Not an Extra

5 - Ginseng Gari Mountain

It was Saturday already, which meant I had only one day until the stupid event with the traveling club. I knew exactly how it was going to be the entire time. I was going to be insulted and looked at weirdly during the whole trip.

I was going to be looking at old relics I didn't care for, and finally, I would be forced to sacrifice my Cube gun to kill some random Djin. "Like fucking hell I'll sacrifice the Cube gun,"  the last thing I was doing tomorrow was owing Cube any more money, "I already owe the fuckers 300 million won. I'm not going further into debt."

I was whispering to myself while outside. That grand Saturday, I decided I would hunt for one of the, if not the most useful resources in the entire Novel, which only gets brought up roughly four to five times. Ginseng.

As an uncultured person myself, I had no idea what they were, which meant I was forced to Google -- or its rip-off in this world. They are thick root things that apparently reduce inflammation. There were eleven kinds, and my attention span ended there. 

I went during a time with the least amount of people, and there were still tons of geezers here looking for this stuff. "Man, they make it seem like that'll cure cancer..." I caught a glimpse of a business focused on the sex market -- how do I know that detail? Sketchy ads on Websites focused on the non-legal distribution of cartoons through the sea that was the internet "or erectile dysfunction..."

This thing seemed to be an all-curing medicine to these people. I didn't really understand too much about its lore in the country, but it was an efficient way of making money and increasing stats.

There was only one problem I had with the stat-increase bit and it was that it only worked via a process called Enchantment, and I had no idea what that process required. 

I was in one of the only locations where this stupid thing was mentioned to exist... Gari Mountain. I used one of my -- very precious trips using the Portal in Cube. Cube had a stupid feature where it was floating in the air, meaning if you had to go anywhere else, you had to either pay or use up one of your free entrances through the gate. I usually paid the fee (170,000 won) which made my wallet feel as sad as it was empty. With all of the stocks I was buying, I was hoping I'd get all my money back from finding these roots.

Anyway, not this time. I went using one of the many free travels I got.

There was something else hidden in Gari Mountain, unfortunately, I doubted I could do much about it with my current attack potency. Kim Hajin used Stigma -- a mysterious power that represented his authority as the author of the story, alongside ginseng to defeat the witch child to get Aether.

"Then there's that," I put a hand on the side of my head and scratched it while moving about aimlessly, "Am I enough of a psycho to kill a child?" I questioned with a deep breath. I was discussing with myself. Part of me said it was necessary, the other part told me it was still a damn child. "Kim Hajin's a fucking sociopath." 

I felt something touch my toes, it was growing from the earth. I looked down and saw it. It looked ugly. I pulled it from the earth and stared at it. I had no appraisal skills like Kim Hajin, so I had 0 idea how to discern whether this was good for me or not.

"I have to make a Storage skill and an Appraisal-like skill." I rubbed the back of my neck in annoyance. Kim Hajin could store things in his stigma with ease. I had no Stigma, and as such had to find my own way to store stuff. "This sucks hella hard. I could make a pouch of holding like DnD and a magnifying glass that praises stuff, but I'd rather not have to take them everywhere I go... That gives me two other options," I looked at my index fingers, "Making a Gift, or Buying the solution." 

I put the ginseng in my backpack, then sighed while looking up at the sky. I had a few ideas for the gift idea.

[Gift Observation and Reading requires 100,000 SP]