Chapter 24
Chapter 24
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Translator: Silver Dragon
Chapter: 23
Chapter Title: White Space!
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Smack!
Kim Juseon's fist landed squarely, shaking Baek Yeonhwa's head violently.
Her pupils trembled, tears welling at the edges of her golden eyes.
He was certain once more.
She had already come back.
"Grrr... grrr..."
Baek Yeonhwa staggered backward.
She stabbed the ground with her tail to barely regain her balance, but what shook wasn't her body—it was her heart.
"Are you still going to fight?"
Instead of an answer, ragged breaths leaked out.
The growling turned bit by bit into human breathing.
"Hah... ugh...!"
Before long.
The dragon's roar had vanished.
What remained in its place was a girl's sobs.
"Hic... I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Forgive me."
"......"
The collapsed Baek Yeonhwa repeated her apologies endlessly.
Words poured out blindly, unclear whom they were for.
"Get a grip, Baek Yeonhwa. What you need to do right now isn't kneel."
Kim Juseon didn't approach.
He didn't extend a hand.
What was needed now wasn't apologies—it was action.
"You know it too. If this continues, it'll escalate to all-out war between the 3rd and 5th Floors. The Interlayer War will break out again."
The weight on her shoulders was different.
Even if unwanted, once shouldered, responsibility had to be taken.
"Hah, but how can I interfere with what the Azure Dragon decrees—"
"The reason the Azure Dragon descends is because of you, Baek Yeonhwa."
"That's—"
"Think about it. Why did the Azure Dragon suddenly start descending? Why now, of all times?"
In the urgency, he interrupted with questions.
Baek Yeonhwa slowly looked down at the wound on her abdomen. The stab from the assassins had already healed, but the bloodstains on her white robes remained vivid.
"......It was because of the assassins."
She pointed it out cautiously, yet clearly.
"At first, I thought they came to test Luca. But that wasn't it."
She traced back through her memories.
Baek Yeonhwa's face grew paler by the moment.
"They had some other intent. Their goal was to harm me and lure the Azure Dragon down here."
After that, she rampaged, swept up in the Azure Dragon's power.
She didn't know the assassins' true purpose.
She knew there was an honorable title on the 4th Floor called Dragon Slayer—but.
'If they could only go as far as getting beaten by Baek Yeonhwa, they weren't aiming to hunt the Azure Dragon.'
Their sole aim was to summon the Azure Dragon here.
Were they plotting a second Interlayer War?
He wasn't sure, but that wasn't important right now.
"Baek Yeonhwa, you've realized it while saying it yourself."
"What... what do you mean?"
"That the Azure Dragon is descending here to save you."
Silent, she slowly looked up at the sky.
Lightning strikes grew fiercer, now hitting nearby buildings and sparking fires.
The lightning rods on the structures couldn't withstand it.
A disaster, plain and simple.
A god-like disaster descending, risking everything for Baek Yeonhwa alone.
"I know. The Azure Dragon isn't a welcome presence to you."
"......!"
Baek Yeonhwa jerked her head up in shock.
A mix of irreverence and being caught.
"But I have to ask."
Baek Yeonhwa.
"Have you ever once refused it?"
"Pardon...?"
"I've heard about the Heavenly Decree Record. About how your life has unfolded."
Baek Yeonhwa's head drooped.
"Or have you ever once raised your voice and screamed?"
Her hands slowly clenched.
"What... what does that even mean?"
Resentment she'd chewed and swallowed leaked out. What do you know?
For the first time, her voice held faint reproach and anger.
The Heavenly Decree Record's chamber, the descending voice of the Azure Dragon.
The time she'd endured their pressure with her small body wasn't for others to judge lightly.
"What meaning? Every moment of my life stems from him! My friend's death! The reason I've built my life! My dreams! In the end, all of it—all...!"
Wasn't mine.
A sigh poured out with tears.
Her life was a novel.
Or more simply, a movie.
Every backdrop was a set, every person an actor, every narrative a script.
So the her who reached this point now—was she truly.
Someone who could be called 'Baek Yeonhwa'?
Or merely.
A 'character' named 'Baek Yeonhwa' in the Heavenly Decree Record?
Finding the answer might be too much.
But what Baek Yeonhwa felt was surely the latter.
It wasn't that she'd been empty from the start.
Everything she'd believed was her life was suddenly stripped away.
The lost woman could do nothing but follow.
Boom—!
"Even this moment right now—"
Kim Juseon's voice pierced her ears amid the fierce thunder.
"Is it written in the Heavenly Decree Record?"
Your life's epic, recorded therein.
In the cruel prophecy she'd read until worn—
"No."
There was no such scene.
Her life being threatened? Not once before her forties, at least.
"Then, that means."
He grabbed her arm and pulled.
Ridiculously, this crisis had created the one moment.
"This moment—this is the first time you can truly be Baek Yeonhwa."
In her 23 years of life so far.
The one day not recorded in the Heavenly Decree Record.
Pushed from behind, she stumbled forward step by step.
The black path written by the brush of the Heavenly Decree Record.
Baek Yeonhwa, who had walked atop those words, deviated for the first time into the white space.
"Go. Tell him."
One step, another.
As her footsteps stained the Heavenly Decree Record like inkblots.
"The emotions inside you right now—they're surely yours."
Looking up at the sky, Baek Yeonhwa could feel it.
The Azure Dragon's gaze clearly looking down at her.
Her throat felt choked.
Something huge and thick blocked it, refusing to let words flow.
Even so.
His words had brought her here.
23 years.
The moment she first stepped into the white space of the Heavenly Decree Record.
Before long.
The role faded away.
And the woman hidden within revealed herself.
Then, finally, the blockage in her throat vanished.
Not as a role that mustn't speak lines outside the script—but as Baek Yeonhwa—
"Answer me, my god."
Her first words spilled out.
"That all life flows within a fated yoke—"
Fists clenched tight.
Were they trembling from fear?
"The things I like, the things I hate—"
No, it was an inexplicable sense of liberation.
"My happiness—! And my misfortune too—!"
All of it.
"Was all of it fake!"
Kaboom—!
A massive bolt of lightning struck.
But clearly, it differed from the previous rage-tinged blue thunder.
Baek Yeonhwa put more strength into her voice.
In this moment, the Azure Dragon surely heard her.
Her plea reached the heavens.
"Even my efforts were all meaningless! That—! That's because! In truth!"
Boom—! Kaboom!
"Anyone could have done it! Not me!"
Lightning struck near Baek Yeonhwa.
Yet she didn't flinch in the slightest.
"At 17! Did you kill my friend Miso-hwa too? I wailed for three days and nights, but in the end, at her grave, I smiled and swore—!"
"To inherit Miso-hwa's dream of becoming the world's greatest master—!"
In the end.
"It was all just your damn script in the Heavenly Decree Record!"
Kaaa—! Kaboom!
Just as the Azure Dragon had meddled deepest in Baek Yeonhwa's life.
She was the sole human with the deepest bond to the Azure Dragon.
Baek Yeonhwa knew the meaning of the pouring lightning.
This wasn't anger.
Not judgment or punishment.
Nor fury at betrayal.
What fell from the sky now was—
"Are you crying?"
Tears.
"Are you sad?"
Tears from an utterly inept father.
Who'd never loved nor been loved.
Only after escaping the coercive scenario the Azure Dragon called love did the girl realize.
She wasn't just a role—she was a daughter.
Her chest ached sharply.
At the sorrow of the being who'd most swayed her life, Baek Yeonhwa's heart throbbed too.
In the end, the time they'd spent together surely existed.
And the most fearsome yet reliable ally had always been him.
"My... my god—"
But.
"If you truly love me—"
Bonds are beautiful because they end.
And irreconcilable twists must sometimes be severed.
"Please, let me go now."
Parents cradle their child.
But they can't do so forever.
The day inevitably comes.
Parents release the child's hand and watch them go—that is their duty.
Beyond the wrath-filled sky.
A cry echoed from something.
But fierce lightning drowned it out, and in the end—
The dragon's form slowly vanished beyond the heavens.
"Ah—."
Her mouth opened.
But no sound came.
Too much surged at once, choking her throat.
Sobs that couldn't become screams leaked like breaths several times—
"Hah—."
A small breath escaped.
"Hahh—."
The breath grew louder.
"Hic—."
Soon turning clearly into sobs.
"Waaahhh—!"
The wail tearing her throat soon lost even its sound, scattering.
The freed woman wept loudly, like a baby meeting the world for the first time.