Chapter 35
Inside the dark room stood a round table nearly two meters across.
A bluish light shimmered around it, and a robed figure appeared. Then another robed figure emerged beside him, and then another, until the circle around the table filled with them, one after another.
The first man to appear folded his hands together and let out a long breath. He looked as though he were still deciding how to begin.
After a few seconds, as if he had finally gathered his thoughts, he spoke.
"Bat and Centipede are dead."
The people gathered around the round table were clearly startled, even with half their faces hidden.
The man sitting opposite the one with clasped hands asked the question on everyone's mind.
"How did that happen?"
"Bat was fooling around in an ant nest."
"That idiot."
Everyone at the table spat out an insult in turn.
"Centipede failed while handling the job I gave him."
"The job you gave him?"
"Bringing Yu Jae-i here."
At that, they all groaned in unison.
This time no one cursed, apparently because this hadn't been a stupid death from playing around.
"Was it that Baek Do-hee bitch again?"
A younger voice than the other two raised a hand and asked.
The man with clasped hands shook his head and answered.
"No. It wasn't Baek Do-hee."
"What? They weren't taken out by the White Witch?"
"That will anger him, then."
The younger voice sighed and shook his head.
The others around him jeered and tossed out one negative remark after another.
"Anger? What's the big deal if a couple of those bastards died?"
"Yeah, exactly. They were the weakest among us. He'll understand."
"That's right. Those words are correct."
They did not seem remotely saddened by the death of a comrade.
To people like them, the one they called that person would hardly be expected to grieve either.
"...He was surprised."
Then, from the man with clasped hands came an unexpected answer.
They all revealed a stronger emotion than anything they had shown so far.
It was bewilderment.
"Surprised? You mean he was surprised?"
"Yes. In my limited judgment, that's what it looked like. He was startled. Flabbergasted."
"Good heavens... Is that really true? Do you know why he reacted that way?"
"He did not say."
The questioner must not have expected an answer, because he only nodded.
The others did the same, bobbing their heads in silence.
"However..."
The man with clasped hands drew everyone's attention and tapped the round table.
Strictly speaking, he wasn't tapping the table at all, but the keyboard of the desk where he sat in reality.
A bluish hologram rose in the center of the round table.
"I know he showed that kind of reaction after seeing this."
Inside the hologram were four beings.
One was Centipede, whom they knew well, and the other three were humans they had never seen before.
Even so, they knew exactly what they were supposed to be looking at in that scene.
The human man with a sprout growing from his head immediately seized their attention.
"A sprout... So that's it. Why the hell is he wearing that on his head?"
"I don't know. All I know is that he was shocked and said, 'Why is that there?!'"
That thing. What thing?
They leaned forward and stared at the man with the sprout on his head.
He was holding a huge conifer leaf in his left hand, and he was plucking off each blade before hurling it like a spear at Centipede.
The people watching let out bitter laughs.
One of the leaves he had just thrown like a spear had lodged deep in Centipede's body.
Once one had pierced him, the next followed, and then the next.
Before long, Centipede was writhing in pain, his body bristling with leaves, before crashing to the ground.
"What in the world is this nonsense...! A body given by that person gets pierced by those little leaves?"
"They're probably consecrated leaves."
"Consecrated? What lunatic would consecrate something like that?"
"Think about it. There's only one man who'd do something like this."
"...The White Witch?"
The man with clasped hands nodded again.
The one sitting opposite him tilted his head.
"You're saying the White Witch consecrated a leaf for some bastard we don't even know?"
"Baek Do-woon."
"Baek...?"
"Yes. That bastard is Baek Do-hee's older brother, Baek Do-woon."
"...!"
The people around the table stared once more at the hologram screen.
By then, the sprout had vanished from Baek Do-woon's head. He had slung the giant leaf over his shoulder and was grinning brightly down at Centipede, sprawled on the ground.
His face was the picture of relief, as though he'd just swatted a mosquito buzzing in the middle of a summer night.
＊＊＊
The Seoul night air brushing my cheeks was pleasantly cool.
I drove slowly through the alleys and stole a glance at Yu Jae-i in the passenger seat.
She was lost in thought, resting her chin in her hand and staring blankly out the window.
When Woo Yeon-hoo called his right-hand man, Oh Ju-han, and stayed behind at the Crowd hideout alone, he had worn a grin that was way too smug for comfort while sending Jae-i and me off first. He had definitely misunderstood something.
The man had been smiling so smugly I couldn't even see his face properly in the rearview mirror anymore. Just what sort of filthy idea had gotten into his head?
"What is that key, anyway?"
She scratched her pale, round forehead with the hand that had been propping up her chin, and muttered with visible disappointment.
"If I'd known it'd be like this, I wouldn't have thrown a fit. I should've at least checked the blueprint."
She had looked like she was zoning out, but she'd actually been thinking about the key.
What exactly was a key that a terrorist organization operating in secret across the world was trying to make?
I tried thinking about it too, but as always, nothing even vaguely useful came to mind.
"No idea."
That left me with no choice but to give the most useless answer possible.
She let out a long breath and nodded slowly.
"Manager Yeon-hoo said he'd look into it, so let's wait and see."
"Yeah..."
Right before we left, he had said he'd gather people early in the morning and look into the blueprint.
He seemed just as curious as we were about the key's true nature.
He added one more thing.
He'd also investigate Crowd more thoroughly.
That was his way of agreeing to follow my lead, even though he was doubtful about my guess that they might possess S-class power.
We decided to hand Yong Du-sik's corpse over to the Association.
It was to pass along information about the Followers of the Demon Race.
He was an A-class hunter and vice chairman of Ildae Group, so even if he thought the whole thing was absurd, he would at least look into it.
I pulled to a stop and cut the engine.
"Oh, we're here already?"
Yu Jae-i murmured in surprise.
I hadn't expected us to get here this early either.
I'd driven slowly because it was night and I was trying to be safe, but there hadn't been any traffic, so we arrived in less than an hour.
She opened the car door, then looked back at me.
"It's a little late, but do you want to come in for a bit?"
"Hm?"
I was planning to go in anyway.
"...Payment! I need to give you the reward for the request!"
"Yeah, I should take that."
I got out of the car and followed her into the blacksmith shop.
The shop was quiet.
Had a customer come and gone while it was this late? On the counter sat a stack of yellow bills and a single note.
That hadn't been there when we left.
Apparently someone had really come in while she was gone, figured out the pricing on their own, and left after paying for a kitchen knife.
Come to think of it, I still had to pay her for making Arca and the light armor too.
"Wait here. I'll make it in a second."
Then she took the memo pad sitting on the counter and started scribbling furiously across it.
It was obviously the making of a lifetime pass to the blacksmith shop.
"Aren't you making that a little too roughly?"
"It's not like I'm showing it to anyone."
Even so, she seemed to think it should at least look official, because she stamped the blacksmith mark beside the POS terminal.
The mark was the alphabetic J.Y. engraved into weapons and kitchen knives.
In less than thirty seconds, she handed me the simply finished pass on the memo paper.
[Jae-i's Blacksmith Lifetime Pass - J.Y.]
"...Can I ask you to appraise something with this pass?"
I carefully took the World Tree leaf out of my magic pouch.
Along with it came the five leaf blades that had been stuck in Yong Du-sik's body.
She broke into a grin and told me, "Of course."
Whew. I had worried she'd say no.
Since she had already agreed, I took out the unidentified fist-sized lump I'd gotten from the ant nest too.
"I guessed as much, but this really is a World Tree leaf."
Yu Jae-i muttered as she appraised the item I set on the counter.
I only shrugged at her without saying anything.
I had brought back a World Tree branch and sap from the World Tree's tree.
If I'd gone and brought back a leaf after that, wasn't it obviously a World Tree leaf?
"Where do you even keep getting such priceless things?"
After finishing the appraisal, Yu Jae-i wrote down the result on a note and handed it to me.
[World Tree Leaf. S-grade.]
[Has the property of repelling corrupt energy.]
[Restores stamina when consumed.]
Oh, a stamina recovery effect?
That could work as a substitute for a healing potion.
The property of repelling corrupt energy stood out too.
That was probably why it had killed Yong Du-sik so easily.
Leaves were, in themselves, powerful weapons against things carrying corrupt energy.
And Crowd was made up of things carrying corrupt energy.
"Keep this."
"The leaf? Why?"
"Because you're going to make me a bunch of things with it, obviously."
As I said it, I gave a casual shrug.
Yu Jae-i had been at a loss after seeing the World Tree branch and sap.
She'd been unable to restrain the urge to create.
Once she rested up a bit, she'd undoubtedly start burning with the need to make something out of the leaf too.
"...Why?"
She was staring straight at me.
I got a little awkward and looked away, and she snorted.
"Because I want to thank you."
Then Yu Jae-i picked up the round lump.
"This isn't World Tree too, is it?"
I didn't know how to answer, so I stayed quiet.
That lump was a mixture of soil soaked in World Tree energy and ant carcasses.
If it was a World Tree-related material, then it was one. If it wasn't, then it wasn't.
"It's not an elixir... wait, huh? This is fertilizer?"
"What?"
Fertilizer? The stuff you give plants to help them grow?
No wonder Saessak had sent a satisfied feeling when that thing was completed...
It must have been because it was for eating.
Good job, past me, for not eating it when it felt off!
I had nearly gone and swallowed fertilizer like an idiot, thinking it was an elixir.
"This is A+ grade fertilizer. If you took it to a farming guild, you'd probably make tens of billions without even trying."
"This?"
"Yeah."
When she set the fertilizer on the counter, a message window popped up in the corner of my vision.
It seemed Saessak wanted the manager to give it fertilizer.
Saessak warns that the manager should not sell the fertilizer.
Saessak says it will be deeply sad and sulky if the manager sells it.
Apparently it thought I was planning to sell it.
As if I would.
What sort of relationship did Saessak and I have?
The more Saessak grew, the more power I gained. It was a relationship of one body sharing one life, in the literal sense.
There was no way I'd do something stupid like make Saessak sulk just to grab a quick profit.
But then, how was I supposed to give it to it?
Saessak says to touch the fertilizer and Saessak with Warm Touch to deliver it.
Touch it with Warm Touch?
So, if I touched the fertilizer with my index finger and then touched Saessak, that should do it.
I immediately did as Saessak instructed.
Then the fertilizer floated into the air.
"Huh?"
Yu Jae-i let out a startled sound.
Of course she was surprised. I'd touched the fertilizer with my finger, and it had lifted into the air.
Seeing that, I remembered the way Saessak had handed me various items in the past.
"No way, right?"
Not that it mattered.
The fertilizer flew toward the smartphone as if answering me.
Toward Saessak, who was dancing with wild delight on the screen.
Thunk!
The fertilizer struck the smartphone display.
Then, at astonishing speed, it slipped into the screen.
It looked as if the smartphone were greedily swallowing the fertilizer whole.
"......"
"......"
Yu Jae-i and I just stared as the fertilizer disappeared into the smartphone.
Once it was all gone, a burst of white light shot out immediately.
Light was pouring from Saessak inside the screen.
A moment later, the light vanished completely, and Saessak came into view.
"Saessak's condition is......?"