He sat next to Yeorum, and quietly waited until she stopped crying. He knew a day like this would come one day and in fact, it should have come a lot earlier.
Yeorum couldn’t stop her tears with ease and wiped the endlessly falling tears with her hands full of wounds.
“Hkk…”
Dragons weren’t unique. Their uniqueness was born from the long amount of time they lived and the experience they built.
So Yeorum’s mind wasn’t very different from an 18 year old human’s, and the training she had gone through until now was far too severe for an 18 year old human to handle.
“Ukk, hupp… uht…”
The Regressor pondered.
In order to remove the limit of the mana capacity that was sealed tightly shut, that person had to live through a painful period of time that screamed of death without running away from it. However, Yeorum being a ‘dragon’ was where the problem lied.
“Ukk, uhk…”
To beings with good memories, a failure was something to be feared. Right now, Yeorum still vividly remembered the emotions she felt the first time she was met with a failure. Such a memory will continue to grab her by the ankles as shackles and make her like an elephant restricted by a rope from its youth, that cannot escape from it even after reaching adulthood.
“Huuk… uhk…”
For dragons with their good memories, failures had an inertial force that tended to become a habit, but one failure was still fine because the depth of that failure was still relatively shallow.
“Nnn… hkk…”
With more frequency came a deeper range of experience and unfortunately, failure was also an experience of its own. Such experiences will tangle deeply into her ankles as more shackles that then make it increasingly more difficult for her to overcome.
Therefore, Yeorum had to do this through now. If she didn’t do it now, she might never be able to.
And Yeorum will die at the end of her Amusement.
“Huukk… ukkk…”
So by the time the child almost stopped crying, he opened his mouth.
“If your emotions get the best of you, you might go the wrong way.”
“…”
“Let’s think about it again after you calm down.”
Those were far too crude words.
***
As she stopped crying, the sea yet again turned silent.
“When we were playing there…”
Yeorum opened her mouth with a murmur.
“…it was so fun.”
“You mean Las Vegas.”
“Nn. It was really… really really fun. If things could be that fun, maybe it’ll be fine to live for just 20 years and die.”
“…”
“You know… so I thought…”
The ripples of her first failure were already moving her mind.
“…Is there a meaning to a long life?”
“…”
“Even if it’s a short life, if I, was to enjoy that time… wouldn’t that be a good enough life already?”
She was about to crumble mentally.
“Thinking like that, I realised there was no more point in struggling underneath, so I came up.”
“…”
“I’m, done weeping now. I’m not emotional. But I still want to stop and go back. As I said, I’m very tired and I just want to rest.”
He didn’t reply.
Humans, if they so wished, could conquer Mount Everest, but some humans had trouble getting up from their bed in the morning. It was a difference in their willpower. Beings with their willpower snapped cannot do anything and that was her current state of mind.
It was a difficult issue. In what ways could you encourage a bird who lost its wings after a crash that now fears flying to fly again…
At the end of a deep contemplation, he opened his mouth.
“Yes. You’re right. There’s nothing good with living a long life.”
“…”
“But you told me that you are not getting stronger to survive.”
“Nn…?”
“Didn’t you say that you had words you had yet to convey? I thought you wanted to say something to your oldest unni and your dead youngest unni.”
“…”
“You have to tell them those words.”
Yeorum wasn’t trying to get stronger to survive. Her primal goal was revenge.
“You have good memories for no reason, fuck…”
She grumbled but couldn’t return any words.
“Let’s go one more time. This time, I will watch over you from behind. I wasn’t expecting you to force through the depths by yourself in the first place. There is a limit to what a person can do by themselves.”
“Did you not understand my words…? I didn’t come up because it was difficult. I told you it’s because it was painful.”
“It’s mental training. We can’t do anything about that because you will get stronger the more pain you overcome.”
“How…”
Yeorum seemingly choked on her words and bit her lips.
“How can you make it sound so easy as if you know how I feel…?”
“Why can’t I.”
“You are already strong… It must have been ages ago that you did something similar. And obviously you must have been better than how I am right now… You don’t know how much pain and torture I had to endure underneath, do you…”
With a powerless voice and yet with a definite attitude, Yeorum was refusing his approach. Once again, Yu Jitae had to stop before her mental ‘boundary’.
“You have no idea how painful it was…”
Like how the wealthy disregarded coins, the strong cannot understand the weak – that seemed to be her line of thought.
“So, let’s just go back… Nn…? I want to stop looking pathetic…”
Throughout the iterations, he had never experienced such a thing, and Yu Jitae had no history to reflect on in such an inexperienced world.
So what he would do now, was also a type of challenge for the Regressor.
“Unfortunately, you can’t do that.”
“…”
“You have to go in again.”
“Do you have to make me a retard till the end…?”
“Yu Yeorum.”
Yu Jitae called the child. As the reddened eyes and the cheeks tainted with tears turned towards him, he put his hand into thin air and took out the monocle.
“What?”
“Let’s do it one last time. Last time.”
“…”
“Let’s do it one more time, and stop if it doesn’t work.”
“Do what. Push me down the ocean again…? And then you say this and that from behind…?”
“That’s what I was going to do, but not anymore.”
“Then what. Isn’t that how a teacher is supposed to teach? And when I freak out saying I can’t do it, you’re going to tell me off again…”
“…”
“That’s what you’ve always been like… Well, probably because I never said I was scared or it hurt but…”
He looked at the child’s body. Feeling his gaze, Yeorum covered her body that was filled with wounds with her two arms but seemed to be ignorant of the wounds that were also on her arms.
“Right. That’s what I used to do.”
Will it be possible for me to fully understand you? Although Yu Jitae wasn’t certain, he also knew that he would never find out without trying.
“This time, let’s take a different approach.”
Saying that, Yu Jitae closed his eyes.
“Like I said, what kind of meaning…”
It was when Yeorum was about to complain from the frustration that something happened.
“Is there…”
Unable to finish her words off, Yeorum widened her eyes.
“Huh…?”
Over the monocle, she saw things that she had never seen before. Underneath the ashen sky of dusk, things as large and tall as apartments appeared before her.
“Uh, uhh…?”
It looked surreal.
What is that?
Yeorum thought to herself. When she looked at herself over the monocle, the authorities and blessings protecting her body had resembled simple stockings and leather armour, but what she was now seeing over the monocle was different.
Murky mana tangled and intertwined into a complex shape, mingling like a large mechanical device. She soon realised that those were authorities and blessings that all protected Yu Jitae’ body. Facing that oppressive, overwhelming and simply incomprehensible strength, Yeorum astonishedly pulled her body away from him with her bum still on the ground.
“What are you trying to do…? Show off your body…?”
That oppressive force made her stutter.
“I, I told you to take off your pants then…”
But Yu Jitae didn’t reply and with his eyes still closed, he meditated as something astounding happened.
That large and complex mechanism started to undo itself. Things resembling a pipe started to fall one by one, followed by plates. Those then dissipated into thin air as the general size of the mechanism started to decrease over time.
Soon when the large mechanical clunk was almost fully undone, Yu Jitae appeared to be wearing a black full-plated armour.
However, he didn’t stop. His helmet lifted; the breastplate dropped and his gauntlets disappeared alongside his shoulderplates. Almost all the authorities and blessings covering his body vanished.
“What do you see,” he then said with his eyes still closed.
The things that now remained on Yu Jitae’s body – Yeorum looked back at her own body and noticed that they were similar in both size and shape to the blessings protecting her body.
“…”
And before long, the place around his chest started to change into deep red, and Yeorum realised what it was despite her confusion. It was the mana of the red dragons that tended to arise from Yu Jitae’s body whenever he was teaching or massaging her.
“…”
But he didn’t stop there.
“I’m going to persuade you now.”
“Persuade…?”
He threw his hand through the void and took out a sharp dagger. What is he trying to do? Yeorum thought while rolling her eyes but that was when Yu Jitae shoved the blade through his arm without a single second of hesitation.
Stab–
Blood splashed over the sand.
Startled, Yeorum shouted out loud.
“Have you gone mad? What are you doing!”
She looked at his face and found his eyes forming a very faint frown. With all the authorities cancelled, his current body wasn’t too different from Yeorum’s body. It had been a while since he last felt his skin getting ripped by a blade; his muscles being torn apart and his bone being struck by a blade.
“What are you doing!”
“Let’s go one more time.”
“What? Is this what you meant by persuading? Keeping yourself hostage…?!”
Casually, Yu Jitae raised the blade and stabbed himself on his stomach. This time, it wasn’t shallow and his skin ripped open as blood oozed out.
“You must have gone mad…! What are you doing!?”
He did not stop.
Stabb– he stabbed through his hand.
Kugukk– he poked a wound on his chest.
Stab… slashed through the skin on his back.
Gritt… and slashed past his neck,
Kwang! He then struck his knee with his fist to break a portion of his bones.
“Stop! Stop! I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I don’t think you are in the right mind right now!”
Yeorum dashed up and held his arms. That was when something astonishing happened – Yu Jitae was being held back by her arms.
“Wait for a bit. I haven’t even started persuading yet.”
“How much more do you have to do? Like, what kind of persuasion is this in the first place?! You are not a child so why are you doing this–!”
It was then. Yu Jitae’s gaze once again landed on her body.
“Nn–?”
And he started creating wounds on his body again.
His gaze was somewhat odd.
Although Yeorum stopped, Yu Jitae did not. He saw through the wounds hidden behind her jacket so he formed push pins with his killing intent on the ground and laid his body on top of it.
Rip–
The sound was simple but the result was not. Blood flowed out like water and wetted the ground.
After standing up, he again looked at her body. Then, he struck his ribs with the handle of the dagger and with a thud, his rib cages broke.
“…”
Only then did Yeorum realise his intention.
And was baffled.
Until now, his eccentric actions came as a shock. Yu Jitae’s always strong and firm body, which she had trouble imagining with wounds, was being broken in real time. That alone was a big enough shock to Yeorum.
However, she realised that Yu Jitae’s eccentric action wasn’t that of a mindless self-injury. At last when his hands came to a stop, Yeorum observed his body in detail and found that all the wounds on his body resembled the ones she had.
She felt goosebumps.
The young red dragon felt her blood boil.
The red race worshipped the strong and not a single dragon in Yeorum’s memories was stronger than Yu Jitae. In other words, Yu Jitae was like a god to her.
And yet right now,
That ‘god’ was imitating her own wounds.
“With this, we are in a similar situation. My body is about the same as yours now.”
“…”
“So let’s go together one last time.”
“…”
“I will take part in the hardship with you. I won’t watch from behind and instead I will be by your side. Let’s suffer through the same ordeals, and endure through it together. Let’s take the flag from the deepest place and come out.”
“…”
“How does that sound.”
Yeorum bit her lips. For some reason, she felt like tearing up. Maybe it was because she had gotten quite emotional just then.
“Hn? Let’s go together.”
She dropped her head.
Right now, he wasn’t suggesting a teacher-student relationship. Enduring through a test ever so painful, suffocating and exhausting together – he was volunteering to be her partner.
“You know, doesn’t it hurt?” she asked.
“It does hurt. But didn’t you endure this already?”
“…”
Yeorum still couldn’t believe it was real. It was too big of an astonishment that she simply couldn’t believe it.
She slowly walked towards him and carefully glanced up at his body from his legs.
“…Don’t dodge.”
“What?”
She made a fist, and punched him by the solar plexus as hard as she could.
Bamm.
It went through. She had punched him before as well but his stomach that felt like steel back then wavered this time.
Just like a human.
Hupp–
She could also hear him gasp,
Just like a normal human…!
Yu Jitae grabbed his chest and took a few steps back.
“What was that for.”
“Huh…?”
“Why did you hit me.”
“D, did it hurt…?”
Her question made him wear a frown.
“‘Did it hurt’? After hitting as hard as you could?”
“Hnn? Nn…”
“Stand straight. I’ll help you find out yourself.”
“N, no. Wait sorry… Don’t hit me…”
Yu Jitae was in pain from her punch. Only after seeing that did this shocking situation feel realistic.
Yeorum shuddered. Something shot up from the depths of her heart.
Closing her eyes, she calmed her emotions and contained the tears that threatened to leave once again.
“So are you going to go, or not. Tell me.”
At last, Yeorum’s boundaries that had blocked others’ approach for a long time started to waver.
Biting her lips, she nodded. She felt like tearing up but suddenly thought of something absurd.
“But why would you cut yourself…? You are an idiot…”
Yeorum smiled with a crying face.
“I was going to heal them anyway…”
***
Yu Jitae called Clone 1 over and made him watch after Gyeoul. Throwing the fake skin off, the clone became Yu Jitae and nodded.
At midday, Yu Jitae and Yeorum made their bodies suitable for entering the water again. Even the degree of their recovery was managed to be the same, and Yu Jitae kept the wounds on his body for those that had yet to fully recover for Yeorum.
They were now fully ready to go. Before starting the training, he asked.
“Aren’t you doing your usual shout?”
“Huh?”
“You know that thing. Fishy Yeorum, ready to dive or whatever.”
Yeorum frowned.
“No.”
“Why.”
“I don’t want to do it now that you tell me to.”
“Alright… let’s start then.”
“Nn.”
Splash–
The two of them jumped into the water at almost the same time.
Their final challenge thus began.