The path back to where Earning was felt on a completely different level from when I was with Winter.

Unlike before, when it was hard to find a human shadow in the vast alchemy tower, now I could see groups wandering around in pairs.

Everyone had a fierce aura. The security level had been raised. As if proving that it was pure luck I hadn’t been caught while moving through the alchemy tower so far, I felt my heart race seeing people waiting at every corner of the hallway.

Choosing Papyrus as my navigator was a stroke of luck. He, who claimed to know the alchemy tower’s blueprints inside out, guided me to where Earning was via an inhuman route.

We each crammed into a manual waste-carrying elevator the size of a moving box, tore off ventilation grates to pass through rooms, and even used the passage that a vine, which had tied my waist and thrown me into a strange room, had traveled through.

We could use it thanks to Papyrus stopping the vine’s movement with a small panel at the entrance of the passage.

Is that vine also part of some dryad? Or is it a product of alchemy?

Squeezing out the memory of climbing door frames in long underwear as a kindergartener with undeveloped limbs, I descended a vertical passage trembling violently.

I wanted Daisy’s help, but it seemed too troublesome for her, who was dragging Papyrus down. Like ants crawling through a nest, the four of us, relatively small in build, moved very slowly toward the lower floor.

When we finally emerged from the passage, my entire body ached. My back, which had supported my weight against the passage wall, felt like it was tearing, as if bedsores had formed, and my abdominal muscles, weakened from being thoroughly beaten by the white daisy dryad, hurt so much every time I tensed them that I thought I’d pass out.

Rubbing my trembling limbs, I glared at Papyrus. Was this brat intentionally guiding me to the weirdest place to mess with me?

“Why… why are you looking at me like that?”

Seeing Papyrus’s pathetic state, dragged around like a piece of luggage by Daisy, I let him off for now.

Tying him up with Daisy’s vines and keeping monkshood at his side as a threat were all excellent choices. If Papyrus had been quicker and stronger, he could have run out to ask for help from the groups searching for us, causing an unexpected incident.

We barely made it back to the empty lab where Earning was. Winter, who I thought had returned to his own lab, opened the door for us.

Feeling the presence of patrolling figures from a distant corner of the hallway, I hurried inside the lab, where Earning’s displeased expression greeted me. I figured he’d be still upset about the Mesquite incident.

“Why are you here again? Trying to hurt my precious flowers again?”

Earning shot me a glare and spat out her words. As Mesquite and Elder emerged from the artifact, the murderous look in his eyes grew even sharper. His Bird of Paradise dryad was nowhere to be seen. He was probably resting back in the artifact.

“Honeysuckle… I’ve found a way to save the Honeysuckle dryad.”

At those words, she blinked rapidly and bit her lip. Uncrossing her legs, she stood up in one swift motion and leaned against a desk close to me. My presence seemed to make her deeply uncomfortable, but the clue I offered about rescuing the Honeysuckle must have been very welcome.

“Is that… true?”

“But to do that, I need to go to the garden where the Honeysuckle is.”

“Then why aren’t you going right now?”

Earning smoothed down her disheveled silver hair, tied it up into a braid, and spoke casually. Her attitude suggested she didn’t care if I went out and got myself killed—she was leaving it up to me.

“Do you really mean that?”

Seeing her like that, it seemed she wished that I’d go somewhere and end up just as injured as her Bird of Paradise dryad. She’d probably be delighted if she knew I’d been thoroughly kicked by that white daisy dryad.

“It’s not solved just by me going to the garden alone. I do have to go to the garden, but there’s one more condition.”

“Don’t beat around the bush—just tell me. So, what kind of help do you need? If you’ve come back to me, it must be something that requires me to give up my safety and step outside the Alchemy Tower as well. Getting my precious Honeysuckle back is important, but if I end up dead, what’s the point?”

“The World Tree branch from the 16th terrarium told me what I need to do. Well, more precisely, I dreamed it.”

I hesitated a bit when mentioning the dream. I was afraid she’d think I was talking nonsense after having some wild dream.

Even for a druid, it felt a bit far-fetched that an ordinary human like me could communicate with a transcendent being of this world through a dream. In the real world, if someone said a god gave them a revelation in a dream, they’d easily be branded a heretic.

But my dryads, who had already experienced things like when Wolfsbane gave me an unripe fruit during recruitment, would know it’s true since there was precedent.

“You say you talked to the World Tree’s branch in a dream…?”

However, Earning’s reaction was a bit different from what I expected. Instead of mocking me, she looked genuinely surprised. She stared at me for a long moment before speaking in a sarcastic tone.

“Hmph… I really don’t know what’s so noble about you that the esteemed World Tree would personally visit your dreams. From what I can see, there’s nothing impressive about you compared to Scarecrow.”

There she goes again. Comparing me to Scarecrow.

Suppressing my boiling anger, I told her about the dream I had—about the suffering black branches and the white branch that demanded I kill it.

If I interpret the dream literally, it means I need to retire the healthy branches currently in the orchard, and only an experienced earning can handle such a task.

The dryads were greatly agitated when the story of the World Tree branch wishing for its own death was told. Though papyrus is different, dryads exist to protect the World Tree. Yet here, a discussion about killing the World Tree’s branches was beginning.

“Did the World Tree branch really wish for that?”

To the elder who asked with a frown, I relayed every word of the conversation from the dream without a single mistake, fearing I might make an error. My stance was that since ‘killing’ could be metaphorical, I wanted the intelligence characters to interpret it on their own.

Earning listened to my entire story and spoke very calmly.

“Oh? Then if I kill the World Tree branch, I can bring back my precious honeysuckle. I can use the same method as before anytime.”

Mesquite was furious, but unlike before, since the World Tree branch itself desired this, Lance didn’t rush ahead.

“But there’s a problem. Even if we luckily succeed in infecting the 16th World Tree branch with bugs… using the method from the 28th terrarium, releasing bugs would take a very long time until the World Tree branch loses its strength and withers. Would you want to wait inside this alchemy tower for years, maybe decades, for the right moment?”

“That’s true.”

I recalled the despair narrated over a long period in Scarecrow’s journal.

“Moreover, this place can supply more diamonds than the 28th terrarium that Scarecrow managed. The World Tree branch’s resistance will likely be much higher. It might take decades, not just years, for it to be consumed by pests.”

“But from what you’re saying, it sounds like you could release the bugs anytime if the opportunity arises… Do you still have the bugs you used back then?”

My face automatically scrunched up as I recalled the things rolling on the floor of the burnt orchard in the 28th terrarium. Surely she wasn’t still carrying those horribly disgusting white bugs?

She silently stared at one spot. The end of her gaze was Winter, whose body was wrapped in layers of clothing.

“The bugs I used back then are no longer left, but the original pest is here. That pest, obtained by scouring the annals of over a hundred terrariums wiped out to support my research. I don’t know how a mere researcher managed to get their hands on it and even came up with the novel idea of infecting their own body.”

Winter, who had wanted to meet the famous bug alchemist Earning to treat his dying body. Could it be that Earning’s knowledge of Winter meant she had given advice on how to cure him? As if sensing my curiosity, Earning clicked her tongue and spoke.

“That’s already over. As the only way to eradicate the insects gnawing on the World Tree’s branch, we could use the improved monkshood, a highly poisonous herb, albeit a single one, but since that’s infected not by the insects themselves but by a disease created by pests, even using the highly poisonous herb can’t cure it. There might be a way to chew the herb and kill the disease penetrating the body, but how could the poison selectively kill only the illness? The body would also get poisoned and die. All that’s left is choosing between dying quickly or dying a bit slower.”

Winter, as if already aware of the outcome, nodded calmly in agreement with Earning’s words.

“Now, the key ingredient is here, but the problem is that I don’t have all the other ingredients and facilities. However, since there’s already a completed recipe, I can create the insect for the World Tree’s branch without needing years of research.”

An insect for the World Tree’s branch… It’s a bit ironic.

“A smart mind that can understand my recipe, access to top-tier materials and facilities, and an environment to carry it out without any suspicion. That man is practically a walking unfinished specimen. On top of that, since his body carries a disease, he can even serve as an excellent host that affects the destination just by reaching it physically.”

“Wait… Are you saying the best plan is to turn Winter into a human pest and have him approach the World Tree’s branch?”

“The reason I released the insects on the World Tree’s branch wasn’t for their lethality. It was because they served as hosts for the disease they carried, spread, and infected. Hmm, maybe without even creating insects, I could just further apply alchemy to the human body, so the time could be shortened even more. He’s already tried something on his own body, so there’d be no hesitation. Also, while the World Tree’s blessing repels insects, it’s endlessly generous to humans, so this might make things easier.”

Isn’t what Earning’s saying essentially human experimentation? How far does that woman’s brutality go?

“If I shorten the infection time and increase the destructive power, I think I could bring down the 16th World Tree’s branch within a fairly short period…”

“If you’re going to use Winter, that’s enough. I don’t want to use such inhumane methods.”