Chapter 34 — Half-Fledged Dragon Words
Chapter 34 — Half-Fledged Dragon Words
Translation: GodTL
We descended with Tae-seong in front. Magic illuminated the staircase, but the light only made the darkness beyond it look thicker. The statue above had carried one deciphered sentence: The emperor rests here. With every step downward, that line felt less like an inscription and more like a warning. If this really was an imperial tomb, then perhaps the entire Garden of the Dragon Sword had been built as its first defense—one that would never reveal the path below until the correct key, a Dragon Bone Sword, arrived.
"Is this how archaeologists feel? It's scary not knowing what might jump out, but kind of exciting, too," said one Hunter, perhaps trying to shake off his nerves.
Another Hunter beside him looked at him in disbelief. "You're excited right now, Oppa?"
"In a way, we're the first people to explore this imperial tomb. When will we ever get another chance like this?"
"Hah..." The woman shook her head, then turned to me. "What about you, Min-jun?"
"Hmm... Assuming we make it back alive, yes. I am a little excited."
The other Hunters couldn't relate, but unlike them, I had one more reason to be excited: I might find a clue here that would help me use my Dragon power.
"What? Am I the weird one? This place just gives me the creeps..." The woman shook her head, still baffled, and muttered to herself, "Maybe thinking that way is the only way they can stand it."
I could understand her reaction. No matter how exciting the discovery was, we were still walking through someone's grave.
We spent several minutes walking and talking about the tomb before one of the Hunters, who had been following us in silence with her shoulders hunched since we started down the stairs, called out.
"Tae-seong Oppa, wait a second. Doesn't it look like something's written here?"
Everyone, Tae-seong included, turned toward the wall she was pointing at. Sure enough, something resembling writing was inscribed there in small letters. I couldn't be certain, but it looked similar to the deciphered sentence Tae-seong had shown me earlier.
"I'll take a picture and bring it up when I make my report."
Tae-seong took a photo for his report, and several other Hunters followed suit, apparently out of curiosity. I joined them and took one too, thinking I could show it to Sia and Rokan later.
The carved letters bothered me the moment I looked at them. I couldn't read them, yet some part of their shape felt unpleasantly familiar, like seeing a word from a dream I'd forgotten.
But just as I was about to put my phone in my pocket, a Hunter behind me gave me a slight shove. My arms flailed as I instinctively reached for something to steady myself, and my hand landed right on the writing carved into the wall. As I leaned against it in an awkward pose, I heard a Hunter behind me.
"Oh! Sorry. Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine. But..."
The wall had kept me from falling, but that wasn't what mattered now.
The instant my palm touched the inscription, something answered from inside the stone.
A fine electric tingle climbed through my fingertips. I pulled back, stared at my hand, then touched the writing again deliberately.
"Ngh."
The same sensation returned—clearer this time.
"Min-jun, what's wrong?"
"There's... something strange about this."
At Tae-seong's puzzled question, I explained what I'd felt.
"Really? It looks like an ordinary wall."
He put his hand against it too, and surprise spread across his face as soon as he touched it. He had felt the same tingle.
Just then, someone spoke up. "I think I know why."
It was the voice I'd heard behind me earlier—probably the Hunter who'd accidentally pushed me. Wasn't his name Hyeonseok? He raised his hand.
"My older cousin is a Gate archaeologist. She tells me stories from work sometimes, and apparently this happens fairly often."
"By 'this,' you mean a wall that tingles when you touch it?"
"Yeah. She says that always means the wall is coated with special mana."
It was news to all of us, and everyone listened with interest. Tae-seong, who had been listening quietly, said, "Then there's magic on this wall."
"Right. Apparently, all anyone has to do is feed it a tiny amount of mana, and the magic inscribed here will activate."
An imperial tomb indeed. They had even enchanted its walls with magic like this.
"Sounds like the same principle as an artifact," Tae-seong said.
"Exactly. That's what my cousin said too," Hyeonseok replied.
"Then should I try it?"
Since he'd brought it up, Hyeonseok volunteered to feed mana into the wall, and the other Hunters readily agreed. But...
"... That's strange."
He had definitely fed mana into it, yet the magic hadn't activated.
"There's definitely magic inscribed here..."
Hyeonseok tried again, just in case, but nothing happened this time either.
"Move aside. Let me try."
Seeing him struggle, Tae-seong—the most knowledgeable about magic among us—stepped up and fed mana into it himself. But just like Hyeonseok, even after putting in more mana, he got no response.
"Hyeonseok, are you sure you've got this right?"
"I'm sure! My cousin's an expert. Ugh, there's no internet here, so I can't even look it up."
While protesting his innocence, Hyeonseok suddenly turned to me. "Min-jun, could you give it a try? I think you might be able to do it."
The other Hunters agreed that his suggestion made sense.
"Yeah, maybe Min-jun can do it. You're the one who opened this hidden dungeon to begin with."
It sounded plausible even to me. I approached the wall as they suggested and fed mana into it.
The moment my mana entered the wall, the letters ignited.
Light raced through the ancient inscription one character at a time. The Hunters fell silent. Then the glow collapsed inward, and an image began forming in the air before us.
"Recording magic...!"
I'd never seen it myself, but I'd heard of it before. Recording magic like this was occasionally found in Gates. I hadn't expected the spell inscribed on this wall to be one.
A boy appeared first. Twelve, maybe thirteen years old. He was crying.
"Think that kid's the one buried here?"
"Looks like it."
I had a feeling the recording showed the life of the emperor buried in this tomb. We couldn't understand their language, but we could make out roughly what was happening from the context.
A royal family ruled a small kingdom. Unlike his siblings, who were renowned for their martial skill, the boy had little talent for it. The kingdom's founder had been a Swordmaster, and all his descendants had inherited a gift for swordsmanship. Oddly enough, though, the boy's talent was pitiful. From what I could tell, he was also the youngest of his siblings and an illegitimate son who couldn't inherit the throne.
Perhaps that was why he faced subtle contempt not only from his older brothers, but even from the royal retainers. The recording captured his feelings so vividly that, for some time, I forgot I was inside a tomb.
Then, after days of humiliation painful enough that the boy seemed to wish for death, a stranger appeared in his bedroom carrying a sword.
He had crossed the royal palace's defenses without raising an alarm. The boy screamed for guards, but his voice went nowhere. Whatever stood before him had cut the room off from the rest of the world.
Was he an assassin someone had sent? Or had he come to kidnap the boy for some other purpose?
The stranger smiled and whispered to him. I should not have understood a single syllable.
"...You have a talent even you don't know about."
The Korean translation slipped out of my mouth before I realized I'd understood him. Every Hunter around me turned.
"Min-jun, what did you just say?"
I waved a hand at the Hunter who'd asked and made an excuse. "Oh, I just figured that's what he was saying from the context."
"... Well, it does fit."
A shadow unfolded behind the stranger. Vast wings. A long neck. Horns. The silhouette of a Dragon filled the room behind him like something too large to belong in human space.
"... Goosebumps."
"What? So the person buried here really got his sword from a Dragon?"
"So there's a reason this dungeon's called the Garden of the Dragon Sword."
No one joked after that. The recording continued.
The boy's fate changed the moment he received the sword. The prince everyone had dismissed as talentless began defeating the brothers who had mocked him. He climbed from an illegitimate child with no claim worth mentioning to the strongest heir in the royal family, and then to the throne itself.
And he did not stop at becoming king. With the Dragon's power in his sword and body, he swallowed neighboring kingdoms one after another until an entire continent knelt beneath one banner.
That's more than I imagined.
Yet when the boy had become an emperor and there was nothing left in the world for him to conquer, satisfaction never came. The man on the throne looked more restless than the child who had once cried alone in his room.
"If it were me, I'd just retire and enjoy the rest of my life without a worry."
"Everyone's got their troubles. You see it with top stars, too. They have money and fame, then go on some show and admit they're dealing with depression and panic disorder."
As they watched the emperor's epic life unfold in the recording, the Hunters briefly forgot everything else and became absorbed in it.
At the end of the recording, the emperor leaned against his throne and spoke as though he were confessing something to the empty room.
<If I could use full-fledged Dragon Words like the Dragons, instead of this half-fledged version... what would it be like?>
Half-fledged Dragon Words.
My breath caught.
I understood him.
Not from context. Not from guessing. I had heard a language no one around me recognized and understood it as naturally as Korean.
"Does anyone have any idea what the emperor's muttering?" I asked, wondering if the others could understand him too.
"No way. I can't make out a word," said the Hunter beside me, shaking their head.
"I even tried translation magic just in case, but it didn't work," another said.
"Maybe because it's a language from another world?"
Even Tae-seong, the highest-ranked mage among us, shook his head and said he couldn't understand it.
Then why was I the only one who could?