The Black Dragon's True Identity
"Whoa, this is seriously *munch* so damn good. The bread is insanely soft and fluffy *chew*!"
"…"
"…"
Baked from nothing but fine wheat and rich butter—no rye, no lesser grains—the bread was exquisitely soft and delightfully chewy. Fresh vegetables and salty, crisp bacon piled on top made for a sandwich that was both hearty and delicious, vanishing into the mouth of a girl whose soft cheeks ballooned with every greedy bite.
"Ahh, the cream stew's packed with pota—*gulp*—toes, so it's all fluffy and soft. Way better than those boiled baby potatoes I had at the rest stop *munch munch*!"
A pair of large, jet-black horns curved from either side of her head like a ram's, giving her a rather ominous air—except that right now they simply bobbed along with every enthusiastic shake of her head.
"…"
"…"
"*Buuurp* Ahh… I'm stuffed… Man, all I've had this whole time is rough bread and jerky, but this is seriously freaking delicious. This is how people are supposed to live."
She polished off every last scrap of food Felix had packed in the basket, then patted her swollen belly—not with a hand, but with her tail. The plump, black-scaled tail was lizard-like in texture, yet refined and beautiful, as though someone had carefully set precious gems into every scale.
Tenebrix Nox.
Mere moments ago she had been a Black Dragon large enough to topple a high-rise apartment building in a wrestling match. Now she sat in human form—looking for all the world like a pretty girl cosplaying at a comic convention—wearing nothing but a rag fit only for a mop, and had just inhaled Felix's entire packed lunch like a starving spirit.
"…"
"…"
Having demolished the lunch box Felix brought in a single sitting, the girl gave her full belly a satisfied pat with her tail. The brother and sister simply stared at her in speechless disbelief.
"…Huh? A-ahem…! I—I am! The Black Flame Dragon who shall bring about the end of the world, the one who shall usher in eternal darkness! Tenebrix No—"
"Hey. You're Korean, aren't you?"
"Wait, how did you—mmph?!"
Caught dead to rights by that stare, the girl had been midway through the most cringeworthy monologue imaginable when Rosaria's bullseye left her flailing in shock. For someone who had just rattled off a string of unmistakably Korean expressions, she clearly hadn't seen it coming—her eyes went round as saucers, and her twitching tail shot straight up and froze solid, like something out of a cartoon.
"Haa… So that's what it was. If she was a transmigrator, of course the plot would go off the rails. Tenebrix Nox wasn't supposed to show up this early."
"Uh… um… so, like… you guys too…?"
"Yep. We came from Korea, same as you."
"So there are other transmigrators besides us… That's news to me."
Instead of the majestic, malevolent dragon from the novel, Felix found himself looking at a fidgety girl wringing her fingers and glancing between them. A look of pure relief crossed his face, as though a puzzle that had been nagging at him had finally clicked into place.
The sudden appearance of a Black Dragon who shouldn't have shown up yet made perfect sense if she was a transmigrator. After all, the original Felix Evergarden—the character he had possessed—couldn't use magic at all and relied entirely on magical tools. Yet the Felix of now could sense mana and cast spells.
Still, the fact that people outside his own family had also transmigrated into this world was a considerable shock. It meant that from here on out, he could no longer claim the story he knew would unfold exactly as written.
And then—
"…Hic."
"…Huh?"
"Hwaaaahhh!!! Waaahhh!!!"
"Wh-what?! What's wrong all of a sudden?!"
"Eek?! Wait, get off—! Why are you doing this?!"
"I—I finally…! I finally met people like meeeeee!!!"
"Hey! Hey hey!! Your snot! Your snot!! It's running—your snooot!!!"
The moment the siblings revealed their identities, fat tears the size of horse droppings began pouring from the girl's eyes. She lunged straight at Felix, threw her arms around him, and wailed at the top of her lungs.
Kang Chanho. Eighteen years old. Male.
He was the soul currently inhabiting the body of Tenebrix Nox, the Black Dragon—a body that was, biologically speaking, female.
It had been an ordinary day.
Just like always, he woke to his alarm, dragged his listless body upright, ate the breakfast his mother had made, and headed off to school—the perfectly ordinary start to a perfectly ordinary day for a perfectly ordinary high school student in South Korea.
Even the moment before he reached the bus stop, when he pulled out his smartphone to catch up on today's webtoons, had been nothing but routine.
What derailed that routine was a homemaker with a reckless disregard for safety—the kind who, on a particularly nice day, set her potted ornamental plants up on the balcony railing of her apartment building. In a way, it was an accident born of overlapping everyday habits.
His eyes were down on his webtoon. That was why his feet unconsciously drifted toward the apartment building. The family dog suddenly nipped at her ankles from below, and she dropped the pot she was holding.
Every one of those moments stacked on top of each other until a flowerpot weighing 3.42 kilograms, accelerated by gravity into a terrifying weapon, shattered the skull of Chanho as he passed beneath it.
It all happened so fast that Chanho never even registered something hitting his head before his eyes closed.
And yet—despite a blow powerful enough that he should never have opened them again—Chanho did open his eyes. The moment he realized he had been reincarnated as the Black Dragon from a romance-fantasy web novel he'd once read, Starlight of Dawn, the ordinary day of an ordinary Korean high school student was thoroughly, completely wrecked.
At first, it was amazing. It was wondrous.
A body that could casually flatten an apartment building. Scales so hard and beautiful they could deflect anything. Enormous wings that could soar freely through the open sky. Razor-sharp teeth that could chew through anything.
And a dragon.
What boy hadn't dreamed of dragons? In every story, they were the ultimate beings—overwhelming power incarnate, the apex of all life. And the Black Dragon he had become was set up as something even stronger than the final boss of this particular work.
Chanho, who had always loved fantasy and isekai stories, was thrilled.
…For about two days.
By the third day in this world—when two moons had risen twice across the sky, and the first light of dawn told him how long he'd been here—Chanho grew depressed. The initial excitement faded as he realized this wasn't some simple dream, and of course his thoughts turned to the family he'd left behind in the modern world.
Mom. Dad. His older brother. His friends from school.
Forced independence—torn from the safety of home—was far too early for an immature high school boy who couldn't even stand on his own two feet yet.
And above all else, the biggest problem was this: he was hungry.
After leaving the cave where he'd woken up, Chanho realized he was deep in the heart of a mountain. Mountains were full of nutritious ingredients a living creature could eat. The problem was that a perfectly ordinary high school boy's soul was stuck inside the body of Tenebrix Nox, the Black Dragon—a creature so fearsome it sat unchallenged at the absolute top of every food chain.
Chanho's entire culinary repertoire consisted of scratching his head and boiling instant ramen on lazy weekends when his parents were out. He had no idea how to tell edible berries from poisonous mushrooms, no matter how thickly they carpeted the mountain.
As hunger gnawed at him, he dug up half-remembered knowledge from a survival video he'd scrolled past on YouTube before bed, and somehow managed to catch a wild animal roaming the slopes. But Chanho was a city-dwelling shy boy with a soft heart. He couldn't bring himself to butcher the animals he'd caught—and even if he had, he wouldn't have known how to cook the meat.
By the time his stomach was growling loud enough to rival thunder—his massive body making every rumble that much more dramatic—Chanho finally set out to find civilization, pushing through the dense forest paths on his enormous dragon legs.
Along the way, he stumbled upon a road that showed signs of human order. And there, right on that road, he spotted a merchant driving a cart loaded with goods.
Tears welled up as Chanho charged toward the first human he'd seen in days—completely forgetting what he currently looked like.
The traveling merchant, who had been passing through Evergarden Territory on his way to another fief, broke out in a cold sweat at the distant trembling of the earth. Then Chanho burst into view, and the man simply collapsed on the spot.
It was only natural. Even modern people who knew dragons were fictional would have been terrified to see one in the flesh. In this world, the equation was already set in stone: dragon equals an overwhelmingly powerful being against which a mere human could not even hope to resist.
Only after the merchant soaked his trousers and fainted dead away did Chanho remember he was a dragon. He waited for the man to wake up—but the moment the merchant regained consciousness and found a dragon staring blankly down at him, his face went white as a sheet and he fainted all over again. The cycle repeated several times.
Eventually, Chanho offered a silent apology to the unconscious merchant, then used his massive claws to rummage through the cart—which felt about as big as a Lego piece in his hands—and scavenged what food he could find.
Dried, twisted jerky. Cheese that reeked to high heaven. Lukewarm milk and dried fruit meant for preservation. It was a pitiful spread by modern standards, but Tenebrix Nox was grateful for every scrap. At least she had escaped the single most dishonorable death on a dragon's ranking of worst ways to go: starvation.
His first contact with human civilization had fizzled out, but Chanho kept trying. He waited for merchants and mercenaries to pass along the road, approaching them as amicably as he could each time—only for every last one of them to either faint or flee for their lives. Chanho found himself in a thoroughly miserable bind.
He needed to communicate. He needed to learn where he was, where the humans lived, and decide what to do next.
So he kept waiting. And in the process, he managed to use Polymorph.
He'd desperately wished that looking more human might make people less wary—and somehow, it worked. The day he Polymorphed, he was thrilled by his newly slender arms, clean skin, and the familiar sensation of a human body… only to be crushed by the discovery that the unfamiliar naked woman staring back at him was him. Still, the raging curiosity of a teenage boy led him to sneak glances at his reflection in ponds and streams more than a few times.
Reinvigorated, Chanho spotted a group of humans approaching and used Polymorph to go meet them. And something amazing happened.
Instead of fainting or running the moment they saw him, they looked at him with genuine interest. Finally able to communicate with humans, Chanho was overjoyed.
…Right up until the moment those gazes turned lecherous, and the men started walking toward him with thick ropes in their hands.
A rare breed never before seen in this world (a half-finished dragon Polymorph). An extraordinarily beautiful face and an alluring figure. And completely naked. The cash-strapped mercenaries immediately recognized that Chanho would be in extremely high demand among certain wealthy clients with… unusual tastes.
Sensing that the atmosphere had gone very wrong, Chanho forgot entirely that a light flick of his finger could reduce the heads on their shoulders to powder—and bolted straight into the underbrush.
Having lived a life utterly divorced from anything resembling violence, the option of simply killing them never even crossed his mind. He'd never had this kind of power before, so he had no idea how to use it. If Chanho had been a web novel protagonist, the comments section would have been flooded with dozens—hundreds—of complaints about him being a spineless coward. But he was just an ordinary boy, so he ran.
With even the option of meeting humans via Polymorph now closed off, and a stomach that never stopped wailing about how hungry it was—as befitting a creature of his size—Chanho, or rather Tenebrix Nox, decided to settle down here and fill her belly as best she could.
And that was how the wild rumors of a Black Dragon's appearance—rumors that now had all of Evergarden Territory in an uproar—came to spread.