Chapter 1: Waste World Tree.

I scratched my messy hair and opened my eyes in bed.

“Ugh…”

With great effort, I forced my body up.

“So tired… My head hurts…”

I blinked my dry eyes, and my reflection scattered across the mirror came into view.

Long green hair that reached down to my waist.

Sky-blue eyes that somehow looked empty.

Pale skin and long eyelashes.

…And above all else, a tiny stature.

“Haa…”

Just a month ago I had been a sturdy adult man, but I woke up one day looking like this.

I had awakened as a superhuman who climbs the Tower, an ‘Ascender’.

With overwhelming power, endless wealth pouring in, and even the ability to extend a nation’s lifespan, Ascenders were the absolute power holders of this era.

“But… why did I end up like this?”

With a gloomy face, I opened the status window in the air. I had seen it so many times it already felt worn out.

[Name: Im Hanyul]

[Gender: Female]

[Disposition: Pure Good]

[Race: World Tree]

[Traits: Rooted on Landing, Tangled Roots, Foolish Old Man Moves the Mountain]

They said the status window followed its owner’s disposition.

I liked Chinese characters and loved old things, so it wasn’t strange that the entire window was filled with them.

The real problem was the race section.

[Race: World Tree]

Where a normal Ascender would have a ‘Class’, a race name was stuck there instead for no reason.

World Tree.

It sounded special at first glance, but it was special in all the wrong ways.

How much better would it have been if I were just a normal swordsman, adventurer, or archer?

I even wanted to be a thief, the kind people call Do-syung-jwak.

I clutched my dizzy head and staggered, then finally couldn’t hold back and buried my face in the pillow.

-Thud!

“World Tree… is complete trash…”

Ordinary people who hadn’t even awakened yet might call this a spoiled complaint if they heard me.

But if I were given a choice, I would go back to being a normal person without a second of hesitation.

After all, a World Tree is a ‘tree’.

The name itself has the character for tree in it.

A tree inevitably needs nutrients.

But my body was in the form of a fragile little girl, not a tree.

“Sht… Why am I a tree if I can’t even photosynthesize…”

My flowing green hair was just decoration.

I had no chloroplasts whatsoever.

So how the hell was I supposed to get nutrients then?

“Ah, how much nutrients do I have left…”

I turned my head toward the kitchen.

On one side of the sink, a pile of dried-up fish bones had stacked up high.

That’s right.

I didn’t know what kind of mongrel I was, but at least this World Tree I had become was a carnivorous plant.

No, a meat-eating plant.

I took living creatures, crushed them, and converted what was inside into nutrients.

The problem was that the efficiency was worse than an ant’s ashole.

“Sob… I never imagined I’d go bankrupt because of food expenses…”

Prices these days were murderous.

With the outbreak of ocean monsters, seafood prices had turned into gold, and buying a live cow or pig was a dream because of the cost.

Monthly food expenses alone were five million won.

And that was just enough to barely stay alive.

Just then, someone toddled over into the bottom of my vision.

A tiny figure that was pure white from head to toe.

The blue plastic bottle cap pressed firmly on its head bobbed up and down.

The reason I still hadn’t given up on living, the single ray of light, salt, and hope in this hopeless World Tree life!

“Pet, come here!”

I snatched Pet up in a hug.

I shoved the little one between my legs and rubbed my face against it wildly.

Pet struggled as if to say this wasn’t the time, but its size was only that of a small dog.

Faced with the overwhelming difference in size, Pet had no choice but to quietly endure the assault.

-Brrrrrrr~!

The moment I finally let out a fart, the furious Pet yanked off the bottle cap on its head and smacked me on the crown.

-Smack!

“Ow!”

Pet stamped its plastic feet in pure anger, then deliberately shoved a smartphone screen right in front of my nose.

“Huh? Why the phone?”

As if telling me to look properly, Pet pressed the screen right up against my face.

Only then did the post on the screen come into view.

[Title: Adopting out kittens~]

Author: CatsAreLove

Our cat just had six kittens, can you believe it?

(Photo)

We can’t afford to raise them all, so we’re looking for good homes~

Anyone interested, please contact us!

(Link)

“Pet…”

I lifted Pet up with an endlessly depressed expression.

“I don’t even have enough food for myself right now. How am I supposed to raise a cat?”

My heart ached at the miserable reality.

I couldn’t even take in a single cat. How had I ended up like this?

While I was lamenting, Pet smacked my forehead again.

“Huh?”

When I put on a question mark face, Pet pointed at itself with its short finger, then pointed at the cats on the screen.

After that, it spun around in place.

“What? You want me to put you up for adoption?”

That was absolutely out of the question.

In this hellish corner of a room, Pet was the only one left by my side.

But at the same time, a bitter thought crossed my mind.

Yeah, rather than staying with an incompetent, food-wasting carnivorous plant of a master like me, it would be better for this little one’s future to go under some rich, muscular alpha male Ascender…

-Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!

Just as I was about to sink into thought, the startled Pet furiously slapped both of my cheeks without rest.

“Aaah! Stop! Stop it!”

Pet grabbed my face tightly with its tiny hands and glared at me with fierce eyes.

“Ah… right. You can’t live without me.”

Pet’s true identity was a ‘spirit’.

And a rather trendy one at that—the ‘Spirit of Plastic’.

Spirits were still an unknown existence to humanity.

You had to climb past the 50th floor of the Tower before things like ‘spirit-possessed whatever’ or ‘fallen spirit something’ started to appear.

That was why I hadn’t found Pet. I had created it myself.

Maybe because of the side effects, Pet needed a continuous supply of nutrients from me to survive.

If Pet disappeared, my food expenses would drop by about twenty percent, but that was a meaningless assumption.

Without Pet, I wouldn’t even be able to survive past tomorrow.

“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?”

As if frustrated by its master’s stupidity, Pet slammed the mattress—thud thud.

It looked pretty cute.

Then the little one operated the phone and brought up the [Tower Ascender Gallery] screen.

After that, it started a one-person play on the bed.

It pretended to take something out of its arms and hand it to the empty space on the right, then dashed over and took the role of the right side, snatching it up.

After examining the received item with satisfaction and nodding, Pet stretched something out toward the left again.

Then it ran back to the left, received it, and jumped up and down excitedly while going “Waaah~!”

Only after watching the entire silent play did I finally understand its intention.

“Ah! You want me to make spirits and put them up for adoption?”

Pet nodded vigorously.

“But… I can’t make any more spirits besides you now.”

It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought of that creative economy idea myself.

If I could infinitely copy Pet, I had even planned to hand one or two over to a research institute and rake in huge sponsorship money.

But ever since Pet was born, no spirit had inhabited any other object.

It was because I didn’t even have enough nutrients to live day to day.

At my dejected answer, Pet shrugged its shoulders and pulled something out from its arms to show me.

A round sphere glowing with a soft green light.

It was a lump of condensed nutrients.

“What!? Where did you get this!?”

Pet crawled around under my feet on its stomach and mouthed meow and woof with its lips only.

No sound came out.

“Ah~ You secretly took a little from stray cats and neighborhood mutts?”

Pet nodded proudly.

I fell into deep thought.

‘Pet could do something like this?’

Because of my tree race trait, even going outside consumed extreme amounts of stamina.

In contrast, as a spirit, Pet could freely roam outside.

But if the little one could extract nutrients from outside… did I really need to go through the trouble of making more spirits to put up for adoption?

I could just have Pet go for a walk every day and suck some energy out of the stray cats…

-Slap!

Pet smacked my cheek firmly, then rolled wildly up, down, left, and right on the bed while flailing its arms and legs.

With its whole body it seemed to be protesting, ‘I can’t do any more! You damn master!’

“Yeah…”

The words that I couldn’t live without Pet were never an exaggeration.

Pet was the actual head of our household (members = me and Pet).

Using its ability to freely manipulate plastic, the little one custom-made figures and plastic model parts and brought in money.

Its monthly income was roughly 4.5 million won.

Since my monthly food expenses were exactly five million won, without Pet my bank account would have long since become empty, and I would have dried up and died.

Our Pet was f*cking competent.

“Hmm…”

I stared blankly at the green sphere it had brought.

It was a fairly generous amount that could last about a week.

If I just absorbed it right now while pretending not to notice, maybe it would go get more next time…

-Slap!

Having read my sly intentions, Pet slapped my cheek again.

“Ow! It was a joke, a joke!”

I rubbed my cheek and reached out to the sphere, starting to manipulate the nutrients.

Yeah, I was also sick of this pathetic shut-in life now.

I wanted to enter the Tower too.

I wanted to cut down monsters and spend money freely.

To escape this lowest-tier half-penny Ascender status, I had to do something.

If I thought about it carefully, my skill had improved a bit since the early days of awakening.

The flaw was that today’s me was weaker than yesterday’s me… but at least the delicacy with which I manipulated and handled nutrients had improved dramatically.

If the past me had created Pet by relying on coincidence, now it shouldn’t be impossible to intentionally mold a spirit.

I took a deep breath and focused my mind.

Before I knew it, Pet had come up beside me and was shaking an empty plastic bottle like a cheering tool.

I picked up a cheap lighter that had been rolling on the floor and flicked it on with a click.

Then I put all my strength into a shout.

“Come out!”