The two thieves came into the back mountain thinking they were stealing from an ordinary hill, and for a while everything went easily for them. They slipped up through the trees, pulled valuable mushrooms out of the soil, and moved with the confidence of men who had done this many times before. One of them even scolded his partner for harvesting too roughly, because a damaged mushroom fetched a lower price.
To them the mountain was nothing but a free treasure chest filled with herbs, roots and rare mushrooms. Then something strange happened. The forest went silent. Wild animals began to gather around them, staring at them as though waiting for an order. The thieves froze where they stood, but their greed was stronger than their fear, and instead of running away they bent down and kept stealing.
That was their biggest mistake, because behind the scenes Sihon was watching all of it through Orin, the giant pine tree he had turned into the heart of his territory. Using the tree as his eyes and ears, he was connected to every living thing in that forest. The animals, the fog, the vines, and even the mountain itself began moving under his command.
These thieves had stolen from the wrong person. The moment Sihon decided to punish them, the peaceful mountain turned into a nightmare. Fog swallowed the forest. Animals charged from every direction. The thieves screamed, begged and ran for their lives, but there was nowhere to escape to. To finish the lesson, Sihon summoned vines out of the ground and trapped them completely.
By the time the village chief and the police arrived, the thieves had already been beaten down by fear. They tried to claim that demons and trees had attacked them, and nobody believed their ridiculous story. After all, they were not facing a demon. They were facing a druid who could make an entire forest fight for him.
In ancient times there was a tribe known as the druids, and they protected harmony and order. They were revered among humans because of how pure they were. Among them was Theophilo, who lived a long life with a pure soul and eventually entered the cycle of rebirth. He began wandering the cosmos, searching for a compatible vessel.
After a long time, he finally found a vessel worthy of him. It was a vessel as fragile as a giant glass ball filled with pain, and still perfect. Tired of waiting, Theophilo entered the chosen vessel, a dying man named Sihon.
By the time he opened his eyes, he saw a young man crying beside him, calling him brother, and the pungent smell of the room hit him hard. It turned out to be a hospital, and he had awakened in the body of an overweight young man. He worked out immediately that there was a great deal wrong with this body. The young man beside him kept speaking, and although Theophilo had never heard the language before, it somehow registered in his brain and he understood it naturally.
At the same time, he was surprised that the memories of the vessel he had chosen still remained after the reincarnation. Everything became far more intense when he locked eyes with Sihon's brother, Siu. The moment it happened, Sihon's memories flooded into his head, and he grabbed his skull and screamed. Everything, from who this man had been down to the pain he had suffered, poured into his brain at once.
He even saw the way Sihon had met his end, and the whole journey of his life. When the inheritance of memories was done, he passed out, and only woke again after a while. Strange as it was that Sihon's memories had come flooding back, he took joy in the fact that he would not have to struggle to adapt to the modern world.
Even though he had accepted his fate as Sihon, the body he had inherited was completely unexpected. It was an overweight body of a hundred and seventy kilograms with a fifty-inch waist. The reason Sihon had died at twenty-eight was a myocardial infarction and complications from hyperlipidemia. Now that Theophilo had taken this body as his vessel, he promised himself he would make it fit.
He began by jogging while he was still inside the hospital. Once the body became fit, it would be the perfect vessel, and he was not worried about taking the hard route, because in his past life he could have starved for a week without dying. He was already used to a hard life.
There was one problem, however, and it was that the nature force he could gather here was very low compared to what he was used to. It was so low that everything he gathered throughout a whole day could only bloom into a single flower. Nature force was the source of the mysterious power wielded by druids.
It was also the driving force keeping this body alive. Even when he managed to gather some, it scattered again in no time, and for a druid that was a serious problem. Sihon was resting on a public bench, thinking about how to fix things, when his brother showed up and scolded him for stressing himself out when he had only just woken up.
Sihon told him he was fine, but Siu insisted that his heart was weak and that he was supposed to be resting. Siu sat down with him and told him that the kid he had saved was six years old. In Sihon's last act, he had thrown his body in front of a kickboard that was flying down a hill like a rocket.
Even though he had hurt himself saving the child and had ended up in critical condition, there had been a sense of relief in him. It was after that that he collapsed from a myocardial infarction, just after saving the child. Sihon teased his brother, telling him he had saved the child because the child was cute. Siu covered his face to hide how proud he was as he told his brother he had done a really good thing.
He urged him to be careful, though, because the moment Sihon was gone he had no one else. Hearing his brother speak that way filled Sihon's heart with a joy he had not felt in a long time. Still, he concluded that getting healthy was the priority. Then he shocked Siu by telling him that he had already quit his job, which forced Siu to ask him why he would do such a thing.
Sihon replied that his team leader had stolen the project he had spent months working on. Siu heard this and yelled in rage, because he knew the culprit was a spoiled rich brat. He finally understood why Sihon had been so stressed, and Sihon only reacted to it casually. Siu was surprised that his brother was not crashing out, and Sihon replied that he had simply accepted things as they were.