NOVEL NEXT chapter 143
“Oh, so this is basically a prompt asking if I’ll let an outsider with no permissions do something on my land, right? I already knew that planting items from another race was possible if you had permission, even across factions—but I didn’t know this is how that process worked.”
“What is this?”
“A seed. I thought it’d be nice if something could stay by your side even when I’m not here, so you wouldn’t feel lonely.”
“I’m not lonely though?”
“Still, the yard is kind of barren. Don’t you think it’d be nice to have at least one flower? And it’s not just any flower—it’s one planted by someone from Jeojajok. ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) Isn’t that kind of fascinating?”
Hmm… When he put it like that, it was sort of fascinating. A flower on its own wasn’t much of a thrill, but the idea that a seed planted by someone from the rival faction—planted by Retaking a Class—would grow in front of my house… For some reason, that started to feel exciting.
I wondered what kind of seed it was. Even if it just sprouted into a random wildflower, the thought that Retaking a Class had planted it himself would probably make me feel quite attached to it.
With a heart fluttering just a bit, I hit the accept button without hesitation. Sparkling effects shimmered on screen, and another message popped up:
[[uibeyvnct] iizwy zykovm tcokbiulwiivn o’s survival probability is 3.854%.]
“3.854%?”
“3.854 percent?”
The moment we saw the message, both of us were horrified. We’d just planted a seed and the survival rate was under 4%. How did that make any sense?
“What... what kind of seed is this?”
“Just one I had stashed in my storage... Maybe it’s because it was a reward item from an event at launch?”
Planting a seed from another faction wasn’t a bug—it was a fully supported feature. Sure, it was a hidden mechanic not covered in the guidebooks on the official website, but the system itself accounted for this possibility.
All living things adapt to their environments, and since the biomes for Jeojajok and Viajok were different, the game deliberately lowered the chance of survival when a seed was planted in hostile soil. I don’t know much about botany, so I can’t make a proper analogy, but it was basically like trying to get a desert fox to survive in the Arctic.
But still—3.854%?! Isn’t that a little too extreme? Once a seed was planted, you couldn’t take it back out. That meant he’d basically just tossed a precious limited-time event item straight into the dirt.
Gang Jaegyung looked stunned too, his face crestfallen. Meanwhile, guild members who had caught wind of the situation through chat started to approach us.
It was absolute chaos trying to read all the message bubbles popping up at once. Everyone typed so fast that just as I’d start reading one message, it would get shoved offscreen by another. And just as I’d shift to the next one, another bubble would appear and knock that one out too. Laughing messages were especially long and big, so they’d block other people’s chat entirely.
In the middle of all this, Gang Jaegyung noticed the greetings directed at him and nudged me, asking me to say hi on his behalf.
At first, I tried responding to everyone individually, carefully picking through the chat messages. But soon enough, my head started to throb. Why did they all have to swarm in like this now, when they’d been invisible earlier when I actually wanted to show off?
And seriously, how the hell was the chat window not even visible on my screen to begin with?
Then, like someone getting kicked out, I quit the game.
As I closed my eyes, the blur from trying to keep up with all those chat bubbles made them feel a little dry. I pressed my fingers into the bridge of my nose and felt a cool touch.
“Do your eyes hurt?”
Gang Jaegyung pulled my hand away and gently placed his own over my eyes. A cooling sensation spread over my eyelids. I’d thought it before, but his body really did run cold.
It felt nice… but also kind of funny.
“What are you doing? It’s not that bad.”
I chuckled and pushed his hand away. As I opened my eyes, my vision was still a little blurry, but then his pale face came into view. He’d been staring at me, clearly worried, but once he saw me smile, he started to grin too.
“Let’s just go play Lastones. Log off Dusk.”
I spoke to him while glancing at his monitor. He hadn’t logged out yet.
After I quit, the guild members had scattered around: Nangman was standing next to the wrecked front door, Nickjoongi was just standing beside Retaking, the summoner hyung—who I hadn’t seen in ages—was at the patch of ground with the seed, whose fate hung in the balance, and Moon Seonhwa was frozen in place right where I’d logged out. The characters were still, but Retaking probably had the guild chat window open, watching the chaos unfold.
Before logging out, Gang Jaegyung jumped a few times—probably as a way of saying goodbye to the guild—and then closed the game.
Then, in a voice like a whisper, he said:
“I really hope the seed... sprouts.”
Even so, with just 3.854%... wasn’t that pretty unlikely?
But I didn’t say it out loud. If I voiced that kind of negativity, it might really stop the seed from growing. Who knows—maybe it’ll beat the odds and sprout.
“So this was why you wanted to visit the guild house?”
“Yeah.”
“No wonder you didn’t seem that interested in the house tour.”
“That’s not true. At first, I really just wanted to see where you lived. But before I left, I remembered the seed in my storage, so I brought it along.”
Amazing he even remembered it.
Then suddenly, another thought hit me. Jaegyung had said the seed was from an “opening event,” but if I remembered right, those seeds had some kind of special option attached. Not necessarily one-of-a-kind, but you could choose one from a set of rare cash-shop seed effects.
So that meant Jaegyung must’ve chosen an option before planting it.
But when I briefly glanced at the info window earlier, everything had been in unreadable alien text. I had no idea what the name or effect was. The only data I could make out were the growth and health indicators.
I didn’t know jack about seeds or plants in the game, so I racked my brain trying to recall what the options had been, but gave up and just asked him directly.
“What option did you choose for that seed?”
“The option? Just a buff.”
Oh ho... a buff?
“Does it apply to me too?”
“No, it doesn’t work on other factions.”
Well, that was disappointing. I gave him a side-eye and asked,
“Then why pick that one?”
“Well, since nothing would benefit you anyway because of the faction difference, I thought I might as well pick one that’d at least feel good.”
“Then you should’ve just lied and told me it worked. I might’ve been dumb enough to believe I’d gotten buffed and felt all happy.”
I was joking, but Jaegyung looked at me like he’d just had some earth-shattering revelation. Like he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of that himself.
“…And then, when I found out the truth and got disappointed, I’d have punched you in the face.”
“…That’s why I told you the truth.”
Unbelievable. I clicked my tongue at him, pretending to be annoyed.