Chick 214
by Cristae214
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‘Hmm.’
Looks like they’re selling well.
Who’s using them, when they’re only F-grade?
Groo barely glanced at the message and stuffed her kids’ phone back into her bag.
‘The potatoes are thriving!’
But no sooner did she have that thought than trouble found her, as always.
“Meeeeeeuuu!”
Groo wiped the sweat from her brow, thrusting a fork into the soil as she kept Bailach tied to a cross.
‘Farming is tougher than I thought.’
Squirm…
Groo let out a sigh as she surveyed the ragged forsythia garden, now overrun with worm corpses.
‘There are way too many worms…’
In fact, the problem wasn’t just the number of worms, but that these worms had gorged themselves on the rich, magic-infused soil thanks to the potatoes’ power, swelling up like balloons and starting to turn into slimes.
The magic generated by the Kriteito reactor was so powerful that the altered dirt was affecting the worms in strange ways.
Groo stabbed a worm-slime with her fork, popping it.
‘The forsythia patch won’t do.’
The forsythia patch was on school grounds.
If slimes started appearing in this special school, full of awakened children, people would find out Groo was farming her odd potatoes without permission.
“Myeeeeeeuut!”
The scarecrow was noisy too…
“Tweet-tweet!”
Mephisto, the ruthless overseer (a sharecropper’s administrator in place of a landowner), pecked at Bailach’s head, signaling him to be quiet.
They’d strung up SSS-grade Bailach on a cross, making him serve as a scarecrow to ward off worms through his intimidating aura.
But no matter what they did, worms growing right next to magical potatoes would inevitably turn into slimes.
‘I’ll need another plot of land…’
Groo tilted her head in thought.
‘Do I need to buy land?’
If she bought a big plot just for her potatoes…
She wouldn’t have to worry about the slimes tipping anyone off, and she could grow way more potatoes, upping her chances of harvesting higher-grade potatoes too.
‘But it’d be a huge undertaking…’
Just picturing her tiny self running around a giant field was enough to wear her out.
‘Groo’s busy enough just with kindergarten.’
There was ballet, horseriding, elixir cultivation to keep up with…
As she pondered the idea of a system to grow potatoes automatically, a lightbulb went off above her head.
‘What if I turned it into a clack-clack filial piety factory?’
If she automated the miniature-farm like a little smart factory, cultivating would get so much easier.
‘If I can draw up the right schematics…’
Groo was toying with all sorts of ideas when—
“Groo.”
Her sitter, who should’ve been waiting in the parking lot, suddenly turned up at the forsythia patch.
“Myeeeuu!!”
“…!”
She flinched at the sight of the shrieking hamster, but quickly recovered.
“Yes?”
Groo looked up at her question.
“Well, um…”
While the sitter eyed Bailach warily, Groo hurried to harvest all her potatoes.
If slimes appeared in Groo’s patch, the sitter would freak, word would get back to Dad for sure.
All today’s seed potatoes were E+ grade.
At least she wasn’t getting F+ anymore—definite progress.
“Well, Groo. How about we call it a day and go see Dad right now?”
“Huh? Why?”
“The boss wants you to come right away. Maybe he has a fun outing planned for you?”
The clueless sitter said with a smile, while Groo, hurriedly freeing Bailach from the cross, swallowed hard and rubbed her chin with a walnut-sized fist.
‘Has he found out…?’
Masking her anxiety, she obediently followed, when suddenly the sitter asked,
“But Groo, why did you hang up the hamster friend like that…?”
“Bai was acting as the scarecrow.”
“Oh, I see. But I don’t think the hamster friend liked it. He was screaming quite a bit. Right?”
“Yep. But sometimes you have to do things even if you don’t like them. Daddy said so.”
“…Ah, Daddy said that.”
The sitter laughed awkwardly, wondering how on earth she’d explain all this to Joorim.
“No, you’re mistaken. This Kriteito Reactor thing has nothing to do with Orchestra.”
Joorim answered the phone with thinly suppressed irritation.
The call was from the director of a university’s magical engineering lab, posing the same question Joorim had answered a hundred times already.
—Are you the one who developed the Kriteito? You’re the Kobso Hunter, right?
It wasn’t just the lab director. Since morning, Joorim had already fielded over thirty such calls.
All because, two days prior, a new material called Kriteito had appeared on the Hunter Market.
A substance more miraculous than magic itself, boosting standard magic stone output by more than fifteen times.
So even though it was only F-grade, every craftsman in the field was tearing the place apart to find the creator—but no one stepped forward to claim it.
To top it off, instead of publicly announcing such a revolutionary breakthrough, someone had just posted it anonymously to the Hunter Market—suspicious enough to make people pin it on Kobso.
Still—
—Ah, maybe you think it’s too soon to announce? Our lab handles a lot of confidential material; you don’t need to worry about leaks…
Joorim let the director’s words wash over him, half-listening.
To him, Groo was just a five-year-old who made a mean syrup potion.
Sure, she’d built a drone somehow, but no one knew better than he did how hard Groo had worked at it.
There was simply no way she could have just whipped up something this revolutionary out of nowhere.
Yet, no matter how many times he said it wasn’t him, no one believed him.
Worried that someone might even approach the child, he had already arranged for the sitter to bring Groo to the company right away today.
Checking past the blinds to see if Groo had arrived, Joorim noticed Kazuki stepping out of the limousine and pressed his hand to his forehead.
One thing after another.
Brr-brr—
His phone buzzed with a second incoming call.
“I’m a little busy, sorry, I’ll have to go.”
Running a haggard hand through his hair, Joorim answered the next call.
“Yes… Chairman Kim. I know, we’ve met a few times…”
And again, like a machine, he repeated his denial.
Bang—!
Kazuki’s arrival here right after finishing his citizenship paperwork wasn’t all that surprising—
“Groo-chan really did it? The rumor’s out in Japan, too—it’s total chaos!”
—but what Kazuki was saying did surprise him.
Frowning, Joorim hung up and replied in disbelief.
“What did Groo do now?”
“You know, what she wanted to make—magic stones sprouting in clusters like potatoes. I was stunned to find Kriteito has potato components… Didn’t you know, On-chan?”
“…Potato?”
At the word “potato,” a parade of images flashed through Joorim’s mind—all those potatoes Groo had been fiddling with.
A chill ran down his spine, and he spun around to look behind him.
Along the panoramic window of the guild master’s office, planters Groo had brought in “to grow” were neatly lined up.
Joorim strode over and pulled up a potato stalk.
Rustle—
And just then.
“Dad—!”
Groo, running in with quick little steps, locked eyes with Joorim, who was holding a plant heavy with pitch-black, burnt potatoes.
Joorim gazed at Groo for a long moment, then split a potato in half.
Out rolled a Kriteito reactor across his gloved palm.
“……”
“……”
Groo watched Joorim’s face, then tapped Kazuki’s knee, who was there to greet her.
Spreading her arms, she silently asked for a hug. Kazuki lifted her up.
“Sensei, please put me down here. Right here.”
“Mhm.”
Groo climbed onto Joorim’s desk, then dropped to her knees.
It was a full voluntary confession.
Kazuki bit his lip to keep from laughing, and Joorim stared at Groo, kneeling on his desk, head bowed.
“Ongroo, was it true you were growing that well-done potato in the guild master’s office, the one you made a while ago?”
“Uh-huh… They said potatoes needed all kinds of environments, so…”
“…”
She’s definitely my child.
Joorim’s head spun.
Evidently, the skill that charred that potato back then hadn’t been a failure at all—it had been a success.