~Chapter 12~
I felt a bitter mood settle in.
What good is talent if I don’t have a family to support me or a noble status to back me up?
I had been fortunate enough to receive the Duke’s sponsorship from a young age, but there were still unavoidable limitations.
I wonder how different things would have been if I had been born into a good family and received proper education from the start.
If that had been the case, maybe I could have competed on equal footing with Aska. It was truly a regret.
Just as I sighed, a sudden idea flashed in my mind.
Wait, hold on.
What if I could implant all the magical knowledge I have into young Relshiz in this timeline? If I could send her back to the original timeline with that knowledge intact?
If I succeed, maybe I could beat Aska in the future?
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good plan.
Okay, when I get home, I’ll talk to Shiz about it.
As I was thinking this, I reached the entrance of the village.
“…Ahwa! Come here!”
I saw a man running toward us from inside, shouting loudly as if something urgent had happened.
I thought maybe he had come to greet the wizards arriving.
“Mushroom! Mushroom!”
The man was saying something that I couldn’t understand.
“What, what did you say?”
“Please catch that mushroom over there!”
“Eh?”
Thinking he was saying nonsense, I stood there confused, but then I saw something that looked like a brown mole-like creature running around in front of the man.
If my eyes weren’t deceiving me, that was a mushroom.
A mushroom with legs, running around.
“Ahhh! What is that?!”
Normally, mushrooms grow in damp, shady places. I had never heard of mushrooms running around the streets in broad daylight.
What the heck was going on?
“Wow, the mushroom is running around!”
Shiz, forgetting our earlier promise, exclaimed loudly. I turned to Aska.
“Isn’t that a monster?”
“I don’t feel any magic. It’s probably the effect of the crack.”
Aska quickly assessed the situation and took out a pure white staff from the spatial pocket. The man jumped back in shock.
“Ah! Don’t hurt the mushroom! It’s expensive!”
Expensive? How much could it be?
I thought to myself, but then the man shouted out an amount.
“It’s worth at least 1.5 million gold! Please catch it! This mushroom will change my life!”
“Eh? What did you say?”
The research budget allocated to me for the first half of this year was about 30 million gold. A 0.5 research grant was running around in front of me.
“Wow, crazy.”
While I was dumbfounded watching the running mushroom, Aska suddenly asked me a question.
“Do you know the cause of the strange phenomena happening because of the crack?”
“It’s due to mana distortion.”
“Right. So how should we solve this?”
“We need to absorb the mana and stabilize it. You’re not asking me because you don’t know, are you?”
“Of course not. I just wanted to make sure you knew.”
Is he trying to teach me something now? Even if he looks like that, he’s a top graduate from the Academy!
Seeing my expression sour, Aska chuckled.
“Mom, look, look!”
Meanwhile, Shiz couldn’t hold back and raised her voice again.
“Shh, I told you to be quiet!”
“Look, look over there! Flowers are flying!”
“What?”
I turned my head, following Shiz’s gaze, and sure enough, I saw flowers fluttering through the air.
If it weren’t for the long stems and roots, I would have mistaken them for butterflies.
What on earth is going on?
“Hey, someone caught my flower over there!”
“My garden plant! Where’s my garden plant?!”
“Your garden plant is walking out on its roots.”
“What? Why didn’t you stop it?!”
Now that I was paying attention, I saw that it wasn’t just mushrooms running around.
Spring flowers, wild grass, moss, trees, various vegetables, and even carrots were all moving around.
There were even vegetables that looked like they had just been cooked and jumped out of dishes.
‘What is happening?’
The village was pure chaos. People were running around in shock, colliding with each other.
“If we leave it like this, the damage will get worse. I’ll handle the east side from here. Please take care of the west, Rel.”
“Don’t order me around! I’ll do it because it’s urgent!”
“Handle it, and meet me at the center of the village.”
“Okay!”
I didn’t like following Aska’s orders, but right now, I didn’t have time to argue.
Aska turned his back and walked away, staff in hand, exuding a completely different atmosphere than usual.
For a moment, I thought, “He really is the leader of the Dawn Tower.”
‘Snap out of it. This isn’t the time to be watching.’
I tightly held Shiz, who had slipped from my arms.
“You have to endure, Shiz.”
Because from now on, we would be running non-stop.
Every time I saw one of the strange plants, I immediately absorbed the mana.
I thought that if I kept repeating this, the chaos would eventually settle down.
But things didn’t go as I expected.
No matter how much mana I absorbed, the strange plants kept marching on. Even the plants I had personally returned to normal were moving again.
“Ugh, this is… huff, this is never-ending!”
My stamina was quickly running out, especially since I was carrying a six-year-old child.
“Mom, wait a minute…”
This wasn’t the time for that. I had to find the source of the crack. To fix the core distortion, I had to end this crazy situation.
‘There must be a source. Where is it?’
I looked around the village, but there was nothing visible to the naked eye.
“…Wait, hold on, stop for a moment!”
Damn, I wish I had a magic sight like Aska.
‘No, he hasn’t been able to find the center of the crack either.’
I guessed that the mana might be so tangled that it was hard to see anything clearly. When there’s too much to focus on, it only gets in the way.
‘Should I wait for the crack observatory to arrive? But no, it’ll take too long to activate.’
Just then, Shiz, who had been quietly resting on my back, suddenly grabbed my cheek and pulled it hard.
“Un! Ni!”
“Ahh, that hurts!”
“Why aren’t you answering?”
“Ugh, just call me, why are you pinching my cheek? What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been calling you and you didn’t hear me!”
Shiz bit her lip and gave me a fierce look.
“I feel like I’m going to vomit! Before I throw up on your clothes, let me down!”
Only then did I notice that she didn’t look well at all.
“Oh, sorry, sorry. I’ll put you down right now.”
I carefully lowered Shiz to the ground, trying to avoid being seen. She wobbled a bit as she stood on her feet.
“Ugh… I can’t carry this bag anymore. I want to stop…”
“I’m sorry…”
I gently patted Shiz’s little back. After rubbing her eyes with a sulky expression, she suddenly perked up and looked at me.
“Unni!”
“What? Are you feeling better now?”
“Didn’t you see it earlier? The running mushrooms!”
“Ah, 1.5 million.”
I remembered seeing it. The price was so shocking, I couldn’t forget it.
“There were really running blades of grass!”
Shiz’s innocent eyes sparkled as she said this. It made me chuckle at how childlike her thoughts were.
“Running grass? Where in the world would you see that?”
“Well, then, was it not real? What about those earlier?”
“Those weren’t real. They were just a temporary effect from the mana. They aren’t real things.”
For some reason, Shiz’s face grew dim at my answer.
“Even if we searched the whole world?”
“Well, I haven’t searched the whole world, so I wouldn’t know.”
“One of my dreams just vanished…”
What kind of dream did I have in the past that I wanted to see running grass?
Anyway, now that I had set Shiz down, I took a moment to catch my breath. Sitting in a small room doing research all the time, I was dying just from moving my body.
“Don’t go, mushroom!”
Hmm, I thought I heard someone calling out desperately for mushrooms from a distance. I really didn’t get why anyone would pay 1.5 million gold for something that didn’t even taste good.
Then, Shiz lightly tugged at the hem of my clothes. She had a tense expression on her face.
“What is it?”
“On the ground, do you see that? Can you see it, unni?”
