WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 50: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (50)

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#50.

One of the things viewers loved about the herbalist vlog was the extraordinary country boy's ability to identify poisonous mushrooms.

It usually went like this.

“This one's called a Chestnut Parasol Mushroom. It grows out of the ground like this, and if you eat it, you could die.”

“This one's a Transparent-gilled Emile's Bonnet Mushroom. It grows well in pine or Korean stone pine forests. It's not very famous, but if you eat it, you die. You really die.”

“This one's a Flame-stem Pine Mushroom. It's white like this during the day, but if you put it somewhere dark, it glows jade green. It's a strange little thing, and if you eat it, you could die.”

“This one's famous, so I think you all know it. It's a Destroying Angel. It looks all white and gentle, so you might think it isn't harmful, but if you eat it, you die. Even a little is dangerous.”

“This one's called a Golden Coral Mushroom. It looks a lot like the True Coral Mushroom, which you can eat and which tastes good, right?

But it'll make you sick if you eat it. Your stomach will hurt, and you'll get diarrhea. If you eat a lot, you could die.”

Shorts edited together from scenes and lines like these, titled 「If You Eat It, You Die Compilation」, gained a cult following among viewers.

No internet broadcaster made mushroom identification a major part of their content.

Some might cover it once as a special event, but practically no one made it a regular, recurring part of their content the way Onik did.

There was more than one reason for that.

For one thing, searching for mushrooms was no easy task.

To find mushrooms that could be growing anywhere, they had to scour mountains and forests without knowing how long it would take.

Hiking a mountain along a designated trail was hard enough. How could wandering through wilderness with no paths, no signs, and not even a signal be easy?

The hardship was one thing. They would be fortunate if they did not get lost and need rescuing.

Gathering mushrooms and medicinal herbs was one of the major causes of serious mountain accidents. Even experts and locals confident they knew the terrain inside and out sometimes could not avoid an accident.

Getting permission from park authorities or mountain owners was another hurdle.

Poisonous mushroom identification also required specialist knowledge.

Yet having knowledge did not make identification one hundred percent certain.

Immature poisonous mushrooms were ghastly things that could make even researchers who had devoted their lives to studying mushrooms hesitate.

Lastly, it was not fun.

What was the point of simply finding poisonous mushrooms?

Where were viewers supposed to find the appeal, and what were they supposed to get satisfaction from?

None of the difficulties that stopped ordinary people posed any obstacle to Onik.

Physical exhaustion? No problem.

Getting lost? As if that could happen to him.

The frightening boy's sense of direction and distance had long since surpassed the human realm, while his ability to navigate rough terrain far outstripped that of a tiger or mountain goat.

Most importantly, when poisonous mushrooms were nearby, the frightening boy could simply know they were there.

He sensed them through a dark faculty rooted in the strangeness inside him.

The small and great possibilities of death sprouting in the shaded, damp places of the wild.

‘Ah. There you are.’

For mushrooms beyond the reach of that dark sixth sense, he relied on his nose.

That also let him find edible and medicinal mushrooms, along with other herbs and wild greens.

Even viewers who knew little about such things found the frequency with which the extraordinary country boy discovered all kinds of things to gather absurdly remarkable.

The comments were full of people sharing similar thoughts.

「Whenever I watch this kid's videos, I feel like I'm being scammed in a new way.」

「At this point, didn't he plant them ahead of time?」

「Why do people even farm? Seriously, I don't get it. They could just pick things up from nature like our Onik.」

「The zombie apocalypse survival guides said mountains were the worst place to live, but that was all bullshit lol. There's so much food there lol. You could even make poisoned bait with poisonous mushrooms lol.」

The country boy's extensive knowledge of every sort of mushroom also impressed people.

The frightening boy was naturally bright.

When it came to absorbing knowledge about killing something, though, that sharp mind displayed terrifying ability.

It would not have been wrong to call it narrowly focused perfect recall and analytical ability.

Onik first became interested in poisonous mushrooms in his third year of elementary school.

Several villagers had nearly cooked and eaten poisonous mushrooms, and nearly died.

For the people of that lineage village, gathering wild greens and mushrooms from the mountain owned by the clan association each season was an ordinary part of life.

In another sense, it was also a way to keep watch for outsiders who sneaked in to steal forest products.

The very fact that villagers came and went so often formed a barrier against potential thieves.

That was why the Village Youth Association took the lead in handling it.

Yes.

Among the people who nearly died back then was, ironically, the Village Youth Association President whom Onik later killed with his own hands...

The reason people in rural areas repeatedly died after eating poisonous mushrooms every year was not that they were ignorant or stupid.

Rather, it was usually people familiar with all kinds of mushrooms, people who had gathered and eaten wild mushrooms for decades without a problem, who suffered accidents.

They were confident that they knew what they were doing.

With that confidence, the Village Youth Association President and his longtime friends had gathered poisonous mushrooms that looked very much like edible ones.

Those poisonous mushrooms had happened to sprout while still small in the same spot as edible mushrooms that looked similar to them.

Had Onik not been there, the village would have seen a string of funerals that day.

It was fortunate that the Village Youth Association President and his friends invited the lonely boy over when they were about to make mushroom hot pot.

Among the mushrooms the adults had laid out, the boy sensed possibilities of death and cried out in alarm.

「These are poisonous mushrooms! If you eat them, you'll die!」

「Huh? That can't be.」

「It's true! Don't eat them!」

The adults tilted their heads at the young boy's urgent warning.

Still, everyone already knew that Onik was not an ordinary child. Uneasy, the adults threw the mushrooms he pointed out to a dog.

The mutt, which even licked up its own shit, gladly gobbled down the mushrooms.

Half a day later.

The dog that had eaten the mushrooms collapsed, foaming at the mouth. It convulsed, then died.

Only then did the adults, who had happily shared a hot pot made with beef and mushrooms, panic and make a fuss about going to the hospital and such.

Yet another day passed, and not one of them even got a stomachache.

That was when the adults finally realized that the extraordinary child had picked out only the poisonous mushrooms with perfect accuracy.

The Village Youth Association President made a great fuss.

“Wow, Onik! How did you know? How did you know those were poisonous mushrooms?”

“Um, I just did! I just knew!”

“Huh. You saved us. Thank you. Thank you so much! If it weren't for you, a lot of people could've died.”

“From now on, have me inspect your mushrooms before you eat them! I know all of them!”

“What? Inspect them? Hahaha! All right, we should have our Onik inspect them! We'll be counting on you from now on!”

“Yes! Leave it to me!”

The Village Youth Association President, whose life had been spared this way, later lost it beneath the frightening boy's knife and became dog food.

What an irony that was...

Even now, Onik sometimes felt conflicted whenever he cooked mushroom hot pot.

The herbalist vlog always ended with cooking.

That was where Onik had something no one else dared imitate. He even ate the wild edible mushrooms he identified himself.

It gave viewers a kind of thrill fundamentally different from an ordinary mukbang.

Naturally, at first, the comments were flooded with worry and criticism.

「Onik! You're going to die doing that! It's really dangerous!」

「What is that useless bastard Boss doing instead of stopping him? Adults should stop a kid from doing dangerous things! Why the hell is he eating it with him? Did his brain fall out or something?」

「Isn't this child abuse? Shouldn't someone report this?」

「Fake insanity: Doing all kinds of crazy shit in public for attention. Real insanity: A kid picks wild mushrooms, cooks them, and the adults happily eat them with him.」

「No, elders... Why are even you eating that? Everyone is accepting it so naturally that I'm starting to think I'm the weird one...」

「It’s because those old country folks are ignorant.」

Even when the elders specifically testified to the record of ‘Jo Onik, the village-certified mushroom identifier,’ the fire only burned fiercer.

Eventually, links were posted across every kind of community and social media site. People who were not even subscribers flocked in solely to insult the Boss and the village adults, and within only three days, it had even been covered by broadcast news.

At that point, Legal Hunter smiled smugly to himself.

‘Heh heh. Just as planned.’

The original plan his daughter in Seoul came up with had been... nothing more than a peaceful mukbang where they gathered familiar wild greens and simply dressed them.

But the greedy adult could not be satisfied with that alone.

He wanted to put into practice what he had read in the book he had studied.

‘Avoiding controversy is amateur hour for an internet broadcaster. A pro starts the fire himself. Of course, only after getting ready to put it out!’

On the third day of the uproar, Legal Hunter livestreamed a broadcast he had planned in advance.

「Beat Onik! Mushroom Identification Edition! (Feat. Professor and Graduate Student from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences)」

The professor of agriculture from a regional flagship national university, whom Legal Hunter recruited with old man Jo Jeong-ho's help by using the head family's connections and money, was an expert who had devoted thirty years solely to mushroom research.

The area where Legal Hunter and Onik lived was widely known as the home of “We’re not strangers!” and truly had a strong tendency toward that kind of close-knit favoritism.

The professor had never even met Legal Hunter before, but when contacted through a relative, the professor chuckled and accepted the invitation.

The professor was also interested in the young genius said to identify poisonous mushrooms with uncanny accuracy.

The young genius's opponent was a lab slave serving under that professor.

The contest between the country boy and the doctoral slave proceeded by having them examine specimens the professor had prepared and identify the poisonous mushrooms.

They received a few bonus points if they could correctly name the mushrooms as well.

“Haah...”

The lab slave who had been dragged out against his will looked miserable.

There was nothing to gain from winning, but if by some chance he lost, there would be far too much to lose.

A doctoral student defeated by a child. What kind of joke was that?

Once he went back to the lab, the professor would certainly crack the whip, telling him to strive harder and devote himself to his studies.

On top of that, about thirty percent of the poisonous mushroom specimens the professor had prepared were almost maliciously similar to edible varieties.

The professor had even included immature mushrooms to make the test more discriminating, which made the graduate student feel even more doomed.

‘Even the professor wouldn’t be able to identify this one...’

Unfortunately for him, the boy he faced was a real genius.

“This one's poisonous! It's a Tippler's Bane Inkcap! If you eat this and drink alcohol, you'll die! The one next to it is just an Ink Cap, and you can eat it when it's white like this!”

“This one! This is the poisonous one! An Ivory Funnel Mushroom!”

“This one's an Egg Amanita, this one's an Ochre Powdercap, this one's a Shiny Scalycap, this one's a Conical Stalk Mushroom, and this one is...”

The boy put on a show of sniffing each sample, then smoothly called out answer after answer. The professor, who already knew the answers, looked utterly astonished, a pleased smile spreading across his face.

The lab slave's increasingly lifeless expression as he worried about returning to the laboratory did not matter to the professor at all.

“That's truly amazing, Onik. Every single one is correct! But can you really tell just by smell?”

“Yes! It's easy for me!”

“Ha ha, hahahaha... How fascinating. Truly fascinating! Human potential is far more incredible than I thought! Leaving aside how you distinguish them, how did you memorize all those names?”

“I studied them! So the village adults won't eat bad mushrooms!”

“Hahahaha...!”

The professor declared the genius boy the winner with a beaming smile.

Then the professor firmly took the boy's hand and offered him some warm words of advice.

“Onik, when you're older, you absolutely must come to our university! I'll become your academic advisor and teach you very well!

At your age, your eye for identifying mushrooms... no, should I say your eyes and nose?

Whether it is your eyes or your nose, your ability is impressive enough to astonish even an expert like me. A student like you could surely become an excellent mushroom expert.”

In short, the professor's warm advice was that Onik should become the professor's graduate student. The live chat was flooded with 「Don't do it, Onik!」.

Once the livestream ended and the edited video was uploaded, the blazing controversy died down quickly.

When the flames had all been put out, what remained was a sharp increase in subscribers and higher views across the board.

Legal Hunter savored his victory as he admired the cleaned-up comment section.

‘Yes! This is it! I knew I had good instincts!’

After that, most viewers no longer worried about whatever the extraordinary boy gathered from mountains and fields to eat.

Legal Hunter and Onik's broadcasts were always going smoothly.

#

After digging up seven roots of long-lived balloon flower from the clan association's mountain and returning to the village, Onik set a wide pot in the village hall courtyard to finish the vlog.

Today's menu was mille-feuille nabe. It was one of Onik's preferred dishes when he wanted to save time. Thanks to his exceptional dexterity, he could prepare it quickly, and it looked pretty as well.

With flashing knife work, he arranged thick layers of trimmed beef and napa cabbage leaves in a circle like flower petals. In the open space at the center, he neatly gathered the mushrooms he had picked from the mountain, like stamens and pistils.

Then all he had to do was pour lightly seasoned broth over that great blooming flower and bring it to a boil.

Onik had already made tangy, sweet yuzu ponzu sauce and sweet, nutty peanut butter dipping sauce, both of which were stored in the village hall refrigerator.

For an additional sauce, Onik poured tsuyu into as many small bowls as there were people, then dropped an egg yolk into each one.

Normally, it would have taken six or seven people working busily to do all that.

The live viewers marveled at the country boy's movements as he handled it all alone without any trouble.

「Nothing this kid does is ordinary. Look at how fast he cracks eggs and separates the yolks. Is he a machine?」

「At this level, he could probably run a fine-dining restaurant all by himself.」

「What are all the star chefs doing? A future super ace is right here. Whoever takes him first and makes him their apprentice wins.」

「Does he really need to learn from anyone? Looking at his skills, it seems like he could teach himself and earn every qualification anyway.」

The elders, who gathered in little groups after hearing the village hall broadcast, smiled at the bubbling pot.

“Ooh. What was this called again? Mil, mil, mil, milf nabe? Is that right, milf nabe?”

“Old man. Not milf. Mille-feuille.”

“Riiight. Milfff.”

“Mil-le-feuille.”

“Miiil-fff.”

“Good grief. Mille-feuille or milf, what does it matter if it tastes good? It's all going into our stomachs anyway.”

“That's right.”

The village hall where Onik had set the pot stood diagonally across the intersection from the old Three-Way Intersection Restaurant where the church was located.

That meant it was close enough even for someone with bad legs to reach quickly.

Onik had sent Pastor Kim a message telling him to hurry over. Then he felt the presence of something “killable and in danger” approaching from the church's direction, and turned his gaze.

Pastor Kim limped closer.

A long shadow stretched beneath the slanting sunlight.

The pastor's figure, crossing the road dyed by the sunset, had become gaunt.

Worried about Pastor Kim's health, the boy took comfort in the fact that he had not grown any thinner than yesterday.

Pastor Kim had grown thinner and thinner, but about a month ago, he finally seemed to have entered a period of fragile stability.

Onik knew the pastor had prayed a great deal during that time.

Footnotes:

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