I Copied It
Dan Miryong walked on empty air, as if an unseen road lay under his feet.
A blade-wind tore through the hospital garden and left it in ruins. An overturned trash can went sailing, and the trees heaved as if they might be ripped out of the ground. It was a calamity no human hand could have made.
"This all you've got?"
One corner of Dan Miryong's mouth twisted. The wind flung his hair back and bared his forehead, and that beautiful face put itself on display all the more.
"I said, is this all!"
A roar rolled across the sky. The dragon howled, and storm clouds swallowed the clear blue. Lightning thrashed inside them.
A siren wailed—an evacuation order. The hospital burst into frantic motion, and out on the street people scattered and collided like panicked ants.
He's controlling it with exquisite precision.
At a glance it looked like blind rage, a tantrum with no aim. But the storm hunted him and him alone. It never once reached for a person.
Leave the people untouched, kick over everything else, and make me think he's lost it. Is that the plan?
If he had been hasty, he would have thrown himself straight into the storm.
But is burning power like that even worth it?
A storm meant as a feint was still a storm. The cost could not be small, and even if it were, raising this much noise accomplished nothing. Help from the police? Backup from the heroes? What good would any of it do? He had already put the pieces together. Most of their number had been assigned to face that great enemy, the Heavenly Punishment. In this country, right now, there was no force capable of standing against him.
"Except this bastard."
The achievement stood out, far beyond the boy's years. Dan Chuyeon had lived an ordinary life. These past few months had presumably been absurd beyond belief, but that alone left him a long way from being able to face Dan Miryong.
Two possibilities suggested themselves. One: someone had secretly trained him well.
"Or Heaven made a mistake."
Personally, he would have preferred the first.
A bolt lanced out of the clouds and grazed his elbow. A tingle ran up from the skin.
"So it's the second."
Dan Miryong smiled at the unfairness of the world, and the smile was full of killing intent. Control of the storm clouds had been taken from him, so naturally that if his nerves had slackened even a little, he never would have noticed.
He considered. Dan Chuyeon had hidden himself in the wind. Straining to find the boy would only clutter his own head.
Then the choice is simple.
The boy would have to come out on his own.
He turned his hand over—the back of it toward the storm, the scarred palm toward the hospital. Breath gathered into that palm. Dragon-flame condensed in his grip, and a storm of fire roared up. The storm of wind flinched.
"Try blocking this, too."
A straight lance of flame shot toward the hospital, swelling as it went. If it was not stopped, it could bring the building down.
Wind balled up in front of the breath. Dan Chuyeon ground his teeth and thrust out a hand.
Wind and flame collided. The fire tried to swallow the wind and push on; the wind thrashed, desperate to smother it.
"Grrrrk—!"
Dan Chuyeon's skin scorched red. At that spirit of sacrifice—the boy not sparing even his own body—Dan Miryong applauded at his leisure.
"As expected. Worthy of the Guardian's son. Splendid."
"Graaaaah!"
Embers drifted down around Dan Chuyeon like snowflakes. Dan Miryong was disappointed. Burns would have been nice, but that seemed unlikely.
I threw it offhand, but it's still my breath.
The boy's resistance was anything but ordinary. Had he gone swimming in a sea of fire?
"You—!"
Dan Chuyeon's eyes burned. Dan Miryong liked those eyes.
"What's the matter? This is strategy, too."
Even as he spoke, he loosed his breath at the hospital again. Two blasts, this time. Dan Chuyeon threw both hands upward.
The fire hydrants along the street burst, and columns of water shot into the air. The hospital's own pipes ruptured and vomited water with them. A barrier of water, dozens of meters long, rose into place. It hissed. Hot steam billowed until the air ahead went hazy, as if fog had rolled in.
"Blocking one side doesn't help you."
No point emptying his bladder against a wall that would not give. You just shot where it was open.
The breath he sent the other way brought a building down.
The screams of citizens who had not made it out rang thin and far. Buried? Hurt? Dead? He had not checked, so he did not know. An evacuation order did not make people vanish on the spot. When they jammed together all at once, that crowding alone made them a target.
"You son of a bitch!!!!"
Dan Chuyeon burst through the water.
Still young. As expected.
Talent could be monstrous. His head could be turning just fine. And still, the experience that should have been his foundation was nowhere to be found.
"You're letting a power that good rot."
If it had been his, the revenge would already be finished.
"Shame, isn't it. The way we're standing."
"Haaaaah!!!"
The moment Dan Chuyeon closed in, the sky cried out. Lightning ran through Dan Miryong's whole body, and his teeth rattled. Then, as if to slap him awake, water came pouring down. His skin stung—pain and pleasure of the kind a man could get addicted to.
"Yeah. This."
His skin darkened to black. Armor plates locked together with a rapid clatter, hiding the frail flesh beneath.
Dan Chuyeon's fist crashed into his head. Heavy. It felt less like a fist than an iron mace.
"Weak, huh?"
"......!"
Dan Chuyeon startled.
"Sorry. I'm not a fire-type."
A growl. Fire came out of his nose and mouth in place of air—the same grade as the breath he had meant to use on the hospital. His clothes tore, and black wings spread. Batlike, they announced to the world that he was here.
Dan Miryong's pupils split vertical. Eyes full of greedy gold took Dan Chuyeon in.
"Krrk. Close quarters is my specialty."
His nails lengthened. His hands thickened. Skin crept up over his face and covered half of it. Hair that had been a bright green, as if it held life itself, blackened into the color of destruction, and his teeth went sharp as a beast's.
A Dragonian—human and dragon poured into one shape—showed itself.
Dan Chuyeon went blank at a form that seemed to have left humanity behind. The spirit burning in those eyes shrank him where he stood.
The Dragonian opened his mouth. Crimson destruction flashed in the throat.
"You piece of—!"
Before the water wrapped around Dan Chuyeon could crawl any higher, dragon breath split the air.
"Keheok......"
Dan Chuyeon breathed out smoke. His green hair had burned away as if smeared with soot, and his skin had shriveled and gone black.
"Bad breath is a specialty of mine too, of course."
Too far gone to hear it? Dan Miryong muttered it to himself. Right now, with the boy wide open, was the chance.
I want to kill him slow. But the kid doesn't know a thing.
Being born into the Dan clan was the whole of his crime. Pitiful. What could you do.
First, one of them...!
His hand shot out like a spear. A dragon's claws ranked, by themselves, among famous blades. Human flesh would be nothing but scraps of meat.
"......Grrk!"
"You blocked it?"
The one he had been sure had passed out threw out an arm and stopped him. The nails tore that arm open and halted at a light scrape across the belly.
"Tough."
Dan Miryong twisted his wrist this way and that. Blood and chunks of flesh pattered down.
"Mmmgh—!"
"Hurts, doesn't it? It hurt me too."
Dan Chuyeon's eyes bulged like a goldfish's.
"Your dad and your mom took a lot from me, you know? You're a brat, so you wouldn't get it, but I rolled like a dog in places you've never seen. Fuck."
Breath. Breath. Fire gusted from his nose and mouth. His throat itched.
"If I tried to explain it—krrk—there isn't enough blank page left, so I can't fucking explain...!"
A grinding crunch.
"Graaaaaah!"
He ripped his hand free by force. The arm came with it, dangling half off—not severed, only barely still attached.
"Screaming over this much? What kind of parenting is that...!"
"Chuyeooooon!!!"
A scream fit to split eardrums. Mi Soryeong had thrown herself out over the railing, tears streaming down her face.
"Ah. Nice. That scream."
Dan Miryong licked his lips. It only left him wanting more. More. Suffer more. He jabbed a nail into Dan Chuyeon's belly.
The boy coughed up a bowlful of blood.
"Stop!!!"
"Krrrrrk!"
He licked the blood beading on his nails. Warm. His chest caught fire.
"Don't die."
The fun was only starting.
"......"
Dan Chuyeon went slack. Shake him one way or the other—no response.
"Tsk."
Dead of shock?
"What kind of weakling is this."
"Weak... my ass!"
A fist met his cheek.
"......What? You're not dead?"
More than that, he looked halfway decent.
"Hah. Hah."
Dan Chuyeon hauled in breath. He lifted his head. He had not given up.
"The will's nice. So how are you going to fight? Your body's wrecked."
"Hah. Hah. I just... have to heal...!"
Dan Chuyeon began to rise. Green droplets beaded in the empty air. He lifted the dangling arm, and as if time were running backward, it crept slowly back into place.
"What is that."
Dan Miryong's face went hard.
"You're family. You know what we protect."
"That should be with Dan Miryu."
"Yeah. Dad has it."
"Then how......"
A simple trick of the eye? Or some tool that holds the Stone of Resurrection's power apart from the stone itself?
"I copied it."
"What......"
Bullshit?
Something was wrong. Dan Miryong's instinct rang the alarm.
"A god told me. Said I can talk to nature."
Dan Chuyeon caught his arm in return. Green threads of light wavered along the boy's arm.
"I've handled the Stone of Resurrection before, you know? Life's nature too, if you look at it wide enough. So I got a little of how it works."
"............."
Dan Miryong had been wrong. This was no talent Heaven had made by mistake. This bastard was something past that.
"Well, screw it up and I might die. Still better than dying to you, right?"
A seed shed its shell. Taking pain, death, and experience for nourishment, it set a sprout.
A chill ran the length of Dan Miryong's body.
Dan Miryong did not know what fate the original Dan Chuyeon had been meant for.
Someone did.
That Dan Chuyeon had been the protagonist of this world.
And that, for someone, was a great misfortune.