Chapter 72: Daily Life 3
Chapter 72: Daily Life 3
Each of my three Incarnations was finding her own path forward, steadily making progress, and I found myself wanting to do something too.
Not that I knew exactly what that something should be.
For now, the fastest route was collecting Nightmare Fragments. The catch was that if I went around stirring up people's nightmares to gather them, I'd leave a trail of casualties behind me.
A Nightmare Fragment was what you got when you took someone's trauma—the kind severe enough to warp a person's character or values—and made it worse. To put it bluntly, it was an item obtained by tormenting someone who already showed early signs of mental illness and pushing them all the way to a full-blown breakdown.
Would I really grab some random citizen off the street and pull that kind of shit just to get a little stronger?
I did consider whether it'd be fine if the target were a criminal, but that wasn't the real issue.
This was a world with laws and rules governing Constellations and Incarnations. If Constellations just started offing criminals whenever they wanted a power boost, how would that be any different from human sacrifice?
It wasn't even that I personally found the idea unthinkable—I was, someone who considered killing a person easier than prying open a tin can lid. This was the foundational ethos of this world.
The reason people worshipped Constellations in the first place was, ultimately, for the sake of a comfortable human life. So wasn't offering up human lives in the name of that worship a complete reversal of priorities?
That was why, even though people offered all kinds of art pieces and point-worthy goods to Constellations, rituals involving living sacrifices were virtually nonexistent.
Which was, I supposed, why all those restrictions made a rare ritualist like Lee Ha-rin hold such high social status. If you could just toss any old thing to a Constellation, who would bother putting in the grueling effort to conduct a proper ritual?
Purify your body, avoid all impurities, follow the precise procedures atop a magically treated altar—only then would it reach the Constellation. That was what people paid for.
In any case, among all those restrictions, a viable path for me turned up in an unexpected place.
"So I just do it like this?"
"Yes. Wave the branch three times over the wheat."
A collaboration with the Unfading Giant Tree. That was the answer.
"Walk three steps, then three waves close enough that the leaves brush the wheat. Repeat that three times, and then... toss the branch onto the field?"
"Yes, exactly."
The Unfading Giant Tree belonged to that class of Constellations who commanded a vast number of Incarnations, far more than I did. Unlike me, she maintained contracts with two distinct types.
The first were combat Incarnations like Jeong Ah-rin, who received a druid's Authority. The second were the farmers who received the World Tree's blessing.
Even with Constellations and Incarnations and alien monsters in the picture, people still had to eat. The level of technology—smartphones, TVs, computers—was roughly on par with my original world, so farming followed similar lines too. Which meant that whether through magical aid or a Constellation's blessing, food was ultimately cultivated in paddies and fields.
An era of factory-produced wheat and pork like the one the Incinerating Tyrant had reached was a distant, distant future for most.
"Are you sure this is really all it takes?"
"It is. I find it difficult to send all my clones out to handle it, so I'm asking you. It shouldn't be hard for you, should it?"
The blessings she could bestow upon farmers came in two varieties: a blessing granted directly to the farmer through an Incarnation contract, and a blessing bestowed upon the farmland itself.
Blessing the farmer was as simple as clicking a button from my room, but blessing the fields was apparently a different story.
"Is it all right to strip off this many branches?"
"Once they touch the ground and return to nature, the World Tree grows just that much more. It's fine."
Thick branches, each as big around as a man's forearm, kept dropping onto my floor from the large branch that occupied my studio apartment, stacking up like firewood. They fell as lightly as autumn leaves, but when dozens of forearm-thick branches came down, the volume was absurd. Thanks to that, my room was flooded with a crisp, forest-fresh fragrance—like I was standing in the middle of the woods.
"So... I'm counting on you?"
Her request brought to mind the spirit she'd sent to visit my room last time. The one that had met my eyes, flickered with a moment of distraction, and then—poof—vanished on the spot. That delicate little spirit clone. Yeah, trying to bless the eastern continent's granary belt with something that fragile would be rough.
The points she was offering were substantial, it doubled as clone practice, and it was a chance to travel all over the eastern continent. I had no reason to refuse, so I accepted without hesitation.
※
A Constellation acting as another Constellation's proxy.
A Constellation with too much pride, or one who'd been royalty in a past life, would never agree to it. But I had no such hang-ups. Specifically, my points scaled with whatever my Incarnations earned. So with my income effectively doubling, why the hell wouldn't I?
The points were basically duplicating themselves.
'I should've known better.'
Blinded by points, I'd miscalculated a couple of things.
The first was the sheer scale. I'd figured I'd just pop over as a clone, get shown around by the farm owner, toss a branch, and call it a day. I'd thought I could scarf down points as easily as cake.
"Right this way, then!"
Reality could not have been more different.
It wasn't just a ritual; it was a village festival and ceremony rolled into one, all to pray for a bountiful harvest—and a genuine Constellation was physically showing up to grant a visible, tangible blessing. Back in my world, even some backwater countryside rite with a pig's head on a table would draw a noisy crowd. So if a real Constellation descended and bestowed a blessing people could see with their own eyes, how many people did I think would show up?
"My, my, what a fine-looking young man."
"Auntie Kim! You run your mouth off at the Constellation and you'll get struck down, so just shut it."
"Eh? That pretty young master is the Constellation?"
"That's right. So zip it and drink your makgeolli."
A swarm of dirt-smudged farming aunties crowded in, straight from the fields. A whole pack of crew-cut uncles followed, balancing serving trays on their heads. I'd heard somewhere that aunties got those tight perms because the style lasted longer. With the gender roles flipped, it seemed the farmer uncles just buzzed their heads to minimize hair care entirely.
The uncles in their loose work trousers came hauling all sorts of things—makgeolli, savory pancakes, boiled pig head-meat—and before I knew it, the harvest-rite had turned into a full-blown village party.
I dodged the uncles and their sun-bronzed skin earned through field labor as they pressed drinks on me and swung the World Tree's branch. The flapping sleeves were a bit of a nuisance—
The second thing I hadn't thought through: this was a gender-reversed world.
As a man, I was positioned closer to a shrine maiden than a priest, closer to a saintess than a pope. What that boiled down to was: fluttery clothes. Flowing, billowy garments, while aunties with grins stretching from ear to ear looked on.
There were some younger people around, farming being a Constellation-adjacent profession, but that didn't exactly make it a thrill.
If it were a crowd of beauties staring at me, I could endure it. Being ogled by wrinkled aunties... not my favorite vibe.
— Hey, isn't that kind of thing your taste... or not?
— No way, man. Isn't that the male attendant's uniform for the World Tree?
The outer robe was like a traditional hanbok's durumagi, with wide sleeves. Pure white fabric embroidered with golden thread that traced vine-like patterns coiling beautifully around the waist, like a climbing tree. It didn't resemble a skirt, nor was it revealing in any way, but the whole silhouette screamed "feminine" to my eyes.
From behind me came the wet sound of gulped saliva, followed by the noisy smack of backs being slapped and scoldings about shamelessness and blasphemy.
"Good heavens, you're going to tear your eyes wide open, you old disaster."
"Here now, stop advertising you're a widow and just eat your pancake. Leave her with the makgeolli and she'll cause a scene."
"You know that what's-its-name village down the road, U-oen? They got smote by divine punishment and lost their whole year's harvest. You know about that?"
Amidst the chaotic henpecking of the uncles, the snatches of intriguing gossip nearly made me trip over a field ridge, but I managed to get through the ceremony without incident.
Between dodging the uncles who'd prepared the feast and kept trying to press more things into my hands, and the leering gazes from some of the aunties—and the uncles scolding them for it with renewed chatter—I made my escape.
'Guess there really is no such thing as a free lunch in any world.'
It hadn't been backbreaking labor, exactly. Just an event whose scale felt precisely worth the points it paid. Judging by the number of branches I still had, I'd be doing this a few more times.
Thankfully, for traveling I could just dismiss the clone and re-form it at the next location. I'd come perilously close to understanding the heart of a celebrity getting run ragged through multiple events a day.
Still, getting to tour the eastern continent's grain belt meant learning all sorts of interesting things, which I genuinely enjoyed. Foundational common-sense stuff about this world that you couldn't pick up from an internet site.
The Eastern Continent was vast.
So vast, in fact, that regional dialects sometimes differed almost to the point of being separate languages. It answered a question that had nagged at me: why this sprawling continent used a language 99% identical to Korean.
In the central cities, the character 阮 was read as "Won" in the standard speech, but in the continent's southeast, they read it as "Nguyen." Some regions pronounced it "Yen," others "Wan"—the variations were endless. Languages that, in my previous life, belonged to entirely separate Asian nations existed here under the single label of "dialects."
The Western Continent probably used English as its standard while Spanish or French passed for local dialects, wouldn't you think?
All this meant I got to sample a dizzying spread of traditional foods made from regional specialties, which was nothing to complain about. I indulged in everything from the classic pairing of scallion pancakes and makgeolli to grilled chicken with a sake-like brew. The distinctive flavors carried a rustic edge that set them apart from anything you'd get at a city restaurant.
"Aigo, thank you for your hard work."
A dark-skinned old woman approached and bowed her head deeply.
I'd been enjoying the way the rituals varied from village to village, but a lot of people seemed anxious that the Constellation might have gotten bored. That was why, as I stood watching the villagers ignite the piled-log altar and circle around it in dance, someone resembling a village chief kept edging closer.
The worry was that a gathering of nothing but old folks, throwing their own little drinking party, might have angered the Constellation who'd been watching it all. Perhaps that concern was sharper because the Constellation in question was a refined pretty-boy who looked wholly out of place at a grubby country festival.
'Was this the Unfading Giant Tree's taste?'
Come to think of it, why had she dressed me in traditional garb when the whole ceremony just needed a World Tree branch tossed onto a field? And the way this clone's appearance had shifted a little under the influence of that elf-typical, deep-forest-scented magic...
Well, she was a girl who'd lived alone for centuries, wasn't she? Maybe she'd let herself indulge in just a little bit of mischief. I had no intention of prying into nuances that subtle.
Han Ye-ji preferred me with soft eyes and a languid air. Lee Ha-rin liked a tall, broad-shouldered form that looked dependable and imposing. Kim Ha-eun favored a solid build but with a slightly reduced frame that kept us on a similar scale.
'So is the elf's type the delicate, slender body?'
My current form was far thinner than anything Kim Ha-eun would have imagined.