Something Keeps Appearing in My Subspace - Chapter 133

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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133. Protix Forest (4)
“….”
Unfortunately, the Witch transformed into a frog remained silent.
“Tick-tock, tick-tock. Time isn’t on our side. If we find it first, your usefulness disappears anyway.”
Even after throwing her own words back at her, the Witch simply glared at me without comment. I decided to leave her be for now.
The moment I stepped into the Villa, what caught my eye was naturally the cauldron the Witch had been stirring.
More precisely, it was the bottle beside that cauldron containing a golden liquid.
While the green liquid bubbling inside the pot looked suspicious to anyone, the golden liquid was different.
[Incomplete Elixir of Youth (D-rank)]
-An elixir that makes your body 5 years younger. Since it’s incomplete, its effects are limited.
-Drinking it seems to slightly increase magical power.
I confirmed it with all the guild members, and their reaction was quite heated for an item of that rank.
“Oh?”
“An Elixir of Youth?”
I’d been thinking of something like a vitality potion or poison. I never imagined an Elixir of Youth.
Though, it was certainly the kind of concoction the Old Witch would make.
“Even for D-rank, five years is quite substantial, isn’t it?”
“Right. Though it won’t turn an elderly person into a young one.”
While Mister’s eyes gleamed, I asked Chun-bae.
‘If someone drinks that, do they actually become younger? If a twenty-year-old drinks it, do they become fifteen?’
-Not quite. Your current state remains unchanged; only your physical age becomes younger. For instance, your skin improves, or your body’s recovery rate increases.
In that case, it was quite a valuable item. Regardless of rank, it made you five years younger physically.
Truth be told, five years wasn’t that significant a span. Most people imagine an Elixir of Youth as something that transforms an elderly person into a completely youthful state.
This Witch was probably aiming for that goal in creating this. That’s likely why she needed sacrifices.
But on Earth, there would be so many people who’d want this. Wouldn’t it have more value than people typically think?
‘Wealthy people drowning in money would definitely invest whatever it takes if they could become five years younger with money.’
However, I had no intention of selling this. Our guild wasn’t in a financial bind. We still had the 50 billion we received from Saudi Arabia untouched.
Moreover, the Subspace was overflowing with an enormous amount of gold, silver, and treasures.
“Everyone seems like they’d want this one….”
And since the Elixir of Youth would have demand among our guild members, there was no need to sell it.
“Our guild’s distribution goes to whoever it suits best, but this is an exception. What should we do?”
The moment I brought it up, Han Chul raised his hand.
“I’ll pass. I’ve received so much already.”
“Oh? You don’t have to do that.”
“Just this once, please let me pass. Thanks to you, Guild Master, I’ve already found youth—it’s no different.”
Han Chul spoke firmly, and it seemed genuine. He truly didn’t mind.
I didn’t push further. With Han Chul out, Min-jae, who was twenty-one, also stepped back.
“I’m fine too.”
“You’re backing out because magic-related items might come up later, aren’t you?”
“Ah, you got me. I have a conscience too!”
Min-jae laughed playfully at Mister’s words.
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“It’s fine. I’m the youngest here anyway.”
“…Damn. I can’t argue with that.”
As Min-jae grinned, Mister lowered his head slightly and stretched, glancing around cautiously.
“Hmm. Must be getting old. My body’s been feeling sluggish lately.”
“You are the eldest, but this isn’t something we can compromise on, right?”
“I know.”
Mister laughed with a hint of regret. Those remaining were me, Mister, and Lee Shin-hee. Lee Shin-hee and I were both twenty-four, the same age.
We were relatively young, but younger was always better, wasn’t it? Then Lee Shin-hee gestured toward me.
“I think Han Hye should be the one to take this.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You spend time inside the Subspace, after all. Thanks to you, we can rest comfortably.”
“Oh, I suppose that’s true.”
Min-jae chimed in, and Lee Shin-hee smiled faintly.
“In a way, you’re saving our time by spending yours. So Han Hye should be the one to take it.”
Even Mister, whose eyes had been gleaming at Lee Shin-hee’s logical argument, nodded along. Though he looked slightly disappointed.
“That makes sense. Hye, you eat it.”
“Then I won’t hesitate….”
Just as I brought the Essence of Youth to my lips, the frog screamed.
“No! There’s poison in it!”
“Poison? There’s no mention of that.”
“It’s having a fit because you’re eating what it should be eating?”
At Mister’s words, I nodded as well. The item description made no mention of poison. It was obvious the frog was lying, but I asked Chun-bae anyway.
‘Is there any chance poison could be in this?’
-Negative. No problems.
The moment I brought it to my lips, the frog thrashed about inside the glass bottle.
“No! Don’t do it, you fools!”
“Don’t do what. I’m doing it.”
I swallowed it right in front of the frog. The Witch, transformed into a frog, wailed in anguish. Her voice was so hoarse it was unpleasant to hear.
And the change was instantaneous. My skin and insides tingled.
“Oh? I’m getting younger!”
“Your skin is becoming so firm!”
Since I couldn’t see my own face, the guild members seemed even more amazed. It didn’t take long.
“Wow, you look different!”
“My body is now nineteen years old.”
“So you’ve lived twenty-four years, and one-fifth of that is gone? You’re five years younger?”
While everyone marveled, only Lee Shin-hee expressed slight concern.
“Your stats and such are fine, right? Just in case—did becoming younger reduce them?”
It was a reasonable question. A twenty-four-year-old body would naturally be stronger than a nineteen-year-old in their growth years. I already knew from Chun-bae that I wouldn’t suffer any losses.
I immediately checked my status window and found no issues whatsoever.
[Lv39 Void Lord, Han Hye]
Strength: 46
Agility: 46(+1)
Stamina: 46(+1)
Spirit: 47
Mana: 80(+1)(+1)
Bonus Points: 7
“Yes. Only my mana stat increased by 1.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Wow, Hye. You look so much younger. Your skin is like a baby’s now?”
“Oh, come on. My skin was always good. Well, maybe not always…”
After all those grueling days as a porter, getting my full sleep quota in the Subspace had transformed my skin beyond recognition.
Mister, who had been examining my face for a moment, tilted his head in confusion.
“Your skin looks better than it did when you were nineteen?”
“Oh, is that how it works? Back then I was living pretty rough.”
Wasn’t that a time when lotion was a luxury? I was so neglectful that Mister even bought me lotion back then.
That was the first lotion I’d ever applied, right after the Gate incident broke out.
“Argh! These damn bastards! I’ll curse you all!”
“Ugh, so loud.”
“Yeah. Make it quiet.”
We were having a conversation, but ever since the frog drank the potion, it had been glowing intensely—now it was reaching unbearable levels.
I shook the glass bottle up and down roughly, and the frog smacked against the glass before finally quieting down.
“Seems like you don’t understand the situation… You said you’d only save us if we give you something precious? If we find you like this, we can’t save you. Do you want to die?”
* * *
Whether from the shock or not, the Witch remained silent, so we had no choice but to search through the villa ourselves.
There wasn’t really anything worth calling a major discovery.
[Deline’s Curse Grimoire (Grade B)]
We did find a Grade B grimoire along the way. Naturally, Min-jae, being a mage, was absolutely delighted—though it wasn’t actually good.
-I wouldn’t recommend curse magic. Curses fundamentally require a price; they can have adverse effects on the user.
Chun-bae’s advice made the difference. When Min-jae also said he didn’t particularly recommend it, he looked slightly disappointed but seemed to understand.
For now, I just stored it in the Subspace.
I could probably sell this to the Magic Tower in the United States… but I was worried it might end up being used for something sinister.
The rest were miscellaneous items. This villa was where the Witch had been crafting her youth elixir. There were quite a few medicinal herbs and toxic plants as materials.
Since turning these over to the Hunter Association would get us a settlement and help our Guild score, I packed them all up.
“No, you can’t!”
“Yes, we can.”
The Witch kept glowing in protest, but I just ignored her. The annoying part was that she wouldn’t even talk about what mattered. Besides that, there were also curse-related items.
Wooden figurines that radiated obvious ill fortune, or orbs that emanated strange power.
‘Does just possessing these things curse you?’
-That’s not it. The user has to actually use it.
After hearing Chun-bae’s advice, I stuffed everything into my Subspace and dumped it all in. In the original game, if your inventory is spacious enough, you grab every miscellaneous item too.
If there were weight limits, I’d pick and choose carefully, but my Subspace was essentially unlimited inventory.
“But… how hard I worked to gather and create all of this…”
The Witch wailed and sobbed, but that wasn’t my problem. Wasn’t she the one who started this mess in the first place?
“I think I’ve found everything now. You’re really not going to tell me? Then you’re really going to die.”
The Witch stared at me for a moment before opening her mouth.
“There’s a potion inside the drawer over there.”
“What kind of potion?”
“A potion that makes you stronger. You drink it while wishing to become stronger.”
I examined it and found it was a red liquid, but since it didn’t convert into an item, no description appeared. That meant only one thing.
“Then you drink it first.”
“…?”
As I tried to pour the red liquid into the glass bottle containing the frog, the frog panicked.
“I-I’m sorry!”
“Where are you selling poison from?”
The moment I tilted the bottle to drop just one drop, the Witch flattened herself and crawled. She was already prone as a frog, but now she pressed herself against the ground completely.
“I made a mistake. Please forgive me!”
“What is this?”
“It’s… extreme poison. Even a griffin would die instantly from just a few drops…”
“You were trying to feed this to me?”
I asked while igniting Blaze near the glass bottle.
“Speak quickly. Is there anything else you’ve hidden?”
“There really isn’t! That Elixir of Youth you gulped down earlier was the masterpiece of my entire life!”
“Really?”
“Really!”
“Then just die.”
“What?”
I immediately used Blaze to evaporate the entire glass bottle.
[Your level has increased.]
To be honest, I hadn’t held great expectations from the start. I had a knack for finding things thanks to my spatial awareness.
I only brought her along because this was the Witch’s villa, and there might be things hidden by magic.
There could be things discoverable only through magic. But judging by the situation, she didn’t seem willing to say anything more.
I’d concentrated intensely on my spatial awareness as we entered, but I didn’t sense any hidden spaces.
“Good work. She’s the type to create an Elixir of Youth using people as sacrifices.”
“I was planning to kill her from the beginning anyway.”
“Anyway, did you find everything?”
“Yes. There’s no underground space or anything. Since it’s like her own domain, it doesn’t seem like she hid anything particularly.”
It felt slightly disappointing compared to the Gate’s difficulty.
“The haul isn’t that impressive. Considering the difficulty, I thought at least an A-rank elixir would drop. This Gate would’ve consumed two or three teams if it wasn’t us.”
“You’re right, but the Elixir of Youth is practically an A-rank elixir, you brat.”
Mister tapped my shoulder playfully.
“Is that so? It’s not because you couldn’t drink it yourself, is it?”
“If we’re being purely objective about value, try selling that outside. Wouldn’t you get over a hundred billion? From famous celebrities or the wealthy in the United States.”
He was right. I’d thought the same thing the moment I saw it. That it would sell for an astronomical price to the wealthy. If we put it up for auction and sold it for around two hundred billion….
Without commission fees, that was enough to buy about four B-rank elixirs.
I’d felt disappointed thinking only of its rank, but in reality, for someone like me who spent so much time in the Subspace, it was far more valuable.
Youth was something you couldn’t buy even with all the gold and treasures in the Subspace.
“That’s true. It’s awkward because I can’t use it, but the Curse Prohibition is also B-rank.”
“Yeah. That was a decent Gate reward.”
As we left the Witch’s villa, the mist blanketing the forest remained even with her death. The hallucinations and auditory illusions persisted during our journey.
Rather than the Witch having caused it, perhaps the forest was simply like that to begin with.
Seeing that only the empty lot was intact, she’d simply built her domain within such a forest. Still, there were no major problems leaving.
[Gate ‘Protix Forest’ conquered.]
[You obtain experience points.]
[Your level has increased.]
Given how difficult the Gate was, I was satisfied that my level rose by two despite already being high.
And I’d consumed the Elixir of Youth as well.
However, what followed was something that shocked me even more.
[You acquire the skill ‘Severance (A-rank)’ Lv1.]
“Whoa!”
It was because I’d finally obtained the occupational skill I’d been waiting for.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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