Chapter 39: The Black House and the Garden of Dreams

Running event maps with Sephiroth definitely had its own high-tension charm.

“I’m done with my objective.”

“Wait. I need to gather one more of these.”

While I was busy collecting ten front hooves from Wolfram Pigs, Sephiroth was obsessively gathering herbs. He did this while intermittently slaughtering any NPC guards who happened to cross his path and interfere with his “work.” He was so serious about the herb gathering that one might mistake him for a master jeweler performing a delicate engraving.

“You really love gathering herbs, don’t you?”

I looked down at him with my arms crossed. We were standing on loamy soil where yellowish dust kicked up from the ground, interspersed with patches of lush green grass. Here and there, slender herbs with four delicate yellow petals peeked out. Sephiroth was crouched in front of one such yellow flower, using a small trowel to carefully tap away the dirt near the roots.

His shoulder plates, usually held high and proud, were slightly hunched forward. The armor on his thick thighs and calves was folded in a way that made me wonder how he could even manage to crouch like that. It was an incredibly mismatched sight: a man built like a mountain, wielding a tiny trowel to dig up even tinier herbs.

Finally, Sephiroth pulled the yellow-petaled plant out—roots and all—and stuffed it into his inventory.

“You could call it my true calling.”

“You like it that much?”

“Sometimes, gathering herbs leisurely is more fun than fighting.”

That statement didn’t fit the image of Sephiroth I had in my head by even a millimeter. I glared at him with suspicious eyes, but he just shrugged.

“I even have a garden at home. A garden specifically for growing herbs.”

Wait, what? A garden at home? Does he live in some mountain village in real life? Is he actually the son of a medicinal herb farmer?

“A garden…”

“Yeah. I have to manage it regularly to make sure the water deer don’t come down and eat everything.”

“…Water deer?”

I felt a sense of vertigo. What am I even listening to right now? I stared at Sephiroth’s face with dazed eyes. If he weren’t wearing that helmet, I could have gauged his expression, but that heartless black visor made it impossible to see even a hint of his complexion.

“Why are you making that face?”

“It’s just… it doesn’t suit you at all.”

“Do you have any idea how much work it is to beat back water deer?”

“Oh, is that so…?”

Sure. I guess. It could be hard. Right…

No matter how I tried, it was impossible to imagine Sephiroth growing herbs in a garden behind his house while water deer hopped down and shrieked—AAACK!—as they munched on his plants. But because the visual was so impossible, it almost felt like it might be true.

Right. He could be the son of a rural herb farmer. Maybe he got addicted to the game because there was nothing else to do out there?

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“You know we’re talking about the game, right? The herb garden?”

“Ah.”

A faint trace of mockery bled into his voice.

Ah. I let out a weak, embarrassed sigh. I guess he wasn’t the son of a farmer. My bad. When you mentioned water deer, I really thought you had a field behind your house. You should have been clearer from the start!

Wait, hold on.

I was about to brush it off as Sephiroth’s poor explanation, but I stopped. One part of this situation was still bothering me.

“Wait, so there are water deer in Zelpia?”

“Yeah. Their cries are incredibly loud, too.”

“But why are there water deer?”

“Because the developers made them, obviously.”

He spoke in a tone that treated me like an idiot for asking such a basic question. I stared at him, dumbfounded, before letting out a dry laugh. Is this all a lie? I feel like I’m being pranked…

“Hey. If you’re going to look that skeptical, just follow me.”

“Huh?”

“Follow me. I’ll show you the water deer.”

Why do I suddenly have to see water deer…?

Without waiting for my consent, Sephiroth vanished. A notification immediately rang out.

[Sephiroth has invited you to his House. Would you like to visit?]

Are we really visiting his house like this?

Up until now, the only house I had ever visited was Han Gyu-tae’s “Pink-Pink Paradise.” The prospect of visiting Sephiroth’s house was actually quite exciting. I wasn’t sure why, but my heart fluttered a bit. It felt like being invited to a stranger’s home for the first time.

When I pressed ‘Yes,’ the prairie vanished, and I was instantly transported inside Sephiroth’s house. It was the same sensation as being invited to Gyu-tae’s. After that brief feeling of floating and landing, I opened my eyes.

Oh, this is…

“Is your concept a ‘Black Room’?”

“Call it ‘Monotone.’ It sounds more sophisticated.”

“To be monotone, you’d need more than just black.”

If Han Gyu-tae’s house was a pink nightmare, Sephiroth’s was a black void. The wallpaper was black, the desk was black, the fancy display cabinet was black, the blanket on the bed was black… If it weren’t for a few white accents here and there, I wouldn’t have been able to tell if I was in a room or inside a giant charcoal cube.

Sephiroth just shrugged at my bewildered reaction.

“Black is a monotone color.”

“I mean, technically, yeah…”

But usually, monotone implies varying shades of a single hue. This house has about a mouse-tail’s worth of contrast…

Why is everyone around me so extreme with their interior design? Putting aside whether I could consider Sephiroth an “acquaintance,” seeing Gyu-tae’s and Sephiroth’s houses made me realize that if I ever got a house, I’d have to decorate it normally. Wait, what if Park Seong-jin has an ‘Orange House’ because he likes orange so much?

While I was resolving to check out Seong-jin’s house later, Sephiroth opened the door. Naturally, the door was black too.

“Follow me.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to see the water deer?”

Did I? You’re the one who invited me to show them to me…

Regardless, I was curious. How on earth did he build an herb garden behind his house, and why were there water deer? This was a rare sight I needed to see for myself.

I trotted along behind Sephiroth. We walked around the pitch-black building, and there, in the back, was an actual garden.

“Are these all herbs?”

It was a massive garden.

At a glance, it looked twice the size of the house itself. About the size of one or two school classrooms put together, it was far larger than I had imagined. I thought it would be a tiny patch the size of a palm, but this was practically a small farm.

In that large field, various herbs grew in neat rows. On the far right, the delicate four-petaled yellow flowers Sephiroth had been gathering earlier swayed in the breeze. Next to them grew plants with purple flowers that looked like fluffy pinecones. From tiny light-green sprouts to stalks that had grown ankle-high, a diverse array of greenery stood in proud, orderly lines.

“Yeah,” Sephiroth grunted, beginning a slow patrol around the perimeter. His sharp aura made it look like he was searching for something. When he reached the halfway point, he stopped.

“Ah, dammit…”

“What? Is something wrong?”

“Another mole showed up.”

A mole…?

Clicking his tongue in annoyance, Sephiroth suddenly sat down. I leaned in to see what he was doing and realized he was crafting. He held a hammer in his right hand and a sheet of iron in his left. Clang, clang, clang. The sound of crafting echoed, and the iron sheet transformed into a cylindrical shape.

“What are you making?”

“A mole trap.”

Then, he pounded the cylinder into the ground.

Watching this sequence of events, I wondered if I was playing Zelpia or a “Rural Farm Life” simulator. Sephiroth’s serious attitude made it feel even more like that. What kind of game has moles and mole traps? The mole hole in the dirt looked unnecessarily realistic.

“Do you kill the moles once you catch them?”

“No. I sell them in town.”

“Oh… you can sell them?”

“Sometimes people buy them as pets through 1:1 trades.”

That sounded like a game. A pet mole… Well, if people can walk around with Azure Dragons and White Tigers, I guess a mole is within the realm of common sense. But I had always assumed moles were just randomly generated items; I never knew there was an entire trade ecosystem involving catching them in your garden.

This shouldn’t be so confusing, but seeing it without any mental preparation was quite overwhelming.

“You want one? You can have the mole I catch today.”

“Ah, no… I’m okay…”

“The stat bonuses aren’t bad. 1.5% increase in attack power and +30% sneak attack defense.”

“Hmm…”

To be fair, those bonuses didn’t sound bad at all. Maybe I should have a mole pet? Some people walked around with giant bees as pets, so a mole might actually be cute in comparison.

“In that case, maybe I’ll—”

“F*CK! WATER DEER!”

“What?!”