Chapter 23

 A Talent Beyond Exceptional—and Dangerous

✦ ✦ ✦

Even as time passed, Rokan showed no sign of returning.

I could not tell whether he really needed a short break or if there was some other reason I did not know about. I asked Sia if she had any idea what was going on, but she tilted her head as though she was just as confused.

[No, I do not really know either. He did not look especially tired to me.]

In the end, all we could do was wait.

As the awkward atmosphere dragged on, I decided to lighten the mood and asked Sia a question.

“Sia. About that sword energy… do you know what it is?”

Aurora-colored sword energy had never once been reported since Gates first appeared and Awakened people began emerging. I had no idea what it was, but I thought Sia, who had spent such a long time living in another world, might have seen something like it before.

However, after silently replaying that section of the video and thinking for a while, Sia slowly shook her head.

[Hmm… I do not really know either. I was curious too, so I was going to ask Grandpa, but he happened to leave.]

Even Sia did not know what it was.

“Feels like we are getting dragged deeper and deeper into a maze.”

[Exactly. The mana pattern recorded by the wearable cam is weird too. I have seen and learned almost every ordinary pattern there is, but… this is my first time seeing anything like it.]

According to Sia, analyzing a mana pattern usually allowed you to roughly guess what kind of power it belonged to. This one, however, was a pattern she had never seen in her life, so even that approach seemed difficult.

Apparently, Sia was just as curious about the true nature of the sword energy as I was. She looked intensely frustrated.

[Still, Grandpa probably knows, right?]

“He probably does.”

While we waited for Rokan, we repeatedly replayed the section where the aurora-colored sword energy began to manifest.

Rokan finally returned more than twenty minutes after leaving.

“I am sorry. I left rather suddenly.”

[It is okay. Grandpa, are you feeling better now?]

“My head merely throbbed for a moment. I am fine.”

He claimed he was fine, but at least to me, Rokan did not look very fine.

He was still slightly frowning as though his head continued to ache, and maybe it was just my imagination, but the calm atmosphere unique to Rokan that I had felt every time we met seemed to have disappeared as well. It made him look as though something had genuinely shaken him.

“Let us continue where we left off. We were speaking about the sword energy… correct?”

“Yes. I asked Sia, but she said she has never seen sword energy like that either.”

[Grandpa, what exactly is that sword energy?]

Surely now the mystery would finally be solved. Instead, Rokan answered firmly, “For now… it would be difficult for me to tell you.”

He had not said, ‘I do not know.’ He had said he could not tell us.

Sia and I turned toward Rokan almost at the same time.

“I have told you before that you possess remarkable talent, have I not?”

He was not simply saying that to make me feel good. Whenever Rokan gave me advice, he had always added something along those lines. This time, however, he followed it with a shocking statement.

“I was wrong. Your talent is not merely remarkable. It is dangerous enough that it could devour you.”

[…!!!]

Sia covered her mouth with both hands in shock, and I was no different. I stared at the frozen image on the screen before me.

That breathtakingly beautiful aurora-colored sword energy, the power that had saved me when I was about to die… was really that dangerous?

“That is why, Minjun, for the next few days you are not to enter any Gates until I tell you otherwise.”

[Is… is it really that dangerous, Grandpa?]

Sia’s body trembled as she asked him.

“I told you. If something goes wrong, it is a dangerous power that could swallow Minjun whole.”

[Th-then our Oppa…]

Her face went pale, as though she had imagined the worst possible outcome.

“He is still fine. This is simply so we can prepare even for the slightest possibility.”

After calming Sia, Rokan continued in the same measured, serious tone.

“If he becomes strong enough to completely control a dragon’s power, then at the very least he should not be consumed by it. At the very least.”

The way he repeated those last words for emphasis left me strangely uneasy.

“Until then, you will need to wear a limiter capable of suppressing this power.”

“A limiter…?”

“Yes. Even if I begin making it now, it will take at least a few days to complete. Until it is finished, Minjun, do not even dream of entering a Gate.”

He spoke so firmly that neither Sia nor I dared to argue.

“You must have many questions. I am sorry I cannot be of much help.”

“Not at all.”

Normally, Rokan would have said something like that with a benevolent expression, but right now his face was deadly serious.

“Shasha can explain everything else aside from this sword energy. I will go begin making the limiter you will use.”

Leaving only those words behind, Rokan departed.

❦

For a while after he left, Sia remained silent as though still stunned. Eventually, she spoke.

[Oppa. I have never seen Grandpa act like that before.]

“It is okay. It probably is not anything too serious.”

Even though Rokan had reassured her several times, Sia still looked anxious and unable to relax. I comforted her by saying that nothing would happen and that, from another perspective, this might even turn out to be a good thing.

“If I learn to use it properly, it could become an extremely powerful weapon. Lord Rokan also said the chance of something actually going wrong because of that power was low. As long as I am careful until the limiter is finished, there should not be any problem.”

[…You are right. Oppa is right.]

After I coaxed and reassured her for a while, Sia finally relaxed and regained her usual smile.

“Then should we keep watching?”

[Yeah!]

Rokan was gone, but the feedback still had to continue. We resumed the video that had been paused for dozens of minutes.

[First, if we ignore that sword energy, Oppa…]

As though she had never been anxious at all, Sia calmly began explaining again.

[It was good that even though you were at a relative disadvantage, you broke through toward the enemy instead of retreating. If you had run away, you probably would not have been able to draw out the dragon’s power properly. Dragons are not beings that flee no matter the situation. Understanding the characteristics of dragons as a race will help you control draconic power in the future too. But if you look here…]

Her tone was gentle, but Sia coolly and meticulously pointed out the areas I needed to improve from now on.

The actual combat had not lasted very long, yet perhaps because she wanted to explain everything in as much detail as possible, the feedback session continued for quite some time.

Eventually, after a long while, Sia finally declared the end.

[Done!]

“Finally. Thanks for watching the video for so long. Your eyes do not hurt, do they?”

[I am fine! I actually enjoyed it.]

She had watched footage for so long that anyone else might have become exhausted, yet Sia looked almost disappointed that there was not more feedback she could give.

Maybe she genuinely enjoyed teaching me, or maybe she simply wanted to spend time with me in any way she could. It might have been both.

I casually asked her a question.

“Sia. Is there anything you want to do right now?”

[Something I want to do?]

“Yeah. It would be awkward to just go home now, and Lord Rokan told me not to enter any Gates for the time being, so it looks like I will have a lot of free time… Keep me company.”

[Yes! Absolutely!]

Sia looked ready to jump for joy. Judging by her reaction, she had probably been hoping from the beginning that I would say something like that.

[I like anything as long as I am doing it with Oppa. Is there anything you want to do?]

“I am the same. Anything is fun if I am doing it with you. So this time, instead of doing what I want, tell me what you want to do, Sia.”

[What I want to do…]

She thought for a moment, then her eyes lit up as if a good idea had struck her.

[How about we keep watching that video?]

“We already watched all of it. Do you still have more feedback?”

The feedback was already finished, so I could not see why we needed to watch it again, much less together. If we were going to watch something together, a movie would probably be much more fun than that video.

[Not feedback. There are still parts I have not seen. Not just the scenes where Oppa fights, but the parts where you chat inside the dungeon, rest, and things like that… I want to see those too.]

If I interpreted that in my own way, Sia seemed to want a glimpse into my everyday life. More precisely, my everyday life inside Gates. From Sia’s perspective, it made sense that she would be curious about what I did inside Gates when she was not around and how I got along with other people.

I did not mind showing her ordinary moments like that, except for one problem.

Then… she will also see me killing the villains.

Those bastards deserved to die a hundred or a thousand times over, but I still did not particularly want Sia to watch me kill them. More than anything, I was even more bothered by the idea of Sia hearing the insulting words the villains had spat out right before they died.

“You want to see… all of it, right?”

[Yeah! All of it!]

“There is really nothing interesting. You might get bored while watching.”

[No way. I definitely will not get bored. It will be like watching a vlog, will not it?]

I tried to dissuade her by saying the video probably would not be much fun, but it was useless. Seeing the determination in those clear, shining eyes, Sia looked like she intended to watch it no matter what.

In the end, I changed strategies and decided to tell her the truth while trying to make her skip only that specific section.

“Actually, the end of the video shows me killing the villains. I think that part might be unpleasant to watch. How about we watch everything except that section?”

Watching someone die was not exactly pleasant, so I thought this much would be enough to convince her. Instead, Sia replied without the slightest change in expression.

[No. I do not mind. Let’s watch it together.]

“Are you sure? It will be gruesome.”

Before her reincarnation, Sia had even refused to watch horror movies because she was afraid they would appear in her dreams. The Sia of the present, however, firmly nodded at my warning.

[Maybe I would have been like that in the old days… but now? Not really. Besides, those guys were not humans. They were beasts wearing human skin.]

She said that was exactly why she wanted to see it even more and continued pestering me.

In the end, unable to resist Sia’s request, I agreed to watch the video with her exactly as she wanted. For now, I would watch along and think of some way to keep Sia from seeing that particular scene. Surely there had to be a way.