What should I do?
I need to cook with the food ingredients someone brought.
The problem is I don’t know how to make these edible.
No, do I even know how to cook?
But most references are memories from other worlds.
The biggest problem is that the four men living here have never experienced cooking food themselves, so I can’t tell what these ingredients are even for.
“Do you know how to cook rice?”
Around evening, I asked the young girl who was roughly dropped off by an old woman saying to use her as a maid.
She shakes her head.
The child shakes her head side to side. She has some illness that makes her face and limbs swollen. It’s like looking at a bear’s paw. Disease is common in worlds like this.
Even if special powers exist, they don’t reach everyone. That’s how it was in the world where the faded man lived, and even more developed worlds are the same.
No, more than that.
Are they telling me to look after a child too?
This nearly-collapsing thatched house, carelessly thrown food, and a child on the verge of breaking down they call a maid.
I can see Heavenly Demon’s petty malice.
That’s fine for me, but what should I do with her? Should I just take her warmth?
Though becoming a monster is cold, at least it won’t be painful. No, is that the same thing?
I could make her a harvester, but in the current situation making her a harvester would only extend her suffering.
What should I really do with this child?
While I was pondering that, the tiny child tries to do something with the cooking ingredients, fumbling around. Her hands swollen like bear paws seem difficult to move, her fingers not moving well.
I let her do what she wants to do.
Tomorrow Heavenly Demon’s mind might suddenly change and try to cut my neck.
No, child! The knife! Don’t hold it like that!
This is driving me crazy.
I snatched away the knife. No, even if you look up at me with such sad eyes, things that shouldn’t be done shouldn’t be done.
All the kitchen-related memories say to first slap the cheek hard, then educate them not to handle knives carelessly.
No, I understand but doing that to a child like this is a bit…
That’s something you do when it’s someone’s child by birth, but wouldn’t a child like this understand just by words? And she’ll need to handle knives in the future.
Whether for cooking, or stabbing someone.
At least in this world, the latter would be easier to live with.
No, would it be better to make her a harvester and make her more human-like?
If I fix her appearance and have her make children, she could produce lots of harvester offspring.
Hmm.
The faded man’s memories are surprisingly quiet. Usually they shine brightly like highlighting at times like this.
Looking through the memories of the four harvesters, I can see how to use the food ingredients, so I should cook and eat properly.
But there’s no fire.
The kitchen doesn’t even have tools to make fire, let alone fuel like firewood.
So I moderately twisted reality and tried to find a pot to boil water in, but seeing it was all rusted, I threw it out and made a new one.
While at it, I brought dishes too.
Crack.
Maybe because I made too many things, cracks formed in the kitchen. It’s a weak world.
But since they’re slowly getting smaller, they should heal back to normal by tomorrow.
Cooking done.
Frankly it became dog food, but I was going to take it to the room to eat. When I entered the room it was chilly so I came right back to the kitchen. There’s still fire remaining so it’s warmer here.
First let’s feed the child and think.
Taking a spoonful, I found it wasn’t dog food but runny dog porridge.
I failed at controlling the water. Tomorrow’s me will do better.
I sat randomly in the kitchen and ate with the child.
“What’s your name?”
At my question the child makes mouth movements saying something. I can’t hear the sound. Though she seems to have vocal cords in her throat, is there a muscle problem?
Looking at her mouth shape, it’s not that she can’t speak. She’s become unable to speak.
Seeing faint light coming from various parts of her body, these are parasites.
But I can’t take warmth like I did before. If I take the warmth, she’ll become a monster and tear herself apart.
Should I take the warmth and let her die instead? Or make her a harvester?
I thought about that while watching the child with her mouth full of slop porridge.
* * *
Dawn.
Perhaps because there’s water nearby, it’s extremely chilly. There’s a rotting blanket in the room so I left it there and laid the child by the fire in the kitchen.
I must have brought some strange fire since it won’t go out even though there’s nothing burning. I hope this isn’t something dangerous like nuclear power?
No, if it were radiation we’d already be dead.
Maybe not me, but this child is human.
Speaking of which, an interesting event is happening right now.
Gapjae, who returned to being a protector, is now standing guard. Of course, standing guard doesn’t mean standing outside, but sitting in a much better place than the house I’m living in.
The ones actually standing guard are people lower in position than Gapjae.
Anyway, an incredible person appeared before Gapjae.
They say she’s the previous cult leader’s daughter.
She’s a very famous person that all 4 harvesters know about. She had left the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult for a while but seems to have returned. She persuades Gapjae to let her in quietly, citing some reason.
The harvesters all know that the current Heavenly Demon treated her well, but surprisingly, are they on bad terms?
She said she doesn’t want her return to be known to Heavenly Demon.
Gapjae nodded in agreement.
Gapjae knows the rumor that the previous Heavenly Demon’s disappearance was due to the current Heavenly Demon. And all three, including Gapjae, think well of the previous Heavenly Demon.
No, strictly speaking, it’s four people.
Yes.
Jeonyang also thinks well of the previous Heavenly Demon.
Though in my view, I don’t think he was really a good person.
Why?
How could someone who created a system of putting bugs in people’s bodies be a good person? This isn’t a system created by the current Heavenly Demon.
Rather, it’s a system passed down from the previous generation or even before.
Anyway, Gapjae allowed the previous cult leader’s daughter to enter.
Though Gapjae could have attached some conditions, he just let her pass then sat at his post giggling.
Looks like he has some plan too? It’s disappointing that when they become harvesters, since it’s real-time monitoring, I can’t know what they’re thinking unless they speak directly or write it down.
Of course I could read it if I tried, but I’d have to decode countless neural bundles responding in the brain.
No, how could I do that?
I can’t.
So I’m just watching Gapjae giggle.
Eunchun and Byeongil are sleeping, and Jeonyang is absorbed in training the Heavenly Demon Divine Technique at the same place I saw yesterday.
It’s quite funny seeing Heavenly Demon waiting in front of the training room. Unlike when threatening me, he’s sitting in a feminine posture.
Is gender identity confusion tragic? I’m not sure.
Honestly, I don’t care about Heavenly Demon either way.
Rather, I’m more interested in the group of sorcerers who summoned me.
A summoning method unrelated to Yasle’s method.
I really wish I could get their memories…
To do that, would I need to increase harvesters a bit more to reach the sorcerers?
The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult as a group worships power.
In other words, they’ll do anything to gain power.
There will be many volunteers when they learn that harvesters give powerful strength. Considering the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult environment, there’s a high chance sorcerers are among them.
That’s why I let it be known that I’m here.
The two men who brought food will spread word about me.
Because they’re people who don’t need to have their mouths shut. Also people who can easily open their mouths to anyone.
If someone disguised as an important person had brought it, there would be a high chance Heavenly Demon would treat me as an important figure, but fortunately I’m being almost neglected.
Along the way, he took petty revenge on me too.
Hehe.
That’s good. I was worried because he was being too cautious of me, but with this I should be able to act quite freely.
Ah, speaking of revenge, I wonder who had one of Choseol’s eyeballs back then? I destroyed it since I could crush it.
Before remaking the body, it was practically a living corpse. She was raised that way from the start. Thoroughly blocking the five senses, consciousness lost in hallucinations from drugs, bodily functions truly at the minimum.
She would likely die before reaching adulthood eight or nine times out of ten.
Meaning she was meant to be used before becoming an adult.
Human sacrifice?
But after scanning the four’s memories, there’s no culture of human sacrifice in the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. To begin with, Choseol’s identity is a complete mystery.
Memories start taking shape around age 3, and by then Choseol was already being raised in captivity. But no one similar to Choseol appears around her.
If there was some purpose, they would have made several, but searching through Choseol’s memories, there’s no one in the same situation.
Moreover, looking at when she was raised, it was before Jeongha rose to the position of Heavenly Demon.
Though the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult itself is similar to the evil cults in the faded man’s memories, there’s something much gloomier hidden in between.
A group of sorcerers almost separate from the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
Something that had one of Choseol’s eyeballs.
And the excessively huge buildings built on karst topography.
The relationship between the previous cult leader and current cult leader.
There are many secrets.
It means I need to work hard to create an automatic harvesting system so they don’t fall to me like the first world.
I’ll do my best.