Chapter 37
Ring ring ring!
“Yes! This is Baek Seo-ryeon, the manager of White Flower Management. How can I help you?”
“Yes? Yes. Yes. Thank you.”
“You want to interview me? Oh, yes.”
“Yes? Hold on a second.”
Baek Seo-ryeon was busy without a break, answering the phone calls that kept coming in.
She couldn’t believe that this was real.
Well, it was understandable.
The office that she had built with debt had no visitors, and she had barely survived on cup noodles every day.
‘She’s doing a good job of handling this, even though she’s flustered.’
Baek Seo-ryeon seemed clumsy at normal times, but when it came to work, she acted smartly.
I sat on the sofa and watched her with a faint admiration.
“Yu-hyun. What are you doing?”
Kang Hye-rim, who was lying horizontally on the long sofa, put her head on my thigh and asked.
I frowned.
“What are you doing? You’re heavy.”
“Heavy? Don’t you know that’s rude to a woman? I’m so light.”
“If you don’t want to hear that, move your head. Do you want to get hit?”
“Ah, no!”
As soon as I mentioned hitting her, she jumped up from her seat.
I sighed softly as I watched her.
She had been touching me physically more often since I gave up my protection.
When I had protection, the beings of the boundary couldn’t touch the tellers, but now I was no different from them.
It must be amazing for her.
But if I let this go on, she might go beyond being silly and become brainless.
“Don’t you know what it means to respect each other’s personal space?”
“Hey. Are we strangers? We’re closer than anyone else in the world.”
Kang Hye-rim retorted with a smug face that didn’t back down.
I felt annoyed by her strangely sly attitude.
She had been like this since we finished the siege of Constantinople two days ago.
Maybe she needed to fall down and break her nose to come to her senses?
“Hoo. I’m exhausted.”
Just then, Baek Seo-ryeon finished her work and sighed as she hung up the phone.
“Are you okay?”
“Huh? No. It’s hard. But I’m happy. Places that would have ignored me even if I called them are calling me first. Do you know how good that feels?”
“Ah, yes…”
“Anyway, I can’t believe this is real. The day before yesterday, you two cleared one of the notorious worlds of thought.”
At Baek Seo-ryeon’s words, Kang Hye-rim smiled proudly and shrugged her shoulders.
She must have felt amazing even by her own standards.
‘Well, so did I.’
Although we had some help from inside, Kang Hye-rim and I were the ones who contributed the most to the clear.
Even after succeeding, we felt uneasy, so how could we not?
Anyway, because of the aftermath of clearing this world of thought, White Flower Management received all kinds of love calls.
“Seo-ryeon. Don’t accept every call that comes your way. We don’t have enough room to accommodate them all yet.”
“I know that too. Especially from clans or other managers, I’m trying to reject them as much as possible. They’re just trying to figure out how to swallow us up anyway. But I can’t ignore the calls from the media or other places.”
I knew that too.
Kang Hye-rim gained a tremendous reputation from this incident.
As a bonus, her collector rank also went up and she achieved level 6 in record time.
People were curious about the new teller named Geomhu who appeared like a comet.
They wanted to know who she was and what kind of person she was.
“For now, I’ve kept a few contacts from the media side. We just need to make a connection with one major place and do an interview once.”
“What about the other places?”
“Some places have already offered to shoot CFs for us. But they’re all mediocre places, so I’m not sure whether to accept them or not.”
“It’s better to reject them. Unless they’re big shots, there’s not much benefit from signing with them.”
Kang Hye-rim’s value was enormous right now.
That meant she had to be more careful with her steps.
If she ran around everywhere just because they called her, she would look cheap.
“I got it. I’ll do as you say and reject them.”
Baek Seo-ryeon was smart and understood quickly.
She sorted out the situation and then asked me with curiosity in her eyes.
“By the way, Yu-hyun, did you really give up your protection?”
“That’s right.”
“Then I can touch you~~”
“Hey.”
As Kang Hye-rim reached out to me, I slapped her hand away.
She groaned as if she was disappointed.
No way.
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“Is it really okay for a teller to do that?”
“There’s no rule against it.”
“It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like that. I didn’t even know it was possible in the first place.”
“I didn’t know either until I tried it this time.”
“Wow.”
Whatever happened, giving up my protection became a kind of my identity.
“Isn’t it dangerous to give up your protection?”
“Well, there are some inconveniences, of course. For one thing, we tellers used to be able to move freely anywhere by transcending space through our protection.”
But now, I can’t do that anymore. If I want to go somewhere far, I have no choice but to move with my own legs. In effect, my range of movement was limited to this place called Seoul.
“Besides, if you enter the world of thoughts or engage in combat, you can’t escape to the room of the observer.”
When my protection was still intact, I could enter and exit the [room of the observer] at will, but now that I gave up my protection, there were restrictions on that as well.
I was forbidden to enter from inside the world of thoughts.
I was also forbidden to enter when I was in combat.
I could still go there in my daily life, but having a new ‘limitation’ was bigger than I thought.
“There are other things as well, but the biggest ones are the two I mentioned.”
“Gosh. Are you sure you’re okay with that?”
“If I wanted to preserve my safety only, I wouldn’t have done this. I’m satisfied.”
I was aware that I had done something ridiculous, but I didn’t regret it.
It was a choice that I made because I wanted to, and I was reaping the benefits accordingly.
Rather, I wondered why I didn’t do this from the start.
“Anyway, since I’ll be fighting with you in the world of thoughts from now on, you could say that I’m practically a collector. Seoryeon, you’ll be busier.”
“I’d welcome you anytime if it’s you! So, do you have any plans for the future?”
Plans.
I nodded my head with a smirk on my face.
“I do have plans. But for now, sorting out the situation is the priority.”
My library had grown too fast because of this incident.
Other tellers had to grow their libraries step by step, but I skipped several steps and grew mine at once.
The number of viewers and subscribers was much more than I had expected.
The spirits who used to enjoy my stories and the new ones who came along.
It was natural that they would mix and make a lot of noise.
I had to make rules for my library because of that.
If I couldn’t control the new viewers, there was a risk that my stories would be swayed by them.
‘I have to make strict rules and block any spirit who breaks them.’
Most of the small and medium-sized libraries had to make rules that they had to follow strictly.
Even smaller libraries did that, but I was actually late in doing this.
‘It’s lucky that there aren’t any spirits causing trouble yet.’
It was thanks to Satan, actually.
There were some spirits who were arrogant and difficult to deal with among the spirits.
They looked down on the beings of the middle and lower worlds just because they were in the position of spirits.
There weren’t many of them, but wouldn’t there be at least one among over 1,000 subscribers?
‘There’s a saying that if five people gather, there’s bound to be one trash. Even if we reduce it to one in ten or one in a hundred for spirits, that’s still more than 10.’
Those kinds of people would often act defiantly even if the teller asked them nicely.
But Satan was a great deterrent for them.
He had the power to make the surrounding spirits not act rashly just by existing.
‘But then again, Satan is the most dangerous.’
I smiled bitterly.
It was like calling a tiger to subdue a wolf or a hyena.
He said he would give up my library and just watch for now, but who knows when he would try to take advantage of the opportunity and declare himself as my patron?
He was a cunning snake, and he had a record of corrupting two second-generation spirits, didn’t he?
He might be smiling and acting friendly to me now, but I never knew when he would show his fangs.
‘As proof of that, he gave me a gift in front of everyone.’
I looked at an item in my personal inventory with a sunken gaze.
On the day when Kang Hye-rim and I finished the Constantinople world of thoughts, Satan gave me a gift in front of other spirits before ending the story.
It was supposed to be the reward for a bet we made privately before, but just by giving me a gift, he revealed his intentions easily.
‘Don’t even think about eyeing this teller. He’s mine.’
He even implied that we had a special relationship by exchanging gifts.
We did have some kind of connection, whether it was good or bad.
But Satan subtly wrapped it up and spread it around.
‘Some spirits might even doubt our relationship.’
It was different from ‘ah’ and ‘oh’, but some spirits might suspect that Satan and I had something going on.
‘But who would have thought he would give such a gift?’
I took out the gift that Satan gave me from my inventory.
A fruit that looked like a watermelon was in my right hand.
“Huh? What’s that?”
Kang Hye-rim, who was sitting next to me, asked with curiosity.
I didn’t have anything to hide, so I answered honestly.
“It’s the fruit of life.”
“What?”
“Whaaat?!”
Unlike Kang Hye-rim, who reacted rather lightly, Baek Seoryeon was shocked as if her mouth would tear open.
“Is that really the fruit of life?”
“Considering who gave it to me personally, I think so.”
It must be true, since Satan gave it to me himself.
I said that and checked the information of the fruit.
[Fruit of Life]
It is a fruit that grew from the tree of life.
It is not fully grown yet, but just sprouted, but the life force contained within it cannot be ignored.
It grants immense life force to the consumer.
That was all the description said, but it was enough.
It was an immature fruit of life, but it was the genuine one that came from the Garden of Eden.
“Why? Is this something amazing?”
“Sis! A fruit of life? One of the two most famous fruits in the Bible!”
“Oh!”
The two fruits that appeared in the Bible, the fruit of wisdom that was good and evil, and the fruit of life.
What I had was the latter.
It was said to give eternal life to those who ate it, the ultimate item.
It was only the size of a ping-pong ball, but its value was priceless.
“Mr. Seoryeon, you seem to know quite a lot.”
“Well, of course. If I want to assist collectors, I have to at least study the stories that are famous in history or mythology.”
“That’s right. Well, that’s also because this is that famous. A fruit of life. If you have to compare it with something else, it would be on par with the golden apples of Idun from Norse mythology, the nectar and ambrosia of Olympus, the amrita of India, or the sweet dew of Buddhism.”
“You received this as a gift?!”
“Well, even if I did, it’s not like I can do anything with it right now. It’s not even a complete fruit to begin with.”
The fruit of life that was handed to me was not fully ripe yet.
But still, because it was worthy of its name as a fruit of life, just by consuming it, the consumer would gain an unbelievable vitality.
‘But I can’t eat it right away.’
I was still too lacking to digest and absorb this.
If I ate it without thinking, I wouldn’t be able to handle the overflowing life force, and my body would either explode or mutate.
‘He gave me something that I can’t eat right away. But it’s not like it’s worthless either, so the other spirits will be suspicious. Damn snake. I can see right through his scheme.’
I clicked my tongue inwardly and put the fruit of life back into my inventory.
It wasn’t now, but someday when I grow enough to be worthy of consuming this fruit, it would be a great help to me.
Baek Seoryeon still looked at me with trembling eyes.
If she thought I was amazing before, now she was almost sending me a gaze filled with awe.
Just as I was about to tell her not to look at me like that.
Ding!
I received a personal message.
‘What is this?’
Most spirits couldn’t leave me messages because I had set up a reception refusal.𝔫𝙤𝑣ℯ𝙡𝗯Ꭵ𝙣.𝖓𝚎𝚝
But even so, if I heard this sound, it meant that someone who met my criteria had sent me a direct message.
‘Is it Satan again?’
With that thought in mind, I checked the message window and couldn’t help but widen my eyes.
‘Why is he contacting me?’
