In the past.
Even within the small Awakener society of Gyeonggi Province, Gang Jaeho was a name known as a strongman.
He pushed the job of [Druid] to its limit.
He excelled not only in his own combat ability but also in supporting his party’s fights.
The group he led had grown to a considerable size.
In the fierce struggle for survival playing out across Gyeonggi Province,
they were running near the front.
Then one day—
“The team that went to gather food...”
“They’re not coming back.”
A ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) part of the group failed to return.
Gang Jaeho grew anxious.
His own elder brother was among them.
When time passed and they still didn’t come back,
Gang Jaeho thought,
‘They must be dead.’
If he had been alone,
he might have searched the place they headed for to at least recover the remains of those who had followed him—his elder brother included.
However—
‘I have many people to lead.’
He was the leader of a group.
There were over forty people in that group.
Group members going missing meant danger lurking where they’d gone.
He couldn’t drive the living into a death trap for the sake of those almost certainly dead.
In the end, like that—
having given up everything, sunk in despair at the thought of losing even his last family.
Right then—
“W-we’re back!”
“!?”
“The ones who went to gather food... they’ve returned!”
Gang Jaeho sprang to his feet
and sprinted to where the people had supposedly come back.
And there—
“Brother...!”
“...Jaeho. I’m here.”
His last family stood there.
At the news that his brother had returned,
he ran and threw his arms around him.
“Good you’re back, brother! Where were you all this time!”
“...Some things happened. Thanks for the welcome.”
And—
in that moment—
‘...?’
Gang Jaeho felt a slight dissonance.
They were brothers,
but like most ordinary brothers,
they weren’t especially affectionate.
He himself
had been in a slump thinking he’d lost his last family, and he was only excited because someone he thought dead had come back.
Normally he wouldn’t have hugged his brother.
Right.
If it was his brother, in a time like this he would have said—
‘Ugh, what’s with a grown man clinging like that!’
With a face half disgusted, half grinning, he should have pushed him away.
But.
At the time, Jaeho had no mind to chew on that discomfort.
In a ruined world, his last family.
That family had returned.
He had been missing for a long time.
He must have gone through a lot and been worn down.
He could just think that and let it pass.
From the start,
to suspect your own brother over a little discomfort like that—
that was absurd.
“So what happened?”
“...I came to tell you that, Jaeho.”
“Huh?”
“I found a place where we can get food.”
“...What?”
Thus,
a meeting with the whole group began.
“It seems suspicious.”
One participant said.
“It’s weird enough that people we thought dead suddenly returned, and now they say they know where to get food?”
“...Weren’t they the ones who went to look for food in the first place? Something happened so they were late coming back, that’s all—they completed their mission.”
“If you put it that way, it’s admirable. But why won’t they tell us what that ‘something’ was? If they were this late getting back, there must be a reason.”
“That...”
He couldn’t answer that.
“...All of the ones who returned seem off.”
“That’s right, Captain. We should probably... be on guard.”
His reason clearly agreed.
Sure enough,
as they said, something was off.
His head told him so, but—
‘What if this is just my imagination?’
His feelings could only deny it.
‘He’s my brother who I thought was dead... who barely made it back alive.’
‘If he’d truly changed into something strange, that’s one thing—but if he only seems strange because he’s exhausted.’
‘If after struggling to make it back, our group treats them with suspicion and caution...’
‘What does that make my brother?’
After many thoughts,
in the end—
“Still, my brother has never once lied.”
“...Captain.”
“It’ll turn out fine this time too.”
What took hold of him
was the bond of blood.
“We’re short on food as it is, and this is intelligence we barely obtained. The ones who returned look odd because they’re worn out... on the flip side, it means they got that intel at the cost of ending up like that.”
“That’s... true, but.”
“Let’s go once, assuming we might be fooled. And if the intel’s wrong, so what? If there’s nothing there, we just made a wasted trip. And even if something is there...”
Gang Jaeho
raised his arm and said,
“I’ll handle it somehow, so don’t worry.”
Thus,
projecting confidence, he decided to head for the place his brother indicated.
“Let’s go, brother!”
“......”
“Brother? What is it?”
His brother, who had told them of the place with food—
when it came time to actually head there,
for some reason didn’t move for a long while...
“It’s the place you said we should go, right? Let’s move!”
What finally forced those stalled steps to move
was none other than him.
****
And—
when they arrived at the place his brother had mentioned, what the group saw was—
“It’s real...!”
“An orchard? Fruit isn’t a food you can store long, but...”
“If we dry it and such, we can use it as preserved food somehow!”
It was a huge orchard,
one that looked like no one had set foot in it since the fall.
‘As expected... my brother was telling the truth!’
He felt great joy—
that he hadn’t been wrong,
that the brother everyone doubted had told the truth—
but then—
“...Don’t... go....”
“Huh?”
Hearing a voice from behind,
he turned his head.
“Don’t... go....”
With an utterly blank face,
his brother said that.
‘...What is that?’
A blank face,
and words that didn’t match.
Feeling dissonance there,
he sensed one more oddity.
‘Those trees... aren’t speaking.’
His job was Druid.
A job whose specialty was communion with nature.
For convenience he called it a voice,
but rather than literal sound, it was the trees’ will... their emotions—
an ability to sense those.
Yet
from the trees there he heard no voice at all.
‘In the first place... are there even trees?’
To the eyes it was clearly a bountiful orchard,
but the Druid’s ability within him—
‘There... nothing exists.’
—reached that conclusion.
“...Everyone, fall back!”
He snapped to his senses
and shouted in haste—
but he was already too late.
What filled his vision—
the orchard that had looked so beautiful—
was the sight of the orchard floor
opening its mouth.
****
“I learned later. That thing could scatter a substance that deranged or controlled minds...”
The orchard that only looked beautiful.
It had been nothing but a hallucination brought on by a mind-deranging substance it scattered.
“That’s why it didn’t eat random prey that wandered in, but kept them alive, controlled their minds, used them as bait... and fattened itself by luring in bigger prey. Efficient way to hunt, don’t you think?”
Where they went was right atop the mouth of that enormous monster.
His group, in an instant, had walked themselves straight into the monster’s maw.
“...How did you survive?”
From the story, that monster was clearly on the powerful side.
‘Even if it’s the past, among the ordinary monsters released on the surface, it must have been a fairly strong one.’
If they went that far,
the monster wouldn’t have let this man go alive.
I wondered how he survived—
“While fleeing that thing... I met the old man.”
“Old man?”
“It might be easier if I say the Chair.”
...Him again.
‘The Chair.’
I’d never even seen his face,
and he was said to be missing now.
Despite being a missing person,
since arriving in Gyeonggi Province his name was the one I’d heard more than any other human’s.
It seemed
the man exerted absolute influence on the people of Gyeonggi Province.
“Apparently quite a few groups had been hunted by that monster. At the time the old man was touring the groups near where I operated... down south, building up his influence, and in the midst of that he realized that groups known to be heading to a certain place were later wiped out.”
“......”
“The monster was subjugated by the Chair... and I barely survived thanks to that. But what good is surviving like that?”
Crack—
he bit down as if to crush his teeth.
“The group I had to return to—I destroyed it with my own hands.”
“......”
“After that, I just drifted from group to group. I had enough skill that there were plenty of places to put me up. Then... once my level passed 20, I got a skill that could make food.”
He spoke as if he himself found it absurd.
“When that happened to me, I was level 19.”
“......”
“Isn’t it laughable? If I’d raised just one more level, at least the problem of feeding my group could have been solved. Over a difference that small... over something I could have avoided if I’d been just a little more suspicious...”
He
growled, glaring at me.
“And you want someone like me to trust people easily?”
“......”
“Ha! Sorry, but I won’t be fooled that easily ever again. I learned firsthand how cunning the monsters of this world are... no words can deceive me.”
Three leaders per group—
they’d said the Chair had faced such monsters and that’s why.
“My group may have been annihilated because of me... but humanity will never let a sacrifice pass meaninglessly. From that, we learned such monsters exist and learned how to resist them!”
That
was what had happened to this man.
“I see. I understand why you were so suspicious of me.”
When I said that,
he seemed to realize he’d gotten worked up.
“...I don’t know why I told you all this. It’s a story I rarely tell anyone... damn it, I must have gotten too riled up.”
He wiped his face,
glared at me, and said,
“After that, I vowed I would never be fooled the same way again.”
Then
he stretched his hand toward the ground.
“With this power... there’s no reason to be fooled the same way.”
Where his hand stretched,
a small tree began to grow.
In the end, because food was scarce,
they fell into a trap baited with food.
The reason he tended the orchard so fervently
was because it wasn’t that illusion he saw back then—
“Humans and monsters can lie, but this nature... does not lie.”
If it was these trees that gave a real “voice,”
they could keep such a thing from ever happening again.
That’s what he believed.
...However.
Watching the tree rising by his power, I thought:
“It looks slow... and hard.”
“...Tch!”
At my words,
Gang Jaeho flinched and drew back the hand that was growing the tree.
‘The land’s fertility is dried up.’
No matter how much he mass-produced food with that power
so others wouldn’t suffer the same fate as him—
in the end,
the moment the land’s fertility was all exhausted,
the humans nearby would again face the same threat.
To survive somehow,
they would have to risk danger and head to places that might be deathtraps—
‘Right, like back then.’
That kind of crisis.
“Well, I roughly understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Why you were that suspicious of me... and other bits and pieces.”
I understood his circumstances.
How he had been deceived.
Why he fixated on this orchard.
Looking at the half-grown tree, I thought:
‘You’ll never be fooled again, huh.’
Unlike humans or monsters,
trees do not lie.
Therefore,
trust only the words of nature,
and doubt everything else...
Right.
I roughly understood the origin of that sickness of suspicion, but—
‘The nature itself won’t last long at this rate.’
Those “truly speaking” trees he fixated on,
and the orchard formed by such trees—
that orchard was losing power and dying.
If that happens,
‘This man might end up unable to trust anything.’
It supposedly took him quite some time just to join this group and blend in.
Even that was because he found comfort looking at those trees.
If even this orchard disappears,
he might truly become someone who can trust no one.
But.
How should I put it.
‘Should I call him lucky, or unlucky...’
Since I’ve come here,
he won’t need to worry about that.
In a way, I should call it luck.
‘Humans and monsters lie, so you’ll only trust nature’s words?’
In that case,
the way to make him trust me
becomes far too simple.
Fertility is exhausted?
So food production is getting hard?
‘Fertility is, in the end, the strength the land has.’
Then, well.
The method is obvious.
‘Cooking.’
What you need to draw out lacking strength
is nothing but a solid meal.
‘Just wait.’
I’ll show you a heavenly taste
no rustic Gyeonggi soil has ever known.
