Ch.182182. Weak Monkey

The weakness of the Guava Snake is its interior.

Attacking inside its mouth or tearing it from within through wounds can bring it down quickly.

But this advice is completely impractical.

Saying that the inside is a weakness isn’t unique to Guava Snakes—it applies to all monsters and humans alike.

Anyone can say “just get inside, tear up the innards, rip out organs, and come back out, easy GG,” but it’s not something just anyone can actually do.

That advice only exists because Guava Snakes are huge with mouths big enough to swallow a Black Monkey whole.

In other words, the fact that people suggest entering its body as a strategy means the Guava Snake has very few actual weaknesses.

Slippery scales.

And tough scales.

They’re difficult to penetrate, and the snake’s physical abilities—its flexibility, speed, and power from its massive size—are overwhelmingly strong.

Well, another method would be breaking the snake’s spine.

But that’s also not easy against such a flexible creature.

So ultimately, the advice to attack from inside is, charitably speaking, about targeting a weakness, but less charitably, it’s basically telling you to commit suicide by entering its mouth.

When I hunt Guava Snakes, I simply cut off their heads.

Breaking or severing the spine near the cluster of nerves in the neck area will kill a snake.

Snakes aren’t invincible monsters after all.

You need to understand the biological characteristics of each monster to hunt them effectively.

So the Black Monkeys could use a similar strategy if they wanted.

When facing one snake, multiple monkeys could cling to it and break the spine near the neck for a successful hunt.

The problem comes when multiple snakes attack at once.

I prepared for that situation by getting explosive potions from Lee Ji-hyun.

“Now, when a Guava Snake opens its mouth wide to eat you, what do you do? Throw this pill straight into its throat. With all your might. So it can’t spit it out before it knows what hit it. The best method is setting traps. Place some tasty meat that Guava Snakes would eat along their paths with this pill inside. Then you won’t have to face them directly.”

In war…

In battle, you don’t always need to face your enemy head-on.

This Level 2 biome—

The Steam Forest itself is a massive battlefield, so there’s no need to fight disadvantageous battles directly.

“Hunt the food that snakes like in advance. Then scatter it around with the pills inside.”

“Keek keek. Understood, Chief!”

We decided to run an experiment first.

If it works, I won’t need to micromanage the Black Monkeys’ hunting—they’ll be able to continue this war advantageously on their own.

The results came quickly.

BOOM!!!

It wasn’t a very loud sound.

When I went to check, I saw a Guava Snake thrashing around with a large hole blown in the middle of its body, as if something had exploded inside it. The Black Monkeys hiding in the trees above didn’t miss their chance—they jumped down, broke the snake’s neck, and successfully completed the hunt.

“Keek keek keek keek!”

“Keeeek!”

“We did it! Keek!”

This Guava Snake was about 6-7 meters long.

To think such a creature could be incapacitated after consuming food left on the ground.

While the damage wasn’t lethal enough to kill it outright, the alchemical bomb had enough power to temporarily immobilize it, which was perfectly sufficient.

Though this might only work because it wasn’t a Corrupted Guava Snake.

“We can do this!”

“Keek!”

The Black Monkeys were fired up after discovering a way to overcome their disadvantageous conditions.

“Hunt slowly like this.”

“Understood! Keek!”

Once I established this framework, I felt more at ease.

I butchered the few Guava Snakes we’d caught, separating the skin and meat, then returned home.

War is war, but there’s still work to be done.

There’s something essential to collect in the tropical rainforest biome.

“Cloud sugar.”

This can be considered similar to healing herbs as a collectible resource.

While healing herbs are flowers that serve as the main ingredient for healing potions, cloud sugar can be extracted from the fruit of a specific tree in tropical rainforests called the Cloud Tree.

Originally in Farming World, players would simply eat these cloud fruit, but while developing cooking skills and trying to use their clean sweetness as a sugar substitute, I discovered how to extract cloud sugar.

The amazing thing about cloud sugar is that it’s very similar to sugar substitutes.

It even overcomes the slight drawbacks that sugar substitutes have—

That slight aftertaste some substitutes leave, and even the problem some substitutes have of potentially raising blood sugar.

I didn’t discover this through any special research.

[Cloud Sugar]

– Grade: A+

– Sugar extracted from cloud fruit. Named “cloud sugar” because its sweetness seems to float like clouds.

– Provides a pure sweet taste when consumed.

– Stabilizes and lowers blood sugar when consumed.

– When used in cooking, its sweetness harmonizes perfectly with other ingredients.

I had Kim Su-jung research recipes for the cloud fruit I brought back, and we extracted cloud sugar.

“Oppa. Is this what I think it is?”

“Yeah. A sugar substitute.”

“…Are we going to sell this?”

“Absolutely.”

The Cloud Tree appears randomly in tropical rainforests.

Farming World players always look for Cloud Trees first when they enter a tropical rainforest.

This cloud sugar not only provides a perfectly clean sweetness in cooking, but even cooking beginners without special skills can make decent food just by adding cloud sugar to adjust the taste.

So while teaching the Black Monkeys how to hunt Guava Snakes, I also searched the Steam Forest for Cloud Trees and eventually found them.

Cloud Trees are known to grow more frequently in moisture-rich tropical rainforests, so I had high hopes given the “Steam Forest” concept.

And not only were they there, but there were quite a few of them.

First the hair-growing trees, now the Cloud Trees.

This Level 2 biome adjacent to a Level 0 biome was nothing short of a gift for me.

“When it says it stabilizes and lowers blood sugar, does that mean it doesn’t raise it at all? Or actually lowers it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tested that specifically.”

The reason this cloud sugar—also called cloud sweetener or cloud sweetness—became quite well-known among the thousands of resources in Farming World was, ironically, because it seemed useful in real life.

As times changed, sugar disappeared and sugar substitutes took its place. Why?

Because people became health-conscious and began battling blood sugar as they recognized sugar’s harmful effects.

No-sugar.

All sugary foods disappeared, replaced by the era of zero-calorie substitutes.

Yet people still yearned for more.

Beyond substitutes, they wondered if there could be a sweetener that actually controls blood sugar itself.

Of course such a thing couldn’t exist in reality, so people dreamed about it in games.

Cloud sugar was that dream come true.

Back then, there were many discussions about how great it would be if cloud sugar existed in reality, with people wondering if it could be found in some dungeon. There were a few cases where Cloud Trees were actually discovered, but no one had successfully extracted real cloud sugar from cloud fruit.

It couldn’t be helped.

Extracting cloud sugar ultimately requires a recipe.

With continued research, modern technology might eventually discover the method.

But in Farming World lore, Cloud Trees needed specific conditions—tropical rainforests with high moisture—and only trees that had grown for 7-10 years would bear fruit.

So there’s no reason not to sell this.

“Extract some for now. I’ll get more fruit so we can check exactly how much it affects blood sugar stabilization.”

“Okay. If this works, I smell money.”

“Not just a smell. We need to make Farming Cola.”

“Hehehe.”

These days, the thing I hear most from my mom is “don’t eat sweets.”

Since she constantly tells me to eat vegetables first and manage my blood sugar, I thought of the most effective place to experiment.

My mom checks her blood sugar daily, so we could confirm quickly.

Will my mother’s long-standing belief in healthy eating—which persists even though I could heal any illness with a single purification—finally change when faced with this miraculous, unrealistic effect?

“HOLY SHIIIIIT! Oppa!!!!! This is insane!!!!!”

A moment later.

Kim Su-jung, who had gone to prepare tonight’s dinner with cloud sugar, screamed in excitement, lavishing praise on the cloud sugar.

“What is this? Is this for real?”

There was a good reason it was an A+ grade resource.