Chapter 372

Chapter 372

Eat The World Tree.

Episode 372: Growing Pains

I approached the woman who hurriedly pulled out her sword from her chest.

“Keuk.”

Frowning because things didn’t go as planned, the woman charged at me with murderous intent.

-Swoosh.

The scene before my eyes slowed down.

The wind stopped, and the noisy city sounds faded away.

The opponent’s path was predicted in my head.

Slow.

-Whoosh!

The city noise returned to my ears.

As I tilted my head away from the predicted path, the sword blade pierced the air.

I didn’t need to pay attention to the fluctuating mana.

[I’ve caught her.]

All means were blocked.

Even the artifacts, magic, or anything else this person might have hidden as a trump card.

With the spirit suppressing the mana and me suppressing the body, she was subdued without being able to do anything.

I felt the growth, but I was not sure.

I stretched out my fist and punched.

-Crash! Bang!

The woman flew to the rooftop of the building and fell. The robe she was wearing was torn to shreds by the steel frame.

Her white neck was exposed, along with a green choker.

Following her to the rooftop, I grabbed the woman’s chin with one hand and broke what appeared to be a device.

-Crack!

The hard choker shattered into pieces. The woman’s eyes followed the choker’s fragments with a look of despair, then glared at me as if to kill me.

“…”

If she were a mediocre fighter, that glare alone might have subdued her.

[There are many devices inside her robe, Master.]

‘I know.’

Probably means she couldn’t use because of spirit interference.

I abruptly put my hand into the woman’s clothes.

“Heeup…! Keuheuk.”

The woman glared at me as if to kill me. She couldn’t bite the medicine in her mouth.

Because I deliberately held her chin to prevent her from putting strength into her jaw muscles.

‘Should I kill her… no.’

I stirred the hand I put into her clothes. As the flesh bumped between my fingers, I lightly tapped the lower part of her chest.

-Crack!

The sound of her dantian shattering.

“…Keuheut, euheueuk…! Eup! Eueueup!!!!”

The woman’s limbs convulsed. Her hand, which had risen to stab my shoulder, trembled and fell down.

The broken mana oozed from her body’s blood points.

“You can go back. It’s over.”

[Umm, Master. What about the mana?]

“Later, for now.”

[Hmph. Okay…]

Eleonore let out a brief complaint and disappeared.

Luci silently spread her wings, bowed, and returned.

I released my grip on the chin of the black-haired woman, who was on the verge of fainting.

The fallen woman couldn’t even support herself with her hands.

Saliva flowed, and tears leaked from her eyes.

“Eueup…”

I put my hand into the woman’s mouth and stirred. I poked her uvula and searched thoroughly from the inside of her tongue to her molars, feeling a foreign object.

“Got it.”

An undissolvable capsule pill.

As soon as I grabbed it, soaked in saliva, I threw it behind me.

“Now… you’re going to talk, right?”

Her lightless eyes stared at the tip of my shoes.

I grabbed her neck.

Contrary to Yuli’s worries, things didn’t go wrong.

“Well, you’re amazing. I’ll admit you’re someone Taeyang-oppa would serve.”

She spoke in a tone that suggested she was doing it because she was told to, even though she didn’t want to.

Even then, she wasn’t looking at me but at Aori.

“You’re looking somewhere weird?”

“I can’t see in front of me.”

“……Okay, that’s that,”

I shifted my gaze from Yuli to Guseul, who was kneeling.

Another tracker Aori had caught.

Who would have thought it was Guseul.

She didn’t seem to have resisted at all, as there wasn’t a single scratch on her body.

When Guseul saw me, she stuck out her tongue as if to show off, so I grabbed her tongue and pulled it out.

“Ah! Hey, what are you doing!”

“I told you not to be conspicuous.”

“I can’t talk!”

When I let go of her tongue, Guseul quickly put it back into her mouth and grumbled.

“Ugh… annoying.”

“Should I just kill her?”

“…Believe it or not, I really don’t intend to fight this time.”

She shook her head and gritted her teeth, saying she didn’t know what was going on either.

It was the reaction someone made when they were truly wronged, but the other person was Guseul.

A woman who could stab you in the back anytime, anywhere, causing conflict.

I didn’t let my guard down and gestured with my chin to tell her to say more.

“They just told me to investigate your life.”

“Who?”

“……Do you think I’d tell you that?”

I see.

Why was this bastard so brazen even though she had been caught?

She was consistently like this, which was rather endearing.

She even asked for my sympathy, as if she had something to be wronged about.

“Is it even possible to investigate without disturbing your nerves, without causing collateral damage, and discreetly…?”

“What?”

“……Ha.”

Without disturbing my nerves.

Without collateral damage, discreetly.

For Flower, who only did vicious things, it’s a cute order.

Just as something came to mind, Aori pulled my arm from right next to me.

“They even asked what you had for dinner tonight, King?”

Why would they ask that?

“…Don’t you know?”

Aori tilted her head with a nonchalant look.

“Do they like you, King?”

“…Ha.”

Guseul, who had been listening quietly, let out a deep breath. She seemed to be at a loss as well.

‘What is this?’

With the power struggle starting, I could understand telling them not to be conspicuous to others in order to win the hearts of civilians.

There were two things that raise questions.

Without disturbing my nerves.

Dinner menu.

Perhaps because Flower has been so negatively ingrained in my mind, I couldn’t help but think that this too was some kind of scheme.

“Are you lying?”

“I wish I were.”

She responded with a prickly reaction to my question.

I left the hedgehog alone and continued to think.

Could it be…

Hongyeon?

A person’s face flashed through my mind.

A colleague from my past.

And the Flower executive I briefly reunited with recently.

‘Even so, she’s not stupid enough to tell someone to dig into my past, is she?’

But there was no one else I could think of.

I decided to test Guseul, who was still sighing.

I knelt down and looked at Guseul.

Just as she looked at me, I slowly brought up Hongyeon, saying,

“The person who ordered you, does she happen to have red hair and wear a hairpin?”

“……”

No change in expression. No change in her pupils as she looked at me, and her complexion remained the same.

“What are you talking about?”

Guseul’s face, as she said she didn’t understand, was very cold.

But being cold meant she intended to hide her true feelings to some extent.

Unbelievable.

Was Hongyeon really this bastard’s superior?

“…Oh ho.”

As my lips curled into a sly smile, Guseul stepped back.

“Why the expression?”

“Did you tell her just now?”

“…What?”

“Since it seems your superior and I have some connection, pass on a message.”

Guseul’s eyes were filled with question marks, as if she didn’t understand.

I pressed down on Guseul’s collarbone with my finger, showering her with words she couldn’t accept.

“Tell that woman not to do this.”

Guseul’s eyes trembled for a moment. She closed her mouth and slowly looked away from me.

I didn’t know why Hongyeon did such a thing.

There must be a reason.

But what was she thinking, digging into my personal life?

I know she had feelings for me beyond just a colleague, but was she so obsessed because she lost everything?

I wanted to ask Guseul what she had investigated and what she was going to say, but I gave up due to lack of time.

Just then, Taeyang returned from the alley.

“Hyung-nim, it’s mostly finished.”

“How was it?”

“They weren’t following you, Hyung-nim. They were targeting me and White Ant. But they got impatient because we started moving.”

Around the time I went to save Sansuyu, I’d be completely at odds with the World Tree.

So I vaguely assumed this pursuit was also aimed at me, but it seemed that was not the case.

Taeyang cleaned up the blood and mana traces with an artifact that looked like a hair dryer.

As I stared at him, our eyes met.

As soon as he made eye contact with me, he grinned slyly and pointed behind his back with his right thumb.

“Go get her. She’s a wood person, but you have to fill the encyclopedia. And it’d be best if you bound her.”

I decided to do just that.

“If anything happens to Unnie and Oppa, I won’t let it slide.”

Yuli shouted, pointing her staff at something else, not me.

The airport we came to in order to board a plane to Russia.

Now that Guseul had been released and all the tasks were finished, all that was left was to fly to the country where the Cornus family was located.

-Hey.

Just before leaving, Guseul asked me, tidying her clothes.

-Are you serious about saving that Sansuyu kid?

She looked at me with eyes as if she were watching someone walk into the fires of hell.

My thoughts hadn’t changed from before, and Guseul clicked her tongue and frowned.

-I’m giving you sincere advice this time, you should abandon her.

-What?

-I know you care for her dearly. But this battle… it’s a war. There’s no guarantee the other Flower factions will stay still.

Flower was divided as many times as there were executives.

Guseul explained to me several times, as if she were driving a wedge this time.

Flower’s opinions didn’t align even among themselves, and a sudden action could cause a disaster.

In short, her words contained subtle excuses and persuasion, implying that they would not participate in the subsequent events.

“Even knowing that, nothing will change.”

“Hyung-nim, what did you just say?”

“Just talking to myself.”

After saying goodbye to Yuli, who came to see us off, we boarded the plane.

European countries other than France are on the verge of being caught up in Flower’s civil war.

The plane to Russia inevitably made stops here and there.

Wherever you went, the news in this country was about Flower.

Various propaganda to shake ideologies and win people to their side was rampant.

-Possibility of Cornus family being confirmed as heretics increases.

They’re slowly laying the groundwork.

The military was gathering, and the association’s hunters were being called up, leaving their respective jobs.

A war would break out under the guise of peace.

Of course, the deaths of many innocent people would be overlooked.

-Twitch.

My body briefly stopped as I was about to board the plane.

“Hyung-nim?”

My heart squeezed and released irregularly.

And below that, the center of my ribcage swelled as if it were about to burst.

“Should I support you?”

“King…”

Taeyang and Aori’s eyes were filled with pity.

I forced a smile and stroked Aori’s hair.

They were working so hard, how could I complain?

Growth came with growing pains.

“Is it… the mana problem?”

As Aori said, the mana trapped inside my body was about to burst.

A problem that even Cheonma pointed out in the past. In the Cradle, the burden was even greater.

Now, it was even causing pain.

If I increased my physical abilities any further, it might not just end with strain on my body.

“If it’s hard, tell me right away, Hyung-nim… if that breaks, you’ll die. Even if you survive, you’ll be a body that can’t use martial arts or magic for the rest of your life.”

“I know.”

Everything was thoroughly prepared in this body.

Mana, physical abilities, even authority.

The problem was… my body was still at the human level.

It wasn’t even a human from this world. At first, there was no mana, let alone a dantian in this body.

It was pushing the limits of the species.

Taeyang looked at me intently and said bitterly.

“If I judge that Hyung-nim’s dantian is about to break, I won’t hesitate to cripple one of your limbs.”

Breaking a part of the body to intentionally let mana leak out to the other side.

In an injured state, there was no strain on the dantian.

“It’s okay.”

I relieved Taeyang’s worries for a moment.

The fact that my heart was throbbing like this was evidence that my body’s recovery was accelerating.

I gained abilities by dominating trees in an injured state.

Now, all that was left was to endure it myself.

“King, you’ll be okay.”

Aori held my arm tightly with her small hands.

“Yeah.”

Tree people or trees didn’t go through this process.

Or… even if they did, the dantian would be strained at a much stronger point.

The only way to overcome this situation was… to literally break the limit or change species.

‘Tree Spirit King.’

I looked at Aori.

She was staring at me with round eyes. She subtly pulled my hands between her breasts with both arms.

I took my arms away from Aori’s chest and lightly knocked on her forehead.

-Thump!

“Ack!”

Aori grabbed her forehead and fell over.

Sitting in the airplane seat, I closed my eyes against the oncoming fatigue.

-Twitch.