The Buffs I Raised Are Too Strong - Chapter 4

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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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Episode 4.
“I—uh—uhhh…….”
The weight of the sum in my hands seemed to scatter my thoughts to the wind.
It feels like eight pairs of eyes are staring back at me.
“C-calm down! Just calm yourself!”
I slipped the Check back into its envelope.
If I kept holding it, I’d spend the entire day doing nothing but clutching it.
“First things first…… this one.”
My sister had given me two things.
Hundred million won and a mysterious Suitcase.
“She said I’d understand once I opened it…….”
I haven’t the faintest idea what’s inside.
It doesn’t seem like anything strange would be in there.
Gulp.
I unlocked it with trembling hands.
The box opened with a pleasant click.
“?”
Then my head went blank.
What is this?
I lifted out the contents of the Suitcase.
Small enough to pinch between my thumb and forefinger.
“A bottle?”
A tiny Glass Bottle.
I couldn’t make out what was inside.
I moved to where the sunlight was pouring in, holding the Glass Bottle up to the light.
Only then did I see what lay within.
“……A Mysterious Seed?”
Something like a small bean.
A green sprout pushing through the shell, already emerging.
“Why would she give me a Mysterious Seed?”
Well, I suppose I know why.
Since I have an ability related to plants, she gave me this.
But still, is it really necessary?
Whatever kind of Mysterious Seed this is, I don’t know, but still.
‘It seems like overkill.’
Pop.
I unscrewed the cap of the Glass Bottle.
“Oh.”
A fragrant, herbaceous scent wafted out.
Familiar yet strange at once.
I placed the Mysterious Seed in the palm of my hand.
To get a better look at it.
Then.
[Target of ability confirmed.]
“There it is.”
The status window appeared, just as it had when I planted the Cherry Tomato.
But there was one difference this time.
[Target: ???]
“……Unknown?”
It had clearly identified the target as ‘Jeong So-hyeok’s Cherry Tomato’ before.
Now it was only showing unknown.
“Is it some sort of special Mysterious Seed?”
Whatever it is.
Since my sister gave it to me, it can’t be dangerous.
“Might as well plant it.”
Why talk about it when seeing is believing?
I’ll know what happens once I see it grow.
As it happened, I had nowhere to plant it.
I scooped some of the soil from the Cherry Tomato’s pot into a washbasin I had at home.
‘Will this work out all right?’
Well, I grew a three-meter cherry tomato in a single day anyway.
It should be fine.
If it doesn’t work out, I can just move it somewhere else.
I buried the seed in the soil.
Watered it until the earth was damp, then cast the spell.
“Blessing of the World Tree.”
Light shot down into the soil.
“Just don’t let anything weird sprout out of this.”
It’s only a plant, after all.
What could possibly go wrong?
* * *
Rumble-rumble.
“Hmm…….”
Bang! Bang!
“Uhhh…….”
Thud! Thud! Thud!!
“Ahhh……!”
Noise.
Sound.
So much sound.
Even more sound.
“Aaaahhh!”
I jerked awake just before losing my mind.
The nightmare had me surrounded by speakers, enduring a full day of neighbors’ noise.
That kind of dream.
“What on earth is that noise……?”
There shouldn’t be any sound carrying up from below in a rooftop room.
Nothing that would cause such a disturbance…….
“Student!! Come out here!!”
‘……unless there is?’
I fumbled into my scattered clothes and carefully opened the door.
Standing before me was not an angry tomato……
but the Landlady, her face flushed crimson.
“What—what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? Are you messing with me?”
She was clearly furious.
I scrambled through my memories.
‘Rent? I haven’t fallen behind on that.’
‘Noise complaints? I’ve just been lying in bed—impossible.’
Nothing came to mind.
No matter how hard I racked my brain, I couldn’t think of anything I’d done to upset the Landlady.
So then, why?
“If you don’t understand, come down and see for yourself!”
“Yes, understood…….”
I clamped down on the words rising in my throat and followed her downstairs.
Times like this, talking only makes things worse.
Silence is golden.
I descended one flight of stairs.
And then.
“Ugh.”
I learned the importance of silence all over again.
“Can you explain this……?”
The Landlady’s voice, thick with fury.
Bewilderment tinged her words.
The moment I stepped down the stairs, what greeted my eyes was.
Some kind of stem.
‘Or is it a root?’
Yes, it looked more like a root.
In any case, something from a plant.
It had forced its way through the building’s fractured seams and was now creeping across the wall.
Literally.
The building’s outer wall was being consumed by creeping vines, as if strangled by ivy.
Now, at last, I understood the rage.
What I had to do was clear.
“I’ll figure something out…….”
“Yeah, you’d better.”
Perhaps because we’d known each other for so many years.
Or perhaps she figured I could claim compensation from my sister if things went wrong.
The Landlady didn’t press further and let it go.
The fourth floor, left alone.
Silence settled like dust.
I stood there, staring blankly at the source of this catastrophe.
“Ha… what in the world is this…….”
I muttered in a hollow voice.
I reached my hand toward the wall.
I could guess what this was, roughly.
The Mysterious Seed my sister gave me yesterday.
Did it grow angry because I planted it in a wash basin?
‘Even so, this is…….’
This crosses every line.
I’d accepted the three-meter Cherry Tomato, after all.
But what in the name of sense is this?
I had no idea how to even begin dealing with it.
Should I call my sister first?
“What kind of plant is this thing supposed to be?”
Roots vast enough to devour concrete itself.
By any measure of common sense, I’d never heard of anything like it.
“I shouldn’t have just planted something without knowing what it was…….”
For now, I’d leave the roots alone.
I climbed the stairs toward where the wash basin was.
I’d rushed down in confusion because of the Landlady.
If the roots were that massive, the stem had to be beyond all reason too.
“?”
But.
When I actually checked the wash basin.
“……A sprout?”
There was only a single sprout poking out of the soil—nowhere near matching those enormous roots.
“…….”
I carefully brought my hand near the sprout.
And then.
[??? Sprout (Growing)]
—Grade: ?
—Freshness: Prime
—Blessing Type: ?
“Here it is again.”
The same kind of description as with the Cherry Tomato.
But since it’s still just a sprout.
There’s nothing I can actually determine from it.
“Nearly everything’s a question mark.”
There was an additional note written below.
I read through it carefully.
—A sprout. Its defining feature is its massive roots. Its true nature remains unknown. But one fact has been revealed…….
“Huh?”
—It came from the Tower.
‘……The Tower?’
I lifted my eyes from the description and looked at the sprout again.
Its appearance was utterly ordinary—nothing to distinguish it from any common seedling.
“……This came from the Tower?”
Now I understood.
All this fuss over a single seed—a letter, a suitcase and all.
‘What am I bringing to a jobless bum holed up in his room……?’
I’d heard rumors about tower plants before.
They were a kind of item that appeared rarely as a reward for conquering tower floors.
Cultivation was out of the question—even research was impossible.
The only information anyone could gather was how people reacted after consuming them.
I’d heard that most people either ate them immediately after receiving them or sold them off right away.
‘And I extracted a seed from it?’
That was remarkable, however you looked at it.
Who would have thought our nation’s botany could influence the tower?
‘And I actually got it to germinate.’
Had anyone in history ever cultivated a tower plant?
Or had any nation, for that matter?
Tower plants were mostly high-efficiency medicinal herbs, since they were conquest rewards.
If I could somehow mass-produce this……
‘……Mass-produce?’
That was when it hit me.
A brilliant thought flickered through my mind.
If I could mass-produce this plant and flood the market with it……
Couldn’t I become filthy rich without ever showing my face?
“Heh…… hehehehe.”
The moment I shifted my perspective, my vision changed.
From a troublesome calamity’s seedling
To leaves gleaming gold.
“Blessing of the World Tree! Blessing of the World Tree!”
[Blessings stack.]
[Growth of ‘???’s Sprout’ accelerates.]
So they do stack.
Caught up in a rush of dopamine, I fired off the skill repeatedly,
And the plant grew before my very eyes.
The stem thickened.
The leaves enlarged and split.
Before I knew it, the thing had grown up to my waist.
“Would it grow even faster if I kept using the blessing?”
The question came to me in a flash.
But I realized immediately it was impossible.
[Insufficient Mana Points.]
Mana Points.
MP.
The resource you needed to activate a skill.
The higher your level and rank, the more you had.
And there were ways to artificially boost it through equipment.
MP was, if you will, like human vitality.
Skills worked by channeling that vitality as it flowed through your body like blood.
So what happened if your MP ran dry?
“Ugh…….”
Your vitality ran dry too.
One knee buckled beneath me of its own accord.
The room spun.
‘Even for a Grade E skill, this is ridiculous.’
Two skill uses.
No—three times counting the morning.
I’d burned through my entire MP pool using a skill just three times in a single day.
I’d heard that using an incredibly powerful Grade S skill even once could knock you unconscious,
‘But a skill that just makes plants grow shouldn’t drain me like this.’
It had to be that my MP pool was pathetically low to begin with.
‘……Would things get better if I cleared a tower floor or two?’
Levels were earned primarily by conquering tower floors.
One floor per level.
Since I hadn’t even conquered the first floor, I could say I was Level 0.
“The first floor…….”
Suddenly, the memory of when I’d first awakened came flooding back.
Heart pounding, grasping for courage.
I cast a blessing upon myself and stepped inside.
I’d heard that about nine out of ten Awakened who entered the first floor succeeded in clearing it.
I’d kept myself in shape, after all.
I figured the first floor would be a breeze.
By now you can probably guess what happened.
That’s right—it wasn’t.
I turned out to be nothing special, nothing at all.
Just another Awakened burdened with a garbage ability.
I still remember it vividly.
The sight of my first time entering the Tower.
A damp, unpleasant cavern.
A stench so thick it was hard to breathe.
Darkness that made it nearly impossible to make out my surroundings.
And most importantly, the monsters.
“Ugh…”
My shoulders trembled.
Yeah, the Tower wasn’t for me.
I’d found a use for my ability, at least.
But that didn’t make me any stronger in the end.
It was still just an ability that slightly raised someone’s regeneration when I cast it on them.
“I guess I’ll just have to figure out how to make money with this thing.”
Oh, and that buff my sister supposedly cast on me?
It had absolutely no effect on me.
When I tried to check it, it was frustrating.
[Conditions not met.]
That was the message I got.
I’d already eaten over a hundred Cherry Tomatoes.
It felt unfair.
‘Guess I was never meant to be a Tower person anyway…’
Yeah, it’s too filthy anyway. I’m not going.
You’d better grow fast, golden goose.
* * *
Bang! Crash!
Baekryeon’s special training facility.
A series of explosive sounds echoed through the space.
“Vital signs normal. Mana levels normal.”
“…The readings?”
“More than three times the usual levels.”
Snap!
Baek Yul-heon’s hand struck his own forehead sharply.
A clear, ringing sound reverberated through the measurement chamber.
“Be careful. You’re making your hair loss worse.”
“…I know. But how am I supposed to contain this?”
Beneath his broad forehead, now marked with a red handprint,
a bright smile was taking shape.
A radiant expression entirely free of worldly concerns.
His gaze was fixed beyond the glass window.
What lay beyond was Baekryeon’s signboard.
Jeong So-hyeon.
“No drug reactions, no abnormalities in Mana, and certainly not a secondary Awakening.”
One of Baekryeon’s staff members spoke to Baek Yul-heon.
“How in the world did you manage this?”
“…Me?”
“Who else is there besides the Guild Master? You must have done something to So-hyeon.”
“If I had any way to do that, I’d have done it long ago.”
“…You’re not? But the guild’s falling apart, so I thought you might have gotten your hands dirty somewhere.”
“Even if the entire guild building came crashing down, I wouldn’t go near that place.”
The staff member seemed taken aback by his response.
The employee’s hands fell away from the keyboard.
“……So you’re saying So-hyeon got stronger on her own?”
“I’m not sure. What’s your take on it?”
“There are no abnormal readings, so nothing was done directly to her body. No skill changes either, so in short…….”
“In short?”
“A high-efficiency Buff?”
Crack!!
Another sound of splitting air.
Baek Yul-heon’s gaze shifted once more.
A Greatsword larger than the body wielding it.
Fractures visible here and there across the training hall.
A Mana aura visible even to the naked eye.
“…….”
Baek Yul-heon closed his mouth and watched her silently.
Crack! Bang!
The training hall crumbling bit by bit.
The sight was so starkly different from a year ago.
“……What on earth did you do.”
He asked quietly, from a distance too far to be heard.
The guild’s foundation.
The pillar that should not waver.
That broken pillar had returned.
“Training hall damage exceeds eighty percent.”
“……Stop her for now.”
My Buff Was Too Strong
Author |
Naengmyeon Hwachae
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Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
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Without the written permission of Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. – Dreambooks, this book’s content may not be used in any form or by any means.

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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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