Chapter 6
"Hello, it's been a while since I last streamed. I'm Farmer Park from Jeolla Province."
-Hey, what are you doing streaming at this hour?
-When are you uploading that traditional liquor content?
Farmer Park was a farmer who worked as a YouTuber on the side.
He was a typical rural YouTuber, balancing farm work with videos about farming, eating frogs, hunting wild boar, and other parts of country life.
He'd come here to take a look at a neighboring farmer's fields, where work had been halted because a Gate had appeared.
"I mentioned this in the community, didn't I? A Gate appeared in Mr. Kim's fields in the next village."
-Yeah, you did.
-Wasn't the Firebird Guild the one that won the bid for it?
-That's why old man Kim set out a whole spread of food and liquor for the Firebird Guild Hunters, asking them to take care of it.
"But then, wouldn't you know it, a dungeon break happened!"
-Farmer Park, don't bullshit us.
-The Firebird Guild couldn't clear a Scarlet Gate? With S-rank Lee Yongwan and over forty A-ranks?
-Bullshit. They could clear it easily even without Lee Yongwan himself stepping in.
Farmer Park felt aggrieved by the viewers' reactions. He'd seen the field's owner, Mr. Kim, bawling over the miasma-contaminated farmland with his own eyes.
Park didn't know much about Hunters, but he knew they belonged to the famous Top Ten Guilds and were incredibly skilled.
Even so, a dungeon break had happened, and Mr. Kim's fields were still being contaminated by miasma. It was a catastrophe farmers feared more than anything since the Cataclysm thirty years ago.
"I'm telling you, it's true! Association employees are here, too, and everyone's in a panic. The miasma contaminated the fields, and all the rice has rotted!"
Park zoomed in with his camera, showing the contaminated land and the Association employees confronting the Firebird Guild.
It wasn't just the rotted rice. The skeletal remains strewn nearby looked like they belonged to Skeletons.
-...For real? If miasma spread across Honam, this year's harvest is screwed. Why isn't this on the news?
-Aren't we fucked? The food self-sufficiency rate's already been falling, so they increased farming subsidies lately.
-What good are subsidies if there's no land to farm?
-The answer is smart farms. Buy Doojeong Future Foods now.
-Stock market addicts OUT!
Park continued filming around the Gate.
There was a cordon in place, but Park crept through the crops without being spotted, and the viewers' reactions grew even more serious.
"Oh... There's a foreigner."
Just then, a golden-haired man came into view of his camera. The viewers began asking questions, too.
-Who's that foreigner? Is he with the Firebird Guild?
-His gear's pretty flimsy for that. He's not even wearing any armor.
-Then is he an Association employee?
-There aren't any Europeans among the Association employees. But damn, he's handsome.
-Why are there so many women over there? They're all holding something, too. Park, zoom in.
Park saw the altar Leon had built and the straw dolls. It was still early dawn, so he couldn't make them out clearly, but the structure looked like an altar.
'Are they holding a shamanistic ritual or something?'
It was common to hold rituals on land contaminated by miasma.
People did it in the hope that the land would be purified, but in the end, the only way to purify contaminated land was to inject the Mage Tower's reagents in time.
Could that golden-haired man be a mage dispatched by the Mage Tower? No, he didn't look like a mage at all.
For some reason, Park couldn't take his eyes off the man.
It wasn't just because of his looks.
Even from afar, the radiance of Leon, the living saint, exuded a subtle nobility and dignity.
Park instinctively sensed something genuine in him, something he couldn't find in the upper-class people and actors he occasionally saw on TV or the internet.
People said the modern aristocracy consisted of high-ranking Awakened and businesspeople, but their bearing and bloodlines could never imitate the real thing.
And then, the next moment...
Farmer Park witnessed the moment that would change his life.
* * * *
Leon was the first knight of Ariana, Goddess of Light and Justice.
The Lionheart Kings throughout the history of the Holy Knight Kingdom of Lionheart had been Ariana's foremost servants—her champions.
But in the Kingdom of Lionheart, which cherished harmony with and service to the gods as virtues, some gods were essential to the faith, so the Lionheart King naturally served as their champion as well.
「Lionheart. My child.」
"I greet you, Demera, Earth Mother, divinity of life and abundance."
Leon showed his respect and reverence to the straw doll, kneeling on one knee.
Demera held a lofty position even in the Pantheon. She was a divinity who embraced all life and governed abundance.
While everyone else struggled to understand the voice echoing from the straw doll, Demera, the divinity dwelling within it, spoke.
「This new land, too, is under attack by evil. The land has been contaminated.」
"Indeed, evil beings exist in this land. Yet there is no divinity here, and I fear these vulgar, lowly pigs will defile the goddess's sight."
The first emotion Leon had felt after returning to Earth was disappointment.
Whether people were called Awakened or survivors was a secondary matter. The faint memories of the twenty years he'd spent here were just that—memories.
But the first things he'd seen after returning were the tyranny of the Top Ten Guilds and an incompetent government. It was pathetic, and yet heartbreaking, too.
「Ignorance and greed are not always sins. Such is the nature of mortal life. What do you intend to do from here?」
"I may not like it, but that does not mean I can overthrow a lawful ruler. The people of this land choose their leaders through the pitiful means of voting, but that, too, is this land's legitimate tradition and lawful process."
That was the only reason he acknowledged the president's authority.
The president's incompetence in letting himself be pushed around by a handful of sword-wielders was exasperating, but the right to rule was sacred. Leon intended to follow the lawful procedures.
"I shall establish a system in which rights and duties stand in balance upon this land. I intend to teach these ignorant fools and guide them down the right path."
Earth.
His homeland, where money and power had become justice.
Above all, a land without divinity.
Leon intended to establish a new Pantheon upon this land.
He would restore the divinities of the Pantheon, who had lost their power and faded away, and revive a new Order of Grail Knights.
To do that, he needed faith. The sincere faith of countless worshipers and priests, offering reverence to the Pantheon.
「My child, is there something you wish to ask of this mother?」
Demera smiled, having read Leon's intentions. Ariana's first knight was no longer a champion who represented only light and justice.
When the gods of the Pantheon chose Leon, the Grail Guardian, as their vessel and decided to dwell as divinities within the Pantheon in his heart...
The gods had staked everything on Leon.
They believed he would rightly slay the forces of evil and survive to the very end.
He had done so magnificently over two hundred years, and now he had found an opportunity in a new land.
And so...
The divinities of the Pantheon would grant whatever he desired.
They would trust the greatest knight in history, who had preserved his honor and divinity to the very end.
"Yes, Demera. The free people of this land are suffering under the foul energy called miasma. Though it may be difficult, please heal and purify this land."
Demera, within the straw doll, gathered divinity at her fingertips. It was a meager blessing, nothing compared to when she received the faith of countless worshipers.
But in a land devoid of faith, it would appear as a tremendous miracle.
「You are my high priest, our champion. The earth of this world is not this mother's body. Spread my divinity across it and replace this barren land with my flesh. Then everything upon this land will become your ally.」
Divinity took root in the land.
The Mother of Life blessed the land upon which the living saint, demigod, Lionheart King... and high priest of life and abundance... stood.
The earth was life itself.
The source of life, and the beginning of a world of abundance.
As divinity took root in the earth, which held boundless energy, a wondrous sight unfolded.
The land polluted by miasma and the rice that had been rotting away vanished.
A divinity that tolerated no impurity caused new life to sprout.
At the same time...
The natural duty of every living thing rooted in the earth was brought to fruition by the saint's hand. Neither the contaminated land nor the rotten rice could stop them from growing.
Leon addressed everyone watching the scene from afar.
"Look and understand! You ignorant masses who have neither learned nor understood! This is a world with divinity!"
A procession of rice stalks surged upward like gold. Before the miracle of life flourishing and purifying every inch of the contaminated land, everyone clapped trembling hands over their mouths.
"Be fruitful and multiply. It is the proper duty of all living things. This abundant land is the proof of the covenant that shall endure forever."
* * * *
Han Hari, Manager Kim Jinsu, and the other Hunter Association employees were dumbfounded by the miracle unfolding before their eyes.
How did miasma contaminate the land?
Why couldn't life grow in contaminated soil?
All their questions led to a single conclusion.
A malicious force beyond human understanding or technology was at work, laying waste to the world.
Crops could not grow on contaminated land. Purification was possible, but it was more like counteracting the miasma by pouring in vast amounts of precious Hunters' mana.
Crops could not be grown on land contaminated by miasma.
That was modern common sense, and the reason modern humanity desperately clung to printed, cultured food and farm-grown produce.
As more and more land became contaminated by dungeon breaks, humanity's food self-sufficiency rate would hit rock bottom.
"W-what is this...?"
Hari and Jinsu couldn't believe what they were seeing.
Golden crops filled the land, swaying gently in the breeze.
The abundant golden fields shone so brilliantly that it was hard to believe they'd been contaminated just moments ago.
"Manager... Th-this is real rice."
"I-I can see that."
It had grown in an instant. The Hunter Association wasn't the only one aghast at the sight.
Lee Yongwan, the Firebird Guildmaster who'd tried to contaminate the land and pressure the Hunter Association, was just as stunned.
"Ha! You seem not to know that crops grown rapidly with magic are poisonous!"
Lee Yongwan was right.
Since the Cataclysm, humanity had researched ways to grow crops with mana.
But crops imbued with mana couldn't be eaten by ordinary people. They acted as poison instead.
"How utterly ignorant. This crop has been blessed by divinity itself. How could you call it poison?"
"That silly straw doll—"
"I will forgive your ignorance once. Do not defile the goddess with that loose tongue of yours."
There was something forceful in Leon's words, something that compelled obedience. More than anything, the unspoken wariness toward survivors stopped Yongwan from acting recklessly.
'Damn it. This isn't how it was supposed to go.'
The Honam Plain was their hostage. Just as the Association had suspected, the Firebird Guild had deliberately caused a dungeon break.
The Korean Top Ten Guilds were already receiving countless benefits, but they wanted even more. What they chiefly wanted was an exemption from taxes on dungeon spoils.
They currently wanted exemptions worth one trillion won a year, but they would keep demanding more until they eventually wanted a complete exemption.
In the end, if they used the dungeon break to threaten the government, the government would have no choice but to give in to protect the country and its people from harm.
But their plan had been ruined because of some survivor. Yongwan wanted to find fault with him somehow.
"Let's have it appraised. I think we need to verify it for the sake of the people who'll be eating that rice."
Setting aside his intentions, the argument itself was valid.
Crops grown with magic couldn't be eaten by ordinary people. Naturally, they needed to be tested.
"We'll lend you our guild's appraiser. I'm curious what sort of thing these crops, grown in just one second, could possibly be."
Yongwan waited for the results with his usual sly smile.
He looked forward to the moment he could tear the mask off that shameless face.
The moment even a trace of mana showed up in the crops, he planned to call Leon a fraud.
"T-the appraisal results are in!"
"Th-that was quick."
"Our guild's appraiser is excellent."
While Yongwan waited for the appraiser to say the rice was inedible, the appraiser, drenched in cold sweat, finally managed to speak.
"The appraisal grade is Rare!"
"Huh?"
"E-every single one of these rice stalks is Rare grade!"