Chapter 168: Socks and a Cap (4)
He always followed his mood or swung the sword when necessary. Now that he lowered it, a concern that he never had before appeared in his mind.
Yu Jitae stared at the young underwater devil looking at him whilst trembling.
– …It would be good, if you were a good person.
Gyeoul’s voice touched his ears. If there was a guy who followed Gyeoul’s standard of being a ‘good person’, what would that guy do in a situation like this.
Would he let it go?
No. If ‘that guy’ was a superhuman, he wouldn’t. In the end, monsters were the enemies of humanity and would decapitate humans after their growth.
Would he cripple it and let it go?
That was a half-assed thought. Humanoid monsters were all weak when young and depended a lot on their parents. Since its parents were already dead, it would soon die no matter what. Unless one was to simply lessen their own sense of guilt by making someone else the killer, there was no reason to cripple it so a guy that made a decision like that shouldn’t be a ‘good person’.
The baby monster trembled with fear and looked at him.
“Guruk… gururuk…”
It was saying, ‘Mommy, mommy…’
“…”
He remained silent.
It was snowing from quite some time ago, and even his arm that was holding the monster was starting to build up snow.
What would a ‘good person’ do.
What would have been a ‘good method’…
If it was simply picking up rubbish and feeding cats, it would have been easy but this was different.
Yu Jitae, who couldn’t be a good person, didn’t know what a good person’s method was no matter how much he contemplated.
He pondered.
And pondered.
Before finally letting go of the monster’s neck.
He couldn’t find the answer so he had no choice but to do whatever method he could use. Yu Jitae heaved a sigh.
With his right hand, he raised the sword again and with his left, he covered the monster’s eyes.
The frightened baby monster remained still while he pointed the sword at its throat.
Since its eyes were closed, the baby monster with its limited intelligence wouldn’t be able to tell what was happening.
After everything was over, the baby monster closed its eyes.
And didn’t move again.
Gyeoul almost finished shedding her skin. All the old shells like the scales, horn, nails and the cornea turned into mana. So far it was the same as what he saw before leaving the cave.
But now, there was something else that caught his attention.
As the old skin near the chest of the dragon was opening up, something white was emanating light from behind the scales that were especially thick and tough.
There were two sources of light.
The large one was the dragon heart that sustained Gyeoul’s life and the smaller one sticking right next to the large light source was ‘Fragment of the Ancient One’, also called the ‘Origin Fragment’.
[Ancient One]
It was the translation of Askalifa’s word for ‘Existence of Origin’, and referred to a green dragon in the distant past who was also the first dragon to ever exist.
It must have been great, and powerful, more so than the current Yu Jitae. Since they were from different species, it would have had more access to authorities unlike the Regressor who was stuck in the boundaries of a human being.
Because it was so great, despite eons having passed ever since the death of the Ancient One, its fragments remained and passed down in the hearts of the dragons.
If the hatchlings died or their Amusement came to an end, that fragment would jump over the boundaries of dimension and send data related to the hatchlings to Askalifa.
The Regressor remembered the distant past.
At one point in time, he thought that was the cause of everything.
After the end of the 4th iteration, the Regressor went through countless, numberless iterations. There was a time when he tried to forcibly remove that from a dragon’s heart and there was also a time when he tried to open a tunnel going through dimensions with the fragment.
In the end, it all failed.
After trying dozens of times, he realised that the Origin Fragment inside the body of the hatchlings wasn’t something he could do anything with.
– It hurts. I’m dying…
He could still remember someone’s aggrieved scream.
In the 4th iteration, after watching the Gold Dragon die in front of his own eyes, he squeezed the heart in an attempt to revive the dead heart and discovered the Origin Fragment at work.
When the planet Earth entered Apocalypse and everything he worked for vanished in front of him, the Regressor felt something shattering inside his head in real time.
In the next iteration, he started learning how to make chimeras, and for a period of time which he couldn’t even remember at this point, he indulged in researching the organism called dragons.
As if they had been censored, the memories from back then were hazy. It was just the technical skills that remained in a corner of his instincts.
– Please, stop…
– I’ll do whatever you say…
– Please don’t kill me. It hurts too much…
– Please…
…How did everything happen again?
Unlike the results that clearly remained, the process itself was hazy.
However, he could remember the shredding screams and the dragon fear and how he cut their vocal cords to reduce the noise. Since there was no reason to wait for the Apocalypse to arrive after a failure, he killed himself multiple times.
They were short – very short iterations.
In the 4th iteration, he met BY who later died.
In the 4th+ iterations, he researched chimeras in order to make use of the Origin Fragment.
In the 5th iteration, he locked the dragons up.
And in the 5th+ iterations, he got killed 1100 times.
Like how the memories of 5th+ iterations where he got repeatedly killed to enhance the Shapeless Sword were hazy in his memories, the 4th+ iterations where he dissected the dragons to use the Origin Fragment were similarly hazy in his memories.
…Looking back, it felt like his memories were stained with ink.
It didn’t feel that good.
Pakang–!
That was when his line of thought shattered.
The large ice crystal crumbled and the Blue Dragon lying inside it slowly hovered down before landing on the ground.
Kugugung…
As the heavy body landed, the hatchling blinked its eyes and appeared to be having trouble coming to its senses.
She didn’t fully shed her skin. The dragon heart only just started beating again and was starting to repump mana throughout her body.
Although the head, arms, stomach, legs and wings that were close to the heart were all completely clean now, old and dead scales were still on her feet which were the furthest away from the heart.
Bom had asked him to remove these for her.
“…”
Yu Jitae went to the feet of the large hatchling. With sharp nails and tender skin, the feet were almost as big as his upper body.
He carefully used his hands to remove the old scales. Though they were softer now, they still belonged to a dragon and were stubborn so he needed to use a lot of force to remove them.
It was usually what the mother and father of the hatchling would do. Powerlessly, the blue hatchling gazed down at him.
Yu Jitae remembered the socks Yeorum gave him as a gift on his birthday. He heard this recently from Bom, but a dragon giving ‘thin coverings of the feet’ to someone meant that they acknowledged them as their guardian.
That was why Bom and Kaeul were surprised back then, and it also meant that Yeorum had acknowledged him despite her actions.
However, forcibly removing the old scales from her feeble skin appeared to have been painful for Gyeoul. The hatchling twitched its feet and whenever that happened, Yu Jitae would get kicked a few steps back.
“Oi oi. Stay still, would you.”
He slapped her nails and the foot twitched even harder. However, it was easier after that. Gyeoul stopped twitching and he succeeded in removing all the dead scales from her feet.
Suddenly, the hatchling pushed its head forward towards him. The head was as enormous as his body.
Trying to eat me for putting you through something painful? The Regressor thought to himself.
After coming right up to his nose, the large lizard lowered its head and closed its eyes. When he blankly stood still, the hatchling growled, ‘…gururuk.’
Even the growl wasn’t clear and was careful like how Yu Gyeoul usually was.
But he still couldn’t understand what she was saying and had to ask.
“What.”
Seemingly dissatisfied with something, the large head shook left and right.
What. What do you want.
Seeing that he was still standing there, the hatchling opened its mouth wide and bit his entire body,
Ever so softly.
*
When the snow was about to stop outside the ice cave, Gyeoul recovered her body enough to polymorph back.
Until then, Yu Jitae was inwardly curious about how much the child would’ve grown. It didn’t really matter how much she grew, but the question was whether she would be the same as the previous iteration.
In the previous iteration, Gyeoul became an adult that looked like Bom after shedding her skin once. Would it be the same again?
In fact, he wished for it to be different, since the Blue Dragon probably hadn’t been happy in the previous iteration.
Before long, the large body was covered in light and soon revealed a human who possessed the unique identity of a dragon.
There, a blue-haired girl was sitting on the ground.
Covering her body with her two hands, she gazed up at him.
She was still short. Perhaps around 130 centimetres or so. Her chubby cheeks that were made after eating a lot in preparation for this moment vanished.
[Polymorph (S)] was a magic created in order to imitate humans and so the growth rate also followed a human’s speed. So after shedding skin, Gyeoul looked like she was 9 years old, and 11 at most.
It was explicitly different from the previous iteration. This should be a good sign.
It was then.
He suddenly remembered the back he saw in the living room when he first saw her.
The time a life was born.
Small back.
Fluttering hair.
Smile blooming on her face.
Fatigue hanging on her eyes.
Hands fidgeting with the shirt she was wearing for the first time.
Mouth that mumbled but couldn’t say a word.
“…Hello.”
But now, she was good at speaking and with a worried voice, she greeted.
“Right. Hello.”
“…Please give me clothes.”
He took off his coat and gave it to her. Watching her push her arms into the coat; watching her wear the coat that was several times bigger than her body and doing the buttons, he remembered something yet again.
Slums near the warzone, Dyrrel.
When the pale and thin pregnant woman wept out loud.
The nameless lady died even after getting helped by a midwife and gave birth to a dead baby. It felt like he had felt grief for the first time in a very long time back then as he saw the end of a life.
With just her existence alone, Gyeoul was teaching him something that had become foreign. Different from what Bom was teaching him every time.
It happened while he was indulged in his thoughts.
The moment she finished putting the coat on, her hair started falling out.
“…Ah.”
Startled, the child tried to stop the falling hair but they fell regardless of her effort so she later raised her hands and covered her head. After shedding the skin, even the human body had to change. Her hair had to regrow as well.
“…Ah, ah. Stop…”
Whether she knew that or not, Gyeoul was unable to stop the falling hair and covered the head with her hands before opting to put the coat above her head as well as her face.
Seeing that, he gave a faint smile. It was because he remembered how she covered her face with a frying pan in front of the tent.
“You don’t have to worry about it. It’s fine.”
“…”
“Your hair will grow back at night.”
Gyeoul didn’t say anything with the coat covering her face. Thus, Yu Jitae took out the cap he had prepared and tapped the child.
“…Nnnn.”
With her face still covered, she shook her head.
“Why.”
“…I have no hair.”
“It’s fine.”
“…Nnnn.”
“Like I said, it’s fine.”
“…It’s not fine.”
“Can you just look at me.”
Finally the coat was raised slightly and the blue pair of eyes stared at him. In his hand was a light blue cap.
“A gift for shedding your skin.”
The coat was finally lowered. He placed the cap above the child’s bare head and it looked a lot better.
Even then, Gyeoul appeared worried and didn’t know what to do. Yu Jitae, who couldn’t understand her from the day of her birth, still didn’t know the emotion that was causing the child to worry.
However, he did know one thing – the reason the dragon pushed its head forward at him just then.
The Regressor walked up towards the child and grabbed the visor of the cap and rotated it to the back. As soon as he grabbed the visor, Gyeoul thought he was taking the cap off and flinched.
However, he used his wide arms to hug the child and slowly pulled her head towards him to match her forehead with his.
“Good work. Yu Gyeoul.”
With their foreheads aligned, Gyeoul opened her eyes that were closed tight and stared at him. When she saw how their foreheads were touching, the worry disappeared from her face and was replaced with a blooming smile.
“You did a great job.”
Gyeoul slowly returned a nod. She reached out with her arms and wrapped them around his neck.
The child’s body was still small,
But she was no longer shivering.