Green dragons see the world’s providence from birth. Providence was another world visible to green dragons, and by seeing the flow of cause and effect, they understood the universe.
The Eye of Providence of such a green dragon having closed, was no different from humans losing their two eyes.
It was practically waking up in the morning to find out that she had become blind.
Bom had never been this confused ever since she was born into the world.
Should she go back? Or stay here? She couldn’t decide what was right.
What should she say? Or should she even say anything? It was hard to be certain of anything.
But it wasn’t easy to share with others that she couldn’t see Providence. It was the identity of a green race and their pride, just like how the red race would rather die than admit that they were weak.
The anxiety caused ripples in her mind and emotions. The heart of the immature hatchling shook and mana jumped as her class as a dragon dissipated.
Seeing her toe bitten by a mosquito, she thought to herself.
‘I must be broken…’
In a situation like that, Bom ended up digging her own grave. Before she realised it, she was standing at an unfamiliar place with Yu Jitae, who had to be treated with the most care and delicacy possible.
How did this happen?
Looking back, she wasn’t in her right mind the past few days. As if someone was pulling her by the hair, she found herself standing in front of a cliff by the time she came to herself.
She thought.
‘I’m going crazy…’
Like an insect with no antennae, bumping into everything around them.
This was a very dangerous situation for Bom.
Everything that was influencing Yu Jitae had been allowed by Providence. Without Providence, she shouldn’t put any colours on Yu Jitae. Without seeing the answer sheet, she couldn’t be 100% sure whether that colour was correct or not.
So, the logical and correct decision here was to go back home and stay holed up in the corner of her room and stay put.
However, Bom did not want to go back.
‘It’s finally just the two of us.’
Because of that, she thought and came to a compromise.
Let’s be normal.
Be normal, but leave some gap and hold back even when there was a chance to tease him. As long as she could do that, the fun times would go on while the canvas called Yu Jitae wouldn’t be smeared with the wrong colour.
***
“I don’t know where to go… I don’t.”
Bom pondered for a bit, before adding more words.
“Actually, there’s something I have to confess.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m feeling slightly under the weather these days.”
“Under the weather? How could that be.”
“Why?”
“You’re not even human. There’s no such thing for dragons.”
“Well, have you been a dragon before?”
“No.”
“Then don’t say anything.”
After saying that, she powerlessly added, “There is such a thing…”
Yu Jitae looked into her eyes for a bit. He rarely checked the authenticity of the dragons’ words during a conversation because he respected them as an intellectual and emotional being.
But it was none other than Bom, whose words and actions were always serene, who was saying that she was in a bad mood. He had to analyse and clearly discern whether this was a trivial matter or not.
The authenticity hanging on the Eyes of Equilibrium was ‘true’.
She really was feeling under the weather.
“…Right. Got it. And it’s nothing serious?”
“Yes. Not at all, but…”
“Go on.”
“Hmm… Anyway, I might have some trouble going there because of that. My brain feels kind of fuzzy and my mana isn’t stable either.”
“You wanna go back then?”
“No. Like I said, it’s nothing serious.”
“Tell me if it gets worse. So that we can cancel it and go back.”
“It’s fine. It’s seriously not a big deal.”
“Alright.”
Bom and Yu Jitae dived straight into the mission in full-swing. And after they entered the desert, he felt in his bones what it meant for her to be feeling under the weather.
Despite having a map and some data, Bom couldn’t focus and despite being a dragon, she couldn’t find the road with mana.
Even then, Yu Jitae decided to watch on.
Including the past iterations, this green hatchling’s decisions had never been wrong. Even a sudden dispatch like this should have a fitting reason, considering the fact that Bom had wished for it.
Thus, he wanted to stay a bystander. This was her dispatch and earning something through her own efforts would be more meaningful than getting it the easier way. He would simply throw in a hint if she was way off the mark.
Due to that, they were often headed the wrong way.
The large northern desert covered the previous lands of Algeria, Tunisia and Libya and had half the surface area of mainland China. It was extremely big. Walking in a slightly different direction would make them end up in a completely different location.
But he didn’t urge nor reproach her.
After several tries and after spending around half the day, the two of them were finally able to reach a part of the desert that was close to the Kahum tribe.
“I think it’s somewhere around here…”
Hwiiiikk–
It was then that an intense sandstorm suddenly threatened them. It was a common occurrence in the desert and particles of sand scattered across with mana embedded within. Covering herself with the alternate dimensional magic, [Laws of Nature (S)], Bom lowered her body.
The wind was so intense that they had trouble seeing past the 10-metre mark but that was when silhouettes appeared from the other side of the sandstorm.
They were people. It was a crowd of them.
After realising that, Bom immediately hid behind a hill and Yu Jitae copied her movement. He stared at the black silhouettes closing in. It was an interesting situation.
He decided to test Bom a bit.
“Have you studied this as well? On how to deal with others in lawless areas.”
“No. It was quite sudden so not really…”
“Then why did you hide yourself.”
“It’s a lawless area, right. I thought we had to either attack or hide.”
“And the reason you chose to hide?”
“Hmm, because I was scared…?”
Yu Jitae nodded in response to her words.
“Look at them.”
“Yes.”
“They’re wearing black bandanas, with daggers and guns. That one guy at the front is a superhuman and the guys at the back have heavy weapons. Now, what kind of group are they.”
When it was this close, it was possible to read their mana. Their mana were very sharp, as if they would attack anything that they came across. As if they were a group of bandits.
“…Maybe a group of merchants from a tribe?”
But Bom believed otherwise.
“What made you think that.”
“There are more goods than weapons on their camels. They’re not headed towards the warp station and that one superhuman at the front is on a camel.”
“And.”
“In lawless areas, you must attack or avoid before the opponent does anything. Unless they belong to a big group, money and authority are less important so the strong person must be the leader. But there’s no reason for the leader to stay at the front, which is the most dangerous.”
And right now, the strongest guy was at the front.
“So you’re saying he’s a bodyguard?”
“Yes. And they’re from a tribe with some sort of currency. Judging from how the two at the back are carrying their weapons, those two and the one at the front should be bodyguards.”
She was feeling under the weather and didn’t even know how to read the map, but her eyes were still sharp.
But is she actually correct? Yu Jitae continued with the test.
“What if the one at the front is paying off a debt?”
“A debt?”
“They could be a group of bandits while the one at the front is a loyal guy that wants to protect his buddies.”
“For that to be the case, their clothes are all generally clean, and the camels in the middle are in a good state. They’re fat and their humps that store fat are also tall.”
“So you’re saying that’s why they’re not vagabonds?”
“They must be merchants with a base.”
Bom gazed up at him, asking with her eyes whether she was right or not.
“Got it. What would you do then.”
“I’ll carefully follow them from behind.”
“Why.”
“There are lots of territorial battles here so the tribes are fairly far apart right. And the direction they are headed in is close to where the Kahum tribe is on the map so… Won’t they be better at finding it than me?”
It was her first time coming here and she had insufficient background information. In a situation like that, she used her knowledge on how humans acted and visual cues to make a fairly reasonable decision.
“You have good eyes indeed.”
An honest compliment.
Her eyes slightly widened right before he looked away. Bom twitched her lips before opening her mouth.
“…Then should we follow them in secret?”
“No. There’s no need to.”
“Sorry?”
Yu Jitae stood up.
There was a rock in his hand. After straightening his back, he rotated his body into a picturesque angle. Soon, his shoulder and arm turned hazy as the rock was shot from his fingertips.
Bamm–
The rock travelled faster than the speed of sound and exploded the head of the superhuman standing at the front. His head literally exploded and the merchants were surprised while Bom covered her mouth.
“Why? Why did you kill him?”
“Watch.”
Something strange started to happen. The merchants started fighting between each other. To be exact, they surrounded two people as a group and ran in. The sound of silenced gunshots echoed across the desert as one of the two were pulled by the hair and broke his back after dropping from the camel.
“You got everything correct. You got them correct but even if there are bodyguards, it’s weird for the bodyguards to be the only ones carrying weapons. In lawless areas, it’s up to them to protect themselves.
They were merchants – merchants who had been held hostage by a group of bandits led by the superhuman at the front. With a rock, Yu Jitae killed the superhuman, the boss of those bandits.
“So, the merchants had their weapons confiscated by the bandits?”
“Yeah. I thought you obviously knew that as well.”
Bom, who gazed at the essence of any existence, knew Yu Jitae was dangerous the moment she met him.
But she couldn’t do that right now.
“So this is what you meant by feeling under the weather.”
“I told you…”
“Got it. Let’s go there first.”
Yu Jitae found the right opportunity to interrupt them. He mentioned how he was the one who threw the rock and requested to accompany them to a nearby village.
No-one turned him down. Perhaps because there was another rock in his hand.
Like that, Yu Jitae and Bom travelled to the Kahum tribe along with the merchants.
*
A small village for around 200 people, awkwardly built with pieces of wood.
“N, no wait. This smell…”
“Oh no. God…”
The merchants smelled the odour that immediately welcomed their arrival and quickly ran away in fright.
Epidemic Type: Ef-014
Another name for it was ‘Ancient Ascomycota Spore-Reproduction Epidemic’.
These viruses that originate from an ancient beast travel through the air and dig into a human’s respiratory system before taking their lives. With the energy they steal, they bloom a flower of fungus and spread the virus through the air once again after the death of the human.
The hyphae of the fungus had a unique scent to it and currently, the Kahum tribe had a dense smell of that Ef-014 virus.
“Do you want to go in or go back.”
Since he knew how devastating Ef-014 was, Yu Jitae asked her once again.
“…I’ll go in.”
Bom nodded with a stiff expression.
The village looked just as he expected it to look.
The tents and huts built with logs and leaves were all half-decomposed. What filled the streets were humans who no longer looked like humans, that were disturbingly flesh-like for them to be considered flowers. A fitting comparison would be how Cordyceps militaris bloomed on the dead bodies of insects.
People turned into something non-human the moment the virus seeped into their systems. At that point, even Bom would be unable to heal them unless she knew how to rewind the time.
Yu Jitae moved his feet and Bom belatedly followed from behind.
Half the infected were already dead and even though the remaining half were alive, they were no different from being dead. Glancing around, they could see people whose upper bodies were normal, as well as those whose body was completely fine except for their heads.
After sucking all the energy out from its host, the virus bloomed what resembled the seeds of a dandelion on the head of the human in search for new sources of food.
A lot of seeds were fluttering in the sandstorm and the seeds rode the wind away from them and scattered like snow.
“…”
In the mix, there was also a large piece of flesh covering a small piece of flesh. The large flesh still twitched and had its two arms wrapped around the small thing to keep it warm.
It was a horrendous scene that was too appalling for eyes to see.
However, Bom composedly confronted that scene.
“So the mission is over with this…”
“Yeah. The reason for the Kahum tribe being out of contact was indeed because of Ef-014.”
“And they all either died or were infected…”
Yu Jitae looked somewhere nearby.
There was one person. One survivor. There was a half-broken tent but unlike other tents, it was covered with cotton all around that was extremely finely crafted.
Inside that tent, Yu Jitae found the only survivor. It was a middle-aged black woman who was fairly chubby, who had seemingly been eating quite well despite being in the middle of a desert.
“W, who are you…?”
She was the one and only survivor.
Because of the good tent, it had taken some time for the virus to seep in.