Chapter 34 - Half-Fledged Dragon Speech

We descended the stairs with Taeseong in the lead. Magic lit our way, but the place still felt terribly eerie. The only deciphered sentence on the statue read, “The emperor rests here.” This had to be an imperial tomb. Weren't places like this usually fitted with all sorts of defenses against grave robbers? Perhaps even the strange layout outside, in the Garden of the Dragon Sword, had been deliberately designed to keep them out—to repel intruders without revealing the secret hidden here until the owner of the other key, the Dragon Bone Sword, arrived.

“Is this how archaeologists feel? It's scary not knowing what might jump out, but kind of exciting, too,” said one hunter, perhaps trying to shake off his nerves.

Another hunter beside him looked at him in disbelief. “You're excited right now, Oppa?”

“In a way, we're the first people to explore this imperial tomb. When will we ever get another chance like this?”

“Hah...” The woman shook her head, then turned to me. “What about you, Minjun?”

“Hmm... Assuming we make it back alive, yes. I am a little excited.”

The other hunters couldn't relate, but unlike them, I had one more reason to be excited: I might find a clue here that would help me use my dragon power.

“What? Am I the weird one? This place just gives me the creeps...” The woman shook her head, still baffled, and muttered to herself, “Maybe thinking that way is the only way they can stand it.”

I understood how she felt, though. This was someone's tomb, after all. Of course it felt unsettling.

We spent several minutes walking and talking about the tomb before one of the hunters, who had been following us in silence with her shoulders hunched since we started down the stairs, called out.

“Taeseong Oppa, wait a second. Doesn't it look like something's written here?”

Everyone, Taeseong included, turned toward the wall she was pointing at. Sure enough, something resembling writing was inscribed there in small letters. I couldn't be certain, but it looked similar to the deciphered sentence Taeseong had shown me earlier.

“I'll take a picture and bring it up when I make my report.”

Taeseong took a photo for his report, and several other hunters followed suit, apparently out of curiosity. I joined them and took one too, thinking I could show it to Sia and Rokan later.

'It feels strangely familiar...'

But just as I was about to put my phone in my pocket, a hunter behind me gave me a slight shove. My arms flailed as I instinctively reached for something to steady myself, and my hand landed right on the writing carved into the wall. As I leaned against it in an awkward pose, I heard a hunter behind me.

“Oh! Sorry. Are you hurt?”

“I'm fine. But...”

The wall had kept me from falling, but that wasn't what mattered now.

'I felt something the moment my hand touched the wall.'

A tingling sensation had run through my fingertips. To make sure, I cautiously touched the writing carved into the wall again.

“Ngh.”

I hadn't imagined it. Even that light touch sent the same tingling through my fingertips.

“Minjun, what's wrong?”

“There's... something strange about this.”

At Taeseong's puzzled question, I explained what I'd felt.

“Really? It looks like an ordinary wall.”

He put his hand against it too, and surprise spread across his face as soon as he touched it. He had felt the same tingle.

Just then, someone spoke up. “I think I know why.”

It was the voice I'd heard behind me earlier—probably the hunter who'd accidentally pushed me. Wasn't his name Hyeonseok? He raised his hand.

“My older cousin is a gate archaeologist. She tells me stories from work sometimes, and apparently this happens fairly often.”

“By ‘this,’ you mean a wall that tingles when you touch it?”

“Yeah. She says that always means the wall is coated with special mana.”

It was news to all of us, and everyone listened with interest. Taeseong, who had been listening quietly, said, “Then there's magic on this wall.”

“Right. Apparently, all anyone has to do is feed it a tiny amount of mana, and the magic inscribed here will activate.”

An imperial tomb indeed. They had even enchanted its walls with magic like this.

“Sounds like the same principle as an artifact,” Taeseong said.

“Exactly. That's what my cousin said too,” Hyeonseok replied.

“Then should I try it?”

Since he'd brought it up, Hyeonseok volunteered to feed mana into the wall, and the other hunters readily agreed. But...

“... That's strange.”

He had definitely fed mana into it, yet the magic hadn't activated.

“There's definitely magic inscribed here...”

Hyeonseok tried again, just in case, but nothing happened this time either.

“Move aside. Let me try.”

Seeing him struggle, Taeseong—the most knowledgeable about magic among us—stepped up and fed mana into it himself. But just like Hyeonseok, even after putting in more mana, he got no response.

“Hyeonseok, are you sure you've got this right?”

“I'm sure! My cousin's an expert. Ugh, there's no internet here, so I can't even look it up.”

While protesting his innocence, Hyeonseok suddenly turned to me. “Minjun, could you give it a try? I think you might be able to do it.”

The other hunters agreed that his suggestion made sense.

“Yeah, maybe Minjun can do it. You're the one who opened this hidden dungeon in the first place.”

It sounded plausible even to me. I approached the wall as they suggested and fed mana into it.

“...!”

At last, the letters carved into the wall began to glow. Everyone stared, openmouthed, but only for a moment. None of us had ever seen anything like this, and we swallowed nervously. Then the glow faded, and something like a hologram appeared before our eyes.

“Recording magic...!”

I'd never seen it myself, but I'd heard of it before. Recording magic like this was occasionally found in gates. I hadn't expected the spell inscribed on this wall to be one.

A moment later, what looked like holographic footage began to play. The first thing we saw was a young boy of about twelve, crying.

“Think that kid's the one buried here?”

“Looks like it.”

I had a feeling the recording showed the life of the emperor buried in this tomb. We couldn't understand their language, but we could make out roughly what was happening from the context.

A royal family ruled a small kingdom. Unlike his siblings, who were renowned for their martial skill, the boy had little talent for it. The kingdom's founder had been a Swordmaster, and all his descendants had inherited a gift for swordsmanship. For some reason, though, the boy's talent was pitiful. From what I could tell, he was also the youngest of his siblings and an illegitimate son who couldn't inherit the throne.

Perhaps that was why he faced subtle contempt not only from his older brothers, but even from the royal retainers. The recording captured his feelings so vividly that, for a while, I forgot I was inside a tomb.

Then one day, after what seemed like an endless succession of days so painful he wanted to die, a mysterious man came to the boy's bedroom carrying a sword.

Illegitimate or not, the boy was still royalty. Security around him would have been tight, yet the man had slipped through it as though it were nothing. Panicking, the boy screamed for the guards, but whatever his visitor had done, his voice failed to reach them. As the man drew closer, the boy trembled with fear.

Was he an assassin someone had sent? Or had he come to kidnap the boy for some other purpose?

But the man smiled and whispered something sweetly to him. Normally, there was no way I could have understood a language I'd never heard before either.

“‘... You have a talent even you don't know about.’”

Yet at that moment, for some reason, I felt I knew what he was saying. Before I realized it, I'd murmured his words aloud in Korean, and every hunter nearby turned to look at me.

“Minjun, what did you just say?”

I waved a hand at the hunter who'd asked and made an excuse. “Oh, I just figured that's what he was saying from the context.”

“... Well, it does fit.”

No sooner had the man finished speaking than a deep shadow appeared behind him. A shadow in the shape of a dragon.

“... Goosebumps.”

“What? So the person buried here really got his sword from a dragon?”

“So there's a reason this dungeon's called the Garden of the Dragon Sword.”

Had they taken the deciphered phrase on the statue, “a sword blessed by a dragon,” as a mere figure of speech? Perhaps because they hadn't believed dragons actually existed, most of the hunters couldn't hide their astonishment. But the recording kept playing.

After receiving the sword directly from the dragon, the boy's fate changed completely. Once dismissed as having no talent for swordsmanship, he began using his special power to overpower the older brothers who had looked down on him. In the end, despite being the youngest and born out of wedlock, he took the throne under the kingdom's custom of passing it to the most capable royal.

What followed was more or less what I'd expected. Using the dragon's power within his sword and his body, he united the continent.

'That's more than I imagined.'

And yet, after uniting the continent, the boy had become an emperor who commanded the world and feared nothing. Though he'd achieved everything he could, he looked dissatisfied for some reason.

“If it were me, I'd just retire and enjoy the rest of my life without a worry.”

“Everyone's got their troubles. You see it with top stars, too. They have money and fame, then go on some show and admit they're dealing with depression and panic disorder.”

As they watched the emperor's epic life unfold in the recording, the hunters briefly forgot everything else and became absorbed in it.

Seated on his throne, the emperor propped his chin on one hand and muttered with a dissatisfied expression.

<If I could use full-fledged dragon speech like the dragons, instead of this half-fledged version, what would it be like?>

Half-fledged dragon speech...

Wait.

'How can I understand what the emperor is saying?'

I wasn't imagining it, and I hadn't just guessed at his meaning. I'd heard and understood exactly what he'd just said. Until a moment ago, I hadn't understood a word, just like everyone else...

“Does anyone have any idea what the emperor's muttering?” I asked, wondering if the others could understand him too.

“No way. I can't make out a word,” said the hunter beside me, shaking their head.

“I even tried translation magic just in case, but it didn't work,” another said.

“Maybe because it's a language from another world?”

Even Taeseong, the highest-ranked mage among us, shook his head and said he couldn't understand it.

Then why was I the only one who could?