Chapter 58: Dead land.

“Manager Kim. Do you have any time this weekend?”

“Sorry, sir. I promised to spend the weekend with my child.”

He wasn’t just making excuses.

He really had promised to play with his kid.

“Tsk. Everyone says they’re spending time with family these days.”

There are far fewer people who just lie on the sofa half-asleep with the TV on all weekend.

Instead, more people are spending time with friends or family.

The department head knew this, so he just smacked his lips.

“How old is your kid again?”

“Eight years old.”

“You have to do well when they’re young. If you ignore them because you’re busy with work, it all comes back to you.”

“You have a son too, right?”

“Yeah. He hit puberty hard, so he won’t even make eye contact, let alone talk to me.”

“It’s not too late yet.”

“Not too late, my foot.”

“Your hobby was fishing, right? I heard you often catch some real monsters.”

“That’s right~. Let me tell you-“

Manager Kim listened to the department head’s usual tall tales for a moment.

As the story was wrapping up.

“Why not try talking to your son about fishing?”

“No, no. I took him with me before, and he absolutely hated it.”

“Then how about approaching it this way?”

Manager Kim offered a suggestion to the department head.

Brag about the fish you caught.

Don’t try to explain how impressive it is-just show it off briefly with a proud look.

“Would that really be enough?”

“Yes. But don’t go barging into his room to brag, okay?”

Manager Kim gave him a few more tips.

“This is complicated.”

“He’ll definitely seem uninterested at first. But as time passes, he’ll start to show interest. He might say something like, ‘Is fishing really that fun?’ That’s when you can’t just let it go. There’s a high chance he’s not interested in ‘fishing’ itself, but in ‘what Dad likes.’ So just say, ‘Yeah, I like it,’ and then ask him, ‘What do you like?’ And when he answers, don’t add unnecessary comments-just listen. That’s how you start.”

“Isn’t that a bit roundabout?”

“What happens if you yank the line as soon as a fish nibbles at the bait?”

“You lose it, and it runs away for good. I see. You have to wait until it bites properly.”

“And there’s one more ironclad rule you have to follow.”

“What’s that?”

“You can’t reel your son in-you have to swim alongside him.”

The department head thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Thank you.”

After saying goodbye to the department head, Manager Kim walked down the hallway, feeling a bit self-mocking.

He’d given advice like he knew it all, but honestly, he wasn’t so sure he was a great parent himself.

That department head’s situation would probably come for him soon, too.

There’s a big difference between knowing what you have to do and actually doing it.

Even though he knew he should spend time with his kid, whenever the weekend came he’d end up lying on the sofa or bed watching TV.

Because his body and mind were exhausted and heavy.

Spending time with his kid was happy, but it was physically and mentally tiring.

He’d look away, using the excuse that if he didn’t recharge over the weekend, it would affect his work.

Even when his wife forced him to take the kid out, he’d move as passively as possible.

Of course, knowing what you should do is better than not knowing, but from the kid’s perspective, it probably didn’t make much difference.

This lifestyle changed from the ground up once he armed himself with <Slime> from his feet to his bed.

Sleeping deeply, he recovered completely, right down to his core.

After eating <Slime> and flushing out unnecessary things from his body, he felt lighter.

He had plenty of energy to play with his kid.

Even if he used up all his energy over the weekend, one night’s sleep was enough to recover, so it didn’t affect his work.

‘Sold out again? It’s so hard to get tickets.’

Even this amazing <Slime> had its drawbacks.

Manager Kim wasn’t the only one enjoying the benefits of <Slime>.

Everywhere was packed with people.

The zoo, amusement parks, aquariums, even parks near home were full of parents out with their kids.

‘I wish there were more places to take kids.’

***

[Penguin Big Family.jpg]

“Puhaha!”

Someone had posted a picture of families all bundled up in <Raincoat Slime> and <Glove Slime>, standing in line together.

It’s already getting popular. The weather’s getting colder, and <Raincoat Slime> and <Glove Slime> are pretty warm.

You can even use <Coloring Slime (for Slime)> to decorate them and show off your own style.

Right now, <Raincoat Slime> and <Glove Slime> come in three sizes. Each one is adjustable, covering a height range of about 50 cm, so they fit anyone from 50 cm to 2 meters tall.

Which means anyone, young or old, can wear them.

Still, there sure are a lot of people.

And it’s November, not even vacation season.

I found some data saying outings with the whole family have increased a lot.

Thanks to <Pillow Slime> making it easier to recover your energy, more office workers are spending weekends with their families.

But everywhere is so crowded, accidents happen more often now.

There are plenty of voices asking for more places to spend time with kids.

“Welcome to Slime Land, full of dreams and tentacles!”

I want to say something like that.

But there are just too many obstacles to building an amusement park.

Even before, during, and after construction, there’s just too much work for one person to handle.

It’s not a project that finishes overnight-it’d take years.

And if it takes all that time and <Slime> loses popularity, so nobody comes, that’d be just too sad.

There’s no guarantee I won’t suffer the same pain as our Emergency Rations’ first owner.

Riiing.

Counselor Park Taeyang called.

We exchanged greetings as usual and moved on to talking about the Yangjae-dong waste processing facility.

The Alchemy Center added extra stakes to the deal we discussed last time.

-They say they’ll designate it as an alchemy testing ground.

“Huh? Really?”

Alchemy testing ground.

A place to develop and test various alchemy products.

Alchemists sometimes work with dangerous monster materials or make alchemy products that can cause major accidents during manufacturing.

That’s why, overseas, there are alchemy testing grounds with security tighter than military bases.

In our country, there aren’t enough skilled people, so only the Alchemy Center’s factory is designated as an alchemy testing ground. Even there, security isn’t that strong.

My stubborn demand for the right to ignore building codes and immunity from liability was actually accepted quite a bit.

But it’s not full immunity.

If you shoot and kill someone who comes in, of course that’s a problem.

But if someone trespasses in the alchemy testing ground and gets hurt or killed by an alchemy product, we have zero responsibility.

If someone dies, the blade of social responsibility will stab me, but if it’s just an injury, I can ignore it.

As long as we don’t spray toxic materials everywhere, we can even run large-scale experiments.

Just how bad is the state of that landfill that they’re so desperate to offload it onto me?

Did they secretly dump radioactive waste or something?

This won’t do.

I need to go check out that landfill.

What kind of mess is it over there that they’re acting like this?

After finishing my call with Counselor Park Taeyang, I changed my clothes.

I covered myself thoroughly so that not a bit of skin was exposed.

It’s already mid to late November.

It’s the season where even if you wrap yourself up in layers, no one thinks it’s strange.

There’s no need to become a fashion terrorist.

After a short trip using the bus and subway-

I arrived at a stop near Cheonggye Mountain.

The road leading to the landfill is actually pretty well maintained.

That’s because when the monsters burst out during the dungeon break, they plowed through everything in their path.

If you just pave asphalt over the path they made, that’s a road.

I walked along the road and arrived at the landfill-there’s not even a fence.

“What on earth.”

Now I get why they’re so desperate to hand this landfill off to me.

About twenty years ago, there was a migratory dungeon in Cheonggye Mountain, but it moved.

This place started being used as a landfill about ten years ago.

In those ten years, they really made the most of it.

What does that mean?

“This place should probably be shut down soon, huh?”

The mountain of trash is piled up really high.

I bet it’s higher than the original landfill limit.

Of course. There’s no way they’d give me a perfectly usable landfill.

Now that I think about it, they’re telling me to take the landfill and turn it into a waste processing facility.

That means I have to deal with all the trash that’s already piled up here too, right?

There are things I never even imagined until I came here.

There’s no rotting smell.

It’s not because there’s no organic matter.

I can see plastic trash with food stuck to it, but there’s no smell.

That means the environment isn’t even suitable for the microbes that break down trash to survive.

The reason is probably mana.

It’s like looking at a city where all the power lines have been cut.

There’s no mana in this whole area.

It’s as if the Earth has cut off the mana supply to this place.

Did the dungeon fail to pay its mana tax?

The dungeon ran away instead of paying up?

This really is land that can only be described as dead.

Considering that no toxic gases are being produced, maybe dead land actually has value as a landfill?

But there’s a fatal problem.

The trash here doesn’t rot. Unless mana is supplied again, it’ll stay like this forever.

Even if you cover it with dirt, plants can’t grow, so when the dirt gets blown or washed away, the mountain of trash will just be exposed again.

On top of that, this is an environment where construction itself is difficult. For an ordinary person, just staying here for a while would cause strange symptoms.

Since you can’t build a park or a power plant on top of this, it’ll probably just be left as is.

A perpetually preserved mountain of trash, complete.

Looking at the situation, I think I can squeeze out even more conditions if I take over this place.

I’ll think about those conditions later.

Question.

Can this place be revived?

Answer.

It depends on the Earth’s attitude.

It’s possible to temporarily supply just enough mana for living creatures to survive.

If I mobilize a large number of Glutton Slimes and convert the trash and solar energy into mana, then scatter that around-

But if the Earth doesn’t resume mana supply even after all the trash here is gone, it’s like pouring water into a bottomless jar.

Question.

Can this place be used as a waste processing facility?

Answer.

Yes.

Looking at this place, it’s easy to prevent Glutton Slimes from being stolen.

All I have to do is give up on retrieving and reusing them.

Rather than giving up, if I think of it as supplying mana to this land, it doesn’t feel like a waste.

I tossed a few Glutton Slimes onto the mountain of trash.

They’ll dig down on their own.

If you can find the Glutton Slimes hiding in this trash mountain, go ahead and try.

***

A delivery arrived from America.

When I opened it, inside was a potion-the mega-hit product of Sole Alchemy.

In the Hunter market, this potion has a market share on the level of CoX-Cola.

And with it, a spider-shaped toy?

As soon as I touched the toy, it went pop! and burst, leaving a sticky HAHAHA-shaped mark.

When I checked the toy’s remains, there was a dried-up Random Jelly Slime (Extremely Spicy Flavor).

I swallowed that Poison Jelsl.

Just as I expected.

The security of my Slime has been breached.

It’s not even an alchemy-made product, but it still broke through.

I guess the best in the world really is the best in the world.

I bet they failed to replicate my Slime. If they succeeded, they wouldn’t bother paying me for Glutton Slimes. Even if they did succeed, the profitability just wouldn’t work out.

But they did figure out a way to extract mana from Slimes.

It was something that was always likely to happen.

Destruction is always easier than creation.

Just like humans can’t create oil, but burning it is easy.

Judging by the state of this toy spider and the Poison Jelsl, the efficiency isn’t that high.

There’s a huge difference between burning oil and using oil as efficiently as possible.

Still, it’s a technology that turns trash into clean energy.

No wonder they offered me those precious space expansion bags.

That’s how much value there is in the combination of Glutton Slimes and the energy extractor they’ve developed.

I get the space expansion bags, and they start a trash recycling business using Glutton Slimes.

That was supposed to be the end of the story.

Suddenly, they sent me two space expansion bags and picked a fight.

Well, maybe it’s more like a test than a fight, but since it annoyed me, it’s a fight.

What they said was this.

Your Slimes are awesome, huh? Jealous? If you’re jealous, why don’t you try breaking through mine too.

One try obviously won’t be enough, so I’ll give you one more chance, just for you.

Since they picked a fight in a way that’s hard to understand, I sent it back in an equally puzzling way.

‘odiso mitzaeng baginia (are you pulling a fast one)? I know you guys developed a technique to extract energy from my Slimes, you know?’

A message card.

‘My space expansion bag knockoff Slimes are only this good, but your energy extractor is only at this level too, right?’

I put in two Bag Slimes, plus a bonus bag of malted barley.

This was their response.

‘We’re doing great in the Hunter market, but your Explosive Web Slime totally flopped, huh? lol.’

Well, I guess the ‘yeot’ malt might have gotten offended.

When would someone at the top of the world ever receive something like ‘yeot’ malt, anyway.

Still, this is a bit much.

Are they really going to keep picking fights like this?

Fine. I’ll play along.

***

[Trait: Slime☆☆ level has increased to 25.]

[A new skill has been generated.]

Huh?

A new skill?

Huh?

The skill at level 25….

I didn’t get it?

What?

Is the status window bugged?