NOVEL NEXT chapter 214
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Anonymous: Customer 5873, we inform you that inquiries regarding additional stock of
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Thank you.
Hmm.
Looks like it’s selling well.
It's F-Rank, and people are still using it?
Guru glanced at the message like it was nothing and stuffed her kids' phone into her bag.
“Tatoes awe gwoowing weaw good!”
But the moment you start to feel safe, crisis always comes knocking.
“Muuuuuuu!”
Guru, who had tied up Veilach to a cross, wiped her sweat as she stabbed a fork into the ground.
'Farming’s way hawder than Gwuu thought.'
Creeeeep.
Guru let out a gloomy sigh as she looked at the forsythia patch, now a ragged mess from earthworm corpses.
'Too many wowms…'
Well, it wasn’t just that there were a lot of earthworms. The real problem was that after eating the organic matter from the soil infused with the magical power of the potatoes, the earthworms had started swelling up like balloons and turning into slimes.
The Kritaito emitted such strong magical power that it was altering the soil, which seemed to be affecting the earthworms as well.
Guru stabbed a slime-worm with her fork again and popped it.
'This patch’s no good.'
The forsythia patch was inside the school grounds.
If slimes started popping up in this special school full of Awakened students, it would only be a matter of time before someone found out Guru was secretly growing potatoes.
“Muuuuuuuut—!”
The scarecrow was noisy too...
“Squeak squeak!”
The vicious estate overseer Mephisto pecked at Veilach’s head, telling him to shut up.
Veilach was currently strung up like a scarecrow to chase away the earthworms with his SSS-Rank threatening aura.
But worms growing right next to the potatoes inevitably turned into slimes.
'Gwuu needs diffwent dirt…'
Hmmph, Guru tilted her head.
'Should Gwuu buy some wand?'
If she bought a big plot of land to grow potatoes...
She wouldn’t have to worry about being caught when slimes showed up, and she could grow more potatoes, increasing the chances of harvesting higher-rank ones.
'But dat might be a biiig pwoblem...'
Just imagining tiny Guru running all over a giant plot of farmland made her feel out of breath.
'Gwuu awweady busy goin’ to pwe-schoow.'
She had ballet, horseback riding, elixirs to raise...
Just as she was thinking of some kind of system to grow the potatoes automatically, a light bulb popped up over her head.
What if Gwuu buiwd a cwick-cwank fiwiaw factowy?
'Maybe if Gwuu dwew up a weawwy good bwuepwin?'
As Guru’s mind swirled with ideas—
“Guru.”
The sitter, who should’ve been waiting in the parking lot, suddenly showed up at the forsythia patch.
“Muuu!!”
“...!”
The sitter flinched for a moment when she spotted the screaming hamster.
“Yesh?”
Guru looked up and asked as the sitter lowered her gaze.
“Ah, um...”
She hesitated, glancing at Veilach. Meanwhile, Guru hurried to harvest all the potatoes.
If the sitter saw the earthworms turning into slimes, she’d freak out. And then it would reach her dad’s ears for sure.
Today’s batch of seed potatoes were all E+ Rank.
The fact that F+ potatoes hadn’t shown up anymore was a clear sign of progress.
“So, Guru. How about we call it a day and go straight to see your dad?”
“Yesh? Why?”
“The President said to bring you right away. Maybe he wants to go somewhere fun with you?”
The sitter smiled cluelessly as she said it, but Guru, who had already unstrung Veilach from the cross, swallowed hard and puffed out her cheeks.
'Did Gwuu... get caught...?'
She quietly followed behind, trying to hide her nervousness, when the sitter suddenly asked,
“By the way, Guru, why was your hamster friend tied up like that...?”
“Bayi was doin’ da scawecwow job.”
“Ah, I see. But I don’t think your hamster friend liked it very much. He was yelling a lot, right?”
“Yesh. But even if ya dun wike it, dey say some jobs gotta be done. Daddychann said dat.”
“...Ah, your dad said that, huh.”
The sitter chuckled and started wondering how the heck she was going to explain all this to Jurim.
***
“No. You’re mistaken. This... whatever, ‘Kritaito Reactor’—it has nothing to do with Hyeonak.”
Jurim held back a sigh as he took the call.
The person on the other end, the director of a university’s magical engineering research lab, was now asking the same damn question Jurim had already heard a hundred times.
— I’m talking about the one who created Kritaito. That’s the Jjapso Hunter, right?
It wasn’t just this director. Since morning, over thirty calls had come in already.
All because two days ago, a new material called Kritaito had gone up on Hunter Market.
A substance that produced more than fifteen times the output of traditional mana stones—basically a magic beyond magic.
And so, despite being marked as F-Rank, every crafter in the field had gone rabid trying to track down the creator, but no one had stepped forward.
What’s more, instead of releasing this incredible research through official channels, someone had posted it anonymously on the market—suspicious enough to make people think of Jjapso.
But—
— Ah, are you perhaps waiting for the right time to announce it? Our lab also deals with a lot of confidential material, so you don’t need to worry about leaks…
Jurim let the researcher’s voice pass in one ear and out the other.
To him, Guru was just a five-year-old who made syrup potions well.
Sure, she’d made a drone once, but Jurim knew exactly how much effort she’d put into it.
There’s no way she just whipped up something like this without him even noticing.
And yet, no matter how many times he said it wasn’t him, no one seemed to believe it.
Worried that someone might even try to approach the kid directly, he’d told the sitter to bring Guru to the office right away.
Peeking through the blinds to check if she had arrived, Jurim saw Kazuki getting out of a limo and pressed a hand to his forehead.
One disaster after another.
Brrrt—brrrt—
Meanwhile, yet another double-call was coming through.
“I’m a bit busy, so I’ll have to let you go.”
Jurim raked a hand through his hair, sounding exhausted, and picked up the next call.
“Yes... Chairman Kim. Yes, I remember. We’ve met several times…”
As he mechanically repeated for the umpteenth time that no, Hyeonak wasn’t involved—
BAM—!
Kazuki bursting in right after completing his naturalization process wasn’t too surprising, but—
“Did Gwuu-chan really make that? The whole of Japan’s buzzing about it!”
—That was a bit unexpected.
Jurim frowned and ended his call, asking with suspicion,
“What do you mean Guru made something?”
“That thing she said she wanted to make! The new mana stone that grows like potatoes! I was shocked to find actual potato compounds in the Kritaito... Wait. Don’t tell me you didn’t know?”
“...Potato?”
The moment that word hit, all those potatoes Guru had been fiddling ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) with flashed before Jurim’s eyes like a damn slideshow.
His chest tightened as he turned his head.
By the panoramic windows of the Guildmaster’s office, a neat row of flowerpots stood—all brought in by Guru, one by one, to grow her plants.
Jurim strode over and yanked up a potato stem.
Rustle—
And right on cue—
“Daddyyy—?”
Jurim, holding a plant with charred-black potatoes dangling from it, locked eyes with Guru, who’d just come trotting in, clueless and cheerful.
He stared down at her, then split a potato clean in half.
A Kritaito Reactor rolled out and tumbled across his gloved palm.
“…”
“…”
Guru, watching Jurim’s expression, lightly tapped Kazuki’s knee.
Then she stretched out her arms like she wanted a hug, and Kazuki picked her right up.
“Sabbuu, put Gwuu down ovuh hewe. Wight hewe.”
“Mhm.”
Guru climbed up onto Jurim’s desk and sat down on her knees.
Voluntary surrender.
Kazuki bit his lip to keep from laughing, while Jurim stared silently at Guru, kneeling on his desk with her head bowed.
“On Guru. That well-cooked potato you made the other day… were you growing it in the Guildmaster’s office?”
“Uuhh… Potato needed wots of diffwent enviwonments, so…”
“…”
Yup. She’s definitely mine.
Jurim felt dizzy.
Apparently, the skill that had scorched the potato back then wasn’t a failure—it had been a success.