“Fish seems to be too difficult for me. Next time, I’ll try something easier to revive.”
Eating the crispy fried fish dipped in sauce, he began to pre-select
The next day.
Rune appeared alone this time, leaving Byakya in the room.
As soon as he arrived in the kitchen, he searched for the pantry where the spices were stored.
There was an ingredient he had in mind.
“Found it.”
Bundles of tree branches with coniferous leaves, which could be used as herbs, were tightly bound together.
Rune hugged the whole bundle and cracked a smile.
“If animals don’t work, then plants it is.”
He placed the bundle of herbs on the sink and concentrated again.
“Revive.”
Flash.
The plants, which were in relatively good condition, began to change.
They looked so full of life, as if they were growing directly on a tree.
Of course, it did not fully satisfy him.
They didn’t grow into a perfect tree form.
“Damn it. This doesn’t work either?”
Rune crossed his arms and tapped one foot, feeling as if he had a treasure chest but couldn’t pull out gold as he pleased.
While looking at the branches with frustration, Rune noticed something odd.
“Was there a sprout like that?”
It was a tiny, blunt sprout, so small it seemed like it might have always been there.
“No, a new sprout has definitely appeared.”
Staring intently at the bright green sprout, he clenched and then opened his right hand.
He felt like he had found a clue to his ability.
After looking around, he went to the cupboard where the jars of tea ingredients were stored and rummaged through them.
“Not this one. Here, this!”
Rune grabbed a glass jar filled with tea leaves made from small, pink rosebuds the size of a fingernail.
As soon as he opened the lid, a subtle rose fragrance spread out.
He tilted the jar and shook it slightly until two dried rosebuds rolled out.
“Revive.”
Flash.
Without fail, a light burst out, and the buds started to absorb life and bloom.
Watching the dead flower regain life was quite a spectacle.
However, it didn’t bloom perfectly and remained in his hand with only a glimmer of freshness.
“It’s almost there.”
Clicking his tongue, Rune put away the jar and roughly shoved the buds into his pocket.
“I think I get it now. How should I use this?”
He pondered while experimenting with different ingredients around him.
As a result, he revived everything from a fresh apple to a smooth, unblemished onion, a hearty potato, and a plump carrot.
And then…
“…Ha.”
Lastly, what he held in his hand was a greenish, half-ripe tomato that had turned from being fully ripe.
“Wrong.”
He threw the tomato on the floor, but it was so firm it didn’t burst and instead bounced to a corner.
“Damn it. Produce, root vegetables, flowers. Something easier and more trivial than these…”
Trying to calm his impatience, Rune took a deep breath and a final candidate popped into his mind.
“…Seeds?”
Looking around, he unfortunately couldn’t find any appropriate seeds for revival in the kitchen.
He felt extremely frustrated, like the saying “no herb is useful when you need it,” because he couldn’t find even a single seed.
“To think it’s this trivial! How much more merit do I need to accumulate to use this ability properly?”
Even if he found seeds and succeeded properly, it was clear he would have to invest a massive amount of time in training to use them effectively.
“There must be a way. Certainly… they said it would be offset or enhanced according to the level.”
He recalled that Ferdikion’s song was merely a form to activate the word of command.
“Level is just a unit, but it must include the experiences and attributes of my life.”
This space was the central part of Christina’s lair.
Simply put, it was a place filled with an attribute of light, directly opposed to darkness.
Having realized something, Rune smacked his fist into his other palm.
“That’s right. That’s why Ferdikion said he would prepare overnight classes.”
While it was a great place for healing, it wasn’t conducive for someone with dark attributes to exert their powers.
Realizing this fact, Rune grabbed the dried fish he experimented on yesterday from the refrigerator and cast a teleportation spell.
He disappeared from the kitchen and reappeared at the place where he first emerged from his egg.
It was a place filled with the relics and mana stones left by the Black Dragons, full of dark energy.
Feeling oddly familiar and confident, he said,
“If it’s here, my attributes will be strengthened.”
He carried the dried fish as he walked past the relics of the Black Dragons toward the center.
Then something caught his eye.
“This is?”
What he saw was a small single black seed on a soft cushion, exactly what he needed but couldn’t find anywhere.
Rune, intrigued, threw aside the dried fish he brought for the experiment and picked up the seed.
Simultaneously, knowledge about the seed surfaced through inherited understanding.
– Variety: Alluring Black Rose that blooms in the demonic realm
– Incubation Condition: Unknown
– Needs soil with dark attributes to grow.
– Special Note: There is a rare possibility that the soul of ■■ is contained in the seed.
“A flower that blooms in the demonic realm?”
Though the information was limited and not fully revealed, it was certain that this was an item that could only be found in the demonic realm.
Hoping for similar items, he thoroughly searched the surrounding lair but couldn’t find even a trace of another seed shell.
Although the special note troubled him a bit, he decided it was the perfect chance since it was a seed with dark attributes, right in the heart of the Black Dragon’s domain.
Even though he didn’t know the incubation condition, it didn’t matter.
If the word of command “Revive” worked properly, he wouldn’t need any conditions.
Taking a deep breath for concentration, he held the seed and shouted,
“Revive!”
Flash!
A stronger light of life than ever burst out from his hand.
Tock. Todok.
The seed in his hand began to twitch little by little.
Soon, its pointed tip broke open, revealing a small, black sprout.
“Great! Keep it up!”
Rune found himself cheering for the sprout.
Watching it flare its first leaves, as if it had met sunlight, Rune’s eyes gleamed.
But that was as far as it went.
The pace of its leaf growth slowed, then its growth halted.
“No!”
His cry of despair rang out, but the sprout stopped moving and hardened as if frozen solid.
Rune sighed in frustration.
“…So even this doesn’t work.”
“A seed with the same attribute should have produced better results.”
It was his final resurrection candidate.
Feeling the power of the word of command gradually fade, he was overcome with a sense of helplessness.
“All I did was sprout it.”
As if he was about to fling the seed away in frustration, Rune noticed something odd.
The thin roots protruding from the seed pricked his hand like they might puncture his skin.
“Am I imagining things?”
Although it was only a faint tickle, Rune held onto hope.
Changing his stance from throwing it, he brought the sprouted seed close to examine it once more.
Wiggling.
The seed, which had sprouted, started to grow fine roots while trembling in his palm.
It seemed to cling to his hand, desperately trying to absorb its energy.
“It’s not an illusion.”
The seed clearly had a dark blessing on its leaves and was desperately seeking Rune’s darkness.
The effort to obtain nutrients indicated a basic survival instinct.
To a seed from the demonic realm, the magical power of a Black Dragon might be a precious source of nutrients.
Realizing this, Rune decided to share some of his magic.
Sluurrp.
As if waiting for it, the sprout started to absorb his magic little by little.
“It’s alive!”
Rune involuntarily smiled from the success.
He then looked around to find soil with dark attributes but couldn’t see anything close to it.
Rune frowned.
“After reviving it with much effort, I can’t let it die here.”
Desperately, he searched among the relics.
He carefully opened old boxes and brought artifacts with dark attributes close to the sprout.
But none worked.
Meanwhile, the sprouting seed started losing strength.
Rune, growing more desperate, racked his brain.
“If the sprout needs soil for nutrients, it doesn’t necessarily have to be soil if it can absorb nutrients. There must be another way.”
It was a challenging situation for someone who had never raised a flower before.
He paced in circles thinking when he suddenly remembered something.
“Come to think of it, I once heard a human was developing a method to grow plants without soil.”
While he had thought of it as unrealistic nonsense at the time, now he was willing to grasp at straws.
“They said there were tiny, hard, jelly-like beads with nutrients needed for plant growth, which you could use in a glass vase to grow plants.”
The person had claimed it was aesthetically pleasing and reduced the trouble of changing water and soil, making it convenient.
Rune calmed himself as much as possible and reviewed the information he had dismissed as nonsense before.
“Nutrients would be my dark attribute magic. So if I have a medium to contain my magic, I can grow this sprout?”
Ordinary plants would have needed a soft medium to root, but the demonic realm rose in his hand was strong enough to pierce his skin.
“With this kind of strength, it can root in a medium with more hardness. But it rejects relics while clinging to my hand, meaning… it can only absorb pure dark magic.”
Suddenly, Rune found a perfect medium.
“My scales!”
Immediately, he removed the golden bracelet that was his polymorph artifact.
Returning to the form of a young hatchling, he plucked a small scale from his arm.
It was easier than pulling out a hair.
“Please work.”
He placed the scale on the ground and put the sprouting seed’s roots on it.
Though small, the scale was enough to hold the seed.
Then, the roots wrapped around the scale and began to draw in the magic contained within it.
“Kyuaa!”
Rune roared as he clenched his right hand into a fist.
Then, letting out a silent laugh, he sighed in relief.
“Ha. I feel like I’ve shaved off ten years of my life.”
He found it somewhat absurd that he had made such a big fuss over a single seed.
But since there wasn’t a stock of seeds from the demonic realm, he couldn’t just ask Christina to procure more.
If this seed had died, it would have been immensely difficult and time-consuming to find another replacement, causing him significant trouble.
Feeling fortunate for having averted that crisis, he adjusted his excitement, plucked a few more appropriate scales, and took a few steps back to observe the sprout again.
“To think I got so excited over something like this…”
He shook his head with a chuckle, wondering if his mentality was regressing along with his body.
It was a satisfying success.
“Anyway, it worked out.”
Watching the sprout work hard to survive on the black scale made him feel a bit proud.
The sprout seemed to be absorbing magic well enough from one or two scales to last several days.
“Hang in there. Both you and I, having come back to life, let’s live to experience good things.”
That brief involvement had weirdly drawn Rune’s affection towards it.
Swish.
Maybe it was just his imagination, but the sprout seemed to sway in response.
After watching the sprout absorb nutrients from the scales for a while, Rune returned to Christina’s kitchen for his cooking lesson.
“Welcome, Rune.”
“Sorry I’m late. What should I do?”
“I have some great ingredients today, so I was thinking we could make steak.”
“Finally, I get to eat some meat.”
Just thinking about what kind of meat it might be made his mouth water. The sight of the large chunk of meat and cheese in the kitchen raised his expectations.
The herbs visible beyond it were surely the leaves he had freshly revived with the word “Revive.”
Seeing the cleaned branches neatly separated and piled in a corner like firewood confirmed it.
Following his gaze, Christina mumbled in curiosity.
“That’s strange. If there were such herbs, I wouldn’t have just passed them by…”
As she stared keenly at Rune, it seemed like she had a hunch about something.
Feeling a bit guilty, Rune tried to deflect her suspicions, and Christina laughed while grabbing the piece of meat.
“Well then, shall we begin today’s lesson?”
“Yes, let’s.”
It seemed Christina decided not to seriously pursue the matter, letting it go without further comment.
Fortunately, today’s classes with Ferdikion had been postponed to the evening, so there was no rush.
“Before that, shall we have a quick bite? Just seasoning and resting the steak will take a few hours. Plus the soup and preparing the side vegetables will take even longer.”
Gathering the potatoes, carrots, and onions, Christina looked satisfied and asked,
“These fresh vegetables are quite something, aren’t they? I thought it would be a good idea to set aside the good ingredients, so I did.”
