The Sap of the World Tree
[Sap of the World Tree]
[It has the property of storing mana. World Tree Mana Storage in progress.]
[Can store up to 50,000 mana]
“......?”
I took the note Yu Jae-i handed me and tilted my head.
Was it really that surprising?
Was storing mana such an incredible ability?
I didn’t know, but she looked as if she’d just seen something impossible.
Why, exactly?
I stared down at the sap resting plumply in my palm.
It looked delicious, like pudding, and I found myself licking my lips.
I opened my magic pouch to put the sap back in, but
“Wait, wait a second!”
she stopped me in a panic.
I watched her drag over a log with a great deal of effort and asked, “Why?”
“Could you let me handle that too? I promise you won’t lose a thing!”
“It’s sap. Can you even use this for item crafting?”
“Of course. You use monster tears and blood to make equipment all the time, so why couldn’t you use sap?”
“Ah... now that you mention it.”
As she said, things like Bluebird Tears and Troll Blood were used in item crafting.
There was no reason the sap of the World Tree couldn’t be used too.
I had no idea what kind of effect it would produce if she made something from it, but Yu Jae-i was the expert. She must have ideas of her own.
“Fine. Please do.”
With that, I carefully set the sap down on the counter.
Yu Jae-i watched it roll a little before the register caught it, and broke into a bright smile.
She looked as happy as a child who’d just received a mountain of Christmas presents from Santa Claus.
That smile lasted until she noticed I was looking at her; then she jerked her head away.
After that, she said, “I’m going to check the materials. Just the materials.”
and went through the door behind the counter.
She didn’t look my way even once as she dragged the log along.
Apparently she was embarrassed after so plainly showing her feelings.
Her ears were a little red too.
About five minutes passed.
“What am I going to do? I’m sorry.”
Her voice came from inside the room.
After finishing the material check, she came back out through the door, making notes as she spoke.
“It’s going to take a while. We’re short on materials, so I’ll have to buy some.”
“What do you need?”
“A Watcher’s eyeball.”
The Watcher was a monster that appeared in the North Han Mountain Insubong Gate, which was rated A-class.
It was a floating, oversized spherical creature, with a huge eye taking up half its body.
From its rear hung tentacle-like limbs, and beneath them was a mouth packed with sharp teeth.
It was also famous for having a vicious personality.
Because it drifted through the air and fired off beams of various attributes from that enormous eye, hunters called it an “eyeball monster.”
“I’ll go hunt it.”
“Oh, will you?”
“Yeah. How many do you need?”
“Three? No, better make it five to be safe.”
The Watcher attacked with multiple attributes.
It was the perfect target for testing the new bark I’d obtained.
And if I brought the materials back myself, I could save on the cost too.
My dismantling skill wasn’t good enough, so I’d have to ask a dismantler near the gate to handle the carcass, but it would still be cheaper than paying the blacksmith for the materials.
It would also cut out the biggest chunk of the markup.
“I’ll bring back plenty.”
With that, I left the smithy.
First, though, I needed to contact Chairman Woo Chan-sung before heading to the gate.
To enter an A-class gate, I needed a hunter license, and he had mine.
“Let’s see... where did I put the business card that old man gave me...?”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The place I stopped by to meet Chairman Woo was St. Mary’s Hospital in Gangnam.
When I couldn’t reach him, I’d gone directly to the Ildae Group, and from Kim Min-ju’s colleagues I’d heard he’d gone to the hospital with his son.
He’d gone to see his daughter, Woo Chae-yeon.
They were probably sharing in the joy of hearing that, now that they had the Udamhwa, her Jeolmaek-jeung could be cured soon.
Normally I wouldn’t have wanted to interrupt family time, but I’d already told Yu Jae-i I’d go get the materials myself.
It would have been embarrassing to return empty-handed, so I decided to steal just a little of their time.
“Move back!”
“Set up a safety line here, here!”
“......”
When I arrived at St. Mary’s Hospital, it was in chaos.
It had frozen over as if it had been attacked by ice magic.
A massive ice pillar, so huge it looked as though a giant had driven a stake into the building, was embedded high up in the structure.
I could see Kim Min-ju helping with the evacuation, caught between police officers and government hunters.
And she wasn’t the only one.
I also saw the support team members from the expedition group, people I’d passed a few times inside the gate and recognized by face.
“A rampage...”
I could roughly guess what had happened.
Woo Chae-yeon.
The yin energy inside her, the one caused by her Jeolmaek-jeung, had clearly burst out beyond her body.
And... she was probably dead.
It was a chill strong enough to freeze an entire building.
There was no way Woo Chae-yeon, the source of it, could still be alive.
And perhaps her father, who must have been with her, too....
Woo Yeon-hoo, an A-class hunter, might have survived.
With that thought, I pushed against the flow of evacuating people and headed for the hospital.
As I approached, police officers and government hunters stepped in to block me.
Of course they would stop some masked stranger walking toward a hospital that looked ready to collapse at any moment.
“You-”
“It’s fine! He’s an A-class hunter from our guild!”
Kim Min-ju cut in front of the people who were about to bark at me.
Then she tried to convince them that I was absolutely no threat.
The police gave her an unpleasant look.
Since this whole mess had happened because of the daughter of the Ildae Group chairman, they probably didn’t like the company employee standing in front of them either.
But maybe my being “the one here to solve this problem” convinced them, because the police stepped back.
Even after retreating, though, they didn’t let their suspicion go, and kept glancing between her and me.
“Ji-on... sir...”
Kim Min-ju called my name in a voice thick with tears and looked up at me.
Her face looked like she’d burst into sobs if I poked it.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
I told her at once that it was okay.
She was apologizing for introducing me to the police and hunters under a false identity.
It had been a quick improvisation on her part, a way to smooth things over.
I had no intention of blaming her for that.
More importantly, if she’d told the truth without knowing my real identity, it wouldn’t have solved the problem at all. It would only have made things worse.
“I still haven’t gotten the compensation I’m owed from Mr. Woo Yeon-hoo.”
“Pardon?”
“So I came to collect it in person.”
“What do you mean by that... ah...!”
Kim Min-ju’s eyes went wide, and a tear slipped down her cheek.
After all, what was the point of getting compensation if the person was dead?
“Thank you...! Thank you so much!”
As she said that, Kim Min-ju squeezed her eyes shut.
It looked like she was forcing herself to remember that now was not the time to cry.
When she opened her eyes again, the tears were gone.
“Chairman Woo is currently in the VIP room on the 17th floor.”
“Understood.”
“I’m sorry I can’t go with you. The others are rushing over too, but...”
Probably because it would take them time to get here.
“It’s fine. I’ll handle it.”
“Please!”
Leaving Kim Min-ju behind, I entered the hospital.
The moment I stepped inside, it felt as if I’d walked into a gate.
Outside, it was a pleasant May spring day, but inside the hospital everything had frozen solid.
The elevator was unusable, frozen over, so I took the stairs up.
By the time I reached around the 15th floor, ice was blocking the stairwell.
From there on, I used Warm Touch to melt and break the ice as I climbed.
“...Strange.”
Not a single dead body showed up on the way up.
In a situation like this, the fact that not one person had been frozen to death didn’t make sense.
Of course, I was glad there weren’t any.
I decided not to think about it and kept going to the 17th floor.
When I reached the VIP room on the 17th floor, I understood the situation completely.
“He suppressed this? The man’s completely insane.”
My prediction had been wildly off.
Woo Chae-yeon was, astonishingly, still alive.
Her father, Chairman Woo, had also survived, though he’d fallen unconscious.
The reason they could still be alive was entirely due to Woo Yeon-hoo.
He had been pouring out mana to wrap around Woo Chae-yeon’s body and suppress her rampage.
That explained why I hadn’t seen a single dead person on the way here.
He must have held back his sister’s rampage until everyone had evacuated.
It was an astonishing level of willpower.
“Ji, Ji-on? Is that you?”
His voice carried both shock and disbelief, tangled together with confusion.
I pushed out my own mana in response.
Blue mana spread out from me, blanketing the people in the room.
Woo Yeon-hoo, Chairman Woo, and even Woo Chae-yeon.
“......?”
When my blue mana reached Woo Chae-yeon, her condition changed.
Just moments ago she had been clutching herself tightly, struggling to control her rampage.
The tears that ran down her face froze the instant they fell, and the lips she had bitten until they split had frozen too, leaving no blood to flow.
But once my mana touched her, her condition visibly improved.
The frozen blood on her lips thawed and began to run, and the tears that had frozen on her cheeks slid downward.
Her body, which had been trembling so hard she could hardly stand, steadied enough for her to turn and look at me.
“How... how did you do that?”
I didn’t know how to answer her, so I couldn’t answer at all.
I had only released mana, just as Woo Yeon-hoo had been doing until now.
The one thing I could guess was that my mana’s nature wasn’t ordinary.
After the World Tree sprouted and I gained the title of World Tree Manager, the nature of my mana had changed to something like the World Tree itself.
Maybe because of that, my mana was affecting her in a good way.
Woo Yeon-hoo withdrew the mana he’d been releasing and came to stand beside me.
“Ji-on. You never cease to surprise me...”
“I didn’t really do anything.”
I was telling the truth and meant to smile faintly, but then I remembered I was wearing a mask and stayed still.
Woo Chae-yeon looked up at her older brother, then bit her lip.
It was already split from where she’d bitten it before, and now a fresh wound opened on top of it.
“Sorry, oppa...”
“Forget it. Worry about your own body.”
Then Woo Yeon-hoo turned to me.
Just from his expression, I could tell what he wanted to say.
Thanks to the mana I’d released, Woo Chae-yeon’s condition had improved a lot, but the rampage itself hadn’t ended.
In other words, I’d only stopped it from getting worse.
I hadn’t calmed it down completely.
“Mr. Ji-on. Do you happen to have any good way to handle this?”
“Sorry. I’m not a doctor, so I...”
As I was apologizing, a holographic message window popped up.
[World Tree Summon (S-class) skill unlock conditions met!]
[World Tree Manager Baek Do-woon has continuously released mana, steadily reducing the surrounding negative energy.]
[As a reward, the unlock conditions have been met, and you can now summon the World Tree.]
[Current maximum active duration - 30 seconds.]
...Out of nowhere?
It was sudden, but either way, this was good news.
World Tree Summon turned a certain area into its domain and nullified all negative energy around it.
It probably couldn’t cure Woo Chae-yeon’s Jeolmaek-jeung, but it should be able to suppress the rampage itself.
“Mr. Ji-on?”
“I just found a method.”
“Just now?”
“It seems worth trying. May I?”
When I asked, Woo Yeon-hoo looked to his sister to confirm her wishes.
When their eyes met, Woo Chae-yeon nodded after he gave her a small nod of his own.
Then she bowed politely toward me.
“Please... I’m counting on you.”
“It won’t hurt.”
I used World Tree Summon for the first time.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
96 hours, 41 minutes until Baek Do-hee arrives in Korea.