Chapter 15
Chapter 15
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 15
Chapter Title: Strange Food Chain
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As the number of schools I needed to learn kept growing, the Onyx Plate truly came into its own.
The save and load functions were ridiculously convenient.
Especially the elves' teachings, which were full of abstract, metaphysical concepts. Without diagrams or notes to organize them, it was impossible to understand what they were even talking about later on.
No, is this person insane?
It's not because I'm human—the elven way of explaining things is what's weird!
To sum up Nature Lover's hour-long, verbose, and pretentious explanation in a nutshell: to thaw the frozen land, you needed the blood of living creatures.
If you wanted to rapidly grow and nurture something, you had to pay the price—fertilizer, in other words. Simple logic.
And this land was a frozen wasteland where nearly the entire surface was iced over, so reviving plant life would require a massive amount of blood.
But where the hell was I supposed to get blood?
Should I hunt some living person?
That would mean heading back down to Seoul...
Uijeongbu City was crawling with corpses, but their blood was utterly useless.
So where was I supposed to get blood?
Should I drain my own?
No, that would be putting the cart before the horse.
Drawing blood meant wounding myself, which was a huge loss already.
Beast blood would work too, she said.
Right. A summon's blood counts as beast blood!
So now I was in a crazy situation where I needed to learn druid rituals to level up alchemy, and summoning magic to properly use those rituals.
Studying two extra schools just to learn one—peak inefficiency.
But I had no choice.
In this resource-scarce ice age, alchemy was essential for a comfortable life.
Potion Addict's Laplace School alchemy only covered botany up to 3rd circle. To advance to 4th circle and beyond, where you handled metals properly, this was unavoidable!
Uijeongbu City had stray corpses littering the streets with no known owners.
When I first entered the area, there were plenty of bodies half-eaten and abandoned by the undead.
Human Lover was overflowing with enthusiasm.
Overflowing so much that her excitement was palpable even in text.
Human Lover was so hyped she couldn't contain herself and even uploaded a video.
----
I've never seen anything like this either.
Real beasts howling and dancing? Not AI?
What the hell is summoning school?
How do you make monsters dance like they're in a Bollywood movie?
"This is terrifying."
It was scary.
So that's why they recommended summoning school.
They want to torment beasts together, huh...
No wonder her nick was Human Lover—she doesn't love beasts.
That's what she claims, anyway.
I'd have to ask the summons themselves if they're really close, but I decided not to bother.
That's when Human Lover's teachings began.
From what I heard, summoning school was basically a gacha system.
A dopamine hijacking show with no pity timer.
Gather corpses, tear a rift to the spirit world, and kidnap a spirit beast.
That was the essence of summoning school, as taught by Human Lover.
Human Lover said to bury summons when they die.
But isn't that just wasting meat?
I think this:
In an era where cannibalism happens due to food shortages, burying a dead summon is too wasteful.
Better to use its corpse to summon another, or...
Eat it myself and be together forever...
I stepped out of the hideout.
The cold wind snapped me back to reality.
Inside Cosmic Dust's insulated tent, using the Body Heat Necklace while scrolling the gallery, I kept forgetting this was the heart of an ice age.
Then, stepping outside...
This flesh-tearing cold reminded me of the brutal truth.
"Haa..."
I donned goggles to keep my corneas from freezing, wrapped my face in a muffler, and started walking.
Today's goal: the corpses I'd seen scattered on day one.
Dump them into the pit at my temporary shelter.
'Saw a few around here.'
When I first arrived in Uijeongbu, I'd seen quite a few bodies.
But today, almost all of them were gone.
'Did the undead move them? Why? They don't eat dead bodies.'
The undead crave the warm blood of the living.
They ignore dead bodies completely.
I knew their habits well, so I assumed the corpses would still be there. But no.
In just a few days, nearly all the mummified human remains abandoned for years on the streets had vanished.
'Undead pairing up and hunting in packs is weird enough. Now moving bodies? Even weirder.'
Reactions I hadn't seen in five years.
I knew the undead retained some faint intelligence, but Uijeongbu's were especially odd.
"Found some."
A few remained.
I had no idea what the undead were up to with the bodies.
But I salvaged five survivor remains. That was enough.
Thanks to Elf Hunter's combat magic lessons, hauling the frozen corpses back to base was easy.
"Huu..."
Digging soil to reinforce the walls had left a huge pit in the front yard of my temporary shelter.
I tossed all the remains inside.
And in this world, the materials Human Lover mentioned didn't exist at all.
To craft guaranteed good-pull tickets, I'd need alchemy in the end.
That's the ultimate reason I'm learning alchemy.
To obtain materials or substances that don't exist here, alchemy was a must.
'Let's just try it once.'
This was a probability-based gacha using corpses as currency.
No idea what would come out, but I rolled the dice hoping for something—anything—that could provide blood.
The five corpses in the pit vanished completely.
A brilliant light burst forth, and in their place...
Something did pop out.
But this was...
Its name was Ice Waddler, huh.
It looked just like a penguin.
No...
This was just a slightly bigger penguin.
"Kwaek!"
"...Asking for food?"
"Kwaak!"
The Ice Waddler waddled up to me and boldly demanded food.
Food.
Food... Hmm.
I had nothing to eat myself, and this thing dares ask for food?
It's lost its mind.
I wonder what penguin meat tastes like.
"Kwaaak!?"
"Come here!"
"Kwaak!! Kwaaaak!!"
The chase between the Ice Waddler and me began.
It was a cold, hungry afternoon in the ice age.