Jumanji kept his gaze fixed on those boys who had yet to see their sixteenth spring, boys who were his true age beneath the mask of the "Thousand-Faced Leech."
A faint, inscrutable smile touched his lips as he watched the chubby Pluton.
After paying for his meal with a copper core, Jumanji rose quietly and made for the exit.
His plan required him to weave himself into the tribe's fabric from its lowest layers to its highest. And so, he decided to visit the tribe's medical district, where he could sell some of the rare spiritual medicines he had skillfully gathered during his journey through the depths of the dense forest.
It did not take him long to arrive.
After a short walk along the paved roads, Jumanji came to a stop before a massive building from whose halls poured the sharp scent of incense, mixed with the rich and complicated aroma of boiled medicinal plants.
This was the "Silver Healing Hall," the living heart of the Carp Tribe—a majestic structure whose walls were adorned with carvings of medicinal herbs curling around the tribe's emblem.
The entrance was bustling with movement.
Assistants rushed in and out carrying wooden crates. Patients lined the long corridors in silence and discomfort.
But Jumanji's trained eye caught something troubling at once.
The faces of the physicians and assistants betrayed a suppressed tension. The resource crates being brought into the building looked pitifully light—nearly empty, just as the youths in the restaurant had complained.
Jumanji advanced with measured steps, adjusting the leather bag over his shoulder in a way that made the powerful herbal scent deliberately smeared onto his clothes more noticeable.
A young man in a clean medical apron stepped forward and stopped him.
"Sir," he asked, his voice tinged with exhaustion, "are you here for treatment, or are you seeking an audience with one of the physicians?"
Jumanji answered in a hoarse, steady voice befitting his dignified middle-aged appearance:
"I am not ill. I am a traveling physician, wandering the lands to trade in rare medicines. And I carry with me a few 'gems of the forest'—things you may not find even in your own stores."
"If what you say is true, then come with me. The Head Apothecary has been searching for any additional resources since dawn. But be warned…" the young man said, lowering his voice, "he is in no mood for nonsense. He will accept nothing but the best."
Jumanji smiled inwardly.
The greater their tension, the greater their need for him.
And the greater their need, the higher the price they would be willing to pay.
Jumanji knew perfectly well the truth hidden behind all this turmoil.
The leader of the Carp Tribe was not suffering from some passing bodily ailment.
He was facing a catastrophe gnawing at the core of his spiritual being:
the illness of his farm's "leech embryo."
Diseases of the leech were among the rarest and most troublesome medical anomalies. Yet when they struck, they turned their owner's life into a living hell.
As long as the sickness remained far from the primary embryo, hope still existed.
But once it reached the embryo itself—as was the case with the tribe leader now—the danger transcended mere pain. It threatened the collapse of the spiritual farm itself.
Among cultivators, there existed a deeply rooted belief that the spiritual embryo was fixed and could never be changed.
That belief had only been reinforced by the extreme rarity of viable alternatives, along with the ignorance of most people regarding the mechanisms of replacement.
But Jumanji carried a secret known only to the elite:
the embryo could, in fact, be replaced with another leech.
The cost, however, was terrifying.
The farm would suffer a violent backlash as a result of such a forced substitution. That shock could lead to the extinction of every spiritual lifeform within the farm—or, in the best-case scenario, the loss of half of them.
Everything depended on the farm's resilience and its ability to withstand the energetic trauma caused by the replacement.
As for curing a diseased "leech embryo"—
that problem was classified as a medical impossibility.
Even the sharpest and most seasoned apothecaries could do nothing before it.
Jumanji walked on in steady silence, but his mind drifted through an ocean of memories that had not yet come to pass in this era—memories from twenty years into the future.
In that distant future, the Carp Tribe and the Brown Bear Tribe would launch a devastating campaign to erase the Eksperia Tribe's farm from existence.
It would be a bloody calamity.
A disaster that would wipe away an entire history.
In that war, Jumanji's father, his uncle, his brother, and nearly everyone he had known in his youth would perish.
Only a handful would escape into the unknown.
Mahinor had been one of them.
And the main force behind that invasion…
was the Carp Tribe's leader himself.
Ten years from now, the leader would recover from his affliction, break through the bottleneck that had imprisoned him for so long, and advance to Rank Four—gaining a level of strength that would grant him absolute dominance over any third-rank tribe.
In his previous life, when Mahinor reached Rank Five, he returned like a storm of vengeance and annihilated both the Carp Tribe and the Brown Bear Tribe to the last, avenging his people.
Though he had learned the *method* by which the tribe leader had been healed, the identity of the one who had provided that treatment had remained buried beneath layers of secrecy imposed by the tribe.
And now—
Jumanji stood at the center of that turning point.
He knew the method.
He knew the price.
And more importantly…
he knew that the "unknown person" who was supposed to heal the leader's embryo would not appear until years from now.
After some time wandering through the halls of the vast building, Jumanji and his guide finally arrived at a spacious chamber thick with movement and tension.
Several figures in green apothecary robes sat inside, testing medicinal samples one after another, their faces pale with strain.
Time was closing in on them.
And the situation had reached its most critical stage.
In the original timeline preserved in Jumanji's memory, the leader would have managed to preserve his diseased embryo for a full ten years—thanks to outside intervention.
A month from now, a wandering apothecary was supposed to arrive carrying a rare method that would place the embryo into a prolonged state of "spiritual hibernation," ensuring the farm remained unharmed as long as the leader avoided combat and refrained from expending spiritual energy.
But Jumanji had decided to steal that stranger's role from history.
He had arrived here a full month earlier.
And he carried not only the means to place the embryo into dormancy—
but perhaps secrets that went even further beyond.
As his steps drew him closer to the examination table, Jumanji understood that every passing second meant the future he once knew was beginning to dissolve, giving way to a new reality—one he himself was shaping with his own hands.
His guide stopped him cautiously, lowering his voice in deference to the charged atmosphere within the chamber.
"Sir, please wait here for a moment while I speak with our elder and inform him of your arrival."
Jumanji cast a brief glance around the room, where the apothecaries were immersed in desperate attempts, then nodded with the calm confidence of someone utterly certain of himself.
"Take your time. I'll wait here."
Only a few moments passed before the guide returned with hurried steps and expectant eyes.
"This way, sir. The Grand Elder is waiting for you now."
The moment Jumanji entered the inner chamber, a few of the apothecaries turned toward him.
Their hands paused briefly over the medicinal samples. They cast him a few quick looks before returning to their work in strained silence, as though the presence of yet another outsider was nothing more than another doomed attempt destined to fail like all the rest.
Jumanji stepped forward—
and found himself face-to-face with an old man whose features had been carved deeply by the years.
He wore an imposing robe of pale violet and held a staff of ancient wood whose hue almost merged with the color of his garments.
The old man sat with an aura of anxious dignity around him.
Spread across the table before him were all manner of spiritual plants.
But Jumanji's eyes settled at once on the most unusual specimen placed at the center:
the "Silver Moon Plant."
Its bloom shimmered with eleven gleaming silver petals, arranged so perfectly that they resembled a full moon.
Its jagged black stem oozed thick white droplets like milk, releasing a pungent scent that was equal parts natural wonder and spiritual poison.
The elder's table was crowded with other rare samples as well—
the "Mouse Ear Plant," with its small velvety leaves,
the "Hairy Cactus," covered in fine needle-like fibers,
and the "Black Cat Plant," its dark rippling patterns steeped in mystery,
along with many others of varying forms and colors.
Each one represented yet another futile attempt to decipher the illness.
The moment Jumanji stopped before him, the elder spoke without lifting his eyes from the plants he was examining.
"I hear you are a wandering physician who travels between tribes trading in medicinal plants. Is that true?"
Jumanji answered calmly and steadily:
"Yes, sir. That is correct. It is the trade by which I earn my daily bread, as you can see."
The elder stilled.
Then he slowly raised his gaze to Jumanji, studying him for a long moment before speaking again.
"Very well. Show me what you have. And do you truly believe that what lies in your pouch surpasses the rarities already before me?
If not, then you are wasting both your time and mine."
Jumanji said nothing.
He simply reached calmly into his bag and pulled out a mushroom-like plant.
Yet this was entirely different from the one he had crushed before.
It was a milky white fungus, with mint-green glowing spots scattered across its cap.
The instant the elder laid eyes upon it, his pupils narrowed in undisguised shock.
"The Blessed Mushroom!?"
The Blessed Mushroom was a treasure coveted by every cultivator.
Its primary use extended far beyond ordinary physical treatment.
It possessed a unique ability to heal living beings inside a spiritual farm—whether rare plants or spiritual beasts that had fallen into weakness.
And yet—
despite the magnificence of its restorative properties,
the "spiritual leech" remained the one exception it could not touch.
The energetic structure of the leech was far too complex to respond to this kind of treatment.
The Blessed Mushroom was utterly incapable of exerting any healing effect upon its embryo.
Jumanji knew this perfectly well.
And he knew that revealing the mushroom now was nothing more than bait—
proof of his worth, and a means of opening the door to a conversation about something far more dangerous.
The elder took the mushroom and began turning it over in his hands with intense focus, examining it with great care.
At last, he set it aside and muttered in a tone touched with genuine appreciation:
"It truly is a rare catch. I have not seen quality like this in a very long time."
Then he raised his eyes toward Jumanji, curiosity plain in his voice.
"Do you possess anything even rarer than this?"
Jumanji answered without the slightest wavering:
"And why do you think I travel between tribes and cross the wilderness?"
Then he began laying out more plants of different shapes and colors.
Among them was a small purple plant with no visible stem, as though it drew its life directly from the air itself.
But what truly made the elder's breathing falter…
was the white "Bone Plant" Jumanji brought forth with exceptional care.
Holding it before him, Jumanji said in a calm voice weighted with hidden significance:
"This plant is capable of treating the deadliest of illnesses."
At that moment, a deep sorrow clouded Jumanji's eyes as he looked at it.
Because this particular plant had once been one of the key elements that could have saved his tribe from annihilation.
It stirred Mahinor's bitter memories within him.
He had seen that malignant disease ravage others in the past—
or rather, in the future of this era.
Now, he knew the secret of its composition.
He knew its source.
And more importantly than anything else…
he knew its antidote.
He knew exactly how to cure it.
**End of Chapter**