had a long way to go. After evolution, the experience from animals had dropped drastically, and it only got harder the further I went.
'I miss the days when I could catch one chicken and level up.'
Now, a single water deer gave me roughly 300 EXP. A wild boar, 1000. Three boars would be enough to level up, but between the Wargs and the number of animals I'd already devoured, live prey had become a rare sight. A good number of animals had probably fled — the ones that had given up on Jirisan entirely and escaped the mountain.
Made sense. All that roamed the mountain now were the corpses of eaten animals and the terror of an unknown predator. The dread of falling from the top of the food chain straight to prey. Of course they ran.
While some animals fled, there was also a bear happily picking up acorns without a care in the world. Watching this one was enough to shatter every image of a bear I'd ever had. I knew Asiatic black bears weren't exactly avid hunters, but... were they really this laid-back? By now, the bear had to have figured out I wasn't its cub.
The bear, which had been munching on acorns with delight, suddenly whipped its head around.
"Grraaaagh!"
This wasn't the vacant-sounding noise from before — it was a threat, like it was trying to drive something away. Before I could even activate Detection to check who was there, a voice reached me.
"...My side is killing me."
I turned toward the sound and saw the girl I'd glimpsed during the fight with the Black Wolf. Was her name Lee Eun-ha? She was looking around like she was searching for something, and then she spotted the bear next to me and jumped.
"A bear?"
Lee Eun-ha closed her eyes for a second as if focusing, then promptly scooped me up. She lifted me this way and that like she was examining a puppy, tilting her head.
"......It matches. Definitely."
'Matches what?'
With the bear right there, she must have mistaken me for a cub. If that was what this was, I'd consider myself lucky.
"Ngh... you're heavy."
"Grraaaagh!"
To any outsider, this looked like a mother bear and her cub, and a stranger had just picked up the cub. The bear erupted in fury, roaring as if it was about to charge Lee Eun-ha on the spot.
"Seriously cute..."
For a moment, Lee Eun-ha, still holding me, cast a strange look around her. I almost laughed — she wasn't really thinking of taking me with her, was she?
"Grraaaagh!"
This was a surreal sight. A mother bear snarling threats right next to her, and the girl lifting the cub like nothing was wrong... You'd be hard-pressed to see that in a zoo.
"Sorry~."
Though she apologized to the bear, Lee Eun-ha studied me with a surprisingly serious gaze.
"It couldn't be... a slime, right?"
She let out a heavy sigh and set me back down — still with that wistful look in her eyes. If her longing for a bear cub was that intense, maybe she should've considered a career in zookeeping.
***
It sniffed the air. The scent of its rival — the one it had failed to finish off. The intoxicating taste of human flesh it had tasted once before. Last time, it had retreated. This time, it would not.
Saliva dripping, the Warg roused its aching body. Tracking the scent, it began to run.