WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Convenience Store Clerk the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 13: World Tree Powder
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Honestly, going to a hospital and throwing up would be much faster than howling here.
That kind of emergency treatment was far more effective, after all.
But this beastfolk man didn’t seem to have any intention of doing that.
The minotaur, whose entire body was packed with muscle, gritted his teeth and held on.
Probably because of the livestream he had running.
-lmaooo look at MooBro tearing up.
-His face looks like absolute shit lol.
-lol look how fast he’s chewing that ice.
-Hang in there, MooBro. You’re almost at two million won.
-Going to a convenience store instead of taking a potion. Legendary IQ lol.
-Just go to a hospital at that point.
-MooBro’s sobbing from the spice T_T.
The viewers snickered as they watched smoke pour from his mouth.
Apparently, reckless challenges like this were his main content.
“G-graaagh…! Bros! I’m seriously about to d-die here! It feels like a bomb went off in my stomach!”
The minotaur shouted tearfully, clutching his selfie stick.
White steam escaped his mouth every time he spoke.
-lol.
-Bro, quit being dramatic and chew some more ice lol.
-Doesn’t he actually look like he’s in danger, though? His lips are all blistered. Yikes.
-Hold on. You wanna give up here and walk away with just 100,000 won?
-Would be a shame.
The viewers sent donations along with their mocking comments.
The minotaur kept bantering with them, but he was drenched in cold sweat.
Watching from beside him, I could tell he’d reached his limit.
‘Isn’t he going to burn his whole esophagus like that?’
I couldn’t let a customer collapse on our store floor and start foaming at the mouth.
If I had to call the police and an ambulance now, I’d definitely end up getting off work late again.
A way to deal with the heat…
“Excuse me.”
“Ah, yes? Hff, got any more ice?”
“We do, but…”
“Then just a little more ice…”
“More ice won’t help. You’d be better off taking a potion…”
“Hff, haah, I really can’t do that!”
He shook his head hard.
“One of the challenge conditions is no potions…”
“…Is that how the challenge normally works?”
“Hrk, whew, no. Not normally, but the challenge I’m, whewww, doing… Hrk! It’s lasting thirty minutes after eating lava fruit with no potions or treatment. I’ve only got ten minutes left. Hrk!”
A fruit with heat that even medicine couldn’t touch.
Apparently, the potions sold in convenience stores rarely worked on it, so sending people to a hospital was the recommended approach.
But this customer refused to go to a hospital at all.
I hadn’t expected that.
“It’s two whole million won! I can’t give up!”
Two million won was a lot of money.
Judging by his determination, sending him to a hospital or giving him a potion was out.
But I couldn’t just leave him like this…
“Well, there might be another way.”
“R-really?”
Back when the Buldak Spicy Noodles challenge, spicy tteokbokki, and Drop-Dead Pork Cutlet were all the rage, there was a drink I often had after eating spicy food.
A magical drink that settled my burning stomach in one go.
I didn’t know whether it really was that effective, but I always felt better after drinking it.
I got up and walked over to the refrigerated display.
Two of the biggest jumbo cups of ice.
One one-liter carton of peach Coolpis.
And some rich, creamy milk.
It was the K-antidote cocktail.
“I’ll mix these for you. Drink it.”
As I began pouring Coolpis and milk into an ice cup, the minotaur and his viewers reacted with confusion.
-?? Did the clerk suddenly get possessed by a cocktail bartender?
-He’s gonna put out lava fruit heat with Coolpis? lmao is he stupid?
-MooBro! You think low-grade drinks like that are gonna put the fire out? lol Buy a potion! A potion!
-Buying a potion means failing the challenge. Why would he do that lol.
-The clerk looks so fucking serious, I’m dying lmaooo.
The minotaur blinked at me.
“D-does this really work?”
“No idea.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know if it’ll work. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t tell you how effective it’ll be. I’m just giving you the cocktail I used to drink when I ate spicy food.”
“Oh…”
“You said you wouldn’t take a potion.”
My shameless answer left the minotaur looking flustered.
The chat scrolled rapidly, too.
-LMAOOO.
-At least he’s honest.
-He’s not wrong.
-Milk does help a little after spicy food.
-If you won’t take a potion, at least drink that.
-The clerk’s smart.
The minotaur glanced at his stream, then squeezed his eyes shut.
“Screw it! I’ll drink it! If it doesn’t settle my stomach, I’m going to the hospital!”
Going to the hospital might have been faster than this.
He began gulping down the Coolpis and milk.
And then it happened.
Flash.
A soft, pale green light shimmered around his body.
“Hm?”
Neither the minotaur himself nor his viewers seemed to notice.
The viewers kept mocking the drink, saying it wouldn’t do anything, while the minotaur desperately gulped it down.
But I could clearly see his body glowing faintly.
“Didn’t some get on your hands too? That World Tree powder!”
I remembered the manager shouting that.
The pollen that had supposedly gotten on me while I was planting the World Tree.
But no matter how hard I’d looked, I hadn’t seen anything…
Was that the pollen’s power?
The minotaur’s eyes widened as he drank the Coolpis and milk.
“Huh?”
Without even thinking to wipe the milk off his mouth, he stared at his drink in surprise.
“What is this? What’s going on? Why’s my stomach settling down…?”
As he set down the empty cup, the faint light flowing around his body faded.
Whatever it was, he seemed to have absorbed it properly.
The man who’d been howling about his burning stomach was now calmly looking down at his belly.
After putting down the ice cup, the minotaur kept patting his stomach.
“Bros! I’m feeling a bit better now. My stomach still stings, but I can actually handle this. I felt like I was gonna die a minute ago, but now I think I’ll live!”
He shouted at the camera in disbelief.
The chat, which had been racing by like mad, stopped for a moment before exploding again.
-???
-What?
-It actually settled his stomach?
-Without a potion?
-What is that cocktail?
-Quit messing with us.
-Wow, the miracle of the convenience store bartender lmaooo.
-MooBro’s face looks so real lol.
-Guess it really doesn’t hurt anymore.
“Wow… How did you do that?”
* * *
For the first time in ages, Sonya enjoyed a day with nothing on her schedule.
Ever since she’d finished her latest Tower run, she hadn’t had a single free day.
Interviews at TV stations, variety show appearances, sparring with her peers, simulations for her next climb, reviews of her clear of the 72nd floor, and even lectures for junior Hunters.
She’d been so busy that even ten of her wouldn’t have been enough.
Now that she’d finally managed to get some rest, she put on one of the livestreams she watched in her spare moments.
MooBro’s Hunter stream.
She hadn’t chosen it because he was funny.
His stream had simply been at the top of the list.
It was something like a habit. A routine.
Whenever she logged in, she played whichever stream was at the top.
She found it hard to bear when her room went quiet.
Other people’s attention weighed on her more than it did on anyone else.
When she rested alone, she tried to retreat into the dark.
And yet, when silence actually fell, she couldn’t stand it.
She usually put on livestreams because the streamers talked back and forth with their viewers.
Being alone without quite feeling alone gave her a small sense of relief.
“This is boring.”
She clicked her tongue at the stream and its dopamine hits, then moved to turn it off.
But then she realized the convenience store MooBro had rushed into looked familiar.
“Huh? This place…”
It was the convenience store she’d visited.
The one with the clerk who hadn’t recognized her.
Instead of turning off the stream, she quietly watched.
She watched the clerk mix a cocktail for MooBro.
“Could that be…?”
There was a strange reaction in the brief moment he mixed the cocktail.
A faint sparkle that neither the viewers nor even MooBro himself had noticed.
As an S-rank Hunter, she recognized the light sparkling on Kim Mincheol’s hands.
“World Tree pollen?”
World Tree pollen.
A powder known to cling only to those the World Tree truly acknowledged.
Not only could it heal people on its own, but it was also a top-grade alchemical material used in all kinds of magic reagents and magic circles.
“No way! That’s really World Tree powder?”
Just how hard was that powder to obtain?
Even elves struggled to get World Tree pollen. There were specialists devoted to obtaining it.
And someone who wasn’t even an elf had pollen that only those acknowledged by the World Tree could receive?
“How…?”
The World Tree was incredibly picky.
Even she, an S-rank Hunter, hadn’t earned its acknowledgment and had failed to obtain its pollen.
Yet a convenience store clerk had it.
“I did think he couldn’t be an ordinary clerk…”
She’d struggled to obtain World Tree pollen for quite a long time.
It was something she absolutely needed to clear the 73rd floor.
Even after clearing all the way up to the 72nd floor, she’d never found so much as a clue to it. And now that powder was right before her eyes.
She couldn’t take it.
She immediately got up.
It was broad daylight, and there would be plenty of people outside.
Their eyes would turn toward her.
Ignoring all of that, she put on a cap and mask and went out.
“I have to ask him.”
She wanted to ask.
Where he’d gotten it.
How he’d gotten it.
And perhaps…
Whether he could give her a little.
Her steps quickened.
* * *
“Bros! Thanks for watching MooBro’s challenge today. I’ll try making this magic cocktail again sometime. That was seriously legendary! All right, that’s a wraaap for today’s stream! Moo-bye, everyone!”
He winked at the camera, then finally pressed the button on his selfie stick to end the stream.
“Sorry for the trouble. I’m really sorry. And thank you. You saved my life. I seriously thought I was going to die.”
He bowed his head in apology, looking much more serious than he had during the stream.
This was probably what he was really like.
“Could you ring me up?”
“For all the ice you had, the Coolpis, and the milk, that’s 34,000 won.”
After swiping his card, he scratched his head and looked at me.
“About that cocktail recipe. Could you tell me how to make it?”
“Well, there’s nothing hard about it…”
I gave him a rough ratio of Coolpis to milk.
“And this is to thank you.”
He held out some crisp bills.
It was 400,000 won.
“I completed the challenge thanks to you. If it weren’t for you, I’d have been taken to the hospital by now. Just think of it as my hospital bill and take it. Please don’t feel bad.”
“What? But…”
“Please take it. I’m still a Hunter, you know. I didn’t notice while I was drinking it, but I can feel it clearly now. There’s definitely some incredible energy in that milk cocktail. It felt like my stomach was washed clean in an instant. There’s no way plain milk could stop heat that even potions struggle to treat.”
He seemed to have gotten completely the wrong idea.
Apparently, he was mistaking the relief caused by the World Tree powder on my hands for some amazing magic.
Hmm.
That wasn’t it, though.
But I didn’t bother correcting him.
It felt like I’d need a complicated, boring, overly technical explanation.
“Honestly, that energy was so incredible that even this feels like too little. A hospital bill would’ve cost me much more. So please, take it.”
After a moment’s thought, I accepted the bills he offered.
It would’ve been rude to keep refusing.
“Thank you. If you eat something spicy again, you’d be better off going to a hospital.”
“Haha! I’m not going anywhere near lava fruit again! Have a good one!”
I’d sent the customer on his way and was cleaning up the scattered ice when it happened.
Ding.
The bell announced a new customer.
I looked up.
“Welcome.”
The woman who’d visited our store last night stood at the door.
A black cap pulled low, a black mask covering more than half her face, and a loose zip-up hoodie.
It was the exact same incredibly suspicious look as yesterday.
I propped the mop to one side and headed to the counter.
I’d expected her to wander around the store like a ghost again, but she came straight to the counter without hesitation and stood in front of me.
“Oh, you haven’t picked out anything to buy today…”
“Where did you get that powder?”
Golden eyes looked at me.
“Sorry? What powder?”
When I asked in confusion, she leaned slightly over the counter and spoke in a near whisper.
“The power you used on that minotaur earlier.”
“…”
“World Tree pollen.”
‘She recognized it?’
Neither the minotaur himself nor the tens of thousands of viewers had noticed a thing.
The minotaur had only realized it quite a while after drinking it.
And someone who hadn’t even been in our store had recognized it?
Who on earth was this woman? How did she have an eye for things on the manager’s level?
“He said his stomach was burning up, so I just mixed Coolpis and milk to neutralize the spice. That’s all.”
“…”
Even after my answer, she didn’t readily look away.
After a long blink, she finally drew back.
“…I see. Everyone has a secret they’d rather keep. I’m sorry. That was very rude of me.”
She didn’t press me any further.
Her gaze softened as she picked up a tuna mayo triangle rice ball and a drink from the display, just like yesterday, and placed them on the counter.
“Please ring these up. And throw away the receipt, like yesterday.”
“Oh, yes. Your payment of 2,700 won went through.”
The woman took her things and headed to the same corner table where she’d sat yesterday.
She peeled off the wrapper and bit into the rice ball, but her gaze stayed stubbornly fixed on me throughout her meal.
‘Seriously, all I did was mix in some milk. Why’s she looking at me like that?’
Sweating on the inside, I picked up the mop again.
This was uncomfortable.
Footnotes:
Coolpis is a Korean fruit-flavored drink commonly paired with spicy food.
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