Chapter 13

"..."

The moment Jio woke up, he spoke.

"... Fruit tea..."

He wanted warm, sweet fruit tea.

"Let's make fruit syrup."

And so today's activity was decided.

Making fruit syrup was not that difficult.

All he needed were tools sterilized with love, fruit raised with affection, and the same amount of sugar.

'Which means I need so much sugar that I'll think, Ah, this is what it takes to get diabetes.'

And most fruits could be made into syrup.

As long as they went well together, it did not matter if he used two or more kinds of fruit.

"..."

The first fruit Jio decided on was the Mangdung Fruit.

"But with just this, I think it'll only be too sweet."

If there were flavors needed to successfully make fruit syrup, which was essentially sugar water infused with fruit flavor, the first was sourness and the second was bitterness.

It was already going to be so sweet from the sugar alone that his tongue would sting, and if another sweet fruit went into that, it would be nothing but canned fruit.

Jio had learned that fact after making syrup with fully ripe, cloyingly sweet mandarins.

"That does taste good too."

But what Jio wanted right now was fruit tea with sweetness as the base, sourness added on top, and a bitter note.

It was not that difficult a composition.

"I'll need a sour and bitter fruit to go with the Mangdung Fruits."

The combination he had often made in reality was mainly strawberries and lemon.

Strawberries did have some sourness, but overall, they were soft and sweet.

By contrast, lemons had sour flesh and bitter peels, so they would add depth to the one-dimensional sweetness of those strawberries.

This time was similar.

"Mangdung Fruits do have sourness, but they're on the sweet side."

And because that sweetness was so intense, he thought they would be good with a fruit as sour as lemon or as astringent as yuzu.

Fruit syrup with such a variety of flavors was especially satisfying when drunk as warm tea.

"Honey."

"Grrr."

"Let's go."

With a golden water bird on his shoulder, Jio set off boldly on an adventure.

He said to Honey, who had at some point moved into the basket.

"I could just draw lemons or yuzu and make them myself, but all foods born that way taste just all right... so harvesting them myself like this is better."

"Grrrk?"

"It's better for my own satisfaction, and better for the fruit syrup I'll make later."

"If possible, I'd rather try using some unusual fruit from this forest than fruit with a weak flavor."

Jio could draw pictures and create things to eat.

Strangely, however, the ingredients and foods made that way were all somewhat bland.

They were decent enough when he just wanted something to nibble on, but he did not want to use them in a dish he was going to make properly.

In honor of his grandmother, who had been a big name in the village, Jio vowed to make fruit syrup worthy of a fantasy world.

"When I think about things like that, farming doesn't seem like a bad option either."

"Grrk."

"As a freshly harvested potato from Gangwon Province, I can tell this soil is very suitable for farming."

"The weather is always like a mild spring day, but that doesn't mean there's no wind, and though it has never rained, the soil is always moist, plus there are streams here and there."

"It's a decent environment for watering too."

"Grrrr..."

"I don't have seeds or seedlings, but I think I can get help with that from Mr. Yu Seongun."

"If I want to receive something from beyond the painting, I'll have to give compensation too, but I can provide that much as much as I want..."

A human life with unlimited activities guaranteed held charm like an onion.

Even if it did not seem that way, once he squeezed it, something to do always came out.

"Good."

Excellent.

Was this kind of freedom not the greatest joy of unemployed life?

"It'll be hard for crops grown by my own hands, full of the spirit of the Gangwon Province mountains, not to taste good."

"Don't you think?"

"Grrrrrr."

"It really feels like I'm living in the countryside."

"I should have lived this peaceful, warm life ages ago..."

Seo Jio recalled his hometown, where he had been able to come into contact with all kinds of nature as a child.

"Ever since I was young, I liked helping with this and that."

"Thanks to the elders having so many different things going on, I tried beekeeping, dug up wild ginseng, met wild boars..."

"Grrk?"

"I'm not talking about poaching."

"I literally ran into them, and no one got hurt or died, and we parted ways peacefully."

"I think I ended up meeting them thanks to someone who went around the mountains gathering mushrooms and ginseng."

There was no one who did not have a vegetable garden, and some people casually raised chickens, ducks, or quail.

He remembered enjoying making cheese with fresh milk he had gotten from a ranch owned by an acquaintance of an acquaintance, or simply mixing honey into it and drinking it.

Jio was a person who had done almost everything a human could do on the land.

"There's no way someone like me can't manage a little farming."

Grandmother, please watch over me.

"I'll prove my talent in the name of our village."

"Grrung?"

"I was taught that you're not supposed to stake your own name on things like this."

His grandmother's theory had been that if it seemed like he could not do it, he should borrow the name of an elder in the family.

"Of course, I don't think she meant for me to use that advice at a time like this."

Interpretation was up to the individual.

"Then what seeds should I ask for..."

"Grrr?"

"... First, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn are absolutely necessary."

Jio began to speak freely.

"They aren't considered representative famine-relief crops around the world for nothing, so it's best to grow them in case of emergency."

"And I want to grow radishes too."

"Especially if you pull up radish sprouts while they're still tender like new shoots and mix them with rice, fermented paste, and oil, it's just that delicious."

"Grrk, grrr."

"Pumpkin?"

"Pumpkins are good."

"Big old pumpkins are good for making porridge, small sweet kabocha pumpkins are tasty if you simply boil them and drizzle honey over them, and long, plump zucchini are nicely savory when you put them in soup, so they fill you up."

"You know a thing or two."

There were many other things that came to mind.

"Lettuce, maybe?"

"Grumble, grumble, grumble..."

"It's surprisingly decent."

"It's easy to grow, and if you pluck off the well-grown leaves and put only rice and fermented paste on them, a meal is taken care of in no time."

"Or bok choy is good when boiled in clear broth."

"Grrrk."

"Peas would be fine too."

"Ah, cherry tomatoes... I like those too."

"If it's a vegetable garden, it ought to have at least one tomato plant growing in it."

After saying that much, Jio looked down at the basket in his hand.

"..."

"Grrr."

"Aha."

He saw Honey spread out inside the basket like a spilled liquid monster.

"Right."

It was cute, so that was enough.

Honey was mainly a bird that held gemstones inside itself.

The gemstones filling the basket, where golden liquid sloshed as if rich honey water had spread out, were quite pleasant to look at.

It seemed that being together would not be boring.

Jio, who had been talking about his future farming plans, soon stopped in front of a tree.

"Ah..."

A pitch-black tree.

It was a tree made of obsidian.

"I found this first."

"..."

Jio, who was looking at the description that appeared automatically, blinked twice.

"Did I use too much obsidian paint last time?"

Quite a lot of obsidian powder had been used in the process of making the water birds' habitat.

It was a material often used to create a transparent texture like water or glass, so it would be good to gather some while he had the chance.

Jio looked for the chisel and hammer in the basket.

They were tools that did not suit the word gathering at all, but there were no better helpers for harvesting a starflower tree.

"Wake up, my son."

"This lazy look of yours is very adorable, but Dad has to work."

"Grrrrk."

"This isn't even the kind of thing you like."

"Give it here."

"Good boy."

Jio gently coaxed Honey, who was playing with the tools, and recovered the items, then put the basket down on the ground and approached the obsidian tree.

He touched a branch of the obsidian tree and checked its temperature and moisture.

As if proving it was alive, he felt a faint warmth and sap flowing like blood through it.

"Probably..."

Jio searched among them for a dead branch.

"This one, maybe."

A hard branch surrounded by an oddly biting chill, reflecting light sharply rather than sparkling, and with not even the slightest sense of moisture.

After Jio touched and checked the boundary, he placed the chisel and hammer close.

Then, tap, tap.

"..."

CLINK...!

"Done."

The obsidian branch came off easily with a clear ringing sound.

Branches that were still alive could not be removed as easily as this.

They were excessively hard, and inside, sticky sap clung together, so even if one tried to break them, they did not break well.

'Obsidian that hard is inconvenient when making paint too.'

Living branches with sticky sap flowing through them were difficult to make into clean powder.

Unless the purpose was to make sharp knives or arrowheads, or to extract sap, it was best to choose dead branches as much as possible.

"That'll be better for the tree too."

Though it was an obsidian tree with glassy tissue like this, it was unmistakably alive.

Since it was a tree that bloomed flowers that would make excellent medicinal ingredients, removing dead branches would be much more comfortable from the tree's point of view as well.

Careful not to let the weakened dead branch shatter, Jio divided the long branch into pieces.

The obsidian shards holding the biting chill of stars in the night sky all went into Honey's belly inside the basket.

"Are you going to hold on to those?"

"Grrrrrrrr!"

"All right, let's do that."

It made him wonder if Honey was stocking up an independence fund in advance, but in any case, it was truly a bird crazy about gemstones.

What an embodiment of greed, so at odds with that clear and clean face.

'He can't resist shiny stones.'

He might cause trouble, but at least he would not live getting taken advantage of.

Jio raised his head again and looked at the starflower tree.

"..."

The tree was a deep black that reflected sunlight vividly like a mirror.

The obsidian was a black so cold that it seemed one should only see it on a snowy mountain, but perhaps because it was alive, it also blended well with the spring environment where flowers and grass bloomed vividly.

At times, forest butterflies in the shape of light landed on it.

After admiring the sharp, hard tree for a long while, Jio started walking again.

"... I need to find fruit."

"Grrk."

"I hope there's some decent fruit."

Fortunately, it did not take Jio long to discover a fruit that he liked very much.

"A nutritional supplement, huh."

That part was also very interesting, but.

"... It's sour and bitter?"

Jio was drawn to this point more than anything.

'It doesn't say it's poisonous, so there doesn't seem to be any real problem with eating it raw, but just how sour and bitter is it for it to separately tell me a way to make it sweet enough to eat?'

He bravely picked the fruit.

Its size was exactly that of a Korean mandarin, and its peel was a little harder than one, but in any case, the form was similar.

The segments inside were also exactly like a mandarin in every way except that they were a rich yellow like honey.

Sniff, sniff.

After smelling the tart scent, Jio bit into one fruit without hesitation.

"..."

GULP.

Jio swallowed the fruit calmly.

"..."

"G-Grr... grrrr..."

"Yes."

At Honey's tense reaction, Jio nodded with his usual blunt face.

His facial muscles, which had long since degenerated, did not yield to trials and tribulations of this degree merely taking place on his tongue.

"It's sour and bitter."

It was a taste that made him understand why the Elixir Refining Method only said, "Process it into an edible form and consume it."

'Even historical execution poison was probably sweeter than this.'

It was a shocking stimulus, enough to make his mind reel.

While barely holding on to his fading reason, he learned that the texture was firmer than a mandarin and that it had less juice, but compared to that astonishing flavor, it was not a particularly concerning detail.

He took deep breaths for a while.

"..."

Why did he not dislike it, though?

Jio gained confidence.

"This much won't lose to the sweetness of the Mangdung Fruits."

Honey, who had been in the same basket, recoiled in disgust and slipped out.

For sweet Honey, it seemed to be too shocking a flavor to handle.