“Yu Kaeul is learning combat magic?”
“Nn.”
“She said yes?”
On the way back to the dormitory, Yeorum asked Bom.
“Nn. She said she wanted to give it a try. We will be starting from today.”
“How ridiculous… who’s she learning it from?”
“Me and ahjussi.”
“Huhh?”
Yeorum asked.
“I understand Yu Jitae, but why you?”
“I have to teach her magic of course? Ahjussi said he wasn’t that knowledgeable on magic.”
“Really?”
That’s weird? He knew the red dragon’s magic though…? The question flashed past her head.
“Anyways… there are so many things to do throughout for our unni.” Yeorum said.
“You mean me?”
“Aren’t you busy? You shop with Yu Jitae, look after the house, teach magic to Kaeul. Ah, you went to Gyeoul’s school event as her mum a few days ago didn’t you?”
“Nn. They were all surprised.”
“Of course. It’s like a kid claiming to be a kid’s mother.”
‘Right’, said Bom with a nod. Yeorum continued.
“You also write, and judging from your grades you’re also studying diligently… when there’s so many things to do, doesn’t your head get all messed up and dizzy?”
“Not at all.”
“Really?”
“Hmm… there’s no reason for it to be complicated. It’s actually very simple.”
“Why?”
“Because I always think about ahjussi.”
Yeorum retched in response.
“Uwekk. Freaking…”
Bom chuckled.
“…But you know, how did you become like that?’
“What do you mean?”
“There must’ve been a reason right. The reason you, uhh, became like that to Yu Jitae.”
There was usually a clear reason in most of the shoujo mangas. Bom wanted to make Yu Jitae a person but why did she start having those feelings for Yu Jitae?
“Hmm…”
However, Bom remained silent. She was thinking to herself and her words naturally disappeared. The fact that Gyeoul came running from afar carrying a bag of ice cream and waving her other hand also played a part in cutting her words off short.
Bom threw her arms wide open. Even while being hugged by Bom, Gyeoul frowned at Yeorum as if she was looking at a bug.
“What’s with those damn eyes.”
“…Why? Can’t I, look with my own eyes?”
“You dare look at your unni with a gaze like that? You wanna die?”
‘Tch,’ Gyeoul still had the discontent look on her face, but soon carefully took out an ice cream from the bag and gave it to her.
“…Eat it if you want.”
“Hell. You probably bought it with Yu Jitae’s money and look at you pretending to be nice.”
Yeorum took the ice cream despite her grumbling. However, Gyeoul felt like she was being falsely accused and opened her mouth.
“…No?”
“Huh?”
“…I bought with money I earned.”
“Nonsense. How does a kid like you earn money. Now you’re lying just to show off aren’t you?”
“…No I’m not? … Give it back if you don’t want.”
Gyeoul came down from Bom’s arms and reached her hand forward but Yeorum dodged her hands. So Gyeoul used her mana to steal the ice cream with telekinesis but in response, Yeorum stuck her tongue out and licked the ice cream.
“…Ah, fuc-”
When Gyeoul was unable to hold it in and almost swore out loud, Yeorum chortled with a voice that irritated the listeners.
Ihihi, kikik, kekekek–! It went along the lines of that.
“By the way, is that true? How you’re earning money yourself.”
“…I am.”
“How? Wait, well, they do buy and sell water in this dimension. Don’t tell me you sold water to make money without caring about the pride of us dragons right? Aye, there’s no way.”
“…Of course not.”
“Huh? Why did you hesitate just then?”
Gyeoul was dumbfounded.
I’ve always been a slow talker okay?
“So you did. Ahh, you’re caught red handed. This kid, you young little brat… You don’t even know how important the pride of your race is and you go sell water? That’s a trash thing to do.”
“…I didn’t though?”
“You are obsessed with money that much. Even the world-famous swindlers will show you respect.”
“…What does that even mean? …No, I don’t care so don’t talk to me. So annoying…”
The repetitive slanders put her in a bad mood as she turned her head around and buried her face into Bom’s stomach. Placed in the centre of the two of them, Bom gave a faint smile, but that in turn caused Gyeoul’s rage to find its next target.
“…Why, are you smiling?”
It was her first time saying bad things to Bom. “Because it’s funny,” replied Bom with a smile and caused Gyeoul to be in a worse mood.
“…Don’t smile. I’m not in a good mood.”
“Don’t want to.”
“…What?”
“I don’t want to, you swindling merchant.”
Bom instead teased her with a cunning expression.
“…Huu, uuuiingg”
Unable to hold her irritation in, Gyeoul bumped her forehead into Bom’s stomach on repeat. Kong! Kong!
Both Bom and Yeorum bursted into laughter and laughed for a long time.
***
“From now, you will be learning combat magic.”
“Yes.”
“Bom will teach you but I will be with you two when you’re learning it, in case accidents occur. Also because we want to force you to continuously hit your output limit. Bom won’t be able to know that either.”
“Yes.”
“Can you do it well?”
“Uhh, umm, I’ll try my best…”
Her response was somewhat lacking in energy.
A person’s confidence that has already dropped to the ground often leads to two circumstances. They either become pessimistic and refuse to do anything, or they simply follow the flow and do everything in a sloppy manner.
What was common between the two circumstances was that there was not a sliver of passion to be found.
It was fortunate that Kaeul was the latter at the very least. If she said the likes of, “I can’t do it”, “I don’t think I can do it” or “How would someone like me be able to do anything” then it would have been a lot more difficult for him to show her a different direction.
As the guardian, he had to be the person showing the right path for Kaeul. There was a clear difference in their relationship compared to that of the other kids.
He had been worrying about it the whole time and had just gotten the gist. Unexpectedly, it was Bom that was holding the key to the question.
“Now, let’s do it together.”
“Nn, unni.”
“Can you promise me? That you will obediently follow everything I teach you?”
“Nn!”
From that day, Kaeul started learning 5 basic spells from Bom.
[Magic Bullet (C)]
[Magic Arrow (C)]
[Barrier (B)]
[Blink (A)]
[Attribute Enchantment – Lightning (B)]
In fact, these were fairly advanced to be called basic spells in human standards, especially for spells above the B grade.
However, they were the race of magic – dragons. Humans might take weeks to learn each spell but Kaeul succeeded in learning all of those spells in the mere span of four days.
Naturally, her learning process wasn’t that smooth.
[Magic Bullet (C)]
It was a simple spell where normally a fist-sized ball of mana would be [condensed], and [launched] after setting a [direction]. Usually, it would never be stronger than a cannonball but,
“No. Kaeul. It’s too strong. You have to be more delicate.”
“Nn? Nnnn? Like this?”
Kwaaanggg–!
Kaeul’s [Magic Bullet (C)] was like an anti-aircraft missile. The problem was that it was a missile outside her control. Bom who was helping from right next to her was caught in the aftermath of her attack.
“Hukk! Unni…!”
Bom flew to the other side of the training centre and rolled several times on the ground.
“Unni, unni! Are you alright!?”
Kaeul ran up in surprise as Bom raised her body with dishevelled hair.
“Kaeul. Are you trying to kill me?”
“Uaah, sorryy…!”
However, that was just the beginning.
Even low grade spells like magic bullet and magic arrow was like that. The dimension was shaken from its root whenever she was using blink so Yu Jitae had to carefully offset its effect. Otherwise, the entire dimension of the training centre could have been ripped off.
Despite that, Bom stayed next to her.
“Don’t stand next to me…! I, I can’t really control this! You might really get hurt!”
“Then you have to control it better so that I don’t get hurt.”
“Uaah…! I don’t know how…!”
“Be more delicate. Let’s do it again.”
Kwaaang! Despite all that, Bom flew again.
“Again.”
Kwaaaaang! And again she flew.
“Why did it get stronger? Do it again.”
Kwaaang! She rolled the ground on repeat.
“…”
Lying on the ground, Bom vacantly stared at the ceiling. Yu Jitae approached her first and lowered his back.
“Are you alright.”
“Yes.”
“You have a nosebleed.”
“…”
Bom cursorily wiped the blood with her wrist before healing her body. She then walked towards Kaeul again, who was fidgeting not knowing what to do.
“Go again.”
“N, nn…”
*
One day,
Two days,
Four days…
And a week.
Time passed rapidly.
With Yu Jitae next to them, Bom’s injuries never got out of control.
The fact that Bom stayed next to her and got overwhelmed by Kaeul’s ‘uncontrollable mana’ might be an intentional action done to touch her sense of guilt.
Looking from the side, he found Bom’s teaching method to be slightly intriguing. He had never seen her teach anybody before, but it seemed that she was quite talented at teaching others.
“Kaeul, where are you going?”
“I can’t do it…! I, I will do the rest tomorrow!”
“No. Come here. Where are you running to?”
Or was she ‘teaching’?
Kaeul was caught from her attempted escape and was dragged back. After less than 30 minutes of resting time, she started shooting magic bullets again.
He gazed at the two of them, and observed the atmosphere around them which was different from normal.
“Hukk, uhh, I’m dying… hukk, hukk… it, it feels like my soul is getting sucked dry… hukk…”
Kaeul grabbed her own chest and whinged. It was because mana was constantly being forced out of her.
“Stand up Kaeul. We need to finish what’s left.”
“Unni! Please let me off…! A little bit more rest.”
“No. You’ve rested for 5 minutes already.”
“Auuanng! How does it make sense to suck me dry for 2 hours and give only 5 minutes of rest!? That’s too cruel…!”
Her complaint was logical.
Normal magicians trained for 30 minutes and took 2 hours of rest – even Kaeul knew that although she hadn’t learned magic before.
However, Kaeul was a dragon no matter how young she may be, and her mana capacity was tremendously bigger than normal hatchlings. That was why Bom repeatedly tried to suck her dry so that the child could get used to outputting large amounts of mana at a given time. This was what Yu Jitae told Bom to do, because both dragons and humans improved the most in extreme situations so it was the most effective method.
But no matter how good one’s stamina was, how could a marathon be easy? Considering that she was also a 12 year old girl who only started running a few days ago, it was impressive that she was able to endure it till now.
When Kaeul remained stubborn, Bom walked towards the child and stared at her.
“Kaeul. We promised when you first started, that you will listen to everything I say. Don’t you remember it?”
“I do. I do but…! I still don’t want to…! I might die at this rate…!”
“You won’t. Ahjussi is here isn’t he?”
“No, that’s not what I mean is it!? How can I do something this hard in one day…!”
Both objectively and even in Yu Jitae’s eyes, the training was quite severe and because of that, Kaeul was almost out of her mind at this point. At last, when she was one week into training, she vehemently protested for the very first time.
“I really, really might die… Or is there a way to do it easier? You know uhh, unni you’re a green dragon, and you are very smart! Training like this is too primitive and hard!”
“Training is meant to be hard though?”
“Which dragon ever trains like this…! M, my mum and dad both lie on the ground and sleep though? Only Yeorum-unni would do things like this right? What if my heart explodes?”
“…”
“Can’t we take it a little bit slower?! There hasn’t been any improvement in a week! I can’t even feel anything change so how would I get the motivation to do it…!”
Her shout filled with tears echoed the training room for a long time, perhaps because Bom was silent without saying anything back.
The words that finally left Bom’s mouth were unusually low and dark.
“How easy your life must have been till now.”
Kaeul regained her sanity and gazed up at Bom.
“Nn…?”
Bom was looking down at her with an indifferent expression.
“Dear Kaeul. You must have been loved so much by your family. Your life must have been pretty and all flowers till now. Right?”
“Uh, uhh… not really?”
“Isn’t it? I think the fact that a dragon ignored magic for 12 years of their life is the proof though? All the gold dragons I’ve seen till now weren’t like you. There were both respectable hatchlings and adults. So a 12-year-old dragon not knowing a single thing about magic can’t be a problem of the gold race. Then whose problem would it be?”
“B, Bom-unni…?”
“Hnn? I wonder.”
Kaeul looked up at her in surprise.
Both her dishevelled hair and clothes made her look like a beggar, but her eyes that were gazing down – her vertically slit pupils caused Kaeul to unknowingly shrink her body.
“Kaeul. Even after coming out on Amusement, you only ate, played around and slept. Have you ever dedicated even a day to properly learn magic?
“Listen. It has been 12 years since you left your egg. 12 years. That’s around 4,500 days. What you’ve been ignoring in that long a period is ‘magic’. ‘Our’ sense of identity common all throughout the races is what you’ve been neglecting.”
There was no change in her tone. As always, her indifferent expression made it difficult for others to guess whether she was angry or not.
Today however, she gave off a feeling that she was mad, and that ambiguity scared Kaeul even more.
“Of course, it will be possible some time in the future. If you slowly receive memories of your mother over hundreds of years. But is that what you wanted? What did you say? Didn’t you want to become a guardian in the true meaning of the word during your Amusement?
“You want a visible change. After doing something for merely 7 days, you want something to miraculously change? The thing you haven’t even glanced at for 4,500 days in just 7 days?
“Don’t you think that’s being too shameless?”
“U, unni. I…” Kaeul tried to intervene.
“Shut your mouth Kaeul.” Bom cut her off and continued.
“It’s been a week now. You just started and yet you’re already like this. What are you going to do in the future? Here I’m sacrificing my time to bother teaching you. Do I have to waste time and listen to you whinge about things you can do just because you don’t want to do them?”
“…”
Kaeul widened her golden eyes in shock. There was a chill in Bom’s gaze.
Frightened, Kaeul glanced at Yu Jitae who had his arms crossed behind Bom, wishing he could save her. However, he stood silent and Bom’s strict voice saying, “Yu Kaeul,” pulled her gaze back to the speaker.
“Get up. Before I really get mad.”