Chapter 20

The Painter Who Draws Dungeons — Episode 20

As always, but this time’s content was quite a success.

“People have to sweat.”

“Kung?”

“Those who do not work shall not eat.”

“Kung kung kung...?”

Honey’s body, the sweet-colored waterfowl, trembled. At a cry that seemed to ask, ‘Then what about me, who doesn’t work?’ Gio shook his head firmly.

“You look that cute, so what on earth are you even worrying about?”

“Kkuk.”

“You’ve already done your share with cuteness, so don’t worry about weird things.”

No matter how thoughtlessly Gio lived, he wasn’t the kind of irresponsible bastard who wouldn’t take responsibility for a lifeform he’d birthed as paint.

Since he was the son of Gio himself, a gourmet and big eater, Honey was never going to starve.

“Got it?”

Honey accepted it and sprawled out comfortably.

“But come out of there.”

“Ggur.”

Of all places, inside Gio’s basket.

“It’s hard to take the seeds out.”

“Ggurung.”

“Who did you take after to be this stubborn.”

“Kkuk?”

“Me?

You unfilial brat.”

Gio bent down and rummaged through the basket.

Since Honey’s body was nothing but transparent water, with only the faintest viscosity, it wasn’t a big problem, but the little bastard had been playing with the seeds and mixed them all into a mess.

“This is...”

“...”

“...I think these were eggplant seeds.”

Fortunately, Seo Gio, a man from a Gangwon mountain village, could identify the kind just by looking at the seeds.

It wasn’t something everyone from Gangwon could do—Gio could only do it because he himself was serious about farming.

Gio, who had enjoyed farm work since childhood, got up holding the eggplant seeds and put them into a hole he’d dug in advance.

“Now is it time to plant potatoes.”

“Gguruk?”

“Hm?”

There was a brief error in communication, but soon Gio realized what Honey was questioning.

“I didn’t mean I’m going to plant Dad.”

“Kung?”

“Potato is a nickname.

It’s like a second name.”

There was an anecdote: his mother, who liked potatoes, saw the fetal ultrasound photo and said ‘it looks like a potato,’ and made his womb name Potato, and when his grandmother saw newborn Gio she nodded and said, ‘You ate only potatoes and gave birth to a potato.’

“Since all the adults called me Potato, until I was four I thought I was a potato.”

Maybe that was why he’d grown up so healthy and harmless.

“Well, then it’s fine.”

“Ggurrr.”

“You grow up healthy too.”

The Seo family, generation after generation, tended to respect the free will of new life.

How many days passed—at last, Gio succeeded in planting all the seeds Yoo Seongun had gifted him.

He’d even planted potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn, famous as famine-relief crops, so starving to death now seemed unlikely.

“Though with this body, starving to death would probably be harder.”

“Ggurrr.”

“No matter how hungry Dad gets, I won’t eat you, Honey.”

The place where the crops were planted was the kitchen garden behind the cabin.

“Honestly, at this point, is it ambiguous to call it a kitchen garden in terms of scale?”

It had gotten a bit bigger, but it was still a kitchen garden.

It wasn’t as big and vast as the fields of people who farm for a living, so Gio had his own excuse.

Anyway, it was a kitchen garden.

Gio was a fine adult who could compromise with reality.

“Then let’s go back.”

“Ggugguruk.”

“Yeah, we should try the syrup I made.”

It was about time for the fruit syrup he’d made earlier to start ripening.

“I put sweet-and-tangy mangdung berries and sour, bitter drought tangerines, so the combination is excellent to start with.”

If there was anything to worry about, it was whether the two amounts were harmonizing properly, but that part didn’t bother him much.

With his dense experience living alone, Gio had somehow come to carry Granny’s hand taste.

“It was only by feel and by eye, but there’s no way I, of all people, could be wrong when it comes to combining foods I’ll eat.”

Worthy of that pride, a good scent was already coming from the glass jar.

“Mmm.”

Gio entered the kitchen, blinked at the cupboard where the fruit syrup was, and said,

“Since I worked up a sweat for once, should I drink it as a cool tea?”

“Gguruk?”

“I sweated in my heart.”

Honey pointed out that Gio’s body didn’t actually excrete impurities like sweat, but anyway, hadn’t he labored.

A human who has labored is supposed to drink a cool, tangy tea so work efficiency rises.

“Then I need to bring some ice from the storage.”

A pig does not hesitate in front of food.

Without even time to wipe nonexistent sweat, Gio went straight down to the storage.

In the ice storage filled with all kinds of ingredients, of course there was ice.

In the corners of the storage—so cave-like you couldn’t even guess where the ice ended—there were broken pieces of ice.

“Is it a bit cold.”

The moment he opened the heavy door and stepped inside, Honey stiffened.

“Ggu, gguguruk.”

“If it’s too cold, you can stay outside... huh.”

“...”

“...You froze?”

Just as Gio, with a blunt face, was violently shaken at the sight of Honey becoming transparent ice itself—

Despite already being ice, Honey shook its body once—porurur—and groomed itself.

“Pubung.”

“?”

“Kkuk.”

“Did you evolve?”

“Ggur.”

“Since I evolved from human into a possessed portrait, there’s no rule saying a waterfowl can’t become an icefowl.”

He was startled once because he thought frozen Honey was dead, and once because it moved flexibly even as ice, but if there was no problem, then what did it matter.

Honey is cute even if it freezes, so it was fine.

“A moving icefowl seems interesting enough.”

“Ggurrrrrrrrrruruk!”

“If you’re happy too, this father’s heart feels good.”

Honey, who resembled its creator and was born without any sense of crisis, was simply delighted with its change.

Even if it was a bird made of water, it felt questionable that it froze this fast, but since he himself had become a portrait from a human, Gio wasn’t too surprised.

“When did we ever follow the laws of physics.”

To live long enough to ignore physics—what a fun life it was.

“For now, the ice...”

“Ggukkurook.”

“Over there, huh, thanks.”

Honey’s wings, now ice, did not merge into one with its body like before.

Perhaps because it had gained feathers—body parts it originally did not have—it pointed out where the ice was, then busily groomed itself.

Maybe not being able to leave feathers alone was a species trait of birds.

‘It did it less when it was water.’

Leaving Honey on his shoulder as it was, Gio slowly walked through the ice storage.

“...”

It was cool.

“Haa...”

His breath came out.

Breath thick enough to see at a glance.

It should mean it was that cold, yet for some reason Gio couldn’t feel the cold, and the ingredients didn’t freeze either.

Whether the ice storage was deceiving Gio, or whether he and the ingredients were tougher than ice, he couldn’t tell.

‘Probably the latter.’

Gio lowered his head and looked at the floor.

“...Mm...”

He murmured.

“If it breaks, it’ll be a catastrophe.”

He could see an ice floor like a bottomless abyss.

‘It looks like solid ice, but it’s so transparent it’s like there’s a lake beneath it.’

It was a very transparent floor.

Ice that froze very slowly wasn’t opaque—it was clean like glass—and that kind of ice covered the floor in full.

Gio couldn’t even gauge its depth.

It was a little slick, it held a faint bluish glow, and from time to time, a sparkling cluster of light could be seen deep inside.

Like fireflies, they would shine for a few seconds, then disappear, and Gio was curious what they were.

“Are they residents similar to forest butterflies?”

“Kung?”

“Or maybe it’s just glowing moss or bacteria.”

They didn’t move.

They just shone for a moment and disappeared.

They resembled faint starlight.

“...”

It was a dreamlike scene.

“And the color palette is like a glacier too.”

It didn’t have the deep scent of the sea, but the transparent, bluish ice floor whose depth he couldn’t know made him think of a glacier.

He’d never actually seen Earth’s glaciers, but it felt like this might be what they looked like.

Gio raised his head and looked at the full view of the ice storage.

“Where did all this ice even come from.

It’s ice on all sides.”

He wondered every time he saw it.

“This ice storage is something you meet only after going far down from the cabin’s first floor.

Then maybe there was groundwater beneath the cabin.”

Then a contradiction appears.

“Right, it also makes no sense that groundwater beneath a forest with such mild weather would be frozen this hard like this.”

That was why it felt even more mysterious.

“Nice.”

And funny.

“It’s like a fairy tale...”

He liked it.

Gio kept moving his feet with the same blunt face, without a single change in expression.

As if it had already adapted to its body not spreading out like before, Honey flew around the huge, cave-like ice storage, crying out in a cheerful voice.

It was a movie-like scene.

After walking for a long time through pupils made of ice, Gio was able to find what he’d been looking for.

“Yeah, that’s right.

This was it.”

It was ice that had grown like cave stalagmites.

“This seems good too.”

“Kkuk?”

“Isn’t it like a cave.”

Absurd as it was, the ice storage even looked like a limestone cave made of ice.

Whether it was flowing from somewhere, or melting, or whether there were water veins like a tree.

Here and there in the ice storage, water was dripping, and perhaps because of the low temperature, those drops formed spires or pillars like this.

“Usually limestone caves are like this.

Water containing a lot of lime drips down and slowly stacks pillars on the cave floor, and droplets splatter this way and that and stick out like coral, or else...”

“...”

“Here.

Like this, it stays in a pearl shape.”

In reality, it’s called a cave pearl.

“Of course, this isn’t a cave pearl, it should be called an ice pearl...”

Didn’t that make it feel exactly like a cave.

Nature’s great mold.

“...”

Ice Pearl

A naturally occurring pearl-shaped ice formation found in the ice storage beneath Gio’s cabin.

A transparent pearl with a faint mother-of-pearl-like luster, and it is edible.

It melts in hot temperatures like real ice, and has no scent and no taste.

Elixir method: If you melt and consume it, it shows great effect in stabilizing mental-type abnormalities such as depression and mania.

“Should I take this back with me?”

Effects aside, doesn’t it taste the same as real ice?

“Cutting off one of those big ice bamboo shoots would be tiring too.”

“Gguruk gguruk.”

Honey, the icefowl that flew over with a flutter, swallowed one of the ice pearls clustered together.

At that quick movement, Gio couldn’t help admiring it.

“You’re eating it?

Are you a pig?”

“Ggurrrrrrrrrr!!”

“No, that’s a misunderstanding.

If it sounded like I was saying something, that’s a huge misunderstanding.

Dad likes pigs.”

Raised for most of his life in his grandmother’s hands, Gio resembled her tastes in some ways, and one of them was that she couldn’t stand seeing someone skinny.

In that sense, if Honey—who could be called his child—became plump, it would only make him happy.

“Kids should eat a lot and grow big.”

Become a pig—zap.

“Then let’s go up now.”

“Kung kung kung...”

“I’m saying I like it, being a pig.”

“Ggurrrrrrrrr!!!”

“Kids are supposed to be chubby so they grow well later.”

Soothing Honey as he came up from the ice storage, Gio headed straight for the kitchen.

A good scent was coming from the fruit syrup he’d taken out of the cupboard in advance, and he was already looking forward to how tasty it would be.

He took out a clean glass and transferred two spoonfuls of fruit syrup into it.

“The scent really is nice.”

The mangdung berries, whose fragrance grew stronger the more you dried them, seemed to have their fragrance amplify even more if they went through a kind of aging process, even without drying.

The mangdung berries soaked into sugar and perfumed it gave off a uniquely refreshing sweet scent.

“And since the drought tangerine is a citrus fruit too, it seems like it has a citrus aroma...”

Should he say it has that bitter, tangy aroma unique to lemon peel.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

The fruit syrup in the glass, by itself, had artistic value.

The fruit syrup that had drunk in sugar and poured out its juice without holding back shone with a glossy sheen.

The mangdung berry flesh had changed into a soft jelly form, and the drought tangerine—whose thin membranes he’d peeled away one by one—had hardened a little and spread out enough that you could see the grains.

“And I’ll put in ice pearls too...”

“Ggokkurook.”

“That’s the pearl you ate earlier.

Put it back.”

“Kkuk?”

“I’ll pass.”

At some point, Honey, now water again, tried to put on the bizarre act of spitting up the ice pearl it had just swallowed, but Gio stopped it with a father’s authority.

It wasn’t penguin milk—he didn’t want it to that extent.

“Now if I stir gently...”

Clink, clack.

The glass and the ice pearls collided and made a clear sound.

“Fruit tea complete.”

“Kkwak.”

“Are you a chicken?”

“Ggurung.”

“I don’t know what you are anymore.”

The finished fruit tea was so beautiful he wanted to paint it.

The vermilion tea seen through the glass, despite its deep color, was extremely transparent.

Perhaps because of the ice pearls, the sparkling blue light clusters he’d seen in the storage repeated, shining and disappearing like shooting stars, and between them he could see full-moon and half-moon-shaped bits of flesh.

He took a sip just like that...

“...”

A ravishing flavor bloomed.

“...Delicious.”

It was a flavor and savor he’d never tasted even once.

The vermilion tea water was smooth and cool, and just when the sweetness seemed too strong, a leisurely bitterness arrived and politely calmed him down.

The drought tangerine’s intense sourness, meeting mangdung berries and sugar, felt like a child’s cute sulking.

‘The fruit flesh is nice too.’

The mangdung berries, with all their juice stolen by sugar, were like jelly.

Strictly speaking, it was similar to konjac jelly, but it was far softer than that.

It had a texture that was soft like a grape with all its skin peeled away, yet with a strange springiness.

The drought tangerine had a taste that popped like grapefruit or orange grains.

It seemed like it, too, had had its juice stolen by sugar, but you could feel a bit more firmness.

But it wasn’t an unpleasant firmness.

The grains that spread softly in his mouth delivered a pleasant texture.

‘The taste and aroma are all mixed together so it’s hard to distinguish...’

Tea water that is never one-dimensional and shows a soup-like depth, fruit flesh that adds joy to what could have been a monotonous texture.

And the strange change that melts on the tongue.

That small change was probably the light clusters that had been trapped inside the ice pearls.

“...Popping candy?”

It wasn’t a tingling spread or fireworks-like burst, but the blue light clusters dotted through the tea water added a strange savor.

It was a pleasure on the tongue you couldn’t describe as sweet or salty.

It was fruit tea that made you smack your lips for no reason.

“...”

“Gguruk?”

“It’d be perfect to give as a gift.”

Since there was a lot, he thought he should package some.

“I should give it to Mr. Yoo Seongun.”

Wanting to share his cooking was Granny’s instinct.

Raised hearing his life mentor grandmother say ‘live by giving,’ Gio wanted to fatten up Yoo Seongun.

Fantasy, modern,