Dragon Poor

While he had been distracted by the Dragon’s presence in his mind, the scenery around him had completely changed.

After passing through lush green mountains and fields, he saw a world where there was only the frozen earth and the dark blue sea. After a certain point, even that disappeared, leaving nothing to be seen. The only thing he could see was the endless road of light. 

How much time had passed?

In a world where neither day nor night existed, the flow of time faded and completely disappeared.  

It wasn’t just his sense of time that disappeared. 

He didn’t feel cold or hot, nor did he feel hunger or thirst. There was no hustle or bustle to crowd his mind. He couldn’t feel the wind’s touch on his skin nor did he hear the rhythmic sounds of Redvern’s beating wings any longer. 

It felt as if all five of his senses were cut off.

It was a terrible stillness that seemed to eat away at his very existence. Perhaps an ordinary person wouldn’t have been able to endure it for even a second and forget his own existence.

But Kim Seon-Hyeok wasn’t an ordinary person. 

Although he was confused for a moment, he didn’t forget himself, nor did he indulge in this drug-like serenity. 

He concentrated only on the Dragon’s energy and resisted the terrible serenity.

[Focus. From here on out, it is the borders of the world. If you were to lose your focus for even a moment, you will forget yourself and become an eternal undead who will wander through the cracks of the world.]

Wow, thanks for telling me this so soon.

He had forgotten that the Fairy Dragon was next to him, but as always, the Fairy Dragon’s warning was a bit late. If he hadn’t figured it out himself, it would have been a ghastly warning.

How much further?

Kim Seon-Hyeok reached out and patted Redvern’s saddle. He grabbed a handful of dried jerky from the sack he had tied to the saddle before leaving and chewed on it. 

Ack. What the hell is this?

Apparently, his sense of taste was among the missing senses. He couldn’t taste the high-quality beef jerky specially prepared for him by the Imperial Palace’s chef. No, he couldn’t even feel that the jerky was in his mouth. 

He had tried chewing on the beef jerky like he would chew gum to keep from falling asleep, but he couldn’t even do that. He couldn’t tell if he was chewing on the jerky or his tongue. 

Ptooey.

Kim Seon-Hyeok continued chewing for a bit longer before spitting the jerky out. Then, once again, he focused his mind on the Dragon’s energy. 

Had the Dragon really been imprisoned in a place like this for over a thousand years?

He was surprised that the Dragon had endured for so long in a place like this. It was to the point that he was confused as to whether it was the Dragon or the dragon sub-species that had been punished. 

To think that your reward for fighting for the world was something this terrible, you sure are unlucky.

Did it make sense for him to sympathize with a being like the Dragon? He wasn’t sure. But at this moment, he couldn’t help but pity and sympathize with the mighty Dragon. 

Hang in there. 

The immense amount of compassion and sympathy he felt soon turned into determination as firm as stone. 

I’ll bring you out. 

That firm resolve gave him the driving force to survive in this hellish world, and he finally reached the end of the road to the Dragon.

But the Dragon was still nowhere to be seen. 

[She is beyond that storm.]

In that still world, a great raging storm was in between him and the Dragon. 

[If you want to meet her, then you must pass through that.]

It was a fierce storm that seemed to be sucking in his very existence just by looking at it from afar. Geheimnis warned him. 

[That is the boundary within the boundary that the world created. It is a storm of time and space. If you believe in your weak ability to manipulate the winds and underestimate it, you may end up leaving here torn to shreds, before even meeting her when you’ve come this far.]

It was exactly as Geheimnis said.

While Kim Seon-Hyeok was confident that he could handle any ferocious winds as if they were his own hands and feet, he didn’t have the confidence to subdue the storm raging in front of his eyes. No, forget that. He wasn’t even sure if he could survive inside that storm, let alone making it subdue. 

[Firmly resolve yourself…]

“I’ll be back.”

Nevertheless, Kim Seon-Hyeok didn’t hesitate and plunged into the storm.

Saaaah.

The storm swallowed Seon-Hyeok up without a trace. It didn’t look any different. It was as if nothing had happened; it just continued to rage as wildly as it did in the beginning.

The moment Kim Seon-Hyeok stepped into the storm, the quiet world suddenly changed.

Kaaaaaaaa.

The roaring wind burrowed into his ears as if to pierce his eardrums, and with every flash of lightning, thunder boomed so loud it sounded as if the world was collapsing. The fierce winds were so ferocious that Kim Seon-Hyeok had a hard time standing against it. 

In an instant, he lost his balance and the world began to spin.

However, even as the world turned upside down several times and his left and right were reversed, he didn’t lose his composure.

“Hold on a bit longer.”

Kim Seon-Hyeok comforted the pitifully squawking Redvern before closing his eyes.

This wasn’t a wind he could endure just by being stubborn. If he was going to be swept away anyway, then he would rather ride the flow of the wind.

He desperately tried to catch a strand of wind from the storm that was blowing irregularly without any direction.

Of course, it wasn’t easy.

Bang!

With terrible heat, flashes of light rained down on him from all directions. Quickly and furiously, hundreds of thunderbolts rained down him. Unluckily, one of them grazed him as it passed.

Whoosh.

It hadn’t even made direct contact with his body, but it still felt like his lungs were burning from the heat of the lightning. It would be terrible if he was directly hit by the lightning. Since he had acquired resistance to flames through Redwyrm, he might survive it. But Redvern would never be able to withstand the heat. 

But the storm of time and space wasn’t terrifying just because of the ferocious winds and powerful thunderbolts.

“Hm?”

Kim Seon-Hyeok had been busy avoiding the lightning bolts while being swept away by the winds when he suddenly felt a strange feeling and looked up.

Snap.

Sharp fangs missed him by a hair.

Kaaaaaaa.

An unidentified monstrous creature had snapped its jaws closed when it was blown far away by the wind.

“What is that…”

Kim Seon-Hyeok stared after the monster who disappeared into the wind. But then, he froze as he realized that the wind was hiding the roars of the monsters.

Gaaaaaaah.

Kah.

The monster wasn’t alone. 

There were countless monsters that if each of them went out into the world, every one of them would be capable of causing more disaster than a Demon King.

Seeing how those monsters were making an uproar trying to get even a little bit closer to him, it was no wonder he felt like jumping out of his skin. 

“...If you believe in your weak ability to manipulate the winds and underestimate it, you may end up leaving here, torn to pieces, before even meeting her when you’ve come this far.”

“Stupid Geheimnis.”

The warning the Fairy Dragon had given him before he entered the storm was wrong.

“What ‘torn to pieces?’ Those bastards look perfectly fine over there.”

Although the monsters’ hide had been horribly burnt by a direct hit from the terrible lightning bolt, they were still clearly alive.

“I wonder if they’re all imprisoned here as well.”

This wasn’t an execution platform to tear intruders apart. It was a place of exile for the prisoners who had been carried away by the storm and lost from the place they had been heading towards. It was also a prison created by the wicked world for the Dragon who had devoted herself to the world. 

He had heard from Marek that the world didn’t want the Dragon to return, but now that he saw it with his own eyes, he had a hard time stopping himself from cursing at the world’s shamelessness.

The greater his anger towards the world became, the stronger his desire became to reach the Dragon. 

He wanted to rescue the Dragon, set it free in the world, and give the ungrateful world the middle finger.

“Let’s go, Redvern.”

At his words, Redvern spread his two pairs of wings and started climbing above the storm.

The time spent in that storm of time and space was truly terrible. 

Almost as if they realized that Kim Seon-Hyeok was the only one who had the wings and qualifications to escape from this terrible prison, the monsters roaming within the storm all chased after him.

Whenever they inadvertently got close to him as they were swept around by the wind, they did everything they could to harm him. It wasn’t easy for him to shake them off.

Among them, there was also a Skull that was doing magic that he had never heard or seen before. 

“If you don’t take me with you, I will shatter you into pieces here!”

There was a monster who stretched out its tentacles and tried to grab Redvern’s tail.

“I’ll make you the king of the world, so take me with you.”

There was even one who even spoke with a honeyed voice, promising to give Seon-Hyeok a huge reward if he rescued him. 

The Skull mage’s magic was destroyed and the tentacles of the monstrous creature were cut off. 

“King? Don’t need it. My wife is the Empress.”

He ignored all the sweet, seductive talks of the others. 

But the monsters didn’t give up.

“Die! Die! Die!”

At first, the monsters tried to cling onto him without harming him, but later, they charged at him, red-eyed, with the intent to kill him.

It seemed like they had noticed that he had no intentions of saving anyone here.

“You, like us…”

If they couldn’t escape this hell, then they wanted him to be in the same situation as them. 

Their temper was as ugly as their appearance. Now, even Kim Seon-Hyeok wanted to praise the world for imprisoning these evil monsters in this hell.

After playing tag with the monsters for a long time as he wandered through the storm, Kim Seon-Hyeok was finally able to overcome all obstacles and reached the end of the storm.

“Noooooo!”

“Stop! Stop! I’ll give you everything I have, so take me with you!”

“I hate being left in this hell again!”

From afar, the evil monsters roared at him.

“Those disgusting monsters.”

In that short period of time, he had become completely tired of the monsters. He looked back. As they clamored to reach him, they had become tangled until they became one mess.

“Let me give you a present before I leave.”

His body twisted, and in an instant, the ferocious War Dragon appeared in the world.

“You bastard! You’re a dragon clan member?!”

“Dragon! Dragon! You're a cursed being!”

The monsters who saw him wearing the hide of a War Dragon cursed at him. But before their curse full of malice and hatred could reach him, flames shot out of the War Dragon’s snout and engulfed them.

“It really is goodbye, you damned monsters.”

After watching the screaming monsters from beyond the flames, he stepped out of the storm. When he crossed the boundary, a new world opened up in front of him.

Beyond the border, he was finally able to come face to face with the Dragon he had so desperately wanted to see.

“Ah…”

Ever since he had seen the illusion of the Dragon looking down at him proudly from the sky, he had countlessly imagined the day he would finally meet the Dragon. Whenever he dreamt, the Dragon would appear, and in his dreams, the Dragon was much more glorious than the illusion had been and was a peerlessly absolute being.

But when he met the Dragon, it was different, so very different from the image he had envisioned in his dreams.

The scales that looked like they were made from melted gold and silver were as beautiful as he had imagined, and her flawless body and wings were perfection itself. Her head, which was tucked halfway underneath her body, was so beautiful that just a glimpse was enough for words of admiration to pour out of his mouth automatically.

The only problem was that the crouched, motionless Dragon didn’t feel alive enough to look like a living dragon rather than a fossil. 

Countless thoughts ran through Kim Seon-Hyeok’s mind as he looked at the Dragon whose chest didn’t seem to be moving up and down like a living creature’s chest should be.

“Can’t be… Did I go through all the hardship just to meet a ghost?”

It was an absurd assumption, but right now, it seemed like the most possible assumption. No matter how often he looked at her, the Dragon didn’t look to be alive.

“Haa. What the f*ck is this…”

His certainty grew that after coming this way, fighting through all the difficulties, he was looking at the Dragon’s corpse. It was so absurd that he couldn’t even get mad.

[Companion. Even the happiness I should be enjoying on this promised day disappears when you appear in front of me with your preposterous thoughts.]

At that moment, the Dragon spoke.

“You weren’t dead?”

Delighted, he spoke to the Dragon.

[If you’re talking about my body, then you’re not wrong. It was my own will that stopped my beating heart.]

“Oh my God. Did you commit suicide?”

From hell to heaven, then from heaven to back hell. Kim Seon-Hyeok’s expression changed several times.

“So you’re dead after all, then.”

[But as it was my own will that stopped my heart, it will be my own will that makes my heart start beating again.]

Kim Seon-Hyeok looked dumbfounded by the Dragon’s words that went against common sense, however, the Dragon’s chest that had been motionless slowly rose up.

Da-dum.

He could hear the sound of a beating heart from somewhere.

Da-dum. 

Kim Seon-Hyeok’s heart also began to pound. 

[Companion!]

In the resounding heartbeat, the Dragon spoke. 

[I ask you here, do you truly wish for our relationship to be complete!]

There was nothing for him to think about.

“Of course.”

At that moment, the entire world around him changed.