Chapter 37

Chapter 37: The Full Might of a Grown Rin
I made Rin rest at home for a full day so that she would not overexert herself after recovering.
The next morning, I went out and bought some children’s clothes.
A white shirt with a set of denim overalls.
And a light green dress.
The one Rin chose was the light green dress.
“It suits you well, Rin.”
“It really does. You are adorable.”
When Ria and I praised her, Rin went over to the mirror to look at herself.
Then she checked herself from the front and the back, and broke into a bright smile.
She must have liked it.
Thankfully, she did not seem especially uncomfortable wearing clothes.
“Rin, shall we go outside?”
I took Rin’s hand.
Now that she had grown, we could stand side by side and hold hands like this.
Rin, too, seemed pleased that she had grown, and she smiled up at me.
‘She really has grown so much.’
Holding Rin’s hand, I led her out of the living room and outside the house.
The three S-Rank Hunters, who had been working, all turned their eyes toward the house.
Then they put down their hoes and the bucket of water one of them had been carrying and came over to the front of the house, all wearing surprised expressions.
The Sword Saint was the first to arrive. He lowered himself in front of Rin and said,
“Rin, I am glad you recovered. Grandpa was very worried about you.”
“Gwandpa.”
“Haha! So now it is not ‘gampa,’ but ‘gwandpa’? Your pronunciation has gotten a little better now that your body has grown.”
That was true.
At this rate, maybe she would stop saying “Seon-u” as “Seonu” and say it properly soon.
Erik came over next.
“Hey, kid. You all right? I heard you were sick. Well, judging by how you look, you seem fine enough. You even grew a bean-sized bit taller.”
That brat.
Just listen to the way he talks.
I thought Rin would shrink back and hide again.
But contrary to what I expected, Rin did not avoid Erik anymore.
Instead, she wore a proud expression, completely unshaken.
“Well, well. So you’ve grown up a little, huh? Anyway, I am sorry about the first day we met.”
Erik lowered himself and held out his hand toward Rin.
It looked like he wanted to shake hands as a gesture of reconciliation.
Rin took it a different way.
Smack!
With a bright smile, she gave his outstretched hand a high five.
“This little thing…… might actually be kind of cute.”
“You are only noticing that now?”
Rin had been adorable when she was even smaller than this, and she was still adorable now.
Santos congratulated Rin on recovering as well.
Not with words, but with applause.
He was huge, but the way he acted was almost girlish.
Then I took Rin’s hand and walked one full lap around the house with her.
Bell trotted along behind us, wagging his tail.
‘This is good.’
When Rin had been sick, it had truly felt like hell.
But this very moment, walking around the house holding the hand of a grown Rin, felt like heaven.
“Seon-u!”
“What is it, Rin?”
Rin tugged on my hand.
She had grown enough now to be able to tug my hand like that.
Everything Rin did moved me now.
The place Rin led me to was Ria’s wilting vegetable patch.
It was the patch where bell peppers were growing.
If Rin went even a few days without touching it, the pepper leaves and fruit wilted in no time.
‘Bell peppers really are tricky to grow.’
They were quite difficult crops.
Something that could not be grown without Rin’s help.
It seemed Rin could not just walk past such a tragic sight.
She stretched out a hand toward the patch.
“Rin……?”
Up until now, Rin had only been able to make a single crop root grow at a time.
But this time, her target was not just one root.
Soon, emerald-colored Mana shimmered from her outstretched hand.
Then a wondrous thing happened.
The wilted peppers and leaves regained their freshness and began to grow again.
Not just a single root, but the entire bell pepper patch.
“Wow……!”
It was an incredibly mystical sight.
Was this the full majesty of a Dryad?
“She really does seem like a spirit of the forest itself.”
Rin finished restoring the bell peppers.
I applauded her and told her she had done well, and Rin smiled shyly and rubbed the back of her head.
Her range of emotional expression had grown a lot too.
Living together with Ria and me, humans, she had gradually begun to imitate our behavior.
Perhaps because being praised made her happy, Rin showed us a new ability this time.
She ran toward the forest, then stretched out her hand, shimmering with emerald-colored Mana, toward a small sapling that had only just begun to grow.
What happened next was astonishing.
The sapling began to grow larger, branches sprouted above, and the roots that had been buried in the ground emerged below and formed arms and legs.
“Could that be the Wooden Golem Ria told me about?”
Perhaps because Rin was still weak, the Wooden Golem was very small.
“Rin, that is amazing!”
“Heh……!”
Rin actually laughed out loud.
She was showing us so many new sides of herself today.
But the golem only stayed standing for a moment.
Rustle!
Perhaps she could only maintain it briefly, because the Wooden Golem suddenly collapsed in on itself.
The Wooden Golem had turned into a pile of wooden debris.
Seeing that, Rin lost confidence and lowered her head.
“It is all right. Next time, you will be able to keep it going longer.”
I patted Rin on the back.
Then I reached toward the wooden debris to clean it up.
[Wooden Debris from a Small Wooden Golem]
[Faintly imbued with persistent Mana.]
A system message appeared.
Wooden debris imbued with faint persistent Mana.
Would it be useful somewhere?
Could it perhaps have an effect like Bell’s golden eggs…… his droppings?
For now, I decided to store it in Acresia.
‘Come to think of it, Bell has started producing golden eggs again.’
Once I began grinding up the Lowest-Grade Magic Stones I had mined from the Ice Dungeon into his feed and giving them to him regularly, he had stopped producing them for a while, but then started again.
I had begun using that golden-egg fertilizer on the Applecherry Trees and on Ria’s fields too, raising the grade of the crops.
***
Two weeks passed.
A number of things had happened in that time.
First, I made more Fruit Wine and delivered it to Mr. Jang’s wine shop.
Then I heard that, after aging and being put on sale, all thirty-five bottles sold out again in just four days.
I also heard that the rescue party and follow-up expedition had been formed.
‘The rescue party is bigger than I expected.’
Two S-Rank Hunters had joined.
One Korean S-Rank Hunter, and one S-Rank Hunter from Brazil, Santos’s country.
In addition, there were over a dozen fairly well-known A+-Rank Hunters selected from various Korean guilds.
And, astonishingly enough, even the porters accompanying the expedition were all B-Rank or higher Hunters, numbering around twenty in total.
‘B-Rank or higher Hunters as porters?’
It was obvious how much effort had been poured into this rescue-and-follow-up party.
And the final piece of news was……!
‘The Glace Mushrooms I started cultivating still are not growing.’
My mushroom farming was on the verge of failure.
I had recreated an environment similar to the Ice Dungeon, yet the mushrooms showed no sign of growing.
Was this simply the limit of a beginner mushroom farmer?
‘Should I start over from scratch, even if it takes longer, and go through the mycelium and spawn stages properly this time?’
Or had the problem simply been a lack of nutrients?
If that was the case, should I mix Bell’s golden-egg fertilizer into the substrate?
But after thinking about it, that would not work.
When cultivating mushrooms, if other fungi mixed in, it would interfere with their growth.
‘Then should I try mixing in the wooden debris from the Wooden Golem?’
For now, I decided to try everything I could.
So I ground up the Wooden Golem debris and sprinkled it over the substrate.
‘Please grow!’
A few days later,
I wrapped myself up in winter gear and went back into the cave.
After passing through the curtains, I entered the incubation room at the deepest point, full of anticipation.
“Ah…….”
They had not grown.
Of course they had not.
But…….
It looked like something white was faintly poking up.
When I looked more closely, tiny white mushrooms were sprouting.
“I did it!”
The beginner mushroom farmer had succeeded.
Of course, I still had to wait and see whether they would grow well, but at least the start had finally been made.
It seemed the answer had indeed been sprinkling in the Wooden Golem debris, imbued with persistent Mana.
If I could mass-produce Glace Mushrooms, they would be of tremendous help in neutralizing the toxins in all kinds of Monster meat and turning them into stat dishes.
Since I planned to open a restaurant inside the Rift in the future, cultivating Glace Mushrooms was a very important preparatory step.
‘In the end, this was thanks to Rin again.’
Rin had helped me through the debris of the Wooden Golem.
‘No matter that mushrooms are fungi, mushroom farming is still farming.’
Rin, the Queen of Farming, had done it again.
***
Two days later.
Night had fallen, and Ria and Rin had gone into their room.
I was outside, taking a light walk alone.
Then the three S-Rank Hunters, who had gone out hunting, came back after several days away.
“You are back. But what is that?”
Santos was carrying something enormous on his back.
“It is the tail of a Basilisk.”
Erik answered before Santos could, sounding proud.
The Sword Saint chimed in as well.
“Since we hunted it, we cut off the tail and brought it back.”
A Basilisk was a High-Grade Monster that resembled a giant lizard.
An extremely venomous Monster.
“But why the tail of a Basilisk……?”
At my question, Erik looked at me as if I were being ridiculous.
“Because you told us that whenever we went hunting, if we found a Monster that looked edible, we should bring back the meat.”
I had said something like that.
The three S-Rank Hunters had recently been going out hunting more and more frequently.
Whenever they went, they stayed out for at least two days and traveled long distances.
And I had asked them to bring back any Monsters that looked as though they might be edible.
That still did not mean I had told them to bring back the tail of a Basilisk, a lump of concentrated poison.
“So you are saying you want to eat that……? It is a Monster famous for how deadly its venom is.”
The poison of a Horn Rabbit was merely the kind that caused severe stomach pain, but Basilisk venom was different.
According to what was written in the Monster encyclopedia, there was a report of an Awakened Hunter from an African indigenous tribe who ate hunted Basilisk meat and died after coughing up black blood.
But Erik answered as if it were nothing.
“Still, if you neutralize it with those Glace Mushrooms, it should be edible, right?”
“Hmm.”
Could that really work?
Even if it did, the poison was so strong that I would probably have to dump in a huge amount of Glace Mushrooms.
It felt wasteful to use that many mushrooms.
Of course, the Glace Mushrooms were now growing in abundance in the cave incubation room.
Once they had finally started growing, they had been flourishing rapidly.
Then the Sword Saint cleared his throat.
“Ahem! Even if it is dangerous, it is worth the risk for the sake of a stat dish. Haha……!”
These people were clearly starving for stats now that they had tasted stat dishes once.
They were not making rational judgments at all.
There was madness in the way they looked at me.
“And there is this too.”
Then the Sword Saint took two huge pincers out of his enormous backpack.
“What are those now?”
“The pincer legs of a Blood Scorpion.”
That Monster was also a highly venomous High-Grade Monster.
My head was beginning to spin.
The three of them stared at me with madness in their eyes.
If I refused, they looked ready to throw a fit.
“Hm…… All right. Fine, let us try it.”
To be honest, I was curious too.
Could Glace Mushrooms really neutralize the meat of Monsters that were that lethally venomous?
And I wanted to raise my stats as well.
In the end, I was no different from them.
“As expected of you, Seon-u!”
“I knew it. Even if we had tried to stop you, you still would have wanted to try, Seon-u.”
That hit the mark exactly.
How could a chef resist new ingredients?
It was like leaving fish in front of a cat.
And so the madness-fueled cooking began.
‘I will probably need to put in at least ten Glace Mushrooms per dish.’
It was better to guarantee success in one go than fail and waste the Glace Mushrooms.
The loss would be considerable, but it was fine.
The cave incubation room was overflowing with Glace Mushrooms now.