[21st Round] The Food Chain
“I wanted to help him, but I didn’t have enough time.”
Gardening Teacher was an elf.
She was wearing clothes woven from green leaves, but she looked more like a girl who came to a nightclub than a gardener.
▷ Displeasure: Junior! Isn’t one glance enough to know she’s a noble wood elf? How can you still think she’s the type to hang out with some nasty men all night after witnessing her elegance firsthand?
Hearing that from Fugitive Senior was weird, considering he was the perfect example of a nasty man.
Wearing clothing in the forest that exposed calves, thighs, and forearms was crazy.
Leaves and branches would easily scratch those areas, and insects wouldn’t feast through those open wounds.
▷ Discomfort: I took care of her when she scratched her skin and was bitten by insects. Isn’t that enough?
Fugitive Senior’s worldview and philosophy would never cease to amaze me.
I approached Gardening Teacher.
But I couldn’t get anywhere near her.
Fshuk! Fshuk! Fshuk! Fshuk!
Tree roots burst from the ground and rushed towards me like tentacles.
“It’s just as I expected.”
I ignored these roots and closed the distance between us by compressing space.
However, they blocked my view and interfered with my movement as they occupied every inch around me.
“I am in charge of gardening. I cannot fully teach gardening to students who can’t stay in one place that long due to their adventures, but I help them find the herbs they need. Thanks to Geography Teacher, I had enough time for my plants to germinate.”
“This is annoying…”
“The cycle of nature cannot be stopped. While you are brutally destroying Mother Nature, the seeds I have planted will germinate and become part of her. Plants have no backbones. It amazes me that you’ve become a deity and not an apostle, but that doesn’t really matter in this battle.”
“Why are we having this conversation right now?”
“Force of habit. While I’m taking care of flowers and trees, I often interact with the forest.”
“Really?”
I also communicated with the spirits through my body quite frequently.
I called the Fire Spirit King.
“It’s time to work.”
Upon receiving my order, he gave a command to the lower spirits with a gesture of his chin.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop…
Three supreme spirits, commanded by their king, gave orders to the top ten, and those, in turn, a hundred average, and those, a thousand…
As a result, millions of fire spirits gathered…
And started a forest fire!
“My flora! How can you do something so terrible?!”
“To overcome evil, one must make sacrifices.”
“If so…”
Gardening Teacher, enraged by the incineration of her plants, sowed new seeds.
What sprouted out of the ground were purple flowers that I had never seen before.
As soon as the fire spirits smelled their scent, they immediately covered their noses with their hands and rushed away.
“Bue-e!”
“Hey, damn spirit! Don’t you dare vomit on my head!”
“You have no idea how terrible this stench is, Drug Hero! If I hadn’t neutralized it with your scent, I would’ve fled like my children!”
And it wasn’t just the First Spirit that did it.
The Five Spirit Kings pressed their noses to my groin and armpits as if I were a gas mask.
The smelly purple flowers’ aroma easily extinguished the fire I started.
“Their ashes will serve as fertilizer for the newer generations. Even your terrible crimes are nothing in front of Mother Nature.”
“What is that flower?”
“It’s called…”
“I’m only interested in its effect.”
“… It gives off a scent that spirits hate. In the entire universe, it grows only on this planet. This rare flower was on the verge of extinction because the elves, guided by the spirits, considered it a harmful poisonous plant.
“Since the spirits can’t handle it, how about this?”
Fshuh!
I unfurled my wings, the tips of their bones, which were harder than Holy Swords, locked and loaded with spikes that punished all evil.
I launched them at her plants.
Fshuk! Fshuk! Fshuk!
In doing so, I executed the Righteous Hero’s justice, capable of instantly killing even dragons!
“W-what is this…” Gardening Teacher’s voice trembled in shock.
Unable to withstand the justice of the MAX-Class Hero, her creations died.
“This is justice!”
“Ah! My God! Such a terrible poison—”
“Poison? This is justice!”
“My plants instantly wither upon getting even just slightly scratched by it!”
“Such is justice!”
“You really have no conscience, student Kang Han Soo! You just witnessed the death of beautiful verdure, and you still call it justice?!” Gardening Teacher shouted in displeasure, refusing to recognize my power as justice.
This wasn’t even my fault.
Compressing space, I instantly moved towards her.
There were no more plants to hinder me.
Her sinister vegetation could no longer grow in this place, considering the spikes from my wings had covered its surfaces.
“No seed can bloom here because you contaminated the entire place, Drug Hero…” The Addicted Spirit said, having recovered from her nausea.
“To defeat the evil members of the faculty, I must make sacrifices. Gardening Teacher herself said that the cycle of nature couldn’t be stopped anyway.”
“It’ll take a very long time…”
“Maybe I should throw you in a field of those smelly purple flowers.”
“What I’m trying to say is that I admire the Drug Hero’s justice!”
Gardening Teacher’s condition was dire.
Her whole body was covered with scratches, especially her calves, thighs, forearms, and face, which weren’t protected by clothes.
“Did you stumble?”
She seemed to have fallen into a thorny bush, with the help of which she tried to fence herself off from me.
“A-ah…”
“Oh! I know this plant. I’ve seen it often in dungeons. If the poison in your body isn’t neutralized soon, you’ll be left with black scars, regardless of your level and skill.”
“Wait—”
Fshuh!
I threw Gardening Teacher into my Demon Vault before she could finish her sentence.
She was probably trying to ask me to apply countermeasures against the black scars that would soon appear all over her.
However, this MAX-Class Righteous Hero didn’t negotiate with villains.
▷ Anxious: Junior! Don’t leave scars on her body!
‘Haha! You’re funny. Healing a woman as vicious as her for free? You can just do it yourself later.’
He could just cut off some of her plump buttocks to get rid of them.
▷ Haste: No carving of flesh! Please help her now! She may just be an evil teacher to you, but she’s one of my favorite wives!
Pathetic senior…
I looked around.
If one got cut by that plant’s thorns, their skin pigmentation would be disrupted, resulting in a black scar.
It wouldn’t disappear even if they surgically removed the scarred skin and used healing magic on it since their damaged skin was considered “normal” by the system.
This effect was used to stigmatize criminals who had committed extremely grave crimes comparable to high treason. Through it, the words “Deprived of Human Rights” were carved on their foreheads.
It only had two methods of treatment.
Skin grafting, and…
“I’ll need to induce a natural excretion of pigments according to the principle of osmotic pressure.”
I grabbed the stem of the thorny vine with my bare hands and squeezed it out like a wet towel.
The green sap of the plant mixed with my red blood, spilling onto the ground.
I combined the resulting mixture with sand to turn it into a thick paste.
▷ Question: What are you trying to do?
‘Simple folk remedy.’
A professional herbalist would use a blend of specific herbs, but I didn’t have that luxury right now.
Hence, I had to resort to a simplified method.
Pop!
After pulling Gardening Teacher out of the vault, I applied the freshly prepared product all over her body.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!”
She screamed in pain, but because of her broken spine, she couldn’t even resist.
It would definitely hurt a lot.
I applied the sand mixture to her wounds and started rubbing it all over her.
As a result, the toxins from her wounds were infused with the juice of my concoction.
After that, I asked the water spirits to cleanse her wounds of the sand.
That was it.
Gardening Teacher’s body itself quickly recovered thanks to her high skills.
… Except for her spine.
“I’ve applied first aid. Your wounds won’t become scars now. Be grateful to your ex-husband.”
“…”
“What?”
“How do you know about this folk remedy, student Kang Han Soo? It’s been forgotten since people preferred living with their scars instead of going through unbearable, hellish pain to remove them.”
“That’s a stupid question.”
I had no money because of my companions, but I wanted to somehow erase the black letters on my forehead, so I had to learn how.
“… Sorry.”
“Huh? What are you doing all of a sudden?”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying this for you to set me free. Just… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
“It looks like your pain was unbearable too.”
Fshuh!
I threw Gardening Teacher back into the vault as she repented.
▶ Question: What happened? Black letters? Am I the only one who doesn’t follow?
‘Let me explain, Trainee Teacher!’
It was a silly story.
During my first round, I was accused of murder and was brought to a trial in one of the kingdoms.
My companions overpowered the guards that came to arrest them then fled, but I had nothing to fear since I didn’t do anything illegal.
However, everything turned out to be much more serious than I thought.
While I slept in an inn, exhausted from training, my companions killed members of the royal family… all to protect some poor girl.
As a result, I became their scapegoat.
I wasn’t even at the scene of the murder, but since my companions refused to take responsibility, I had to do it for them.
I didn’t run away.
I wasn’t executed.
I wasn’t tortured.
The indignation of the parents who lost their children at my colleagues’ hands burst, but they knew that if I died, Demon Lord Pedonar would destroy the world. Hence, they couldn’t punish me.
Instead, they branded me.
▶ Depression: Why didn’t you run away? It wasn’t even cadet Kang Han Soo’s fault…
‘Because if I ran away, someone else would’ve been punished in my stead, Trainee Teacher.’
Complicity.
All those who helped my companions until the very moment of the crime they committed would be declared criminals.
All of them would’ve been executed, their parents tortured, and their siblings subjected to lifelong supervision.
Knowing this, I couldn’t just run away laughing like my companions, saying, “Haha, the vile royal family has been punished.”
Yes, it was unfair.
But I took the hit regardless.
▷ Confusion: Your way of thinking doesn’t fit the image of heroes, junior. Not a single hero of Fantasy thinks and acts like you.
‘And what do you suggest I should’ve done?’
▷ Reasoning: You should’ve fought back. Never take someone else’s fault as your own. Instead, you could’ve just arranged a coup in that rotten country and founded a new dynasty…
“Hahaha!”
I didn’t find that odd since I usurped the throne of the Emperor of the Holy Empire myself, but it wouldn’t have changed much back then. Hence, even a simple escape was a far better option.
The royalty punished the people they didn’t like, and the heroes got rid of the royalty they didn’t like…
There was no difference between the royal family and the heroes.
The strong fed on the weak.
“Shouldn’t someone break that food chain?”
And if nobody could tear it apart…
Then one simply had to abandon the incompetent role of Hero.
And…
Skrrr!
Become a God who would change everything.
