Chapter 7 - Oppa, How on Earth Did You Do That?

After a quick lunch, we arrived at the D-rank gate we planned to clear that day. The recommended party size was two, and it was an ordinary D-rank gate known to contain lizardmen.

“Sia, do you have any equipment?”

“Yeah! I've got plenty in my pocket dimension. Why? Did you forget yours, Oppa?”

“No, I brought mine. I was asking in case you didn't have any.”

Not much had changed for me since a year ago, so the equipment in my pocket dimension would still be there. But Sia was different. After being reincarnated, she'd probably lost both the pocket dimension she'd used in her previous life and everything inside it. I'd assumed she had no equipment, but she was already prepared, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Except...

“...?”

The first piece of equipment Sia took out was, of all things, a sword. There was something extraordinary about it just from the way it looked. I didn't need to hold it to know how absurdly powerful it was.

Still, I glanced at her, a little puzzled. For Sia, a dragon, to draw a weapon at a mere D-rank gate was absurd enough. But more to the point, wasn't Sia a mage? Shouldn't she be using a wand instead of a sword, if she meant to keep pretending she was a D-rank mage?

Just as I was wondering about that, she held the sword out to me.

“Here, Oppa. Use this.”

“... Huh?”

“It's a present from me. I thought it would suit you.”

Caught off guard, I didn't know what to say for a moment.

“Don't you like it? Should I give you something else?”

“No, no, of course I like it. If it's from you, Sia, I'd be happy with a toothpick. I'm just a little stunned. Thanks. I'll put it to good use.”

“There's more, Oppa.”

“Huh? There's... more?”

“Yeah. Just wait a second.”

As if the sword had been only the beginning, Sia began pulling all kinds of equipment from her pocket dimension: armor, a helmet, a cloak, accessories, and more. Judging by the caliber of the sword she'd just given me, I doubted any of it was ordinary. And sure enough, when I put the pieces on, I could feel something extraordinary emanating from each one.

“Thank you, Sia. I'll put them to good use.”

“Hold on, Oppa. There's still a lot more.”

She kept drawing artifacts from her pocket dimension. She'd told me dragons filled their lairs with treasure, but this was beyond anything I'd imagined.

“Sia, does this sword... have a name?”

Amid all that, I asked her about the sword. The other equipment was impressive too, but when I gripped its hilt, I had the strange impression that some invisible thread connected me to it. Though I'd held it for the first time today, it felt familiar, as if I'd been using it for years.

Sia looked a little surprised. “It's... a Dragon Bone Sword.”

A Dragon Bone Sword. It wasn't simply that it was a good weapon. Something about it felt right on a deeper level.

Still, to carry all this absurd equipment just to kill a few lizardmen... That felt strange in its own way.

Anyway.

Once I was ready, I stood with Sia at the gate entrance, my heart pounding. I was nervous about clearing a gate again after so long, but memories of how we used to be together filled me with emotion.

Then a thought struck me.

‘Is Sia... okay?’

I looked over at her. I'd briefly forgotten that a gate was where she'd once met a terrible death. It might have been 2,500 years ago for her, but didn't dragons remember everything? After all the trauma I'd suffered over the past year, perhaps she had some of her own about gates, even if she hadn't said so.

“Are you okay?” we asked at the same time.

The moment I asked Sia, she asked me the very same thing. We smiled at each other.

“You were worried I might have trauma too, weren't you, Oppa?”

I nodded. Perhaps touched by those few words, Sia suddenly kissed my cheek.

“I'm really fine, so you don't need to worry about me at all. More importantly... are you okay, Oppa? After what happened...?”

“Yeah. I'm fine too. I was worried, but I didn't expect to feel this okay.”

To be honest, I'd been a little nervous before entering the gate. But the moment we stepped inside, the trembling was strangely gone. Far from feeling any trauma, I even found myself looking forward to what came next.

“I'm glad. Let's finish up quickly and go get mala tteokbokki for dinner!”

From the sound of it, we might have been out for a stroll around the neighborhood instead of inside a gate. Then again, Sia was beside me, and with the artifacts she'd given me, I didn't feel tense at all. It practically felt like a date.

We walked slowly through the gate, waiting for monsters to attack. Before long, a few lizardmen appeared at our ten o'clock. They made their distinctive cries and watched us warily.

“Oppa, over there.”

“I see them!”

“I'll watch from here. You can handle that many on your own, right?”

“Of course. I'll be right back.”

Sia wished me luck and said she'd help if it looked as though I might be in danger, unlikely as that was. I doubted I'd need her. The difference in strength was just too great.

Unlike us, the lizardmen seemed to sense danger. They shifted from wary vigilance to a fighting stance.

“Kreeeek!”

Once they were close enough, I felt a pleasant hum from the sword and swung at them without hesitation.

SHNK!

Before one could even react, its head was cleanly severed.

I'd thought my fighting instincts would be rusty after such a long break, but perhaps the rank reassessment that morning had helped. I had no trouble swinging my sword. No—in fact, whether it was thanks to the equipment or not, I seemed more skilled than before. My swings felt better, and I could see the lizardmen's movements much more clearly: the length of their strides, the paths traced by their crude weapons, everything.

I kept swinging, like a fish back in water. The old me might not have been able to kill them in a single stroke, but now I had the ridiculously overpowered weapon Sia had given me. The lizardmen fell to single blows without putting up any resistance.

“Phew.”

I'd expected things to be somewhat easier with equipment this good, but not this easy. I turned toward Sia. What was so impressive about killing a few lizardmen with such an incredible weapon?

Yet she was staring at me in astonishment.

“Oppa, that was... incredible.”

“Oh, come on. It wasn't much.”

To a dragon like Sia, killing a few D-rank monsters couldn't be a big deal. I thought she was only saying it to boost my confidence, but...

“I'm not just saying that, Oppa. I mean it.”

I could hear it in her voice. She was genuinely, purely impressed by what I'd just done.

‘What? Is she serious?’

* * *

The sword Sia had given Minjun was no ordinary blade. It was a Dragon Bone Sword, made from a dragon's bones. The weapon itself was so powerful that she'd expected him to do well. But something else had surprised her.

‘He drew out the sword's power.’

Minjun hadn't meant to, but he'd unmistakably awakened and used the power dwelling within it. The amount he'd awakened was small, yet the fact that he'd done it at all was immensely significant. After all, no one who had drawn out a Dragon Bone Sword's potential had been ordinary.

‘Dragon Bone Swords... recognize their owners' potential.’

Before Sia came here, to the modern world, swordsmen in her world had known Dragon Bone Swords as “swords that find their owners.” There had been a common soldier who became a Swordmaster with one such sword, and the king of a weak nation who unified a continent with nothing but a blade. There were many more great figures whose names anyone would recognize.

‘Could my Oppa become someone like that?’

Imagining Minjun leaving his mark on the pages of hunter history, Sia smiled softly.

But there was one thing she didn't know. In her world, the person who had once made the greatest use of the power dormant in a Dragon Bone Sword... was a being whose very name had long ago become taboo among dragons.

* * *

As they gathered the spoils, Sia told Minjun the sword's secret: that he'd drawn out a little of its dormant power, and what those who had drawn it out in the past had accomplished.

It was a startling story for Minjun.

“So what you're saying is, the sword you gave me isn't just any sword—it's something much more special... and I drew out the power hidden inside it?”

“That's right, Oppa.”

Even after hearing her explanation, Minjun still looked stunned.

“I had a talent like that...?”

His muttered question carried another, obvious one: ‘If I have that kind of talent, why am I still only at this level?’

It hadn't shown up during his rank assessment. And why would he have been born with such a strange talent in a world without dragons in the first place? Having a talent was clearly a good thing, but Minjun couldn't help feeling bewildered.

“At this rate, my Oppa might become a ranker in less than a year!” Sia said playfully.

Despite her teasing tone, she took the possibility quite seriously. Even before this, she had believed Minjun could become a ranker if she gave him her full support. In fact, she'd planned to do just that. But if Minjun had this much potential of his own, he might be able to achieve something that great without her help at all.

Not that it would be easy.

“If you believe in me that much, Sia... I guess I'd better try.”

“How can my Oppa be so dependable?”

He was dependable, but that only made him all the more adorable to her. Sia ruffled his hair.

“Sia, you're messing up my hair.”

“That gives you a whole different kind of charm.”

Looking embarrassed, Minjun covered his face with one hand and pushed hers away with the other. Sia only enjoyed his reaction, smiling fondly at him.

“Well, let's go!”

It was time to move on and hunt more lizardmen. Feeling as if they were on a date, Sia and Minjun wandered slowly through the gate. After a while, they spotted a group of lizardmen heading somewhere. Watching them, Minjun prepared to ambush them.

‘If this sword has that kind of power... I'll use these guys to get used to it quickly.’

He hadn't known about the sword's power when he'd first swung it. Now that he knew he could tap into its potential, he couldn't just swing it without thinking.

‘Forget everything else. Focus on drawing that power out.’

Of course, deciding to do it wouldn't let him draw out more of the power dwelling in the sword right away. He still didn't know what it felt like to draw it out, or even exactly what that power was.

But...

‘Visualization matters for this sort of thing.’

Now that he'd discovered the possibility, he had to develop it somehow. Minjun toyed with the sword's hilt until the moment was right, then sprang toward the group.

“Kreeek?!”

While the lizardmen reeled from the sudden ambush, Minjun quickly swung at the one in front. His body felt light, and he could see the lizardman's movements clearly. But he couldn't feel the power Sia had described.

‘I don't get it.’

Again. This time, too, his sword struck true, piercing a lizardman's chest.

‘What exactly was Sia talking about?’

He still had no idea what energy he'd supposedly drawn from the sword, or how he'd done it. Not even as he tried swinging it in different ways. Not even as the lizardmen fell helplessly before it.

And yet, to Sia, it was clear that Minjun was drawing out the potential within the sword—just in a slightly different way from other Dragon Bone Sword users.