I Became A Married Man in Another World
Chapter 108
108. The Strange Vines
To live in the mountains, one must first familiarize themselves with the surrounding terrain and the types of animals inhabiting the area.
One must check for hidden drop-offs that look safe on the surface, or cliffs and steep slopes concealed by dense grass and trees. If there are bear dens or wolf lairs, their locations must be noted. There were countless things to verify.
However, it was impossible to scout such a vast area in a single day or even a few days.
Gers had taught him to expand his search in a spiral pattern, starting from the living quarters and gradually moving outward.
One couldn’t do everything at once, nor should they try. The goal was to expand the perimeter with minimal checks, adding detail to one’s knowledge bit by bit every single day while living there. That was the basic rule.
A phrase he had seen somewhere came to mind.
Do not try to boil the ocean.
Trying to exhaustively check every inch of the land before moving on was no different from trying to boil the entire sea.
One shouldn’t pour useless effort into solving an unsolvable problem. A person’s time and effort are not infinite.
Juhwan suppressed the urge to poke around the house more and set off.
Heading toward the back of the cabin, he saw a burial mound as smooth as if it had been trimmed with a lawnmower. Perhaps because it was winter, only a few flat, withered blades of grass covered the grave.
No trees grew near the mound, but there were quite a few left standing toward the cabin. There were short, young trees and ancient ones that soared high into the sky.
Because of the lush growth, the cabin was hidden from view even if he moved only a short distance away.
A moderate amount of trees was fine, but this was excessive. There wasn’t enough space to start a field near the cabin; it seemed some logging would be necessary.
Juhwan smirked after inspecting the nearby trees. Most of the species around the cabin were good for firewood. He wouldn’t have to go far for fuel for a while.
Moving in a spiral around the house, Juhwan’s steps suddenly came to a halt.
He had found several animal tracks.
Most belonged to small animals like foxes or moles, but one set was considerably large.
‘This is…’
In front of a clear paw print, long claw marks were dug deep into the earth. It was a track unlike any Juhwan had seen before.
‘For tracks to be this distinct, the creature must carry considerable weight.’
It had to be several hundred kilograms at least. For a beast that large in the mountains, it was either a bear or a Magic Beast.
When he touched it, the footprint felt as hard as a fossil. Even accounting for the ground being frozen for winter, these weren’t recent.
Checking the leaf-littered surroundings further, he found a few more identical tracks.
Judging by the dry leaves, soil, and mouse droppings settled over the prints, they were at least several months old. They certainly weren’t from within the last ten days.
Juhwan turned his gaze toward Yeonhwa, who had followed him nearby.
Yeonhwa had likely lived in this cabin until recently. He had heard that the Guild Master brought Yeonhwa—in her girl form—from this house. She had been living here alone after her grandfather died. Thinking back now, that man probably wasn’t her grandfather, but an adoptee brought in by his parents.
“Did you ever see the owner of these tracks while you lived here? A bear or a Magic Beast?”
When Juhwan asked, Yeonhwa looked down at the tracks and blinked. She tilted her head. She didn’t seem to know.
However, her reaction didn’t seem to be that she had never met it, but rather that she simply didn’t recognize who the owner of these tracks was.
‘Well, I suppose.’
Considering her abilities, Yeonhwa didn’t need to care about the size of her opponent, even in her girl form. She would have hunted giant Magic Beasts without hesitation. Naturally, she must have killed countless creatures like the one that left these tracks.
‘Really, I need to grow my abilities as soon as possible. I’m losing face as her master.’
Juhwan gave a bitter smile and lightly stroked Yeonhwa’s mane.
“Go back to the house and stay by Riji and Dorothy. There might be dangerous beasts or Magic Beasts around here.”
Oz was at the house, but he felt uneasy leaving only the rabbit if something appeared. Oz’s skills hadn’t yet improved to the point where he could kill an opponent in an emergency.
Yeonhwa seemed happy to be given a task. She stomped her hooves lightly. After rubbing her face against Juhwan’s shoulder a few times in an affectionate gesture, she headed straight for the house.
Listening to the rhythmic sound of her retreating footsteps, Juhwan draped mana around his arms.
As the mana spread around his limbs, his skin felt a slight tingling sensation.
In the past, he couldn’t feel mana at all, but by using it frequently, he could now roughly grasp its flow. It felt much like electricity running through him.
He released a bit of the mana flowing over his skin into the air.
Following the thin breeze, the mana scattered into the surroundings.
Just as he did when firing an arrow, Juhwan focused his mind on the mana.
In this world, mages started by imitating others, but they gradually found their own methods by adapting and tailoring magic to suit themselves.
To Juhwan, it all seemed similar, but even if it looked the same on the surface, the way the power was manipulated apparently differed.
Juhwan was also experimenting with various ways to manipulate mana to find the style that suited him best.
Lately, he was trying to suspend mana in the air to detect things out of sight. He practiced this little by little whenever he had a spare moment in his daily life.
If he could master this, he wouldn’t have to rely solely on Yeonhwa and Oz’s instincts; the mana could act as a scout.
But it wasn’t easy. He could feel the mana carried by the air within visual range, but the moment it drifted further, the sensation dissolved into the void like cotton candy. It seemed difficult to sense something that had no physical form.
‘Can’t be helped.’
Juhwan gave up on detecting with air alone and picked up a bit of soil from the ground.
When he rubbed it lightly with his mana-infused fingers, the soil crumbled into fine dust.
Juhwan infused the pile of dust with mana and then raised his hand into the air.
With a soft puff of breath, the fine dust scattered into the atmosphere.
The dust motes carried by the air did not fall to the ground; instead, they billowed and spread through the air, riding the wind.
‘It’s definitely easier when there’s a physical medium, even if it’s tiny.’
Maybe he didn’t need to insist on doing everything with pure mana. If he could manifest magic with less mana, that would be more efficient.
‘Besides, magic in this world seems to manifest by being imbued into objects anyway.’
However, imbuing mana into something as small as dust seemed impossible for the people of this world. Most mages had to use objects with a certain volume—like whips, arrows, or swords—to use magic. At least, that was according to the Guild Master and the Guild Leader.
‘Ah, there we go.’
This time, the mana flew straight to places out of sight.
Forward, sideways, and backward.
With Juhwan at the center, the dust motes spread out in a wide circle.
And he could faintly sense what objects the mana touched. It wasn’t that he could see them. But like fumbling through the dark with his hands, he could feel it when the mana brushed against an object.
Perhaps because he still lacked training, he couldn’t tell exactly what the mana was touching.
He knew it had hit something with form, but he couldn’t distinguish whether it was a rabbit or a cat.
He could, however, tell that the sizes were different, and whether it was a living, breathing animal or a fixed object without body heat, like a tree or a rock.
The sensation varied depending on the form the mana touched. Trees, grass, birds, mice, cats…
It was hard to explain in words, but he instinctively felt, Ah, this is an animal, this is a rock.
At first, he poured all his concentration into spreading the mana, but once it was dispersed in all directions, he relaxed his focus slightly. He only needed to pay enough attention to check his surroundings while walking.
The mana spread around him followed Juhwan, detecting within a certain radius. It was a sensation similar to holding up an open umbrella.
Every time the sound of Juhwan’s footsteps echoed, small animals nearby fled in surprise. They seemed larger than mice—maybe weasels? He felt a bit sorry for startling them for no reason.
Juhwan walked in a circle around the house, checking for animal droppings and tracks.
Occasionally, he made small nicks in the trees to mark his path. Without doing this, it was easy to lose track of how far he had come or which direction he was heading in the mountains.
When marking, he always chose a tree that met his criteria and kept the height consistent.
He used diagonal slashes rather than horizontal ones to indicate direction.
A ‘/’ mark meant he was heading left, while a slash in the opposite direction meant he was heading right. An ‘X’ mark meant the area nearby or beyond was dangerous and should be avoided.
He discovered large beast tracks once more, but like before, they weren’t recent. Perhaps they had been hunted by Yeonhwa or had moved their territory. He felt a bit relieved.
‘But I should warn Dorothy not to go too far. No, should I tell Oz instead?’
Perhaps because she grew up in the mountains as a child, Dorothy occasionally wandered toward the woods without thinking.
When they lived in the mountains near the village where he first met her, it had happened a few times. It wasn’t that she wasn’t afraid of the mountains, but she would suddenly run toward the trees or bushes.
He had asked why she went to such places, but the child wouldn’t answer. It was the same when Riji asked. She would just press her lips together and shake her head.
‘They say this place is more dangerous than other mountains, so I really have to be careful.’
She didn’t behave like that anymore, but you never knew.
He spent several hours scouring the mountain, but he didn’t encounter any beasts that would leave such large tracks.
Instead, if you could call it that…
He occasionally saw vines climbing the trees in strange shapes.
They were more common near the grave, and here and there, circular coils of wood were suspended like snail shells.
‘That looks strange.’
The thought suddenly struck him that those circular coils looked like Zentangle patterns.
It looked as though the trees were being decorated with round drawings.
They said it was a mountain where Magic Beasts lived; even the vines looked bizarre.
Juhwan set a trap in a path where he saw rabbit droppings and then returned home.
That night, a dismal rain began to fall.
Fortunately, he had set up a wooden pillar like an umbrella over the hole in the ceiling above the hearth and covered it with leather.
While some droplets splashed when the wind blew, the rain didn’t pour into the center of the house.
However, other parts of the roof that had looked fine on the outside began to leak.
Dorothy, who hadn’t gone to sleep yet, ran back and forth across the house. She held a small wooden bucket in her hands.
The child placed a bucket here to catch water, then ran over there. After placing a bucket where water was dripping, she shouted while holding her hands over her head to block the rain.
“Dad! It’s raining here too!”
Riji also moved around, closing lids to ensure the flour and food didn’t get wet.
Juhwan was also busy moving mattresses and lidless containers to dry areas.
By the time they had moved everything out of the rain’s path, the house was a mess. It looked exactly like they had fled to a shelter in the middle of a disaster.
Because they prioritized keeping the food dry, even large items like the bed ended up with one corner getting soaked no matter where they put it.
“Haa.”
A sigh escaped him involuntarily.
The floor was rotting in places, and he had assumed it was just because it was old, but it seemed it was actually because of the leaking rain.
Juhwan looked up at the ceiling and muttered to himself.
“How on earth did my parents live in a place like this?”
Ultimately, that night, he used the tent leather he had bought in advance to build a makeshift tent inside the house.
They pitched the small tent over the bed with the straw mattress and all huddled together to sleep.
Every time raindrops pitter-pattered against the corner of the tent, Dorothy’s eyes snapped open and she looked at the fabric.
“What is it, Dorothy? Are you worried it might leak?”
When Riji asked, Dorothy shook her head while lying down and spoke in an excited voice.
“It’s exciting, Mom. It’s raining inside the house!”
“….”
Did she feel like they were camping? At least the child was having fun.
Riji, who was lying on the other side with the child in the middle, giggled.
“Now that I think about it, you’re right. It’s raining even though we’re inside.”
“….”
For some reason, Riji seemed to be enjoying it too. Riji reached her arm over the child’s body and took Juhwan’s hand.
“Isn’t it strange? I feel like I should be sighing at the thought of mopping the floor tomorrow, but this is fun.”
It didn’t seem like she was just trying to comfort a dejected Juhwan; she genuinely seemed to be having a good time.
“Mom, it’s fun, right?”
“Yes.”
Hearing his wife and child giggling, Juhwan’s heart lightened a little.
Still, he would have to patch the roof as soon as dawn broke tomorrow.
