The Garden of Fresh Greenery
Baengnae snatched another picture book the moment we stepped out of The Happy Home. The title read The Giraffe Lady Who Rides a Bicycle. She had clearly grabbed it because she wanted to eat the giraffe on the cover.
“Baengnae found this one.”
“Enough tasting. Time to work.”
“This one!”
Baengnae stuck out her lower lip. Still, we had only entered The Happy Home to verify the information floating around the community. There was no point wasting time on low-grade books. The library sorted books by label color: White—Red—Blue—Gold—Black. Five tiers, each one more intricate in story structure and world-building than the last.
White Label books were exactly what we had just seen—small, flimsy worlds with vague conflicts. The system had even accepted “kill everything” as a valid ending, something impossible in higher grades. I checked the label on The Giraffe Lady Who Rides a Bicycle. White, as expected. Low-grade stories were obvious from the title alone. This one was probably about a bicycle-riding giraffe running into various conflicts on the road.
I slid the book back onto the shelf and offered a compromise.
“Find me a Red Label. If it’s Red, I’ll let you have what you want.”
“Got it.”
There was no reason to suffer through another White Label. At the same time, blindly jumping to higher grades on our first run wasn’t wise either. We would climb the colors slowly.
Most of the dusty, musty books in the “bookstore” section were White Label. A few Red Labels appeared here and there, but none satisfied Baengnae’s picky tastes. We wandered aimlessly until, at last, a book that matched her preferences appeared.
The title was The Gluttonous Uncle’s Dessert Café. It might as well have been written to lure her in.
“This one. Nyam nyam.”
Baengnae’s fingertip rested on the gluttonous uncle. She had zero interest in the desserts themselves.
“Hmm… Let’s give it a try. It’s Red, after all.”
“Hehe, right.”
I opened the book. We were invited into The Gluttonous Uncle’s Dessert Café.
***
When I opened my eyes, Baengnae and I were seated by a sunlit window. The warm scent of baking bread filled the air. Pink wallpaper, a white tablecloth edged with frills. Customers chatted softly around us.
A dessert café?
I grabbed Baengnae before she could charge off in search of the gluttonous uncle. Red Label stories didn’t end with mindless slaughter. The structure was the same—catch the villain, receive a reward—but the conflict had to be clear. The problem was that the protagonist of this story was almost certainly the gluttonous uncle. Titles usually named the main character, after all. Our gluttonous zombie, however, wanted to eat the uncle. We would need to change the ending slightly. A bad ending was still an ending. Helping the villain kill the protagonist and claiming the reward would count as a valid conclusion. So for now, waiting for the villain was the correct move.
Fifteen minutes passed.
“Ugh… Baengnae is bored.”
Unlike the White Label story, where hostile farmers had appeared immediately, the villain here remained nowhere to be found. The café stayed peaceful. The customers were kind, and the gluttonous uncle served them with a hearty laugh. Where the hell are the villains?
Before Baengnae could go berserk and turn the genre into a zombie apocalypse, I needed a solution. If the world ended, we would have to infect every human in this story to reach the ending. I had no intention of wasting time on that.
“Baengnae wants to eat!”
Why are you always so impatient…?
Then I noticed something odd. As a Zombie Summoner I was normally numb to the smell of corpses, but that very familiarity made me sensitive to it. The stench was thick throughout the entire café. Baengnae had entered her awakened state because of it.
This story… was horror?
The Gluttonous Uncle’s Dessert Café used humans as ingredients for bread and tea. I only smelled something pleasant because I was a Zombie Summoner. An ordinary user would have been overwhelmed by revulsion the moment they stepped inside.
“Didn’t expect that.”
I sighed once and gestured that Baengnae could eat. Killing everyone here was fine. Anyone who baked people into bread and anyone who happily bought and ate it were all villains.
Once Baengnae began, the café became a slaughterhouse.
“Aaaagh!”
“Owner! Owner!”
“Run! It’s a monster!”
While the pink wallpaper turned crimson, I headed for the storage room. If the story followed this pattern, the protagonist was likely among those captured for food. The side door behind the counter led to what looked like a prison. People still alive were crammed behind iron bars.
Let’s see…
As villains often did, the protagonist stood out at a glance. I approached the boy whose face was especially clear and whose eyes were bright—someone who looked like he would have escaped even if left alone. He had protagonist written all over him.
“Hello?”
The boy’s voice trembled, but his words were clear.
“It’s dangerous. The owner here is a famous serial killer. Please go outside and call for help…! Please, help us!”
Even the way he spoke marked him as the protagonist. I gripped the iron bars with both hands and bent them. The metal that had caged humans screamed as it gave way. The boy’s mouth fell open in shock. I put on a quick disguise to play along.
“I’m with the secret police. Don’t tell anyone what you’re about to see. Understand?”
“Secret police…!”
I tossed out a word that would light a fire in a teenager’s heart, then opened the other cages as well. Everyone escaped, yet no one ran. They only watched me nervously, terrified of the killer outside.
At that moment Baengnae came running, her mouth smeared with blood.
“All nyam nyammed. Nothing left.”
The uncle and customers outside had been dealt with too. When I stepped out, the others followed. Those who had been meant for food vomited at the sight of the café. The smell of vomit annoyed me.
“Hey, don’t mess up the scene.”
“S-sorry. Sorry. Hik…”
“Those people came here to eat you. You should be spitting on their corpses, not throwing up.”
At my words the protagonist boy suddenly spat on a corpse.
“Kah—ptoo!”
Then he started cursing up a storm. I had told him to, but I hadn’t expected him to go that far.
Well, that’s what makes him the protagonist.
I looked around for the reward. Red Label rewards were worthless to me even if they came by the truckload, but I still needed to claim one to leave. The protagonist boy approached me.
“My name is Campbell.”
Campbell took a small brooch from his pocket and offered it to me with care. It was shaped like a blue butterfly—nothing particularly useful.
“It’s nothing special, but please take it. I want to become a great secret police officer just like you someday.”
Oh, the reward.
I accepted the brooch and stored it away, then gave the formal thanks.
“I’ll be waiting, boy.”
Villain dead. Reward obtained. The ending triggered. Light enveloped us and we returned to the sixth stage.
***
“Baengnae is full.”
Baengnae patted her stomach beside me, looking content. In that short time she had devoured nearly a hundred human-shaped villains. Of course she was satisfied.
“Then let’s move faster. Better to head to a higher library than keep searching for Blue Labels in the bookstore section.”
“Right.”
We hurried between the bookshelves, searching for a different library. Eventually we found a door. Movement between floors in the bookstore section was usually done by wooden ladders. A door would lead somewhere else.
“Stop.”
I pressed my ear to the door. Rushing in was dangerous. Librarians were ■, so we could run into them anywhere. Better to check first.
Beyond the door came the faint sound of music—calm classical playing. I ran through the zones in my head where such music might be heard. Three candidates.
None of them are bad zones. Good. Let’s go.
The door opened with a creak. An indoor garden spread out before us. A glass dome in the ceiling let in sunlight. Countless plants sat in pots, their leaves vivid and well-tended. A neatly arranged stone path welcomed us.
This was the Garden of Fresh Greenery.
We’ve come to quite a famous place.
The garden’s fame didn’t come from the bright interior or the gentle music. It came from the unique “lumps of information” found here. The Sky Library was, as its name suggested, mostly filled with books. But the Garden of Fresh Greenery had no books. Instead, it had statues. From tiny three-centimeter figures to towering thirty-meter colossi. And in front of every statue stood a speaker—an audio device that played the story sealed inside the statue.
The method was simple. Press the button and you would be drawn into the statue’s story. The grade was indicated by the button’s color, a system unique to this garden.
We strolled along the tidy pebble path, admiring the garden. Walking among the potted forests and stone structures felt like visiting a European museum. Then Baengnae spotted something and clapped.
“There, there.”
“Right.”
Libraries usually grouped similar books together. This place was no different. A cluster of blue-button statues stood gathered in a lavishly decorated space, like books of the same genre shelved side by side. It felt like a smaller garden within the garden, given extra care and decoration.
Baengnae’s hunger had already returned. She immediately chose a statue—a gorilla holding a bunch of bananas. I picked a different one. The story I had been looking for was here.
“Baengnae, let’s do this one.”
She looked at the statue I pointed to and nodded without hesitation.
“That one.”
It was the statue of a dark elf—a mighty warrior baring a powerful physique, gripping a long spear. Since entering the sixth stage, I had three goals:
1. Open the door to the sky.
2. Find the direction for the Zombie Summoner class and make the power stolen from the old users completely my own.
3. Uncover the secrets of this world.
And just now, the edge of the third goal had revealed itself.
Dark elves. Where did you come from, and what are you? Let’s step into their story.