Chapter 37: The Mount of Flames

After finishing the manual, I moved to another location.

That was because of the advice to inject mana somewhere with no people around.

Luckily, there was a perfect place nearby.

It was the ‘B-rank Mount of Flames Dungeon.’

Once the Seoul World Cup Stadium, it had become a dungeon when a B-rank gate exploded there.

As the name suggested, it was a mountain spewing flames.

Most of the monsters inhabiting it were wrapped in fire, but the most common were the Flame Golems.

With heat so hot it went beyond just being warm, and monsters appearing with formidable defenses, it wasn’t a place hunters visited often.

Occasionally, hunters from the Association would come to hunt the golems to prevent the dungeon’s mana from overflowing.

“Phew, this should be far enough?”

Passing by the mana cooling devices set up to keep the mountain’s flames from spreading, I climbed for about ten minutes.

Thanks to my passive skill, the flames of the Mount of Flames had no effect on me.

However, breathing wasn’t as easy as usual.

It seemed the burning flames had thinned the oxygen in the air.

I sat down on a rock that wasn’t covered in flames.

Perhaps because everything around was ablaze, even the rock was hot.

“…Huh?”

Suddenly, my body tilted.

I hurriedly regained my balance to avoid falling off the rock.

“…Ghk.”

What I was sitting on wasn’t a rock.

It was the head of a Flame Golem.

The thing, having been asleep, woke up because I sat right on its head.

Thwack…!

Before it could fully wake, I smacked its head with a warm touch.

With that single blow, the Flame Golem’s head and the red core inside it shattered, killing it instantly.

Thunk.

Its body turned back into a huge rock.

“That gave me a fright…”

Muttering, I looked around to make sure no other golems would appear.

Only the crackling sound of flames licking at rocks filled the air.

The golems here tended to sleep in their own territories until something happened.

Since I had dealt with the one under my butt, there wouldn’t be any others.

“Let’s get started… Manager’s Manual, Volume 1.”

After checking the surroundings, I activated the skill.

The Manager’s Manual floated in the air before me.

I opened the book and quickly flipped to the latter section.

I stopped turning pages at the part describing how to inject mana.

[How to Inject Mana into the Body]

[This method, commonly called ‘Pruning,’ is quite simple.]

[Simply stroke your body with a warm touch.]

[Of course, remember that you must do this precisely to 108 spots.]

[I’ll explain the details in the next section with illustrations.]

Even though I had read it all, I opened the manual again for reference.

You had to tap 108 precise spots on your body, but there was no way I could memorize them all at once.

While taking off my armor and storing it in my magic pouch, I thought about how best to tap the points.

The manual said as long as you stroked the designated spots clearly, the order didn’t matter.

I decided to start from the left leg and slowly work my way up.

“…Is this how I’m supposed to do it?”

Half-doubting, I carefully tapped all over my body.

After finally tapping my head, I waited for a moment.

The manual said,

[If you wait a bit, blue dots will appear at the spots you tapped.]

Because of that sentence, I waited.

“Oh.”

Sure enough, it happened just as it said.

After waiting about ten seconds in silence, a blue dot appeared on my left ankle.

One after another, blue dots began to appear, gradually filling my body.

And then,

Bang!

“……?”

It exploded.

My left ankle.

It exploded beneath me and vanished.

Red blood spurted across the rock.

Why… Why did it blow up?

That question filled my mind, but quickly vanished.

After a moment, even greater pain came.

And it didn’t stop after just one explosion.

The area above my ankle began to blow up as well.

It seemed the explosions were following the order I’d tapped them.

“Wa-wait! That means…!”

My head is going to explode too!

Gritting my teeth against the pain, I couldn’t even mutter.

My knee exploded next.

[Nothing is gained without pain.]

[Endure this pain, and be reborn as a true Manager.]

[I, ‘Dishing Na Thor,’ sincerely wish this for you.]

Words like those appeared in a blank space of the book.

That bastard?

A curse slipped out of my mouth.

“Y-you son of a bii—!”

[Hey now, don’t curse your senior.]

[I went through this pain too, so I do understand how you feel.]

[Back in my day….]

Unfortunately, though rage bubbled up, I couldn’t get a full curse out of my mouth.

The pain was so intense, I screamed rather than swore.

Now I understood why I’d been told to inject mana somewhere with no people.

With my body blowing up over and over like this, of course I couldn’t do this where people could see!

I couldn’t even imagine how much Dohee and Taecheon would have worried if they’d seen me like this.

They’d probably have blamed the World Tree and demanded I get rid of it from my smartphone immediately.

[The World Tree’s sapling asks Manager Baek Dowoon if you’re okay.]

[It’s saddened that it can’t understand why the Manager is suffering.]

Come on, Sapling. What do you mean by that?

You see me like this and still don’t understand why I’m in pain?

Is there a single human who wouldn’t hurt when their arms and legs have blown off…?

[The Sapling sends encouragement to the Manager.]

Ah, I see how it is…

The Sapling isn’t human.

It’s a tree.

A fallen leaf or broken branch isn’t something to feel pain or distress over.

I think I understand why Dishing called this method ‘Pruning’ in the manual.

As I was coming to this profound realization in the midst of agony, I heard heavy thudding sounds.

“Huff, go… golems?”

Several Flame Golems were charging toward me.

My loud screams and wild thrashing must have woken the nearby golems.

As I watched the golems approach, I found myself growing ever more curious about Dishing’s face.

At the very least, couldn’t he have described that this would hurt?

If he had, I’d have holed up alone at home instead of doing this in a dungeon!

[…That’s what happened.]

[Ah, are you about to complain that I didn’t warn you it would be painful?]

[If so, let me say it was all for a reason.]

[You might have been too fainthearted to attempt the pruning.]

[As World Tree Manager, this is something you must do, so I had to hide it, just for a moment….]

[As your senior, I hope you’ll generously understand and forgive me.]

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

‘My senior’s profound thoughts?’

‘Generously understand and forgive as a junior?’

If Dishing really thinks I’ll do that, he’s making a big mistake.

I am not that kind of person.

Starting tonight, I’ll shower him with every curse and insult I know, every single day!

“Oooh…!”

A Flame Golem swung its blazing red arm at me.

Of course, what broke wasn’t my face, but the golem’s own arm.

In truth, the golem’s attacks weren’t a big issue.

Even tree bark was enough to block them.

The problem was that I still had to breathe.

No matter how fast I recovered, even better than a troll, I couldn’t live without air.

If the flame-spewing golems kept gathering, all the oxygen here might disappear.

I needed to move before that happened.

As I tried to roll my body away, I saw a green sapling sprouting under a Flame Golem’s foot.

Did I summon the Sapling?

“…!”

No, that wasn’t the Sapling.

For some reason, grass was growing from the blood I’d spilled.

And that wasn’t all.

Young trees sprouted, as if seedlings had been planted in the ground.

The grass and trees that grew like that sowed seeds, giving rise to even more plants.

“What in the world is…”

Staring at the scene, I lost consciousness.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t bear the pain.

It was simply time.

Time for an explosion.

That’s right.

The last spot I tapped—my head—exploded.

“Ugh, that feels good.”

After a shower, I dried my hair and body with a towel.

I threw on some clothes and walked into the living room.

The sound of a male anchor yammering from the TV caught my ear.

“An unbelievable event has occurred.”

The male anchor said that and rattled off the news.

The Flame Golems and the scorching heat that filled the dungeon had all vanished, replaced by a dense forest radiating gentle energy.

A subtitle below kept repeating, ‘Dungeon Disappears Overnight!’

“…Hmm, hmm.”

After a couple of coughs, I sat down on the sofa.

The reason the dungeon disappeared, as blared in the news, was none other than me.

The germination of plants I saw before losing consciousness had continued until a forest filled the place.

As if the dungeon’s mana was food, it had all been devoured.

After the pruning ended, the Mount of Flames was nowhere to be seen—only a lush forest remained, which left me so flustered….

After that, it was all as the news said.

The dungeon had completely lost its function, becoming a forest radiating gentle energy.

That gentle energy probably referred to the mana of the World Tree.

“I erased a dungeon, huh…”

Never before had a dungeon simply vanished.

Despite the whole world working together, researching ways to erase dungeons and doing everything they could.

They’d even tried running mana reactors, the peak of modern science, for a year to suppress dungeon energy, but it was useless.

About twenty years ago, a Tibetan high monk called a ‘Living Buddha’ had prayed with three thousand bows.

A holy aura lingered for a moment and then disappeared; the dungeon remained.

With that in mind, it was understandable that the news was in such an uproar, repeating the same story over and over.

No matter what was tried, dungeons never disappeared—yet here one vanished overnight, replaced by a forest.

If I didn’t know it was me who’d done it, I’d be just as amazed.

I would have been messaging Dohee or Taecheon, asking if they’d seen the TV.

But now that I think about it, isn’t this strange?

With something as huge as a dungeon vanishing, why haven’t either of them contacted me?

Did they just not watch TV yet?

Ding dong.

The doorbell erased my questions.

I pressed the intercom on the living room table to see who had come.

The hologram showed a man I’d never seen before, standing outside my door.

Assuming he was a guest of Dohee’s, I pressed connect.

“Yes, who is it?”

“Hello, I’m Choi Giwoo, team leader of Hunter Management Team 4 at the Hunter Association.”

I met Team Leader Choi Giwoo’s eyes through the lens.

His ID badge said ‘Hunter Association.’

If it was the Hunter Association, then as expected, he’d probably come to see Dohee.

Too bad for him.

If he’d come just thirty minutes earlier, he could have met Dohee.

When I got home, Dohee had already left for work.

I thought she’d scold me for coming home with my clothes covered in red from the pruning, but thankfully she hadn’t.

She just added, “Take care of yourself, okay…”

Maybe she wasn’t worried about me getting hurt, thinking I recovered too well.

That’s probably it.

“Dohee isn’t here. She already left for work.”

“Pardon? Oh, actually, I came to see Mr. Baek Dowoon.”

“Me?”

Why would the Hunter Association come looking for me? Did I do something wrong?

[With the disappearance of the dungeon, the President has ordered a special investigation.]

The voice of the news anchor rang in my ears.

Don’t tell me… Did they figure out I was the one behind this?