“Hands are visible, Shia.”
“….Unnie Yeonseo, isn’t it strange if my hands go out of your sight?”
“Tsk! Where do you think you’re talking back from?!”
“Oh come on, a kid can say that, why are you reacting like this!”
“Kids can say that, but you shouldn’t!”
“I’m not a kid!”
Yeonseo Unnie and Menelapie both keep calling me a kid, and I’m completely bewildered by it.
Have you ever seen a kid with this chest and height?!
And I saved the world! I’m not a kid!
Seriously, even if we concede that my mental age is 21, my life experience counts for something! And besides, 21 isn’t that young!
I knew it; even Menelapie sees me as someone she needs to take care of like a kid?
“Yep. To me, you still look like a little brat.”
Feeling wronged, my hands and feet are trembling when suddenly Lirisia appears next to me, giggling and whispering.
Yikes.
She sneaks up on me like a serpent of the forbidden fruit, whispering with an exceptional skill.
I’m sure in my previous world, those who opposed me didn’t just use brute force; they definitely approached and tempted or brainwashed me like this.
If I can’t even infuse my voice with Spirit Power any longer, it’s clear I had many followers back then.
“How old are you to be saying that to me?!”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Are you a thousand years old or something?! Why do you look like that?”
“Pfft.”
What is that supposed to mean?
What’s with that laugh?!
Wait, doesn’t this girl seem to look down on me quite a bit?
“Think for yourself.”
“No, tell me!”
Haa, any further debate is pointless.
The more I talk, the more they seem united to annoy and mess with me.
‘Everyone is truly bad…!’
Do I really have such good hit reaction? Huh?!
Especially, not that I care about others, but with Menelapie, I feel really betrayed.
She called me her own hero and now she’s playing childish pranks she didn’t even do when she was the Empress.
I figured there’s no way to respond positively; it would only lead to my loss, so I started stacking up cabbages again.
Let’s see, one cabbage. Two… Three…
For reference, I had to move and grab the cabbages tentatively and diligently with the speed and strength of an ordinary human.
Dungeon cabbages were just called cabbages, but they were luxury items worth way more than the same weight in gold.
They were treated as superior goods, even more so than crops handled by elves in the Daesanrim.
That was probably because of the unique topography and gimmicks of this dungeon.
This dungeon, built as Yeonseo’s private villa, had a massive desert, and in the middle of it was a flat highland suitable for highland farming. In reality, all the life force and mana of the dungeon were concentrated in this plateau, where dungeon cabbages grow nourished by overwhelmingly concentrated mana, increasing their value.
The good news for me was that Lirisia, Menelapie, and I surprisingly hadn’t consumed many cabbages.
Yeah, from that vast cabbages field in the dungeon, we only ate about one row.
…Well, okay, I did eat an entire row in less than 20 minutes, so there was a problem there, but still, it was a relief we didn’t eat that many. Normally, I would have apologized to Yeonseo Unnie and immediately offered to compensate with money on my smartwatch, but she refused and made us organize the cabbage.
Thinking back, even though Yeonseo wasn’t flaunting her wealth that much now, she was one of the wealthiest of the wealthy worldwide.
Since the Great Rift in 2024, she had saved humanity from extinction countless times, so if you combined her wealth stacked in her bank account and the real assets scattered around the world, a mere returnee like me wouldn’t even stand a chance, and compensation would mean nothing to Yeonseo.
She probably made us do this work so we would learn the value of hard work and understand the sweat of the farmers.
To be precise, it meant sorting and stacking the well-ripened cabbages, suffering to recognize the hardship and labor they had put in.
But wait, wasn’t Yeonseo herself sorting fields and planting seeds, finishing harvests in mere seconds with her abilities?
Ding ding!
At that moment, Yeonseo’s eyes twitched as she looked at a bright red message that came through on her smartwatch.
“Shia. And that… yellow-haired hero.”
“‘Yellow-haired hero of Shia.’”
“….Can’t we just call you by name? It’s taking a while to get used to…”
“Feel free to call me however you want.”
Yeonseo sighed lightly and got up from her seat.
Whatever the message was, it didn’t seem right.
“Shia and Menelapie, you must come with me for a moment.”
“Huh? Why?”
“What’s going on?”
“….Shia, do you remember the Great Forest?”
“The Great Forest?”
“Oh, you mean Olgania’s?”
“You mean the Elf Great Forest, right?”
“Oh, was there also an elf in this world?”
Menelapie seemed curious about the mention of elves and stroked her chin with her finger.
She had this habit whenever she found something interesting.
“Yes, but they’re not the sand elves or spirit elves of our world… if I had to categorize them, I would say they’re high elves?”
“That’s curious. But yes, regular humans from Earth don’t differ much compared to imperial people either.”
“But why? Did you receive a request from the Great Forest again?”
“No, that’s not it.”
As she said that, Yeonseo sighed again.
“The elves wrecked China.”
“……..?”
“China? Oh, what is that? Is it food?”
As I heard that, I momentarily lost track of what Menelapie was saying.
What did I just hear…?
Ding ding!
As soon as Yeonseo, Menelapie, and Shia hurriedly disappeared, Lirisia threw the cabbages she was holding as if she had been waiting for that very moment.
“Ugh. Dammit!”
“Keep the field clean by the time we return…? Is this not a task fit for Han Seok-bong’s mother?”
‘Sigh, as the Witch of the Dark Star and the Seongnyeo of carnage, I’m now peacefully doing cabbage work… If someone saw this, they would shed tears of blood.’
If someone truly understood what kind of being Lirisia was, they would surely have their eyes rolled back.
“………The sky is really clear.”
After tossing the cabbages, I looked up at the sky, and it was indeed very clear.
The skies of the previous world Lirisia inhabited were no longer clear, yet looking back at this world, how could it be so clear even in a dungeon?
Whenever I closed my eyes, it felt like memories from that time were coming back up from beneath my feet, but regretting the past was futile.
It was several hundred years ago that I became an unforgivable being.
‘Well, thinking about it is of no use.’
The lives I took wouldn’t return, and the traces of my actions would remain somewhere in the past world.
The Witch of the Dark Star had completely become bleached, walking the land as a human.
I never thought I would live a life as a human, having lost all memories of my former self.
‘As long as I’m not hungry, it doesn’t really matter…’
In the previous world, the moment my sanity started to erode from hunger, I would devour monsters, inhumans, and humans without hesitation.
I didn’t care if it was a malicious entity; I devoured anything that looked delicious.
And as a result, my enemies, comrades, and friends all vanished…
Now, I’m left with only the corpse of what once was a god clinging shamefully onto me.
Seriously, I’m uncomfortable with being sentimental.
Forget it.
But I’m trying to forget, and all that remains is a mountain of cabbages…
“By the way, I did need to clean this up…?”
Ugh, how annoying.
When will I even manage to organize all this and put it in storage?
‘No, to be precise, didn’t that girl Yeonseo just tell me to “clean this up”?’
Ha, how dare that Witch of the Dark Star find me an escape route like this?!
I absolutely won’t let that pass.
“So, if I eat it all, it wouldn’t be a problem to call it ‘clean’, right?”
I didn’t tell a lie.
As I said, I did it.
Look, isn’t it ‘clean’ after eating it all?!
Yeah, am I not the Witch and the Villainess for nothing?
As I became the Witch of the Dark Star, the rebellious spirit of Lirisia awoke again, and picturing the shocked faces of Yeonseo, Shia, and Menelapie made me giggle.
However, the problem was….
‘I’m sick of it.’
Having starved and devoured anything in sight was part of Lirisia’s nature.
But the current Lirisia was a powerful human.
Not a Seongnyeo of the Dead.
Naturally, as a human, I have preferences and limits.
For the first time in her life, Lirisia felt fullness and disgust towards food.
Grumble
“Oh? Are you hungry? Want some cabbages?”
I asked the still unwilling divine corpse just in case, but even the tentacles seemed to grind their teeth in disgust, and eventually, Lirisia shrugged her shoulders and threw the cabbages she held far away.
Yeah, it’s true I ate quite a bit.
It was tasty, but after eating an entire row in the cabbage field, it made sense my palate would dull.
Yet throwing it all away would be a waste.
Wasn’t it supposed to be expensive?
Ding ding!
“Oh no.”
Haa, I knew this would happen.
If it were the previous world… No, regardless of the world, if I were still the Witch of the Dark Star, then the moment I used that miracle, the souls I devoured would have become undead before me.
It must have been a spectacular sight.
But now, even if I summoned, nothing would happen…
Thud!
“Huh?”
[Geeek…?]
Suddenly, something sprang out of the miracle I caused.
What is this?
“…………..”
Huh…?
[Geeek…?] (What the hell……?)
What is this cute creature?
