Chapter 36
Bang-
After I stomped on it a few times, like I was crushing a familiar, the machinery covering the wall burst apart with a thunderous crack.
There. Now the mana’s moving.
I took out my Device at once and placed the call.
The familiar drifted back a little, keeping a proper distance.
“Anything happen over there?”
Hearing that, I felt a little relieved, then glanced off to the side.
Ma Yu-ri was sleeping soundly in my clone’s arms.
So much time had passed, but somehow, miraculously, she’d survived.
Since she was lying there peacefully instead of thrashing around, it didn’t seem like my self had swallowed her whole.
Even with the old dragon’s essence and my help, to adapt this completely was impressive. For a human, she clearly had a frightening amount of potential and willpower.
I lifted my brows at the screen, and the familiar snickered with an unpleasant grin.
It was the kind of face that said, You expect me to believe that?
Damn bastard. Ever since he’d been with Seo-ah lately, he hadn’t been stepped on, and now his whole attitude had grown arrogant.
Just wait until we’re alone.
Leaving that promise for later, I briefly explained the current situation.
As I went through everything one by one, the familiar who had been listening in silence gradually stiffened.
By the time I finished with Ma Yu-ri’s condition, he was staring at me with a rare look of dumbfounded disbelief.
After a moment of fluster, the familiar quickly regained his composure.
I shifted aside slightly and showed him Ma Yu-ri sleeping on the Device screen. He let out a short breath and blinked, his expression growing complicated.
The familiar nodded and looked Ma Yu-ri over more carefully.
As he kept marveling, a faint trace of relief finally settled into those yellow eyes.
“Hey. Why the hell are you bringing up that ungrateful cat bitch all of a sudden? It’s annoying.”
Watching the familiar speak so casually, I frowned.
I’d gone to the trouble of saving that damn cat bastard, only for her to get half-devoured by my Shyness and then run off without looking back.
And later, when she showed up again and stood against us on the humans’ side, I couldn’t believe how shameless she was.
Now that the war was over, where on earth was that cat bitch, and what was she doing?
Since the topic had come up, I found myself a little curious about how she was doing, but I shook my head and wiped the thought away.
Now wasn’t the time to worry about that. I needed to focus on the situation right in front of me.
“So, Bura. Make sure Seo-ah doesn’t freak out. Explain it properly, and calm her down, got it?”
At that, the familiar nodded to show he understood.
That ended our conversation, and I hung up.
Then I tapped another saved name and placed a call.
Kim Su-hyun asked back with a dumbfounded face.
I ignored him and gave him a quick, rough rundown of what had happened and the situation I was in.
“So I killed about half the bastard scum, and I’ve kept the other half alive for now.”
I looked away from the hologram and turned to the side.
In a space as large as a school field, a group of humans was kneeling and trembling.
White, black, and Asian, the crowd was a mix of races.
There were Awakened among them, ordinary civilians too, and around two hundred people in all, wearing everything from military uniforms to research coats.
It was almost funny, the way they all held their breath as they wandered nearby, terrified of touching the thick, blood-colored sludge that squirmed and pooled around them.
You butchered them all, and now you’re scared of dying yourself?
“Hk, hwaaaah!”
Out of spite, I swallowed one of the worst of the filthy lot.
Strangled screams rang out all around me.
Kim Su-hyun’s face, worn down with exhaustion, disappeared from the screen.
After measuring the coordinates with magic and sending the message, I tucked the Device into the inner pocket of my cloak.
With nothing else to do while I waited, I sat down on a nearby chair and looked at Ma Yu-ri in my clone’s arms.
She was mumbling and grinning in her sleep, as if she were dreaming something pleasant.
That made the dragon scales on both cheeks, which showed up like tattoos, twitch faintly.
“Did she get a little bigger?”
I was about 170 centimeters tall. When she’d still been human, Ma Yu-ri had only come up to about my shoulder.
But now, that gap looked like it had shrunk by half.
Her hair, which had grown down to her calves, was no longer the deep black-brown typical of Koreans; it had become a pure black, and the skin exposed beneath it had turned ghostly white, like a virgin spirit.
The two dragon horns on her head had grown larger than my palm and taken on a more elegant shape, and her once inhuman arms were now only human hands with black scales spreading over them.
Ah, though her nails were still as long as a beast’s.
I turned Ma Yu-ri, who was still cradled in my clone’s arms, around and hugged her from the front, and her naked back came fully into view.
Then I swept her black hair aside, and small, dark dragonkin wings were growing from her white back.
Below that slender waist, near the tailbone, a black tail larger and thicker than before twitched faintly.
The chimera’s rejection reaction was completely gone, and the joints looked so natural it was as if she had been born that way.
Her severed left leg had also regenerated completely, so all that remained was for her mental state to stay intact.
“Should I put something on her?”
Only then did I realize Ma Yu-ri was naked.
She was still a kid, but staring at that idiotically oversized chest and those hips, there was no way this could pass for the body of a fourteen-year-old, so I figured I should at least cover her with something and started rummaging through my inventory.
“Hmm. Is this a bit small?”
I happened to find a white boxy T-shirt I’d bought because I thought it would look cute on Seo-ah, and I got Ma Yu-ri into it, but it clung too honestly to the curves of her body.
Worse, the white panties I’d put on underneath were barely visible, caught on that thick tail and sitting there on the edge of being exposed.
“Tsk.”
Without meaning to, I covered my mouth and let out a low breath.
Why was it even more obscene now that I’d dressed her?
If it weren’t for her age, and if it weren’t Seo-ah’s body, I might even have gotten a little worked up.
At this point, the scent of her body wasn’t bad at all, really.
Vwoooom-
“Huh?”
I stopped admiring her and turned my head at the sudden surge of massive mana.
Light flashed in the empty space before me, and a blue portal-like thing opened.
Wondering what was going on, I stared blankly as a number of humans began walking out from inside it.
“Ms. Cynthia.”
“Glasses.”
One of them was a face I knew.
“You got here fast.”
“The coordinates you sent were quite far, so I asked for assistance.”
Assistance?
As I looked on in confusion, someone else stepped out from behind Kim Su-hyun.
The first thing I noticed was the sharp smell of iron, distinct to metal.
Then glaring platinum-blond hair dazzled my eyes, and a firm, unwavering force seemed to radiate from her without even trying.
A white woman stood before me.
Wearing armor straight out of Ragnarok, she was taller than I was, so I had to look slightly up at her.
Setting aside her remarkable beauty, she was someone who felt strangely familiar in a way that was hard to pin down.
“I’m very sorry to meet under circumstances like these. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Angelica Hart. Ms. Valentine.”
The greeting was stiff and polite, but there was no hint of submission in it. Her bright, righteous golden eyes stared straight at me.
Oh. This woman’s stronger than the maid.
That was interesting enough, but who was she supposed to be?
“She’s America’s protector.”
“Protector?”
“The American number one hero I mentioned before, Archangel, is this lady right here.”
When Kim Su-hyun added the explanation after seeing my puzzled expression, Angelica smiled faintly.
“I sincerely thank you for your kindness and your efforts. And I warmly welcome you to America, Ms. Valentine.”
“Huh? America?”
I tilted my head at the sudden mention of the country, and Kim Su-hyun, standing beside me, looked at me with mild disbelief.
“You didn’t know? This is American soil.”
“Oh, really?”
Apparently, this wasn’t a city but an abandoned industrial complex outside the Wall.
I’d known I’d gone far, but I never expected it to be abroad.
“Mmm.”
“Ma Yu-ri?”
Just as Angelica was about to speak again, Ma Yu-ri, still in my clone’s arms, began to stir.
When I stepped closer to check on her, the eyelids that had been tightly shut pinched once, then slowly opened.
Inside those gray-white eyes, pupils slit vertically like a reptile’s blinked several times.
Then she met my gaze.
Her eyes curved into crescents, and her mouth opened wide in a smile that revealed sharp fangs.
“Mom!”
“What?”
Ma Yu-ri threw her arms wide and sprang into me.
Her thick tail whipped back and forth furiously as she rubbed her face against my chest.
Just the way she had with Shin So-ra.
“Hey, why am I your mom?”
“Huh? What do you mean, Mom?”
With an innocent face, she looked up at me, not understanding a thing.
As I was left utterly speechless, Angelica’s voice came from beside me.
“My apologies. I see it’s not Ms. after all, but Mrs.?”
I’m not exactly sure what she meant, but I felt like I probably needed to say no. Why did I?