Who in the world is he?
That was a doubt which remained in BM’s head for a long time.
His name was Yu Jitae, and appeared to be in his late twenties. His height was a little short of 190 centimetres, while his physique was in an ideal state. Up to this part, was a rather common thing.
Normally, when he saw young outstanding superhumans, he would think to himself that they would be able to grow stronger in the future. However, he didn’t feel such a thing when he saw Yu Jitae.
…Can he even become stronger after that point? After realising that he was asking himself that, BM found himself to be ridiculous.
That short encounter was enough for him to see Yu Jitae as a completely insurmountably strong person. It was more than a mere strength level, and he contained an aura that suppressed his surroundings. It was a rare feeling even for the Returnee, who had lived in two different worlds.
How was that possible?
At such a young age?
But those questions would be difficult to be answered.
Right before Yu Jitae’s group was about to leave the labyrinth, BM looked at the blue-haired girl.
The red-haired lady was pretty as well. Her beauty was if she was from a different world, but his thoughts merely stopped there, and it failed to ring his heart.
However, it was different for the child.
“…”
“…”
Even when their eyes met, she did not wave her hand or bow as she merely stared blankly at himself.
But how could this be? This child…
‘She’s too…’
…too cute.
Thus, BM decided to do something which he had never done in his entire life. Carefully he approached the child and bent his back before reaching out. When he did that, the blue-haired girl stared at his hand before turning her body around and running up to Yu Jitae.
“…”
With faint disappointment, BM blankly stared at the place where the child had been, but after finding something, his eyes shot open.
“See you later.”
“Yes. See you sir.”
After sending them on their way, left alone, BM summoned the chimeras. They had arms like squids and had suckers.
“Search everywhere around here.”
The squid chimeras moved around the place where the blue-haired child had been standing and dug everything out. After groping around the dust-filled ground of the labyrinth for a long time, BM finally found a short black strand of hair.
“…”
A black strand of hair that was stuck on the body of the blue-haired child.
…This was definitely that man’s hair.
Raising the man’s hair up, BM headed into the corner of the workshop. When he opened a large door attached onto the wall, a large artifact telescope which was larger than a human body revealed itself.
[Hera’s Telescope]
It was a Level 4 artifact that could look into the essence of something with just a tiny piece of clue, and was one of the treasures that countries were greedy for.
‘Where in the world is the man’s strength coming from?’
Supported by immense curiosity, BM placed the man’s hair inside the telescope.
A murky light came out and scanned past the strand of hair and after seeing the result, BM was shocked.
‘How could this be…’
The man revealed inside the telescope wasn’t alone.
There were multiple individuals inside him.
Although it wasn’t common, it wasn’t a very unique occurrence either, and even BM himself was such a case, where he was both an ‘individual’, and ‘multiple beings’.
In other words, for an individual to be ‘multiple beings’ at the same time, there had to be more than one person inside that one body.
That meant that the man was…
‘…He was a chimera huh. I had no idea.’
In doubt, he placed his own hair into the telescope. What he saw inside himself were ‘multiple selves’, and there were about 13 in total. It was the same number as the number of chimeras attached to his hand, arm, neck, chest, legs, back and other places.
What was being shown inside the telescope was like a black screen having 13 red and blue dots placed here and there.
‘This is normal. Normally it should be like this…’
But the number of existences shown inside the body of the man, Yu Jitae, was so much that he had a hard time counting it.
A hundred? Or perhaps a thousand? No, that wasn’t it.
With a gulp, BM looked back into the telescope.
Metaphorically speaking, what he could see now was like this.
‘What in the world…’
There was a universe before him.
***
“Oi, I was joking so come out now.”
Yeorum tapped on the door of Bom’s room with her foot before walking away.
Gyeoul too was a dragon. She probably would have kept her ear perked up so there was no way she didn’t hear what Yeorum had said to Yu Jitae.
The door was slowly pushed open, as a pair of water-coloured eyes cautiously glanced outside the door.
Until then, Yu Jitae was receiving memories from his clone. It had been around three months since he had met the dragons and it was near the end of the year. A fairly important event of the seventh iteration was approaching Yu Jitae.
[Melissia Masquerade]
Approximately 100 new demons would be born and Wei Yan would finally rise to a Seat. In order to make it in time, the clone was busy moving around the Undetectables, gathering information.
‘It was a mess.’
Due to the sudden disappearance of Prototype X and the emergence of an unknown enemy, the demons’ level of caution had reached an extreme level. Among the memories of his clone, he could often see Wei Yan screaming in anger. He shouted at his underlings to find the enemy, and later ended up cutting off the fingers of a useless adjudant.
Since he was the killer of Prototype X, the demons called Yu Jitae, ‘X’. What he found funny was that there was a bounty under his name.
‘There are 15 highest grade magic stones for the bounty.’
That amounted to roughly 15 million dollars in cash. Since it was a large amount for individual demons, even the demons belonging to other organisations started moving after seeing that.
Of course, it did not matter at all.
‘Ryuunosuke, the leader of the 70-man raid team back then is keeping quiet.’
It was natural, considering how that old man loved his family.
‘In any case, I will continue observing them, my lord.’
After he finished reading the memories, he left the room, onto the corridor and found Gyeoul standing behind the half-opened door of Bom’s room without walking out. Their eyes had clearly met, and yet she pretended to have not seen him and fidgeted with the two ears of the blue teddy bear.
Yu Jitae walked up to her. As he went closer and closer, her hand fidgeting with the teddy bear’s ears became more and more awkward.
He came to her side and crouched down. The distance between them was small and it would be weird at this point for her to not see him, but Gyeoul seemed to be pondering on whether to turn around or not.
“Do you want to go somewhere on the weekend?”
“…!”
Hearing his words, Gyeoul immediately turned around with a somewhat tense look on her face. However, she wasn’t overly nervous like before, to the point she couldn’t do anything.
Nod…
“Where should we go.”
“…”
She remained quiet and threw short glances at him. Thinking back, he remembered how Gyeoul liked being at the Lake of Life.
“Should we go playing in the water?”
Her eyes turned circular, but her hands remained rolled up, and the option appeared to be slightly unappealing.
Therefore, this was an incorrect answer.
“Or, did you want to go eat some delicious food?”
Gaze: Delicious food?
“You know, things like chicken, pizza and pork belly.”
After staring at Yu Jitae’s eyes, Gyeoul slightly lowered her gaze. Once again, she didn’t look too eager and thus, ‘delicious food’ was also incorrect.
More so than Bom, Yeorum and Kaeul, he found Gyeoul to be the most difficult. Especially in situations like this, where it was hard to have a conversation, when he did not even know what the child wanted, he felt like he was facing a complex problem.
In front of yet another complicated problem, he was contemplating what to do. That was when Gyeoul pulled at his pants after hesitating for a bit.
Then, she looked at his face and slowly opened her mouth.
“…Sled.”
The answer was suddenly thrown out at him.
***
“Hold on tight.”
“…!”
A sled carved out of wood started speeding down a mountain ridge covered in snow. It started off slow from a level ground but suddenly picked up speed after reaching a slope.
Swishhh!
The sled travelled down the slope of snow as small flakes of the white snow splashed onto Gyeoul’s face. It was cold.
Excited, she shot her two arms up.
However, the gradient of the slope continued getting steeper before eventually resembling a cliff. Gyeoul hesitantly looked at the slope and felt her enjoyment slowly changing into fear. She turned her head and stared at Yu Jitae.
Gaze: Isn’t it going too fast?
…She had polymorphed straight after her birth, and was yet to fly, which was the most common thing for dragons. That seemed to be the reason behind her fear.
He thought about getting off if she was scared but the child seemed to be also feeling a faint thrill from it. Yu Jitae therefore extended his large arms forward and covered the child’s body with it.
“…Kyaa!”
Gyeoul’s chuckle tickled the Regresor’s ears.
They were at a barren mountain somewhere inside Haytling. Yu Jitae was thinking of going to a sledding slope in Lair’s entertainment district, but decided against it.
“Do you want another ride?”
Nod, nod!
It was so that they could sled without waiting in line.
The wooden sled roughly made of wood was decent, and the Regressor could use mana to get rid of obstacles in their path. Oblivious to his hard work, Gyeoul pulled down on his pants with a sparkling pair of eyes, asking him to start walking already.
“Let’s go.”
Yu Jitae reached his arms out to her. Gyeoul was about to walk into his arms like usual, but suddenly stopped. Then, she carefully extended her short fingers and held onto his hand.
“…”
What was she doing.
While he was confused about the child’s action, Gyeoul carefully pulled his arm forward. Yu Jitae naturally followed her lead as they walked up the slope hand in hand.
“…”
Gyeoul had seen Myung Yongha’s son walking while holding Myung Yongha’s hand, some time in the past. At the start, she didn’t think anything of it, but seeing them at the very end disappearing into the forest hand in hand, she had felt envious.
I want to hold hands and walk as well… thought Gyeoul.
Slip.
“…!”
But the steep mountainside was slippery, and she lost her sense of balance in an instant. Due to her fluster, she even forgot to use magic and could only shut her eyes tight.
That was when her body was suddenly lifted. Yu Jitae had raised the child up with one hand.
“…”
After being hugged by him, Gyeoul gave a wide smile.
“Let’s go up now.”
He immediately started using mana to fly up the mountain, like how they had climbed it the first time, but Gyeoul grabbed his sleeves, and conveyed her panic with her gaze.
According to the Regressor’s knowledge, that meant that she didn’t want to do something.
“Why.”
“…”
“Do you want to stop?”
Shake, shake.
“Then what.”
“…Walk.”
“You want to walk up?”
She nodded her small head. However, the slope was too steep for the child to walk on her own feet. After some contemplation, he raised her up and placed her behind his neck.
Being suddenly made to ride on someone’s shoulder for the first time in her life, Gyeoul wrapped her arms around his head in surprise.
“I can’t see the front.”
“…Ah.”
Her small pair of arms covering his eyes were undone.
Yu Jitae placed her on top of his shoulders and climbed up the mountain, and came down on a sled. He repeated it several times.
The smile did not leave Gyeoul’s face.
*
They sledded for quite a long time.
Darkness started painting the nearby area as the cold wind became a level colder.
The Regressor whose body was being protected by dozens of [Blessings] did not feel any coldness, but Gyeoul in her human form had her nose and cheeks flushed. She wouldn’t die of coldness even if left alone, but she still felt it.
Drowning into his inner alternate dimension, Yu Jitae carried some camping equipment out and installed it in the real world. Meanwhile, Gyeoul sat down on the floor making a small snowman by herself.
“Do you want to eat now?”
But the moment Yu Jitae’s words fell, she started flickering her eyes.
After quickly gathering enough twigs, the Regressor used an ignition rock to create fire. He put clean water into a pot and started boiling instant noodles inside. He wanted to let the dragons have the best food all the time, but having noodles in a place like this, in this sort of weather, had its own uniqueness that could not be compared to having luxurious food.
…At least that was what he saw in a certain movie.
Thinking back, he could kind of remember having a similar experience in a distant past, near the start of the regressions. While revising through his faded old memories, the Regressor boiled noodles.
Meanwhile, Gyeoul entered extreme nervousness.
Hiding behind the door of the tent, she held her two hands into fists and glared at Yu Jitae. She could remember the words Yeorum had said a few days back.
– …But after playing like that, it’ll get cold.
– Do you know what you would need then?
– Ahjussi would boil a warm soup for you. For you alone.
Like a prophecy, her words were turning into reality, but it was still lacking. There was one thing which Gyeoul really wanted to hear from Yu Jitae.
Thump thump…
The blue-haired child bit on her lips and glared daggers at him. Soon, after finishing the instant noodles, Yu Jitae carried the pot and approached the child. He then placed a small bowl along with a fork and a spoon in front of her.
After receiving the cutleries, Gyeoul’s tension reached its max level. The pot was placed on the ground, and slowly he opened his mouth.
Should be now…!
“Here you go.”
Wahh!
A bright smile bloomed on her face.