Chapter 35: Harvest (2)

Chapter 35: Harvest (2)

The moonlit fortress was silent. Henry ran through the thick darkness, reaching the gates in no time.

“Fly.”

Henry flew, soaring endlessly into the sky to avoid the fortress’ security, which was stricter at night. Finally, when the gates under his feet looked as small as a fingernail, Henry canceled his spell and surrendered himself to gravity.

Whooosh!

Henry fell toward the ground at a high velocity, but he remained as calm as ever. He was enjoying the speed of the fall, and the feeling of the cool night breeze across his whole body. His drop point was the Demonic Beast Forest. Henry had to resort to this method to avoid the guards, as well as to land safely in the forest.

“Feather Fall.”

The fortress gates grew large in his vision once more, and the trees of the forest were now close enough to be distinguished from one another.

Thud.

Upon casting his landing spell, he landed lightly on his feet as if he had descended using a stairway. As soon as his feet touched the ground, Henry ran across the forest like the wind, without looking back. Soon, he passed through the Safety Zone and reached the inner section of the 6th district.

“Klever.”

- Yes, Master.

Summoned by its master, Klever once again appeared before Henry in the form of a white cat. It took the lead, guiding Henry to the location of the Kin Mushroom.

After a while, they arrived on an unfamiliar path that Henry had not searched before. The path was densely lined with trees, just like the other areas. Klever pointed to one of them and said,

- It’s behind that tree, Master.

“Is that so?”

On the surface, Henry couldn’t notice anything different about the tree. But since Klever had said so, Henry drew his holy sword. Although the tree looked quite thick, Henry’s holy sword, imbued with the power of a mage, cut through it like a hot knife through butter. The tree began to fall slowly and finally crashed with a noise befitting its massive size.

Boom!

Despite the moonlight that poked through the leaves and illuminated the forest floor, the back of the tree was still very dark.

“Are you sure this is it? There’s nothing here.”

- No, Master. Please take a closer look.

Henry took a step closer and looked more closely at the area behind the fallen tree.

“...Spores?”

The tree was pitch-black, but it wasn’t darkness. It was the thick spores released by the Kin Mushroom.

‘These are all spores?’

At first, Henry had thought that the blackness was just the shadow of the tree. Upon closer inspection, however, he realized that it was not a shadow but spores emitted by countless mushrooms.

‘They’ve grown a lot.’

This was somewhat understandable. Kin Mushrooms were a 5th district species, so they had found it easy to survive in the 6th district ecosystem.

‘Since it has no natural predators here, it could comfortably multiply.’

Creatures without natural predators only had two activities programmed into them for survival: feeding and reproduction. The providence of nature, and the spores in front of Henry were proof of that fact. Henry paused and thought for a moment, contemplating how to get rid of the Kin Mushroom colony.

The easiest way to get rid of spores of this quantity was to burn them. However, it was the middle of the night, and it was obvious that a huge flame would make Henry an instant target for any nearby Demonic Beasts.

After a while, Henry thought of a pretty good method; to order Klever to suck away the spores. With Klever’s Chest ability, it was probably doable. It had absorbed that brutal whisky after all, so spores were nothing in comparison.

“Klever.”

- Yes, Master.

“Can you suck those up?”

- Of course! Just leave it to me!

Klever walked up to the thick colony of spores and opened its little mouth.

- Meeeow!

A cat’s cry echoed through the forest. Then, countless spores began to violently shoot up into Klever’s mouth. The sight reminded Henry of a giant antlion trap, but Klever was devouring the spores much faster than an antlion trap could draw in ants. When it devoured the last remaining spores, Henry could finally see the huge colony site, illuminated by the moonlight.

“Did you swallow the mushrooms as well?”

- Ah, before I knew it...

“Good job.”

Henry had been wondering how to get rid of the Kin Mushrooms next, so this was great news for him. Live Kin Mushrooms were great magic ingredients.

.

‘This ability is so much more useful than Subspace.’

Of course, the storage space that Klever’s ability provided was not as great as the Subspace, but the former was a lot more convenient.

Henry stepped on the site of the colony as he moved forward. It was wider than he remembered. There was a small opening within, leading to a cave.

‘Found it.’

The cave that Henry had artificially created decades ago was here. It looked just like his Wizard's Camp, and the sole purpose of it was to hide Henry’s treasure.

“Light.”

Henry used magic to light up the inside of the dark cave. As he walked along the seemingly endless path, he eventually arrived at a huge cavity.

‘There it is.’

At the center of the cavity stood a huge stone statue, covered in dust and mold. It was as tall as a Taurus and looked like a knight, with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. Henry approached the statue and greeted it as if he was meeting an old friend.

“You’re still the same.”

The stone statue’s name was Shielder. Henry had created it with a special type of alchemy to protect his treasure. Shielder had perfect resistance to all types of magic up to the 5th-Circle.

In addition, since it had been made from the kind of alloys used by the best imperial craftsmen, Shielder was a sturdy protector that not even a young Expert’s Aura could leave a scratch on.

Henry brushed the dust off of Shielder.

It was a shame.

Henry had initially wanted to leave Shielder behind as part of his legacy, It was a pity that he now had to retrieve it for his own revenge. Henry stared at Shielder with a bittersweet look in his eyes for a long while. Then, he recited a spell.

“...Boj tearg a enod ev’uoy.”

Crack, craaaack!

The spell that Henry recited was the final spell to end Shielder’s life. When he finished, a small crack formed on Shielder’s body. Soon it began to break apart.

Pzzzt.

The broken stone statue turned into fine sand, which piled up like a grave. Henry stood for a moment, honoring Shielder with a brief moment of silence.

“Here it is.”

After a short moment of silence, Henry put his hand into the pile of sand, touching a small wooden box within. It was in the same state as when Henry had placed it within Shielder decades ago. He pulled the box out from the sand.

Click.

There was no separate locking device, so it only took a bit of force to get it open. Within it, there was a purple sphere the size of a fist.

- Master, what is this?

Klever asked as it climbed over Henry’s shoulder.

“This is the heart of a Demon called Venom. If you eat this, you will become immune to all the poisons in the world, and the blood in your body will also turn into a deadly poison.”

- Is there no antidote for it?

“There is.”

- That’s fortunate.

Klever nodded.

‘Finally, it’s in my hands.’

There was a legend in the East about people drinking a magic elixir and becoming ‘impervious to ten thousand poisons.’ It was actually possible in reality, but Venom’s heart was the only thing in the world that could accomplish it. The reason why Henry wanted to find Venom’s heart first among the various other treasures was simple: it was the very poison that had killed him in his previous life.

Of course, with his new life, he had started off by training in swordsmanship to improve his resistance to poison and compensate for his weak physical body, as a well-trained knight’s body imbued with the power of Aura was resistant to most poisons. However, he still wasn’t resistant to all poisons. Far more training was required to reach that level. Due to the trauma from the last moments of his previous life, Henry had decided that he needed to completely eradicate the risk of being poisoned ever again.

Henry took out the heart and put it in his mouth without hesitation. Its texture was reminiscent of crusty bread.

‘It’s so awfully flavorless.’

Of course, only its texture was similar to bread, not its taste. Still, Henry ate it all up on the spot without batting an eye.

- Master, are you okay?

“Yeah.”

As the essence of Venom’s heart flowed through him, Henry’s body heated up. It felt as if he had just drunk a bottle of hot liquor.

After a while, he took out a small glass bottle.

- Master, what is that?

“Poison.”

- Huh?

A truly powerful poison called ‘Prasia’s Death.’ This was the very poison that Silver Jackson had fed Henry before robbing everything from him.

- W-what are you going to do with it?

“Now that I’ve eaten the heart, I’ll have to test it out to see if it works.”

- W-what?

After answering Klever’s question, Henry immediately poured the poison down his throat in one swig.

The concentration and volume of the poison was exactly the same as what had ended his previous life. Henry emptied the bottle, down to the last drop. The dark-purple Prasia’s Death flowed down Henry’s throat and began to spread throughout his body.

Klever was beyond shocked. Such a rash act made no sense to him at all. However, a few moments later, Henry spoke.

“...I’m fine.”

- A-are you really okay?

“I’m certain of the heart’s effects.”

Normally, just swallowing the poison would have felt as if there was lava flowing down his throat. It would have torn through his inner network of mana and eventually wreaked havoc on his organs. Now, however, Henry was as healthy as ever. With the effects of the heart confirmed, he licked the extra poison from his lips and returned to the company.

* * *

The next day, Henry entered the administrative office to attend the morning meeting.

“Oh, Commander Henry, you’re here!”

Solomon’s attitude toward Henry had become even more over-the-top. The same went for Borg and Hugo.

“Commander Henry, please rest for a while. Captain Iselan has given you special permission.”

“The Captain did?”

“Oh, yes. Since the entire special task force platoon is hospitalized at the moment, he must have thought it’d be better that we take a break and reconsolidate our strength.”

“Understood.”

“Ah, I almost forgot! Take this.”

Commander Solomon handed Henry a small note.

“What’s this?”

“An official document that was addressed only to you. Head back to your residence and take a look.”

“Understood.”

Henry had never seen an official document that looked like this before. It didn’t look like anything special, so Henry silently returned to his residence.

‘What kind of document is this?’

Once he was inside his residence, Henry opened up the note.

“This is...”

After seeing what was written in the note, Henry couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

- I’m on a break today, so let’s have lunch. I’ll be waiting for you at the residence.

The note that Solomon had passed to him under the guise of an official letter was none other than a personal note from Tini. Henry thought of Tini as a brave and daring woman. Only Tini could have pulled off something like this. After all, most of the company’s official documents had to go through her.

After contemplating for a while, Henry decided to play along. After all, it was true that he was able to finish his mission quickly thanks to her, and he felt good about having finally found his treasure that he had been looking for so long.

“Well then... guess it’s time to let loose a little.”

Henry let out a little smile as he opened his wardrobe.