Chapter 55
It was Saessak’s fault that the light energy had vanished.
When it fired the pinecone, it had packed in every last bit of that light energy.
Come to think of it, that was why the pinecone had felt stronger than it had at the special event site when it was launched.
Thanks to Saessak’s judgment, I’d been able to bring Kim Mu-yeon down.
He’d still kept going for a while even after taking a hit loaded with all that light energy, after all.
If I’d shot it without charging any energy into it...?
Ugh. I didn’t even want to imagine it.
“As expected of our Saessak. We won because of you.”
Saessak is reportedly sulking.
Seriously, I said I was sorry.
I was the one who’d messed up.
Saessak had been pouting ever since my slip of the tongue earlier.
Inside my smartphone, Saessak had turned the top leaf toward the back and crossed the other two leaves in front of it.
It looked exactly like someone standing there with their arms folded in a huff.
Hah. Who did it take after to be this cute?
“Do-woon, you okay?”
Tae-cheon walked over with the pinecone slung over both shoulders.
He was carrying something that huge like it weighed nothing.
Was he human or a monster?
Thunk.
He set the pinecone down right beside me and grinned.
“N-no, I’m not okay.”
“...”
“I’m serious! It hurts like hell. I can’t even move my body.”
“You can’t move? That skill is impressive, but the side effects are brutal.”
“Tell me about it. I knew it had a penalty, but I never thought it would be this bad.”
“Then—”
“Brother!”
Do-hee came down from the sky and crouched beside me.
Apparently she’d heard me say I couldn’t move, because she cast a heal on me right away.
The warmth unique to light-element magic spread through my whole body.
I was in pain, but warmly so.
“You should be fine now.”
“I’m not fine.”
“Huh? Th-there’s no way.”
Do-hee panicked and cast heal again.
Warmth spread through me once more.
I was still in pain, and I still couldn’t move.
“It’s not doing anything.”
“W-whaaat?”
Do-hee tilted her head, then inspected my body from head to toe.
She was using her healer skill, Health Checkup, to examine my condition.
A few seconds later, her eyes went wide.
She must have figured out why my body was hurting so badly.
Her face darkened as she looked down at me.
“Brother, don’t ever use that skill again.”
“Why?”
“The mana circuit in your nerves, the part that handles mana flow, is a wreck. It’s like it’s been injured over and over, then barely managed to recover each time.”
“Ah...”
I got it now.
The mana that took in the light energy had moved at a frantic pace, tearing at the mana circuits, and my passive skill had repaired the damaged ones.
That must have repeated itself until all the light energy was used up.
In other words, photosynthesis mode was a dangerous skill you absolutely shouldn’t use unless you had a recovery ability absurd enough to regrow even after your guts spilled out.
No wonder every muscle in my body felt like it was screaming.
“It’ll go back to normal, right?”
“Of course not. Not for a normal person.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll be fine, Brother. You’ll just need to rest for about a week.”
“Phew, hey! You scared me.”
“I’m saying it’s that serious—”
“Kheuk!”
There came the sound of Kim Mu-yeon coughing up blood.
From how close the voice sounded, he must not have landed very far away.
Right, Tae-cheon had carried the pinecone here, so of course he’d be nearby.
Tae-cheon drew his longsword and stepped in front of me and Do-hee.
It was the very image of a proper tank.
He didn’t have a shield, though.
“Is that bastard really still alive?”
“...For now.”
“For now?”
“It’d be more accurate to say he’s dying.”
Fair enough.
I’d seen with my own eyes that the pinecone had pierced him clean through and separated his upper body from his lower body.
Even a troll, famous for its regeneration, would die if it ended up like that.
Unless, like me, it had some absurdly ridiculous level of recovery.
It was a shame I couldn’t see it for myself.
Tae-cheon sheathed his longsword and came over to me.
He must have noticed what I wanted.
“You want to see?”
“Yeah.”
“Hm. Then lift your arm a little.”
“Graaagh!”
The moment Tae-cheon lifted me, pain shot through me again.
Seeing how much I was hurting, Do-hee hit Tae-cheon on the back.
Nice one, little sister!
Tae-cheon, who didn’t seem to feel a thing despite being smacked in the back, whispered something to Do-hee.
I focused on their voices, but I couldn’t make out the whisper.
Do-hee looked as if she were thinking for a moment, then nodded.
Huh? That’s... not a good sign.
Before long, Tae-cheon was walking with me over his shoulder.
Do-hee didn’t hit him again. She just quietly avoided my gaze.
That’s cold.
“Kheuk! Ugh, ngh!”
Every time he took a step, a groan escaped me.
Even when I was still, my body ached in dull waves.
Being slung over his shoulder and jostled around only made it twice as bad.
“It hurts, damn it!”
“Quit whining and bear with it.”
“Just carry me on your back, then!”
“No. Too much trouble.”
What an asshole.
I looked at Do-hee.
Grinning through the pain, I said, “Do-hee, can’t you carry me with magic?”
“...”
“...Do-hee?”
I called her name, but she ignored me.
She was still deliberately avoiding my eyes.
Hmph. Fine.
I had Saessak, so I was fine—
Saessak is currently sulking.
“...”
With an involuntary sigh, a groan slipped out of my mouth.
If that was how it was going to be, it might be better just to drag me along.
“Cough!”
The guy coughed up another mouthful of blood and looked up at me.
How was he still alive in that state?
“Want me to save you? Do-hee’s heal could do it.”
Of course, that would only work if his lower body had still been intact.
Since he’d landed a little ways off, if we picked him up, Do-hee could probably save him.
Not that I had the slightest intention of saving him.
I was only saying it to toy with him.
He knew that too, so he gave a thin smile.
“Cut the crap. You never stop mocking me.”
“Yeah, well. Die already.”
I’d seen enough of him dying.
I had nothing else to say.
I tapped Tae-cheon’s body a couple of times to tell him to move.
Just then, as Tae-cheon shifted his step, Kim Mu-yeon called out to me.
“Baek Do-woon.”
“...What?”
Only after I answered did Tae-cheon stop walking.
I twisted a little and looked back at him.
Kim Mu-yeon was coughing blood as he stared at me.
“I’ve got one favor to ask.”
“Are you insane? You think I’d grant you one?”
After trying to kill each other and all that, what was this, a favor?
The whole thing was so ridiculous I let out a dry laugh.
Every time I laughed like that, my chest shook and hurt.
He just looked up at me without saying a word.
The hell. What an obnoxious, weirdly persistent bastard.
“Fine, fine. What is it? What do you want me to do?”
“Calypse.”
He pointed at the greatsword sprawled about five meters away.
Calypse.
Apparently that was the sword’s name.
“Take it with you.”
“No need, idiot. Arca’s enough.”
More than enough, really.
I couldn’t even handle Arca properly, and I had no intention of taking on another weapon.
Kim Mu-yeon nodded slowly, as if acknowledging that.
“You can shove it in a warehouse, then.”
“What?”
“You can dump it somewhere nobody will find it. Just... take it.”
“Then why the hell are you asking me to take it...?”
I stopped mid-question.
Because there was no one left to answer.
Only those hollow eyes were still looking at me.
Kim Mu-yeon was dead.
“Seriously, why the hell leave behind a keepsake like this and make things awkward?”
I wasn’t his comrade or his junior or anything.
Tae-cheon tilted his head and asked, “Maybe it’s cursed?”
“He’s the one who used it.”
“Ah, right.”
“Still, it’s better to be sure.”
Then Do-hee cast magic toward Calypse.
The greatsword lifted lightly into the air and flew toward us.
She should use that to hold me instead.
After whispering a short incantation, Do-hee made a white light start shining from the sword.
If some filthy curse had been on it, it would have glowed black instead.
“Mm, there’s no problem.”
“So it’s just a plain greatsword?”
“Not plain, no. It’s an A-rank greatsword. If you sold it, you’d get at least several hundred billion won.”
“Oh, I’m getting a new shield made!”
I wanted to hit him in the mouth.
Since my position was uncomfortable, I settled for smacking his thigh from behind.
“More importantly, why did he hand it over to me?”
“Who knows.”
“Wasn’t it some kind of apology?”
“That bastard?”
I looked down at Kim Mu-yeon’s corpse.
An apology?
He was the type who came sneaking in at night to covet other people’s things.
There was no way he’d ever apologize.
Even Tae-cheon, probably realizing after saying it that it didn’t fit, scrunched up his face.
“He did say we could throw it away, didn’t he? Let’s just dump it in the sea.”
“Come on, if we’re going to toss it, we might as well sell it.”
‘You can shove it in a warehouse, then.’
‘You can dump it somewhere nobody will find it.’
...No.
He hadn’t said it was fine to sell it.
He’d said it was fine to stash it away or throw it out, but he hadn’t added that selling it would be okay.
Then there had to be a reason for that.
I didn’t know what the reason was, though.
“I’ll take care of it.”
It wasn’t such a big deal to grant a dead man one request.
At my words, Do-hee looked at me.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“...Is that intuition?”
I didn’t answer, just shrugged.
Of course, since I was still slung over Tae-cheon’s shoulder, the shrug went down instead of up.
Do-hee let out a sigh.
“Fine. Do as you like, Brother.”
“Then I’ll take it.”
With that, I reached toward Calypse, hanging in midair.
As I spoke the sword’s name, the greatsword was sucked into my hand.
“Huh, what?”
“Subspace? Was that subspace just now?”
“Ah, right. You two don’t know about that yet. I’ve got an inventory... ”
As I was explaining it to them, a message window appeared.
At the top of the window were the words Hidden Quest.
A hidden quest? What the hell was this?
“Brother?”
“Ah, hold on a second.”
“...? Okay.”
At my request to wait a moment, Do-hee tilted her head but went along with it.
I thanked her and read the message window that had popped up.
Or rather, since I was upside down, I guess I was reading it from the bottom up.
The hidden quest of the previous World Tree Manager!
Can you protect the World Tree by any means necessary? has been achieved.
The previous Manager was currently suspicious of the present Manager’s mental state.
They had felt uneasy about the current Manager’s behavior, which seemed to have a screw loose, but after seeing him kill an enemy and loot their item, they felt reassured.
Quest objective - Enemy slain (success). Enemy item looted (success).
Reassured by what kind of sight?
That’s just a complete lunatic.
Previous World Tree... what kind of human did you appoint as Manager?
As if answering my question, another message window appeared.
The previous World Tree Manager, Dishing Na Thor, was an enormous miser.
He was the sort of person who used anything he could, and he didn’t hesitate to seize and use the items and weapons of enemies he’d killed.
That personality gave birth to the skill Steal and Learn, which allows him to acquire the skills of others.
However, the skills learned through Steal and Learn are downgraded versions of the original.
Quest success reward - You may learn one of Kim Mu-yeon’s skills.
Oh?
Even a crazy bastard could be useful if he was the right kind of crazy.
I could learn one of Kim Mu-yeon’s skills.
Already grinning at the thought of picking up Song of the Sword, I clicked to claim the reward.
A list of the skills Kim Mu-yeon had possessed appeared before me.
Song of the Sword (A-rank)
Ironbody (A-rank)
Super Regeneration (B-rank)
Super Strength (B-rank)
······
The instant the list appeared, I picked one.
Of course I chose Song of the Sword.
With that one skill alone, Kim Mu-yeon had become a famous A-rank hunter.
It would be a huge help to me too.
You have selected Song of the Sword (A-rank).
It will be converted into the downgraded skill Humming Song of the Sword (B-rank).
Light burst from my body.
The Sword’s Humming Song had been learned.
Just then, Saessak sent me a message.
So it was finally over the sulking thing?
Saessak reports that the World Tree Manager’s physical condition is currently very poor.
It recommends using the power-saving function for the Manager’s sake.
Would you like to use the power-saving function? (YES/NO)
Warning! Use it in a safe place!
Power-saving function? What was that now?
If it said to use it in a safe place, then it should be fine to use here.
This place, right now, with Do-hee and Tae-cheon, was the safest place for me.
Curious, I clicked YES.
The power-saving function will activate in 5 seconds.
5, 4....
Power-saving function, huh.
At this point, I didn’t even know if I was still human.
Honestly, there was all kinds of ridiculous stuff in this world, and I meoaaagh.
Current Manager entering power-saving mode.