A Back-Breaking Awakening
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I felt was the excruciating stiffness in my back, like it was about to snap in two. ...Is it because I pulled two straight nights of overtime? A dull, throbbing pain crawled from my neck down my spine and stabbed straight into my lower back. It felt like I'd dozed off slumped in my office chair—my whole body was as heavy as a boulder. This was the kind of fatigue that would've taken a solid week of rest to shake off, but I wasn't in any position to take a break right now. The team leader had probably nagged me again to come in early today. Without thinking, I stretched.
A hard something brushed my fingertips.
Crack—BOOM!!
The air ripped apart with a sonic boom, followed by an explosion like thunder. Rock shattered, sending shards flying everywhere, and a heavy tremor shook the ground beneath my torso.
"...What the hell?"
I instinctively looked down. Everything that should have been there was gone. No desk piled with paperwork, no battered keyboard, no half-empty Americano cup. Nothing.
Instead, right in front of my eyes was a massive forepaw covered in dense jet-black scales.
"......."
I stared at the paw. Each scale was the size of a decent sedan. Golden patterns pulsed like molten lava between the pitch-black surfaces, throbbing slowly as if alive—brightening and dimming in time with a heartbeat. It was so eerily unreal it sent chills down my spine.
I flexed my fingers. The enormous claws moved. Exactly as I willed them to. One, two, three. Right on the timing I imagined.
...This is.
My brain froze. For a good three seconds, no thoughts came at all.
Then my vision slowly widened, taking in the surroundings. A cave. The ceiling stretched impossibly high. Even in the pitch darkness, my sight was crystal clear. By that sharp vision, I gauged the space: vast enough to swallow an entire mountain peak whole.
Faintly glowing mineral crystals studded the walls, and the floor was blanketed in thick dust, testament to eons of neglect. Rock dust still trickled from the wall I'd just pulverized with my stretch.
I looked lower. Behind the forepaw stretched a mountain range of a torso, ending in a tail that could coil around an entire cave wall. And on my back, I felt something sturdy folded tight.
Wings.
Wings on my back.
...Ah.
My numb mind snapped into focus on reality right then. A single word flashed in my head.
Dragon.
Memories flooded in like a burst dam. Heading to the subway for the last train after overtime. Dizziness hitting me at the crosswalk. A dull thud to the back of my head, like someone clubbed me. My vision narrowing as the asphalt rushed up. I'm falling, had been my last thought.
And when I woke up? Here. Now. In this massive cave of rock and shadow, covered in jet-black scales.
Hold on. Just hold on a second.
Jet-black scales. Golden patterns. A cave so vast the ceiling vanished into darkness. A nagging sense of déjà vu hammered the back of my skull.
I'd read about this somewhere. Not once or twice, but over and over. On my bed after a tiring commute home. Chewing convenience store kimbap during lunch. Even sneaking peeks on the company toilet.
The Oath of the Silver Rose. The GL romance webnovel I'd been catching up on in my spare time.
The dragon in it. An ancient black dragon of calamity level, plunging the entire continent into terror.
...Barkaion?
That instant, something writhed ominously in my throat. Hot, nauseating heat surged up my esophagus. Deep in my gullet, something boiled like a volcano. A metallic tang coated the base of my tongue.
I coughed reflexively. Just a light throat-clearing, nothing more.
WHOOSH—!!
Black flames roared from my maw, slamming into the opposite wall. The ferocious black flame breath, packed with immense mass, melted solid rock into glowing red lava that dribbled down. Reflected heat licked at my scales.
Of course, my body felt no burn.
A massive crater yawned in the cave wall, edges still bubbling cherry-red. Acrid sulfur stench poured from the molten rock—thick enough to choke a human dead. But this body's nose just registered it flatly: Oh, sulfur. Whatever.
"......."
I stared blankly at the insane being who'd just melted a rock wall like ice cream with a single cough.
That insane being was me.
Ah, this is bad.
This was not okay.
In the novel, it was just words on a page. Reading how Barkaion's breath scorched the earth, I'd thought, Damn, what a scale. I'd even commented as much while swiping through on my phone.
But I never imagined that terrifying breath would come from my mouth.
It took forever to calm down and catch my breath. I clamped my jaws shut, breathing only through my nose—ultra-carefully.
Let's sort this out.
Song Igym, 28 years old. Average Korean office drone. Collapsed from overwork after overtime, lost consciousness, and woke up possessed in a calamity-level dragon from a GL romance novel.
Current location: probably some cave in the Black Thunder Mountains. That much checked out.
The problem? How Barkaion ended in the original story.
I frantically recalled. Late game. The awakened hero Harwen leads the continental alliance into the Black Thunder Mountains. And in the final battle, the holy sword—
My forepaw shot up reflexively. Massive claws clamped over a spot under my chin. A desperate motion, like a human clutching their heart.
Between the rough, hard talons, I felt one scale with a slightly different grain.
The single reverse scale, grown in the opposite direction from the rest.
The reverse scale. The spot Harwen pierced without error with his holy sword in the original.
That was Barkaion's end.
...So I'm the final boss. The final boss who gets wrecked by the protagonist and dies.
I froze, talons gripping the reverse scale tight. My heart pounded in my chest. A dragon's heartbeat was slower than a human's, but each thump was heavy enough to vibrate the cave floor.
When did the main story start again? The opening scene was Lucivia Liester's coming-of-age Rose Festival. I even remembered the exact Imperial Calendar date.
After that, Barkaion emerges from the Black Thunder Mountains, news of the dragon's awakening throws the continent into chaos. Harwen awakens as a hero, Lucivia does whatever... Yeah, whatever.
But where am I on the original timeline right now?
I craned my neck, scanning the cave. No Imperial Calendar hanging on the wall, obviously.
No way to know the exact date here.
I couldn't be sure what point in the story this was. The thick dust on the floor suggested no one had visited yet, but my name might already be spreading across the continent, with subjugation forces forming outside for all I knew.
Until I confirmed the exact Imperial Calendar date, I couldn't relax. No clue how much time I had left—I needed a survival plan, stat.
First, current situation.
Me, Barkaion. Calamity-level ancient black dragon. Only three ever recorded in history, the kind that demands the whole continent's full might to take down.
But in the original, this mighty dragon rampages mindlessly and gets hunted. The original Barkaion had no ego. Just a living disaster, like a typhoon or earthquake.
But now I'm here. Song Igym, 28-year-old salaryman, soul inside this body.
That's the variable.
Follow the original, and I die. So don't follow the original, problem solved?
Simple logic. Original Barkaion wakes up mindless, rampages mindless, burns the continent mindless, dies to the hero.
I have a mind, so no rampaging. No reason for subjugators to come if I stay put.
Perfect.
Just live quietly? Stay holed up here, breathe shallow, done.
That thought eased the tightness in my chest a bit. Hey, this situation wasn't all bad. No team leader nagging, no endless overtime, no work emails. As the apex of the world's strongest race, no one would bother me unless I stirred first. Nothing would—
The outside world nagged at me. How much leeway did I have, exactly? A year ago? A month? I needed to scout the Imperial Calendar date and the state of the world.
Time to move. I slowly twisted my massive bulk toward the cave entrance.
Haa.
A sigh slipped out unbidden. Just a normal, weary exhale—the kind I'd let out daily at the office.
But from this body? Worlds apart.
Hot breath warped the air as it escaped. The twist crushed the floor, sending tremors. My tail scraped the wall with a dull grind.
The combo? Disaster.
Crack—!
The ground split under me. Spiderweb cracks radiated out; the sturdy ceiling groaned. Dust billowed.
Then it started falling.
Rocks. From the ceiling. Like rain.
Rumble—!!
Dozens, hundreds of massive boulders poured down on my head. The kind that would've flattened any normal creature. They thudded against my scales and bounced off.
It didn't hurt.
Didn't hurt, but...
Ah, so damn loud!
All I could do amid the rockslide was hunker down, forepaws shielding my head. A calamity dragon curled up like a scared kitten, waiting it out.
I don't think I ever shrank like this, even when the team leader slammed the conference table back in my past life.
Only after ages did the quake-like rumbling fade. Dust hung thick; rock grit jammed between my scales, itchy and gross. My paws were too huge and clumsy to brush it off delicately. Scratching with a claw? Might rip scales—or bring the rest of the ceiling down.
...One sigh, and the whole cave nearly collapses.
I sealed my jaws. Breathed through my nose only. Shallow as possible.
This body was a walking calamity. Stretch, and walls crumble. Cough, and rock melts. Sigh, and ceilings fall. A good sneeze, and the mountain range splits.
No wonder the original called Barkaion a calamity. Not hyperbole.
How the hell am I supposed to live quietly like this?
I lifted a forepaw, clutching my reverse scale again. The cool, smooth texture pressed into my sole.
Someone would aim a blade here eventually. No idea when, but if the story followed canon, that future was inevitable.
The trigger for the continent's chaos in the original? Barkaion emerging from the Black Thunder Mountains.
I'd already awakened.
So only one option left.
Never. Ever. Take flight from here.
No moving. No getting spotted. Hide away quietly somewhere in this range, unknown to all.
If my past office life taught me one thing, it was how to minimize presence and go stealth.
...But with a body the size of a mountain?
I eyed my forepaw. One claw alone was house-sized.
Polymorph.
A vague memory from the novel surfaced. Dragons could shrink to human form by compressing mana. The original Barkaion never did, lacking ego, but the ability should exist.
Not knowing how was a fatal flaw, though.
Later for that. Urgent now: stop wrecking this cave.
I hunkered down obediently. Breathing shallow, not twitching a toe.
Barkaion, calamity-level ancient black dragon.
Song Igym, ordinary salaryman from a past life.
My second life's first day began as an unmoving boulder.