‘I can’t be helped. There’s no proper method right now, so I’ll just do my job.’
He let out a small sigh and headed toward the cluster of storages.
If the Shaman, Han Iseo, borrowed the power of spirits to set the group’s direction,
and Junggu commanded the combat roles by sheer force,
then the Druid—
Jaeho—handled food production created by his own ability,
and oversaw interior management of the Wall using his defense-specialized skills.
Managing supplies
was the most representative part of his duties.
“Huh?”
On his way to the storages,
his eyes flew wide open.
‘Why is that open?’
The buildings used as storages—
among them,
one that usually stayed shut tight was standing open.
A few of the storage keepers were only now closing that storage’s door.
“What’s going on?”
“Ah, Mr. Jaeho.”
Jaeho approached the storage and asked the people there.
At that, the ones closing the door turned their heads.
To be precise,
it was the storage for keeping monster corpses.
“This storage should hold nothing but monster corpses. Did someone go out and hunt monsters and bring them in?”
The people holding the door looked at Jaeho.
It hadn’t been long since they’d started collecting monster corpses.
Only recently had a few production classes started to stand out,
and after it became known that monster hide or fangs were needed to bring out those powers,
combat roles would bring in the corpses of monsters they’d culled and store them.
Lucky, perhaps—
the brutal cold itself acted like a freezer, so managing the storage was easy.
You could just toss the monster in and close the door, and that was that.
The meat wasn’t of much use,
but the other by-products had plenty of places to go as materials.
In this cold, nothing was really going to rot anyway,
so rather than processing outside, they just piled it into the storage first,
and later the production classes would prep what they needed, when they needed it.
Unlike the other storages,
nothing disastrous happened if something here went missing,
so the corpses in this storage weren’t managed all that strictly.
There were so many monsters and so many varieties that it was awkward to classify them anyway; they didn’t even count the number.
“Ah, actually—”
But now he’d seen that storage standing open.
It wasn’t as if the combat roles had gone out on a subjugation...
Right now, in fact.
It might have been nothing,
but Gang Jaeho felt a huge sense of wrongness.
“You know that person who joined us recently.”
“If it’s ‘that person’... yes. I think I know who you mean.”
“That man came to us and asked for something. He wanted a few monster corpses and some materials.”
“...What did you say?”
At the man’s next words,
his face went pale.
“W-what have you done!”
“Y-yes?”
“He’s an outsider. And you just casually opened the storage without my permission?!”
“N-no, it’s just...”
When Jaeho blew up,
the storage keepers could only flounder.
“Weren’t you aware too, Mr. Jaeho?”
“What are you...!”
“E-even if the corpses aren’t all that useful, we hesitated over whether we could just hand them to some outsider at will! Lots of the combat Awakeners have been saying he’s suspicious, too.”
“So you knew. Then why...!”
“B-because...”
What came out of the man’s mouth next
left Jaeho aghast.
“Ms. Iseo came with him and said it was fine.”
“...!”
“She’s a fellow officer, isn’t she? So we figured you and Mr. Jaeho must have discussed it...”
Jaeho spun on his heel without a second of hesitation.
“Damn it!”
In a rush,
he started searching for where that outsider who’d recently joined up was.
‘I should’ve told them not to trust Iseo too readily, since she might be compromised...!’
Han Iseo, who’d served as an officer for a long time.
Telling people to suddenly not trust her might cause internal chaos—that was his judgment—
so he hadn’t informed the entire group.
Unlike him, who’d joined this group later on,
Iseo had been a leader alongside them since before they joined the Association.
He’d only heard that the man wanted access to the Dining Hall
and strictly warned the Dining staff to control access.
Other than that,
he’d merely watched to see if they pulled anything strange.
But of all times—
in that brief moment while he set Iseo aside to talk with Junggu—
‘He started doing something suspicious!’
And not just any suspicious thing.
‘Of all things, he took monster corpses...!?’
If he’d taken food instead,
they could’ve written him off as a hungry petty thief and thought lightly of it.
But corpses?
That was far too ominous.
‘What is it? What’s he planning to do with monster corpses?’
Countless ominous premonitions
flashed through Gang Jaeho’s head.
What did one even do by gathering corpses?
Offer them up to summon a demon,
or scatter some dire curse throughout the base—
that sort of
horrible, repulsive imagining.
‘Damn it, damn it...!’
Forcing out the dire images trying to overrun his mind,
he asked around and sprinted to where the man was.
And then he found out.
That man was now—
“You bastard...!”
Not only had he taken monster corpses,
but he’d entered the domain
Jaeho managed.
“Oh—you’re here?”
He had gone into the Orchard.
The primary food source for Northern Gyeonggi at large—
the very place where that food was made.
“I told you I wouldn’t let suspicious acts slide...!”
Rage surged through Jaeho’s body,
and change began.
KWOONG...
When Jaeho took a step,
the sound that came wasn’t human—
it belonged to a massive beast.
“You broke the warning, so you’ll pay the price.”
[Naturalization — Wood]
[Beastform — Bear]
What appeared there
was a colossal bear.
Not only was it enormous,
but woody growths thrust from places across its skin, wrapping it like armor.
By taking on bestial form he gained tremendous might,
and he transformed only his skin into thick, hard, root-like wood—his own fighting style.
A ‘Druid’ is, at base, a combat class.
This appearance was, in fact,
his true form when he fought as a combat role.
Using both skills at once devoured mana at a fearsome rate,
but in this state, even Park Junggu—the group’s strongest warrior—would struggle.
These days he invested that power only into food production,
but once, leading a group,
he’d massacred countless monsters—a bona fide powerhouse.
His huge, razor claws
scythed toward the man in front of him,
and with that strike,
the man was about to be ripped to shreds—
‘What...?’
Gang Jaeho
couldn’t help but be appalled at what unfolded before his eyes.
****
“You’ll pay the price.”
Saying that,
the man’s form turned into a gigantic bear,
and that enormous forepaw barreled at me.
The instant I saw it, I thought:
‘He looks insanely strong.’
Even if my combat ability had gone up a bit thanks to [Field Cooking],
I’m not a combat class to begin with,
and against something that big, I’m at a slight matchup disadvantage.
Judging by that armor-like skin that looked wooden yet incredibly tough,
it didn’t look easy to inject poison either.
If that blow landed clean,
I’d be reduced to a corpse unrecognizable as a body.
Maybe that’s why—
—Master’s master?
—Shall we poke it once?
My bodyguards, who sensed my danger, spoke to me.
With a voice full of anticipation, my shadow rippled,
and its shape formed into keen blades.
Two sharp swords.
No matter how solid the wooden armor wrapped around that bear,
there’s no way it could endure the blades wielded by two elite vampires.
It’s not as if I’d entered this group without any thought.
Even if the group’s combat roles turned hostile,
my combat power had risen quite a bit,
and on top of that there were the elite vampire siblings.
With that much force,
I was confident I could punch through most crises.
But—
‘Don’t. You two, stand down.’
I hadn’t come here to fight.
The humans in this group are not my enemies.
If I had to define them,
‘they’re customers who’ll eat my food.’
I’m still nothing more than a humble cook.
I’ve never opened a restaurant of my own,
but—
‘To secure customers, you put in a little hardship. I know at least that much.’
And once the customers you secure become regulars,
I also know the hardship gets repaid several times over.
Watching the charging bear out of the corner of my eye,
I scattered the ‘dish’ I’d brought
onto the orchard floor.
[Improvised Unfinished Animal-Based Fertilizer Infused with a Field Cook’s Devotion]
Srrrrk...
“No!!!”
The massive bear recoiled in horror at what I’d done.
Regardless,
as I scattered the finished dish, I thought:
‘Because time was short, I couldn’t go through the full composting process.’
If the earth lacked strength,
then to fill that strength, you just feed it a meal.
Luckily for me,
I’d already fed the earth once before.
Compared to something crafted by a proper [Farmer] Awakener, the quality might lag a little,
but I’d been told the ‘taste’ was on a level that couldn’t be compared.
It was good to aim for making fertilizer,
but because the Druid himself managed those materials,
I couldn’t make a perfect, time-intensive fertilizer.
I figured I’d be caught quickly if I siphoned ingredients.
‘A half-made fertilizer that skipped most of the truly important processes.’
You could still see bits of monster flesh here and there.
In this state, effectiveness aside,
it would obviously fail to soak into the ground properly.
So what you need at a time like this is—
‘Force-feeding.’
A power that could force this dish, which wouldn’t seep into the soil on its own,
down the earth’s throat.
[Trait — Force-Feeding activates.]
A power that lets you feed a dish even to something with no mouth and no stomach.
Originally, this would apply only to ordinary dishes and ordinary folk,
but—
‘For me, there’s no limit to what can be ingredients.’
From my point of view,
all things in the world split simply into beings that become my dishes and beings that eat my dishes.
“Eat.”
Incomplete fertilizer shouldn’t have been able to mix into this land,
but what it contained
were nutrients that could undeniably bolster this earth’s strength.
****
—FWAAA—!
“What is this, exactly!”
The something the man scattered over the ground,
as if it were liquid,
soaked naturally into the earth,
and soon after,
spread through the entire surrounding soil.
The land that had lost all its geovitality and was drying out—
cracked into a web and, thanks to the cold, frozen here and there—
the very earth that was clearly dying—
‘It’s filling with life...!’
In that moment,
he forced himself to think clearly.
‘No, don’t be fooled, Gang Jaeho! This could be a hallucination too!’
Gang Jaeho.
His class was Druid—
he communed with nature
and drew power within it.
‘In the past... I fell because I didn’t trust this power.’
How many times had he regretted it?
If only ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ then
he’d been able to discern those trees’ true nature through this power,
he’d never have made the wrong choice.
Maybe because that thought had rooted deep in his mind,
after the wrong choice,
he doubted everything else,
save for one thing:
‘This power I possess.’
At least the voice nature uttered—
that, he resolved to trust absolutely.
If he believed that voice,
the events of that day could have been handled well—
so he believed.
And yet...
‘What is this!?’
The voice nature uttered
was... wrong.
Until just a short while ago—
—Hungry...
—Want to die...
—Thirsty...
The land’s geovitality had run dry.
The trees that were slowly dying
because they couldn’t even be properly bathed in sunlight—
—Delicious...!
those very trees were now—
—Happy. Just happy...!
—Sweet...
—Eheheh... heh-heh!
—making these sounds!
“H-how?”
The amount of geovitality he’d drawn from this earth to make food was considerable—
enough to dry out sound ground like a desert.
For people’s survival, he’d kept using his skill,
but looking at those trees letting out their agonized screams, he’d spent his days drowning in guilt.
They’d tried sprinkling fertilizer of their own to revive the geovitality,
but ordinary fertilizer could never keep up with that enormous consumption.
Priests, healers—
no one had pulled it off.
And yet of all people—
‘That man did it?’
The man he’d found so suspicious—
that man had done it.
“What on earth... are you?”
The form he’d taken to tear the man apart
shifted back to that of an ordinary human,
and—
“What kind of man are you?”
“How many times do I have to say it?”
When he stared in disbelief,
the man, who’d had his hands clasped behind him, casually turned his body sideways,
gestured toward the scene spread out behind him, and answered:
“The one who came to help you.”
“...”
In the direction he pointed,
the parched ground that had turned into a desert glimmered with a strange light,
“Even after this—will you still suspect me?”
and was regaining beautiful vitality.
