Chapter 154: Nature's Wrath 3
Chapter 154: Nature's Wrath 3
The clingy, sappy display of affection finally wound down.
After using the vine shower—a bizarre but refreshing fixture I never got tired of—I returned to the Sanctum.
A bag full of herbs and catalysts in my right hand,
and in my left, the toxic weeds I planned to feed the Heart of the Exiled Serpent.
'This won't kill it, right?'
The sweet, languid hours we'd spent together left me so drowsy
that I half-hoped the Heart of the Exiled Serpent would just eat the poison and die.
A lassitude so deep that everything felt like a chore.
Maybe it was because she was an elf, but the afterglow felt especially loose and bonelessly melted.
I mean, I'd been in the World Tree's garden in an elven body—comfort was the only possible result.
All I wanted was to wrap everything up fast and loaf around in peace.
I sprawled on the bed and rolled around, indulging my laziness for no reason at all, before finally dragging myself up.
I channeled magic to pull flowerpots out of a dream.
Little tan pots, suitable for seedlings.
I pressed one toxic seed into each, and within minutes, sprouts were pushing through the soil.
'Is it the World Tree?'
I'd been wondering whether I needed to conjure up a watering can,
but whatever the World Tree was doing in the corner of my room seemed to make it unnecessary.
I had briefly considered arranging them artistically so the Heart of the Exiled Serpent would take an interest,
but from the looks of it, leaving them alone would let the World Tree raise them on its own.
I left the pots covering the narrow table and headed straight for the Academy.
I'd check in on Lee Ha-rin and the alchemists, hand over this pile of herbs,
then touch base with Han Ye-ji and the surveillance team.
After that, I wanted to dive back into Kim Ha-eun's dream-city.
Somehow, letting things drift had landed all three of my Incarnations in one place.
Having them all at the Academy made scheduling a lot easier than I expected.
Things with my Incarnations were moving smoothly,
and I'd even picked up a few friendly Constellations along the way.
The Sword That Severs the Yoke had promised me her aid,
and the job The Incinerating Tyrant had left with me was progressing without a hitch.
I swung the herb bag lightly as I walked toward the magic building where Lee Ha-rin was working.
Crossing the training grounds, people bowed their heads as I passed.
By now they recognized not just my giant form but my elven one as well.
Made sense—I was the only elf in the whole Academy.
Probably easier to spot than my human shape.
My steps were light as I headed into the building that housed the magic labs.
More beastkin than usual were posted around the place.
Watching their pointed ears flick down in repeated bows,
I found a sleazy thought creeping in: maybe a beastkin for my next Incarnation?
"What the hell is...?"
That train of thought derailed the moment I saw the room they were guarding so heavily.
"Ah, Constellation! You're here... Is it just me, or does whatever's in that hand smell a little... pungent?"
Lee Ha-rin wrinkled her nose. The herb scent must have been stronger than I thought,
because everyone around her flared their nostrils. Maybe being in elf-mode had dulled my own sense of it.
No wonder the beastkin guards had been twitching their ears more than usual—
was it all because of the weird fragrance wafting from this bag?
"Never mind that. What is that thing?"
"That? It's a special solution we developed with the alchemists."
The scene in front of me was far more urgent.
No, the man's brain hadn't been scooped out and left floating in a tube.
Just the whole man, bobbing inside a tube.
So I told them not to pull out his brain, and their solution was to submerge him entirely.
Like some kind of pickled delicacy—only the delicacy was a person.
A test subject hung suspended in viscous, pale-green fluid, electrodes dotting his skin.
And in front of the tank, alchemists stood with clipboards.
In what possible light did this look like a criminal interrogation?
It looked exactly like some evil organization conducting live-subject experiments.
"Are you sure this qualifies as 'interrogation'?"
No matter how I squinted, it looked like an evil syndicate growing clone soldiers.
I swallowed the sarcasm that rose up my throat.
These alchemists were doing the work I'd assigned them—couldn't exactly snipe at them.
They beamed like lottery winners every time they talked about the research,
bowing practically in half and thanking me.
"Not yet, technically. We're lowering his resistance without damaging the living body."
The explanation that followed was easier to follow than I'd expected.
Just like games have physical defense and magic defense,
and real life has an immune system that fights off viruses and bacteria,
people in this world had a baseline resistance that countered superpowers and magic.
The Incarnation's innate resistance was blocking ordinary truth serums.
Using something caustic enough to overcome it would damage the subject,
so instead of strengthening the drug, they were weakening the subject's resistance.
"Fortunately, the alchemists we partnered with are showing far better results than expected. If this keeps up, we can solve the Academy's barrier problem and the Constellation-Incarnation link at the same time."
"Huh. That so? Great news, then."
Lee Ha-rin smiled in front of the bubbling tank.
In one hand, a file of papers dense with graphs fluttered.
Everything she was about to say next was going to fly straight over my head.
I could grasp the concept of shaving down resistance to maximize drug efficacy,
but how was I supposed to follow the mechanism by which they whittled away a body's internal resistance?
She looked as cheerful as a kid bragging about a prize,
but the words coming out of her mouth sounded like the discussions she'd been having with her instructors.
'Don't spew that stuff at a layman...'
Eyes sparkling, Lee Ha-rin launched into a breakdown even more complex than the last one.
Left with no other option, I opened my mouth to stop her—
in a way that wouldn't hurt her feelings and would pivot the subject cleanly elsewhere.
"In that case... shall I give you another reward?"
"A... reward?"
The single word "reward" brought the marathon explanation to a halt.
I wasn't in my usual oversized body—I was the elven boy.
I could dress her in something different from last time.
Whatever image flickered through her mind, her face flushed pink.
The alchemists behind her read the atmosphere instantly,
gathered up the herb sack and the tank, and slipped quietly away.
Part of me was annoyed—right in the middle of work?—
but in a world where fantasy and Constellations were real, everyone just rolled with it.
When you thought about it, the current situation had an elf, mages, and alchemists all gathered over one assassin.
Throw in murim and sci-fi elements on top, and apparently nothing fazed anyone anymore.
'Come to think of it, people here have nerves of steel.'
When The Incinerating Tyrant's space battleship had drifted over the Academy,
or when the Sword That Severs the Yoke had visited armed with nothing but a single blade,
the crowds had gawked like they were spotting celebrities, but they hadn't panicked.
I was chewing on that thought when Lee Ha-rin hesitantly spoke.
"Constellation... if it's a reward... may I ask for just one thing?"
The bright, chattering mood had evaporated.
She fidgeted like a student who'd failed an exam, nervously presenting her report card.
The contrast with her usual full-throttle, no-brakes approach was so stark it was almost uncomfortable.
In reality, when I'd offered a reward, she'd turned me into a dress-up doll for her Constellation-themed hobby.
Inside the lucid dream, she'd claimed she wanted to 'serve' the Constellation and ended up giving me a full-body bath scrubbing.
What could possibly make her hesitate now?
A thousand depraved thoughts rioted in my head.
The catch was, we were in a gender-reversed world.
When the roles were flipped, what counted as embarrassing?
A sheet of paper was thrust in front of me while I was still puzzling over it.
In thick, blocky letters at the top:
[COMPLAINT]
●Complainant: Lee Ha-rin
...
‥
I didn't even read the lines below.
She wanted a reward, so she was handing me a formal accusation?
I hadn't seen one of these in my previous life, but here one was.
Thoughts swirled in a dizzy spiral.
Maybe she misread my frozen expression—
her hand crept back behind her.
"Was that... too presumptuous?"
What did a reward have to do with a lawsuit,
and how was calling that 'presumptuous' supposed to make sense?
It didn't feel like a quirk of the gender-reversed world, exactly—
was there some special protocol between Constellations and Incarnations?
"No, just... explain what this is about."
"Ah, yes!"
The words slipped out before I could filter them.
Flat, commanding, all pretense of my usual persona gone.
Still, the fact that I hadn't refused seemed to cheer her, and her voice lifted.
As I slowly read the paper she extended again, something familiar caught my eye.
[The respondent, for the purpose of sexually demeaning the complainant, wrote on an internet forum post: 'lol a whore of an incubus who can't go a single day without licking cunt'...]
It was the kind of crude sexual-harassment comment I'd have scrolled past and laughed off online,
but seeing it typed up under the heading of a legal complaint, with "complainant" and "respondent" attached, was disorienting as hell.
I should have seen this coming the moment she started dressing me in a patient gown inside her unconscious mind.
"There's... quite a bit more, actually."
"Quite a bit?"
"Yes."
She plopped down a stack of papers.
Even just skimming the sections highlighted with quotation marks,
I could guess where most of the posts had come from.
But how did this qualify as a reward for Lee Ha-rin?
And why would my hesitation make it 'presumptuous'?
The whole thing was so far from what I'd imagined that my face must have broadcast my confusion—
because she finally clued in and offered more explanation.
"This sort of thing is normally handled by the first Incarnation, you see..."
A Constellation wasn't an AI with an electronic brain.
Naturally, the more Incarnations you had, the more some of them slipped to the periphery of your attention.
That was exactly why I'd kept three and stopped looking for additional contractors.
And most Constellations didn't bother descending to the mortal world.
Which meant the Incarnation who served as the Constellation's legal proxy
was, by definition, the one who received the most favor and attention.
My first Incarnation was Han Ye-ji.
Lee Ha-rin was my second.
Based on how Incarnations interacted and what custom dictated,
this sort of legal proxy role should have fallen to Han Ye-ji.
To me, it looked like annoying bureaucratic grunt work,
but in the Incarnations' eyes, it was the single biggest way to draw closer to their Constellation.
'Could she actually stand in a courtroom and handle something like that competently...?'
A mental image flickered through my head: Han Ye-ji watching an internet stream and flailing right off her bed.
Yeah. Probably best to leave this stuff to Lee Ha-rin and soothe Han Ye-ji some other way.