Pruning Interrupted
[Pruning was interrupted partway through.]
I cut the pruning off in a hurry, because the grass and trees that had grown at a reckless pace were starting to spill out beyond the warehouse.
The entire floor was covered in grass that had grown up to my ankles.
It looked just like the turf of a soccer field.
There were even two trees tall enough to reach the ceiling.
It felt almost refreshingly like I’d stepped into a forest.
I could probably have taken a forest bath in here.
“Cough….”
I wandered around the warehouse and let out a small groan.
The side effect of stopping pruning midway was that everything below my elbow had burst apart.
Still, it wasn’t a big deal.
That was just how this skill worked.
If I’d kept going, the arm would have exploded anyway.
No, my whole body would have blown apart.
Head included.
“They say pain is something you get used to, but….”
Pruning was not the kind of pain a person got used to.
Getting accustomed to the agony of your whole body bursting apart was no easy thing.
Besides, I had no intention of trying.
I tore my eyes away from my left arm, which was already growing back.
The energy of the Followers of the Demon Race was purified, so the quest condition was fulfilled once.
[Defeated the Followers of the Demon Race. (8/10)]
[Current completion reward - Pine Cone of the previous World Tree]
“Oh.”
The previous World Tree’s pine cone, huh….
As soon as I heard it, the pine cone from my memory sprang up in my head like a World Tree missile.
And with it came the memory of Kim Mu-yeon being launched sky-high after taking one to the face.
I remembered his upper and lower halves separating, too.
The pine cone was a weapon that had killed an A-class hunter even after he used Heart Break.
That had only been possible because I dumped the energy from Photynthesis Mode into it, but even so…
The real remarkable thing about the pine cone was that it had unleashed that kind of power and still come out perfectly fine, as if nothing had happened.
“Still, once it gets to around 8 out of 10, the reward actually starts sounding worth getting.”
An item tempting enough that I almost wanted to hit the complete button on the quest.
Tempting, yes, but I had no intention of pressing it.
The more times I filled the quota, the better the reward became, which meant the next reward would clearly be better than the pine cone.
No matter how good the pine cone was, giving up the reward for fully completing the quest would be unbelievably stupid.
Besides, I only needed to hunt two more of the bastards.
There was no way it would get worse than this.
This time, the mana obtained through the World Tree Root totaled 555,084.
The first fruit is now 30% away.
When I closed the quest window, another one rose up.
It was about how much energy had been gathered for the fruiting.
“A total of 550,000?”
I hadn’t expected it to climb that much in one go.
Gong Woo-jae, who had drunk a mana amplification potion, had been worth about 500,000….
The snake-man had been 50,000 higher than that.
He’d only been there to fill a seat, but I guess he really was a senior executive after all.
That much mana was proof enough.
Maybe that was why?
The ugly faces of the other executives who hadn’t managed to have their mana drained drifted through my mind.
Bats, mosquitoes, bees….
If I’d learned the World Tree Root a little earlier and drained those guys, too….
“…I think I’d have gotten the first fruit by now.”
The thought that it might really have happened left me feeling regretful.
Right now, I was still 30% short of the first fruit.
This time I’d gained about 20%….
If I’d drained the mosquito or the bee, I probably would have gotten the fruit.
The bat… was so weak compared to the other two that it was almost embarrassing to compare them.
I probably wouldn’t have gotten much energy from it.
Maybe around 200,000, like Ji Sang-wook.
“Anyway….”
I looked back at the message window.
[The first fruit is now 30% away.]
In the ant nest, the message had said it was 50% away.
That made it certain.
“Ha….”
A sigh escaped me before I could stop it.
Just as I’d suspected yesterday in the ant nest.
The message window about fruiting only appeared whenever the percentage changed in the tens place.
In other words, I’d been wasting my time all along.
If I’d known that sooner, I would have already produced the first fruit.
I could have gone to any B-class-or-higher gate and hunted with the World Tree Root.
Because I hadn’t known that, I never even thought of using the World Tree Root when hunting monsters up to now.
You don’t use a slaughtering knife on a chicken.
That was the logic I’d followed when I didn’t use the World Tree Root.
It really was the dumbest kind of stupidity.
I was starting to feel pathetic even toward myself.
The World Tree sapling looks at the manager with pity.
It sends morning dew to comfort the manager.
My smartphone vibrated.
Saessak was sending me morning dew, just like in the ant nest, trying to comfort me.
“You’re really the only one….”
The sapling cheers on the manager and tells him to hang in there.
Yeah, I should.
It wouldn’t change anything if I sat around feeling pathetic and dug myself into the ground.
Now that I knew for sure, all I had to do was go into any gate, use the World Tree Root, and hunt monsters.
Then I’d be able to get this so-called first fruit in no time.
Well, I wouldn’t be able to enter a gate for a few days.
Tomorrow I had to go out as a bodyguard and receive the S-class hunters.
For today, I should just go home and get some proper rest.
Having made up my mind, I turned my head and looked at the wall opposite the door.
There were all kinds of vine-like plants growing there.
“Die….”
Of course, there was something else too.
A human voice reached my ears.
It sounded pitiable, and desperate.
“…….”
I lowered my eyes and looked toward the source of the sound.
It was where the ivy that had grown on the wall met the grass that had spread across the floor.
Lying on its side at the point where the two kinds of plants met was something in the shape of a human being.
Maybe because it had grown so thickly, it almost looked as if plants had sprouted out of it.
I still couldn’t tell what it was.
It looked human, and it also looked like a tree.
If I judged it as a human, I’d say it had gone pale, as if every ounce of vitality had been drained out of it.
If I judged it as a tree, it looked dry and withered like a bundle of dead firewood.
It looked like a sculpture of a person screaming.
Objectively, it wasn’t a pleasant sight.
Still,
“It looks good.”
Subjectively, it looked very good indeed.
A smile naturally spread across my lips.
The thing, with a snake-like tongue flicking from its mouth, rolled its eyes toward me.
In those eyes, as it looked up at me, was desperation.
I had seen that look before.
From the bee-man.
It was the same expression I’d seen there when it had begged and pleaded with me to kill it.
“Kill me….”
It was asking me for the same thing.
I bent my knees and looked down at the thing.
“What? Can’t hear you, asshole. Speak up.”
I could hear it just fine, but I pretended not to.
The way it was begging me to kill it was too ridiculous.
It had sold itself to the Followers of the Demon Race because it wanted to live longer, and now it wanted me to kill it? Wasn’t that a joke?
“Kill me. Please, kill me…!”
“What are you talking about, you lunatic? Didn’t you say you didn’t want to die?”
“That’s….”
“You said you wanted to live forever, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want to live like this-”
“Then what’s the problem? I gave you exactly that.”
Well, there was a problem, of course.
What it had wanted was probably not to live forever in this sort of way.
It said in a panicked voice,
“Not like this, not like this…! I didn’t want this! Not this-”
“Ah. Maybe you don’t believe me when I said you’d live forever?”
Pretending not to understand, I raised one finger.
Then I used Warm Touch and pressed hard on its arm.
Thwup….
The arm, which had turned into something like tree roots, sank inward.
The bastard clenched his teeth as if bracing for pain.
A few seconds after I let go….
“Ta-da.”
His arm returned to its original state.
It restored itself so cleanly you’d think it had never been dented at all.
Confusion clouded the bastard’s eyes as he stared at the arm that looked like tree roots.
He seemed unable to understand why it was recovering.
Of course he couldn’t.
I hadn’t explained what I was doing to him.
“Believe it a little more now?”
“My arm, my arm…? What did you do to my body!”
He screamed when he saw the restored arm.
He seemed to be afraid, as anyone would be after experiencing something they couldn’t understand.
How should I explain this to make him even more hopeless?
After a brief moment of thought, I answered.
“…You’re an engine.”
“An engine…?”
“Yeah. An engine that generates energy to sustain the plants in this warehouse.”
“……!”
“Naturally, the energy being burned up is your mana.”
“What on earth are you talking about-”
“Oh, and don’t worry about mana depletion. It’ll keep getting replenished steadily before you run out. Just as you wanted, so you can live forever.”
The bastard looked at me with a face like he was about to vomit.
No, that wasn’t me imagining it.
He really was about to.
“Ugh, uuuugh! Bleagh!”
But….
What came out of his mouth wasn’t anything like the food he’d eaten.
It was a strand of ivy.
The vine that had grown out of his mouth clung straight to the wall.
“Good. It’s working properly.”
The bastard looked at what had come out of his mouth and suddenly glared at me.
Then he started screaming again, like he was wailing.
“…You crazy bastard! What the hell do you think a person is!”
“Hm?”
“How could you think of doing this to a person? Son of a bitch!”
You crazy bastard!
He started cursing, and the tirade went on for a few minutes.
Son of a bitch, piece of shit, damned bastard, and on and on.
By the time he’d worked through every kind of bastard that existed in the world, he finally quieted down.
As I listened to him, I slowly considered what he was trying to say.
How could I make a person into something like this?
He had a lot of nerve to say that.
I wasn’t some mad scientist from a science-fiction novel.
How could I possibly turn a person into something like an engine for growing plants?
I wasn’t deranged enough to do something like that to a human being.
“Turn me back right now-”
“But you’re not a person.”
That was right.
I didn’t do that to people.
To people.
“What the hell are you talking about! If I’m not a person, then what am I!”
“A monster.”
I said it flatly.
Maybe I should call his race Crowd.
Monsters whose purpose was to overthrow the world.
They kidnapped humans, brainwashed them, killed them, and turned them into mindless beasts.
Could you really call something that did that a human being?
Besides.
“A monster? I-”
“A Follower of the Demon Race. You sold your human soul because you wanted to live longer.”
“……!”
“What, am I wrong? If I am, go ahead and tell me. I’ll correct myself.”
Crowd had sold their souls to a being called a demon.
They were nothing less than enemies of humanity.
No, not just of humanity.
According to Regina, the demons were polluting the lands of Yggdrasil.
The elves’ forests, the dwarves’ mines, and even the humans’ grasslands….
It was more accurate to say they were enemies of every race.
“However you look at it, you seem like a monster to me. Isn’t that right?”
“…….”
Even Saessak didn’t treat Crowd as human.
Whenever it sensed that disgusting aura, it cut straight to the point and called them Followers of the Demon Race.
“And besides… I’m a hunter.”
“……?”
“I hunt monsters and make a living by selling the byproducts or turning them into items.”
“……!”
His eyes widened.
He’d realized that I really wasn’t seeing him as a person, but as a monster.
Was that why?
“…Kill! Kill me! Please, please kill me!”
He started begging like he had before.
He must have realized I was genuinely serious about leaving him here forever.
I let the corners of my eyes and mouth curl upward in a quiet, soundless smile.
Then the bastard shrieked in terror.
“Hiiiik… Monster….”
“That’s harsh. I gave you exactly what you wanted to live forever. To you, I’m not a monster. I’m a god.”
It wasn’t the immortal life he had wanted, of course.
But what did I care about that?