The Dragon Descends
The wail of sirens pierced the air—weee-ooo, weee-ooo—blending with the shrill electronic alarms. Red emergency lights flashed across the streets, screaming a single instinctive warning to everyone who saw them.
Monsters were coming.
The creatures would soon begin tearing away their lives.
What had been a peaceful weekend afternoon on the city streets transformed into pandemonium in the blink of an eye. Chaos erupted.
“Aaaah! Somebody help!”
“It’s a Gate! A Gate Break just burst open!”
“What the hell?! The alarm didn’t even go off! Damn those useless Association bastards!”
“Stop pushing! People are getting hurt!”
A jagged rift had torn through the air without any prior warning.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
What rained down from the sky were crimson droplets. Or perhaps they should be called drops of blood.
They symbolized terror. They foreshadowed the blood that people would soon shed.
The roads were paralyzed by tangled vehicles. Sirens, screams, and furious curses aimed at the government merged into a nightmarish cacophony.
A living hell.
There was no other way to describe the scene.
So-i stood just outside the heart of the madness, in a relatively safe zone, watching the horror unfold.
“This is bad…!”
So-i clenched her teeth and scanned her surroundings. Disaster alerts were only now belatedly flooding in, long after the Gate had already opened.
She had only just been promoted to A-class Hunter, but there was no way she could handle the flood of monsters pouring out by herself.
“Y-Yuhwa-nim…!”
So-i called out desperately, turning her head—only to witness a falling signboard plummeting straight toward a young boy’s head.
“No!”
She was about to summon her spirits when—
Swish.
The descending signboard bounced harmlessly off something massive and soft.
“Huh…?”
The boy, who had squeezed his eyes shut while sobbing, slowly opened them at the warm sensation enveloping him.
What gently curled around his body was a tail glowing with brilliant azure light.
The boy looked up.
There stood a woman, backlit by dazzling sunlight, gazing down at him.
Dark blue hair. Eyes as deep and blue as the ocean itself. An overwhelming beauty that seemed to belong to another world entirely.
That woman smiled softly at the boy.
“Are you alright, little one?”
Her voice was cold yet warm at the same time. It erased all the surrounding noise and settled gently against the boy’s ears.
“Ah…”
The boy forgot his fear entirely. His face flushed bright red as he ducked his head.
In his nine years of life, he had never seen anyone this beautiful.
Yuhwa let out a small chuckle and gently stroked the boy’s hair.
“Shall we go find your mom together?”
She took his hand and helped him to his feet.
And not long after—
“Minsu!” “Mommy!”
When the boy waved his hands wildly, a woman came running from afar, sobbing uncontrollably. She didn’t even seem to notice that her shoes had fallen off.
“Hic… thank you, thank you so much…!”
After confirming her son was safe, the mother bowed repeatedly, looking as if she might prostrate herself at Yuhwa’s feet.
Yuhwa simply gave a small, indifferent nod, lightly patted the boy’s head once more, and said,
“Take care, little one.”
Just as she turned to leave—
“U-um…!”
The boy hesitated, then bravely grabbed the hem of her clothes.
“C-can I… um… know your name, miss…?”
The boy’s bold question came with a face as red as a tomato. His mother panicked and tried to cover his mouth, but Yuhwa simply smiled and answered.
“You may call me Yuhwa.”
The moment the words left her lips—
Fwoosh!
Beautiful wings unfurled from behind her back.
A light leap.
But the result was anything but light. In an instant, Yuhwa’s body soared into the sky.
The boy, his mother, and even the people who had been evacuating could only stare up in awe at the breathtaking trajectory of her flight, completely mesmerized.
Once high in the air, Yuhwa looked down at the devastated scene below.
People who hadn’t managed to evacuate yet were trapped beneath collapsed buildings, while grotesque monsters continued pouring endlessly from the rift.
‘Being this big has its downsides, huh.’
She would have to deal with them one by one. If she transformed into her true form and unleashed her full power, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say everyone here could die.
Yuhwa lightly snapped her fingers. Instantly, dozens of ice spears materialized in the air.
‘Fire.’
The spears shot forward at supersonic speed, striking down the flying monsters one after another.
She was watching with satisfaction when—
Kyaaaaaaa—!
A massive shadow tore through the clouds and dove straight toward her.
It was a hideous bird-like monster roughly three meters long.
She could feel its steel-hard talons aiming precisely for her neck.
“Not a chance.”
Yuhwa twisted her body mid-air, effortlessly deflecting the attack. With a single flap of her wings, she shot straight upward.
Then she gracefully landed on the monster’s broad back.
“Let’s see how long you last.”
She lifted her foot and stomped down hard.
BOOOOOOM!
With a single strike, the monster’s spine exploded. Its internal organs ruptured. Screaming, it began plummeting straight toward the ground.
—Kyaaaaaaaaaa!!!
Riding on the monster’s back as it sliced through the wind, Yuhwa felt an unexpected thrill.
It was kind of like surfing, she thought.
Shwoooo—!
The ground was rapidly approaching. Just before impact, Yuhwa lightly jumped off the monster’s back.
KWAAAAAANG—!
The creature’s body slammed into the asphalt, splattering horrific amounts of blood in every direction.
Yuhwa fluttered her wings and landed elegantly on the ground, not a speck of dust on her.
“Oh.”
It just so happened that she had landed right behind the defensive line where So-i was helping with the evacuation.
“Y-Yuhwa-nim…!”
“Have the people mostly escaped?”
Yuhwa dusted off her hands and asked. So-i swallowed hard and nodded.
“Y-yes! The rear evacuation is nearly complete! A-class Hunters are currently evacuating the remaining people at the front…!”
“Hmm… I see.”
Yuhwa cracked her neck from side to side, beginning a light stretch.
“Then shall I put in a bit of effort now?”
“Pardon?”
“I said I’m going to put in some effort.”
Yuhwa spread her wings once more and soared into the sky.
At the intersection.
Kang Jin-hyeok, the A-class space-teleportation Hunter in charge of the front-line defense, gritted his teeth as he coughed up blood.
“Goddammit… why are they pouring out like this?!”
The Gate Break had occurred without any warning. With no time to be shocked, Jin-hyeok had been using his powers nonstop to evacuate citizens while dodging the swarm of monsters.
But because he had overused his ability in order to save lives, his brain was now in a state of critical overload, on the verge of bursting.
Blood dripped steadily from his nose down his chin. His vision blurred. His legs trembled.
‘Is this as far as I go…’
The moment Jin-hyeok despaired and began to collapse to his knees—
Vrrrrrrrr—!
Suddenly, the sky that had been bright as midday began to darken into pitch blackness.
A total solar eclipse? No, that wasn’t it.
Jin-hyeok stared up at the sky with dazed eyes.
And he could hardly believe what he was seeing.
“Ah…”
The identity of the enormous shadow covering the heavens.
It was a single colossal ‘dragon’ flying through the sky.
A dragon so immense it defied comprehension…
Compared to the sixty-meter dragon he had seen on internet communities, this was on an entirely different scale.
He had thought even that was fake, but what he saw now seemed even more impossible.
Something far larger and more overwhelming than if the entire 63 Building had been laid on its side… was flying through the sky.
A mythical being whose volume and weight were beyond human comprehension was gracefully soaring above them.
Beautifully shimmering silver-and-blue scales. Enormous wings.
Before that absolute majesty, even the monsters flying through the air froze in terror.
And then the mythical dragon slowly opened its massive maw toward the open Gate.
Grrrrrrrr—!
A vibration. Yes, he could feel it. The buildings shook. The air seemed to compress.
A chill ran down his spine.
Jin-hyeok felt goosebumps rise all over his body. The surrounding air seemed to grow colder.
The dragon… was opening its mouth.
What poured out from it was not flames that could incinerate everything, but beautiful… ‘cold.’
Fwoooooosh—!
Jin-hyeok watched as even the air itself froze solid.
Water vapor in the atmosphere crystallized, transforming into tens of thousands of brilliant snowflakes that began raining down from the sky.
And then—
The moment those beautiful snowflakes touched the bird-like monsters flying through the air, they turned into perfect ice sculptures without the slightest resistance.
Dozens, hundreds of monsters froze into transparent ice in the blink of an eye.
And those ice sculptures began falling toward the ground.
Crunch!
Crack…
Crrrrrrack…
The ice sculptures shattered into fragments upon hitting the ground, scattering blood and flesh in every direction.
Even amid a scene that looked like the end of the world, Jin-hyeok felt only silence.
It was quiet. Yes… completely quiet.
The monsters on the ground had fallen silent. The citizens who had been evacuating had fallen silent.
Everyone simply stared up at the sky, unable to utter a single word.
Jin-hyeok did the same, gazing upward in a daze.
He could do nothing but stare, completely lost in awe.