Chapter 45 - The Dungeon (Formerly)

'He's going to turn that gate... into a training ground?'

How could he drop a line like that without explaining anything? He could at least have waited until later to tell me.

Anyway, after Rokan announced that he was turning the gate into a training ground, my mind filled with questions. The dungeon belonged to the Maple Guild, so how was he going to buy it? And why turn it into a training ground for me?

There was so much I wanted to ask, but he said he would explain after the spar. For now, all I could do was swing my sword as hard as I could for the next hour.

I gritted my teeth and traded hundreds, thousands of blows with Rokan. Swinging my sword without a moment's rest was bad enough; watching every strike get blocked with ease was mentally agonizing. More than once, I wanted to drop my sword, but I gritted my teeth and endured the hour.

And finally...

"Well done."

Rokan brought the spar to an end. The moment it was over, I collapsed where I stood, unable to say a word.

After swinging my sword for over an hour, my palms were red and hot, and my wrists throbbed whenever I moved them.

Was that a spar, or torture?

While I lay there without the strength to speak, Rokan cast a healing spell on me and brought me a bottle of water. I drained it in one go and let out a ragged breath.

"... I thought I was going to die."

"But you didn't, did you?"

Rokan joked, but he also praised me for keeping up despite how hard it must have been.

I took a sip of the additional potion he'd given me, breathing heavily as I stared in silence at the sword Rokan had planted in the ground. It had been perfectly fine before our spar, but now its blade was chipped in several places. That drove home just how grueling the session had been.

Rokan pulled the sword free, then used dragon speech to take us back to his lair. Still not fully recovered, I dropped into a chair and asked, "Lord Rokan, could you tell me about that dungeon now?"

He'd said he would turn the entire Garden of the Dragon Sword dungeon into my training ground. After that spoiler, curiosity had nearly driven me mad for the whole hour.

"Of course. Were you that curious?"

"Of course I was. You could have waited until now to tell me."

When I complained lightly, Rokan smiled. "I told you then on purpose. I wanted to see how well you could maintain your focus with that on your mind."

Ah. So that had been part of the training too. He hadn't just been messing with me.

... Though did that sort of thing really help?

"Well, I suppose I should start with my visit to the dungeon."

Apparently, Rokan had entered the Garden of the Dragon Sword yesterday for a second investigation, alongside representatives of the Maple Guild and the Hunter Association. I'd joined the team for the first investigation instead of him, but naturally, we'd all come away empty-handed.

I should have known what to expect when the dungeon's clear conditions reset. Once we went in, we found that, as if by magic, it had returned to the way it was before that incident.

A guild representative had asked, "Could the secret be in your sword, Mr. Minjun?" They asked me to draw it and open the entrance to the tomb, but I made the excuse that it had broken completely after the incident. It hadn't seemed right to let the world learn this secret concerning dragons. So the first investigation had inevitably turned up nothing.

The Maple Guild must have been determined to uncover the dungeon's secrets, because they assembled a larger team for a second investigation. That was when Rokan quietly joined them. But that team came away empty-handed too. They needed an artifact containing dragon power, such as a Dragon Bone Sword, to get inside. In the end, all their efforts were wasted, and they left the dungeon with nothing.

"Once I made sure everyone else had left, I slipped back in."

Rokan entered the dungeon alone and inserted a spare Dragon Bone Sword from his pocket dimension to open the passage beneath the tomb. After thoroughly searching its interior, he reached even the space where Minos had trapped me.

At first, I wondered how he could go in and out of that space so freely. But on second thought, Rokan was a real dragon. To him, entering it must have been as easy as walking into his own room. No matter how intricate the dungeon was, a dragon would hardly be trapped in something made by a mere human.

In any case, Rokan said he had entered what he believed was the space where I'd been trapped and begun investigating.

I say "believed" because what he saw was quite different from the scene I'd first encountered there. It was an alien landscape, as though countless dimensions had been cut apart and layered over one another. Cracks ran through it in places too, making it a sorry sight. Rokan described it as something like performance art by an artist suffering from hallucinations.

And most importantly...

"There was no sign of that Minos fellow. For someone obsessed with dragon speech not to react even when a dragon came calling, perhaps..."

"He was scared?"

"No. I couldn't find even a trace of his remnant consciousness. I suspect that seeing you use dragon speech satisfied his longing, and the stubborn remnant he'd left there faded to some extent."

... Had he genuinely wanted nothing more than to see a human use dragon speech? In a way, wasn't that true madness?

"But that's not the important part."

His throat apparently dry from talking so long, Rokan fetched a glass of water, drank it, and continued. "That Minos fellow seems to have been out of his mind in more ways than one. Emperor or not, I never imagined he'd gathered so many artifacts capable of manifesting dragon power."

In the tomb, Rokan had found not only Dragon Bone Swords but all manner of artifacts that could manifest, amplify, and sustain dragon power.

"It seems he lived in a different dimension from mine, so I can only estimate their worth. But by the standards of the world I lived in... each item was worth two or three years' budget for a small-to-medium-sized territory."

Rokan shook his head, seemingly recalling what he'd seen. It wouldn't be strange for an emperor to own a few such treasures, but Rokan said he'd found well over a hundred.

"Every artifact he'd collected was linked into a single magic circle. When I examined it, I found it packed with formulas designed to assist the use of dragon speech."

In other words, the entire space had been designed not merely to manifest and amplify dragon power, but to make a meaningful difference to someone's ability to use dragon speech.

"I'm thinking of taking Shasha there to see it soon."

For Rokan, a dragon himself, to say that, the circle's ability to assist dragon speech must have been astonishing.

"..."

The more I learned about Minos, the more staggering his obsession seemed. He'd spent eons as a remnant of consciousness in his own tomb and poured all that money into it just to see that one thing. From what Rokan said, the magic circle inscribed there was no ordinary one either.

Sorry I misunderstood you, Minos. I thought you were a deranged psychopath, but you were just one hell of a lunatic.

"Looking at it, only one thought came to mind."

"That it's... the perfect place for me to train?"

Rokan nodded. "Yes. It'll need some adjustments, but it's more than adequate for your training. Even for us dragons, building a system so perfectly suited to a human dragon-speech user would be no easy task."

If Rokan went that far, that settled it. The thought that I might be able to train even more systematically than I did now filled me with excitement.

But the feeling didn't last.

Wait. Wasn't that place a tomb? Which meant I'd be spending long stretches training near someone's buried body.

'That's going to feel pretty creepy.'

Who trained inside the tomb of an emperor from another world—one revered by his people as a wise ruler while he was alive?

Seeing me lost in thought, Rokan gave a small laugh. "I can guess what you're thinking, but bear with it. It was thanks to that human that you took your first step toward understanding dragon speech."

... He had a point. I'd gone through hell there, but I'd also made real progress in using dragon speech. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that, thanks to Minos, the day I could see Sia had drawn closer.

"... You're right."

"Anyway, now you know. I'll have my hands full buying and modifying the dungeon."

"But Lord Rokan, what if the guild... won't sell it?"

The discovery of the imperial tomb had probably sent its value soaring, and the dungeon was also extremely useful for training rookies. If I were the Maple Guild's guild master, I wouldn't sell it easily.

But Rokan answered as though I'd asked something obvious. "They'll sell. Don't you humans have a saying? If money can't solve a problem, consider whether you're using enough of it."

Oh. Sia alone carried more expensive artifacts and treasure than I could count. How much wealth must Rokan, a former Dragon Lord, have?

I marveled at his unimaginable fortune, but I also felt newly grateful that he was willing to spend so much on me.

"Yes, sir. Thank you so much, Lord Rokan."

"No need to thank me. Rest a little longer, then do some recovery training before you go."

"Thank you!"

"Oh, and one more thing."

Rokan called to me, then paused to think. "I seem to be giving you a lot of good news today."

"You mean...?"

I looked at him, full of anticipation.

"I think you and Shasha can spend a little more time together now."