The Academy Brimmed with Life (3)

"Haaak—!"

I opened my eyes to the sensation of my heart dropping clean out of my chest.

My vision had spun without warning, and I'd gone down where I stood. Just as Ermia had said at the very end, mana exhaustion must have finally caught me. Even without her words I would have known it on instinct. The dizziness was identical to what I felt whenever I exchanged goods in bulk through Mana Market.

But... setting that aside. Where in the world was I?

I was fairly sure I'd heard them say they were taking me to the infirmary, yet nothing about this place suggested a room meant for treatment. It was familiar, though—somewhere I had definitely seen before. I wrung out my freshly woken mind and dug through my memory.

"Oh. Costco?"

To any Korean, the view was pure Costco. Or Traders, if you preferred. This obviously wasn't either of those actual chains, but the resemblance was unmistakable: a cavernous warehouse store, ingredients stacked in bulk. I'd collapsed on the street in front of the Academy and opened my eyes in some bizarre place.

For a second I wondered if I'd been kidnapped again, but this time the feeling was different. Hard to put into words—a peculiar strangeness in the air of the warehouse, in the atmosphere itself. This was a dream of mine that merely happened to look like a warehouse club.

I must have been more tired lately than I'd thought. Of all things, I'd graduated all the way to lucid dreams. I'd realized it was a dream and still couldn't wake, so there was nothing for it.

Since I was stuck here anyway—

"Can't pass up a trip through the mart."

Might as well browse to my heart's content. It had been a while. If I held a tournament of my favorite places, the mart would easily crack my personal top three, and a warehouse club in particular was every bit as thrilling as Lotte World. My steps grew lighter as I started weaving through the place.

From the far left: vegetables, fresh goods, dairy, meat, and on from there. True to a warehouse whose end I couldn't see, every kind of ingredient imaginable was in stock. The far wall simply wasn't there. How did a store get this big? At this scale it was practically an American cornfield, the kind they dust from crop planes.

Figuring I'd wake eventually if I just looked around in order, I started with the nearest section and worked my way along. The longer I browsed, though, the more a sense of déjà vu flickered at the back of my mind. By the time I reached the sauce aisle, that flicker had hardened into certainty.

Unlike the vegetable and fresh sections, which had held a decent variety, these shelves were packed with only certain sauces. Soy sauce, gochujang, doenjang—chili paste and fermented soybean paste—and from there tomato sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise, even the signature sauce from Isaac Toast. Nothing but sauces I myself had made, lined up without end.

A chill raced through me.

A cold shiver stitched itself from my toes to the crown of my head. Past strange and into outright grotesque—I broke into a run for the next section. But the next aisle, and the one after that...

Every product on display was an ingredient I had made or used. Something registered as merchandise in Mana Market.

Which meant this place wasn't merely inside a dream. It was the interior of the ability I'd been granted without ever learning what it truly was. Mana Market itself.

"Status window, status window...!!"

I called for it like a man possessed by something foul. For the first time since I'd come to this world, the status window refused to answer. I was already inside Mana Market, so the view before me offered neither reaction nor change. In a sense, every object in front of my eyes was the status window.

It was the same incomprehensible dread I'd felt in Nuardel, when I touched the World Tree. A fragment of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠power far too vast for a mere human to endure—I shuddered at the sheer unknown of it.

If something was different from usual, was it the mana exhaustion? Was that why I'd been pulled in here? In a place this wide, with no end in sight, was I really the only one?

No. Calm down. Get a grip.

Out in reality, I had surely collapsed from mana exhaustion and been carried to the infirmary. It was possible some transcendent power really had brought me inside Mana Market. It was also possible that a vague, faint suspicion about the status window—one that had started back in Nuardel and hidden itself in my unconscious—had swollen until it showed me a dream like this.

And the way to judge which of the two was the truth lay in a remnant of failure. Back then, registering an item from the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠World Tree had been rejected, and yet something had remained in the System: a slot among the registered items, occupied by broken characters.

If this place was Mana Market, where the items I'd registered waited to be exchanged, then that entry written in shattered text ought to be here too. An item whose identity I hadn't even been able to guess at. Depending on what form it had taken, the truth of this place would split one way or the other.

Fear poured over me, the kind you get watching some vast documentary about the cosmos. My legs had been shaking for a while already, and cold sweat ran down my forehead. Even so, I tore through the other sections.

At last a refreshing scent I'd smelled many times brushed my nose. The distinctive fragrance of the World Tree's sap and leaves. The broken-text item was probably in the same section—I'd tried to register it together with the sap and the leaves, after all. Breathing in that green scent cleared my near-panicked mind a little.

I moved along shelves drowning in World Tree sap and leaves, rolling my eyes over them in search of the corrupted entry. Leaves and bottles of sap stood packed so densely they played tricks on the eyes. Among them, something of a clearly different shape had to exist.

Huh. What's this.

Between the green leaves and the pale yellow-green sap sat a dull gray-brown lump. Suspicious to anyone who looked, and like everything else it filled the shelves, piled across a vast stretch. It was the size of a kidney-bean seed magnified at least tenfold. In the middle of its gently oval form was the distinctive white hilum you see on a plant seed. Only the size was absurdly huge; in structure, it wasn't much different from an ordinary seed.

Without hesitation I reached for the enormous seed. Whatever it was, I figured I'd only be sure once I'd touched it and turned it over in my hands.

But in that instant—

Behind me. To the left. To the right. Above my head? Below?

I couldn't tell. There was no way to pin down where the sound came from. A gentle, soft voice pressed in from literally every direction and filled my ears.

"What—who are you?! I mean—who are you, ma'am!!"

Whoever was blasting this unprecedented telepathy at me, they were stronger than I was. That much was obvious. I hastily gathered up the casual speech that had slipped out on reflex.

Whether I did or not, the warm voice wasn't conversing with me. It simply delivered the message it meant to deliver.

And in the brief gap between closing my eyes and opening them—

"Jinwoo!! Are you awake? How do you feel? Are you all right?"

"Ahh... Costco, Traders..."

"Talking nonsense. You're still a bit confused, I see. Classic mana exhaustion."

"Yeah? Whew. That's a relief."

I lay sunk into a plush bed. Eilenna, ears drooping as she fretted and couldn't keep still, and Ermia leaned over me, their faces hanging straight down into my view.

Mana Market, shaped like a giant warehouse store—had that really been a dream?

Thump. Thump...

My heart, as if I'd just finished an all-out sprint, was slowly bringing its spiked pulse back down. Cold sweat had left my back unpleasantly damp. If I called it a nightmare, it was convincing enough to dismiss as nothing but a dream. But I still had a way to prove it hadn't been some meaningless scrap of sleep.

The price the mysterious voice had said it would pay. Whatever that price was, the status window probably knew better than I did.

Status window.

This time the window answered my call in full. I opened Mana Market's item list at once.

The text... it's whole.

Before, the item name had been shattered into illegible chaos. Now it showed itself with perfect clarity. Those fist-sized gray-brown lumps I'd found were none other than seeds of the World Tree.

Seeing Exchange Unavailable written there brought the voice's words back to me. I wasn't ready yet. Which meant that someday, I'd be able to obtain the World Tree's seeds too. At this point the hypothesis was as good as confirmed: the World Tree equals The Giving Tree. Leaves, sap, and now seeds—since when was all of that ingredients? Were the elves a cult of mad vegetarians, worshipping one giant vegetable?

I checked carefully for anything else out of the ordinary, but the status window showed no other changes. Aside from the fact that, despite collapsing from mana exhaustion, my condition was strangely excellent?

"Ugh. So, uh... how long was I out?"

"Not that long. It's evening now, so about four hours?"

"Basically just a nap. I feel great."

Whoosh—

I shot my reclining torso upright and rolled my arms to loosen them. The fatigue piled in my shoulders and legs felt as if it had all flown off. My body was refreshed, and impossibly light.

Is this part ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the price too? Not bad.

I was just about to get off the bed and plant both feet on the floor when Eilenna seized my shoulders with both hands and shoved me flat again.

Thud. Whump—

"Ghk—Lady Eilenna?"

"No! Rest a little longer before you get up. Do you have any idea how scared I was? If you were low on mana, you should have said something!"

"I'm sorry. I thought I was just barely going to make it. I blew it this time, so next time the tightrope walk succeeds."

"Next time? Haah... Why are men actually like this. You idiot."

The male special: stretch it to the absolute limit until it finally snaps. And then, even after it snaps, stick it back together and challenge it again. That is a man.

You nearly collapsed on the stone floor and got badly hurt. You're not a moron, so why would you burn your mana down to the last drop. And so on. Eilenna preached her affectionate scolding at me, then let out a deep sigh.

"She's worrying too much, I'll grant you, but the elf has a point. Mana exhaustion can sever your mana pathways entirely, if you're unlucky."

"Ah. Is that so?"

"Yeah. Even accounting for that, the elf was overprotective. Going on about how she had to feed you World Tree sap right this second, or how she herself had to XX you until you XX'd..."

"Waaaaaah!!! Kyaaaaaah!!"

Mm. Eilenna really had been making a fuss. Even so, XX until I XX was a bit much. I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud, so the filter in my brain had censored it automatically.

"Anyway, nothing seriously wrong. The mana you burned through has fully recovered, too..."

"Huh? Really?"

Whenever I used a lot of mana, I needed at least half a day of sleep—a full day, to be safe—before I recovered completely. The only thing I could guess at was that mysterious voice. Maybe, in sending me back to reality, it had topped my mana off as well. That would explain why I felt this good.

"Right. Well, you'd know ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠better than I would, wouldn't you?"

"Pardon? What do you..."

"Don't play dumb. You think the name of the Empire's greatest mage is a joke?"

Then, all at once, Ermia's manner turned serious. Like a detective in a noir film grilling a suspect, she pushed those deep blue eyes in close.

"Increasing the mana of an archmage on my level is anything but easy. Drink a whole bowl of elixir and it still might not rise—but when I ate the toast you made... my mana increased. Only a little. But it increased."

I had the sharp, unmistakable sense that someone had just stepped on my tail. It was difficult to argue, and Ermia didn't seem finished. When I kept up my silence, she drove the wedge in.

"You're not an ordinary chef."

"She's right, Jinwoo. Tell us honestly."

Eilenna, who had been quietly listening off to the side, joined the interrogation.

A sealed infirmary. The Empire's greatest mage, and an elf who seemed a little too obsessed.

One way or another... I had landed in a situation I wouldn't be slipping out of easily.