Raise Your Guard
"Close combat is your specialty, is it?"
Life burst outward in a rush, and the blue sky was blotted out across the field.
"I'll play along."
Dan Miryong was driven into the dirt. It happened in less than a blink.
"……Ha."
Pain flared through his collarbone. He had a fair idea of where the blow had landed. Sprawled spread-eagle on the road, he looked up.
A silhouette dropped out of the sky with green radiance at its back and came down hard. He wrenched his head aside and slipped the descending stamp. If he hadn't moved on reflex, he would have been flattened like a piece of dried fish.
A light tap. He caught a slender ankle, and in the same motion flipped his body the other way and swung Dan Chuyeon around like a toy. The boy hit the ground with a crash.
"Damn it."
His wrist hurt. The instant he was slammed down, he kicked free and got clear.
"Tch. My back."
Dan Chuyeon stripped off his torn clothes and flung them aside. The back stained red knit itself together, little by little, under Life.
"Hell of a body."
"Thanks for the compliment."
Nothing about Dan Chuyeon looked like a high schooler. He was short, but the muscle was ridiculous: abs that wore their confidence in the open, and obliques packed tight as rows of corn.
"You popping something? That muscle density doesn't even make sense."
"That so? First time I've been like this, so I wouldn't know."
Dan Chuyeon's muscle pulsed. Heat poured off him as it shifted, as if the flesh itself were searching out its perfect state.
Unfair as hell.
A hollow laugh escaped Dan Miryong. To build a body like that, he would have had to grind through every kind of misery there was. That bastard only needed one shot of eco-friendly steroids and he was finished. Set beside a dragon body it might still fall short, but it would not be long before he surpassed even that.
So this is a shard of the guardianship the Dan Clan has kept all this time…….
Next to the real thing, it was nothing but dregs. And those dregs felt as if they might blind him.
When will I be able to do it.
When would he be able to hold his head up.
"What are you doing."
"……!"
The stray thought had lasted too long. In the space of a gasp, the initiative was gone.
A kick drove into his side. It punched through the barrier of ages, and the shock sank in after it. His guts sloshed. He chewed the pain down and curled his arm, trapping the leg against his ribs.
Dan Chuyeon spun, using the pinned leg as his axis. A kick loaded with the full force of his body came scything for the neck.
Just as expected. Dan Miryong reached with his free hand. Catch the foot, pour out his Breath, and the brat would be roasted whole.
A small explosion burst from Dan Chuyeon's heel.
What……?!
Driven by the thrust, the foot speared into his neck before the hand could get there.
"Ghk!"
Scales shattered and spat out chunks of flesh. Pain tore through him as if his neck were breaking, and for an instant his body went slack.
"And you call yourself a close-combat specialist. Pathetic."
"Tch!"
That pitying look snapped him awake. He closed his hand, chambered a dragon's claws, and fired. The strike flew dead for the chest, sharp enough to tear soft skin like paper.
His vision lurched sideways. Before he could tell what had happened, Dan Chuyeon sprang up. Unwilling to lose the flow of the fight, Dan Miryong loosed his Breath. Fire drew a whirl and burned every tree behind them, and the garden with it, down to nothing.
"Khah!"
"You little shit!"
Dan Chuyeon shoved his charred face in close and grinned. Life glittered.
He hadn't expected that. He had thought the boy would fall back. Instead Chuyeon ignored the fire and came in.
Damn that Life!
Dan Chuyeon slipped in close enough to be held. Light strobed in both his hands.
A rattling storm of blows landed in less than a second.
Ghk!
Pain chased itself through collarbone, ribs, temple, groin. He hauled both arms in front of his chest, but the line of attack bent toward his abdomen. One hit. Two. Three. Blood welled up his throat. His organs were damaged.
The scales……!
Scales harder than steel were useless. Right now they were nothing but dead weight, getting in the way of his speed.
This won't work!
He had to break out of the combo. He spread his wings wide, meaning to retreat on a single beat.
"……?!"
"Not done yet, asshole."
He never got off the ground. He jerked to a halt. His legs would not move, as if they had been fixed in place. He rolled his eyes and found tree roots wound around them.
"That attack just now, too?!"
"Finally noticed?"
Dan Miryong's eyes went red. His thighs swelled. The roots creaked. Dan Chuyeon cracked him across the cheek, and a tooth came loose.
"Let's keep it to one thing."
Dan Chuyeon wiped the bridge of his nose. Dragon blood came away on his fingers.
"You get beaten until you're about to die."
"Over a few hits—!"
A high kick shut his mouth. His head spun.
"Funny, right? Since I'm only hitting you with my fists."
"……!"
Crackle. Flare. Hiss. Rumble. Shriek. Five natures took shape in the empty air.
Wind · Water · Earth · Fire · Lightning
The five natures ran wild, burning Life for fuel.
"……It wasn't only your body that got stronger?"
"Your brain's part of your body too, dumbass."
"Read a book."
"Right now, I'm at my peak."
"Feels like I could fly."
"Thanks. Idiot."
"……AAAAAAAHHHH!!!"
This can't be happening!
He sucked in a breath, and the blows came down in a relentless storm.
No…….
Earth pierced his thighs.
No……!
Fire burned his head.
If I go down here……!
Wind laid the scales bare and carved him apart.
Everything I've done until now…………!
Water mixed with Lightning and reached all the way to his heart.
"This is the last."
The fist blazed, brilliant with five colors. The grandeur of it struck him dumb.
If it hits.
He dies. He wanted to run. He couldn't.
"Haaaaah!"
The fist came. He watched it approach his chest, slowly.
Dan Miryong.
A man whose face was swallowed in darkness opened his mouth.
"I don't recommend it, as a rule. But if it comes to a crisis, become a dragon."
"I am already able to."
"Not something that only half became one."
The darkness rippled.
"I mean the dragon we all know. A Dragon."
"…………."
"Well. The one it concerns will know the danger well enough."
The darkness patted his shoulder.
"See that you do not use that power before the masked man."
Leaving words that made no sense, the darkness vanished.
When the darkness was gone, the fist had already reached his chest.
The world detonated.
"Haa. Haa."
I let out the breath I had been holding. The season was still warm, and yet it smoked out of me.
I looked at the one my last attack had sent flying. As if an earthquake had torn through, the ground lay overturned, bored open in a single straight line. Nothing remained of the hospital's beautiful garden. There was only the wreckage of the trouble I had made.
I had made that scene. I didn't know how. I had simply done as the whisper told me.
Life had given me far more than I ever imagined. Even though it was only a copied fake, it laid on me an omnipotence that made my mind go white, and my power answered whatever I thought. Every act I had only ever pictured became possible. I didn't know how to put it into words.
"The compatibility's way too good, isn't it?"
The one thing I could tell was this. Life fit me far too well. There had always been something lacking in my output, and once Life filled that gap, the power strengthened by exponents. But power of that size always charged a price.
Something cracked.
"GAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"
It split from the inside. Not the flesh. A more fundamental source. I couldn't catch hold of anything but the soul.
"Guh—hk—!!!"
It hurt. It hurt. I rolled in the dirt, graceless as it was, and tried to endure it with a mouthful of soil. The scream only thinned into a groan. Tears and snot poured off me like a waterfall. I wished I were bleeding instead. It felt as if something other than blood were leaking out of me.
How long I thrashed, I couldn't say. Only when my throat had gone raw and my body shivered in fine spasms did it finally ease.
I can't move a single finger.
I stared blankly at the sky and panted. Even breathing hurt.
Was it over-spec?
I replayed the fight. Drawing Life out had been the right call, but the desperation to end it fast had made me spend far too much. Even a quarter of that would have been well within what I could bear.
"Still, thank god the damage wasn't worse."
If I hadn't finished it here, there was no telling how he would have rampaged. Innocent people would have kept getting hurt.
"……Will Mom be all right."
I have to recover and get over there…….
The ground heaved.
"…………?"
Heave. Heave. What was that? The earth was shaking. Heave. Heave. Heave. I hadn't imagined it. Something was coming, with a rumble like a great weight rolling under the soil, and then a sound as if something were climbing out of hell. I had never heard it before. Never a cry this cold, this frightening.
Dozens of tons of earth lifted. It was like a chick breaking out of its shell. My body rolled. I braced my torso on one arm.
"What is that……."
I could only stare. A hill that had not existed a moment ago had risen, and in a crack of that hill a golden eye flashed.
A wet click of the throat.
"Hey. No way……."
Enormous bat wings surged up out of the dirt.
"Please. This isn't it."
Two legs stretched out, like great trees that had stood for thousands of years.
"No……."
Not a drab brown. Black scales veined with red showed through. A long snout, like a crocodile's, split open, and it roared at the sky. One roar shook the dirt from its body.
"Well, fuck."
I got my feet under me on two trembling legs. I called back the Life that had left me and clothed myself again in that omnipotence. Instinct screamed. Use any more than this, and—
"I know. I know."
Even so.
"Not like I can sit this one out."
"Grrrrrh……."
The Black Dragon bared its teeth.
"Looks like I'm a dragon slayer now. Just like that."
"KYAAAAAH!!!"
The Black Dragon howled.