Rebirth
Thankfully, Rune's cooking skills were quite good.
In his previous life as an Imugi, he'd learned cooking from shoulder to shoulder while living among the humans sacrificed as offerings, so it came out half by choice, half by necessity.
“What kind of class was this that the fish dish turned out so abundant?”
Perdikion's inner thought drew a gentle reply from Christina.
“It's a cooking lesson. Since this child was interested, I decided we would cook together starting today!”
“...Huh?”
Perdikion glanced back at Rune, then muttered something uneasy: ‘A hatchling destined to become a lord of the Dark Tribe... cooking... yeah, I guess that's possible...’ before starting to eat.
The taste was excellent.
Moreover, with Baekya and Rune's good appetites, they cleared every plate of food without leaving a single bite.
Perdikion looked a bit tired at the prospect of devouring so much fish at once, yet the food carried power-enhancing mana, and it was his younger brother's first attempt. He finished every dish on the table.
‘Fish seem too much for me yet. I'll have to try something easier next time.’
While dipping crispy fish into the sauce, he began selecting resurrection candidates from Christina's dishes.
The next day.
Rune left Baekya in the room and stepped out alone.
As soon as he arrived in the kitchen, he located the storage filled with herbs.
The ingredients he had in mind were right there.
“Found it.”
Bundles of pine needles tightly clustered on branches awaited.
Rune scooped up the entire bundle, flashed a grin, and hugged it close.
“If animals won't work, then plants will.”
He set the herb bundle on the sink and focused once more.
“Resurrect.”
Paat.
The plant's condition, already decent, shifted.
It looked as if it had simply continued growing right where it was.
Of course, that didn't mean it was satisfactory.
It hadn't sprouted into a complete tree shape.
‘Damn. It didn't work this time either?’
Rune crossed his arms and tapped one foot. The ability he'd finally obtained was a taboo, yet he felt no pleasure at being unable to freely draw on it.
Glaring at the wooden branch with irritation, he noticed something odd.
‘A sprout there too?’
It was tiny and blunt. As if it had been there from the start.
‘No way. There was definitely no sprout before.’
He narrowed his bright green sprout with a glare and clenched then opened his right fist.
He felt he'd finally grasped the thread of his power.
He scanned the room and headed for the shelf of glass bottles for tea ingredients, rummaging through them.
‘Not this. Wait, this!’
In his hand he held a tiny pink rose bud—barely the size of a fingernail—that had been shaped into tea leaves and placed in several bottles.
He popped the lid at once, and a faint rose scent wafted out.
He tilted the bottle, shook it gently, and two dried rose buds tumbled out.
“Resurrect.”
Paat.
Light burst forth as expected. The buds began to unfurl with fresh life.
Watching life take root in what had once been a dead flower was awe-inspiring.
Yet it remained imperfect, green and fresh but still lying on his palm.
‘Almost there.’
Rune clicked his tongue, put the bottle away, and shoved the bud into his pocket.
‘I get it roughly. How do I use this?’
He wandered the kitchen, testing every ingredient one by one.
The results were fresh apples, smooth onions without a single blemish, firm potatoes, plump carrots...
And.
“...Hah.”
Finally, what he held was a ripe tomato that had turned a bright green.
“Wrong.”
He hurled the tomato to the floor, but it bounced back, unflinching.
‘Damn. Something easier than fruits, tubers, or flowers...’
Taking a deep breath to calm his rising impatience, a final candidate surfaced in his mind.
‘...Seeds?’
He searched the kitchen but found no suitable seeds.
‘If something is medicinal, it's not even used. With nothing but a single seed, this was hopeless.’
‘Such a trivial level! How many layers of rank must one reach to use it properly?’
Even if he found a seed and succeeded, the time needed to master it would be enormous.
‘There must be a way. Rank is just a unit, after all, and includes the years lived and the attribute.’
This place ranked among the innermost chambers of Christina's lair.
In other words, it was overflowing with the light attribute, which stood directly opposite darkness.
The realization hit him like a fist to the other hand.
“Exactly. That's why Ferdikion mentioned preparing a night class.”
The place was fundamentally good for recovery, yet not ideal for a darkness-attribute practitioner to unleash full power.
The moment he grasped this, Rune snatched a dried fish from the fridge—the one he'd experimented with yesterday—and cast a transport spell.
The kitchen vanished behind him. He had arrived at the very spot where he'd first hatched as a hatchling.
Ruins left by black dragons, mana stones, and an atmosphere thick with darkness.
For some reason, the feeling was familiar, and confidence surged.
“Here, my attribute should be even stronger.”
He carried the dried fish past the black dragon artifacts toward the center.
Yet something caught his eye.
‘This?’
No matter how much he searched, the exact size and color of the black, small seed he wanted had appeared on a soft cushion.
Rune tossed aside the dried fish he had carried for the experiment and picked up the seed with keen interest.
At the same time, information on the seed bloomed in a small window through the transmitted knowledge.
— Species: Bewitching Black Rose blooming in the Demon Realm
— Hatch conditions: Unknown
— Requires soil infused with darkness attribute to grow.
※ Note: With very low probability, a soul is embedded in the seed.
‘A flower that blooms in the Demon Realm?’
Not all information was public, yet the fact that this item could only be obtained here—meaning from the Demon Realm—felt certain.
He checked the surroundings and the corners of the lair, but no trace of the seed shell remained.
The note bothered him slightly, yet the central area pulsed with the black dragon's aura, and the seed carried the darkness attribute.
He didn't know the hatch conditions, but that didn't matter.
‘As long as the “Resurrect” Word of Power worked properly, conditions were unnecessary.’
He took a calming breath and lifted the seed.
“Resurrect!”
Blink.
Life's light exploded from his palm more powerfully than ever.
Tick. Tok.
The seed in his hand twitched slightly.
Next, its pointed tip cracked, and a black sprout poked out.
‘Great! Keep going!’
Rune found himself cheering for the sprout without realizing it.
He watched the seed unfurl its leaves as if it had met sunlight, his Imugi eyes gleaming.
But that was the end.
The leaves spread slower than expected, and growth gradually stalled.
“No!”
The shout that escaped him made the paused seed harden instantly, motionless.
Rune sighed.
“...This isn't working either?”
‘I thought a seed of the same attribute would yield a better result.’
The final resurrection candidate.
The sense of the Word of Power's power waning filled him with despair.
‘In the end, I only sprouted a sprout.’
The burning frustration made him almost hurl the seed, but he sensed something strange.
A tiny root from the sprout gently prodded his hand.
‘Is it an illusion?’
The touch was barely noticeable, yet Rune felt it intensely.
He shifted his grip, brought the seed with its sprout close, and examined it again.
Crawl.
The seed had grown roots that now waved in his palm.
It even seemed to sense his intent to toss it and tried to root and absorb power.
‘! It's real.’
The seed was weak, but it clearly sought his darkness, wrapping its leaves in darkness.
Attempting to obtain nourishment was the basic survival instinct of life.
The mana of the black dragon might serve as excellent nourishment for a seed from the Demon Realm.
Rune decided to share some mana with the little creature.
Sluuurk.
As if waiting, the sprout began to absorb his mana little by little.
‘It lived!’
Joy at success made Rune open his mouth unconsciously.
He scanned the area for soil infused with darkness but found none.
He furrowed his brow.
‘I just saved it. I can't let it die here.’
He refused to give up and rummaged through the artifacts.
He opened ancient chests carefully and tested artifacts infused with darkness by placing them near the sprout.
All to no avail.
Meanwhile, the seed was slowly losing strength.
Rune tormented himself with worry.
‘If a sprout needs soil to obtain nourishment, then as long as there's some substance that can absorb it—’
He had never grown a flower, so the situation was desperate.
As he twirled in place seeking a solution, something clicked.
‘I recall a human who claimed to have developed a technique to grow plants without soil.’
It had sounded unrealistic at the time, but now it was worth grasping at any straw.
‘They said the nutrients were contained in dense, firm beads that plants could grow in, and that planting them in bottles or vases would work.’
A trivial rumor he'd dismissed as nonsense.
He examined the information one by one, letting his anxiety settle as much as possible.
‘Nutrients—my darkness mana, naturally. As long as I have a medium to hold it, I can grow it.’
Ordinary plants would need soft soil to root, but the black rose in his hand was powerful enough to pierce skin.
‘With this strength, it could root even in something firmer. But the artifacts are resisting... so it can only absorb pure darkness.’
In that instant, he found the perfect medium that matched every condition.
‘My scales!’
He immediately pulled out the golden bracelet, his polymorph artifact.