Chapter 36 — I've Been Waiting for You
Chapter 36 — I've Been Waiting for You
Translation: GodTL
How much time had passed?
"Ugh..."
Min-jun woke with a groan and one hand clamped to his head. The last thing he remembered was the floor sinking beneath him inside the imperial tomb. This place was nothing like that chamber.
Strange patterns covered a broad stone platform, and waist-high weeds swayed beyond it under open blue sky. He had been deep underground only moments ago. Now there was sunlight on his face.
The horizon was wrong. The land extended only so far, then ended in a clean, impossible boundary. Beyond it was no wall, no mountain, no distant haze—only a depthless black void. Looking into it stirred fear too old to have a name.
And the air itself carried something else: an energy that made the Dragon Bone Sword beside him feel strangely awake.
"What...?"
Before he could orient himself, the stone under him shuddered. A shape rose slowly from the ground ahead, as though the world were remembering someone who had died there.
It was...
"...The emperor?"
Dark brown hair and eyes of the same color. A masculine face and a tall, broad build to match. It was the emperor as Min-jun had seen him in his youth through the recording magic.
"You look upon His Majesty the Emperor and call him 'the emperor'? You have no manners."
Min-jun had never heard the language before, yet he could understand him. It was the same unfamiliar language he had heard and understood in the recording. He swallowed hard and watched the emperor warily. Despite calling him rude, the emperor did not seem particularly angry. If anything, he was looking Min-jun over with keen interest. Min-jun sensed no immediate hostility.
'Still, I can't let my guard down.' That was only a guess, after all.
"Then should I call you... Your Majesty?"
"Forget it. I'm already dead; what use have I for 'Your Majesty'? Just call me by my name. I am Minos."
Minos wasted no time on ceremony. "There is only one reason you were able to come here."
He pointed at the Dragon Bone Sword beside Min-jun. "You wield a Dragon Bone Sword, as I did. This place does not open for anyone else."
The last of Min-jun's doubt disappeared. The Garden, the statue, the hidden tomb, the barrier—none of it had been coincidence. The sword had brought him here.
Before Min-jun could ask, Minos slowly explained, as if he already knew what Min-jun wanted to know.
"You saw it in the recording magic. I used the Dragon power dwelling in my sword to change not only my own fate, but my homeland's as well."
The recording Min-jun had seen was one Minos had ordered the royal mages to leave for whoever might find his tomb. It told them who lay buried there and what kind of life he had lived.
"I, who had been furthest from the line of succession, became king and transformed a weak kingdom into a vast, united empire."
To Minos, those events lay in a past so distant it was now impossible to measure, but his memories of them remained vivid.
He remembered the first time the strange visitor had placed a Dragon Bone Sword in his hands. The visitor had not revealed who he was, but Minos had sensed that he was probably one of the Dragons he had only heard about. With time, that intuition became certainty. Only a Dragon could possess both the confidence to overwhelm anyone and the immense power to prove it was no empty boast.
'You have a talent others do not. Let it blossom.'
The strange man had turned away, telling Minos not to disappoint him. Watching him go, Minos became utterly fascinated by Dragons.
'If I were a Dragon.'
The words about his talent had barely registered. His mind was consumed by Dragons.
'If I'd been born a Dragon instead of a feeble human...'
His brothers and his subjects would never have humiliated him so. If he had been born a perfect being—a Dragon—he would never have endured experiences so shameful he wanted to erase them.
From that day onward, Minos carried a dream he never dared speak aloud: he did not merely want a Dragon's strength. He wanted to become one.
Defeating the brothers who mocked him, seizing the throne, turning a weak frontier kingdom into a continent-spanning empire—those achievements that would have defined any other man's life were, to Minos, only milestones along the road to something greater.
He wanted the body of a Dragon. Their lifespan. Their power. Their freedom from the humiliations of human weakness. He wanted perfection badly enough that becoming emperor eventually felt small.
At thirty, after years of brutal training, he accomplished what should have been impossible: Dragon Words spoken through a human body.
"But I never mastered them."
The world had called his power miraculous. Minos knew the truth. What he had produced was unstable, incomplete—an imitation that tore at the body every time he forced it into existence.
'I want to use perfect Dragon Words. Not half-fledged Dragon Words, but the very same flawless Dragon Words that Dragons use!'
With no Dragon to guide him, Minos kept pushing. Every failure only deepened his obsession. He believed perfect Dragon Words were the gate he had to cross if he ever wanted to shed the limits of being human.
'Damn it...!'
The price arrived slowly, then all at once. First came blood after using Dragon Words. Then blood after drawing on the sword. Eventually the backlash came even when he did nothing. The body that had conquered a continent collapsed under a power it had never been built to contain.
Still, Minos did not abandon the dream. The tomb itself was proof. He had built an entire trial that could be reached only by another wielder of Dragon power, then left part of himself behind to wait.
But the more Min-jun heard, the more Minos reminded him of Icarus from ancient Greek mythology: Icarus, who was not content merely to fly, but flew higher to approach the sun, only for the wax on his wings to melt and send him falling. Min-jun feared he might end up like Icarus—or like Minos before him.
"You seem to have a great deal on your mind."
"... How could I not?"
Minos had some inkling of what Min-jun was feeling.
"Which brings us to you." Minos's gaze sharpened. "I have waited an absurdly long time for someone to reach this place and continue where I failed."
Minos had died long ago, but his powerful longing had left behind a remnant of his consciousness. That was why he could stand before Min-jun now.
Some might think his fixation on becoming a Dragon had gone too far. For a human, using Dragon Words was nearly impossible to begin with, and Minos had managed to use it, however imperfectly.
But his blind admiration for Dragons had turned into a pathological obsession, and that obsession had given rise to a twisted dream. Though he himself had failed, he wanted to witness someone else break through the limits of their birth and become a Dragon.
So his consciousness had endured inside the tomb, century after century, waiting for someone carrying Dragon power to arrive. Kingdoms could rise, languages could die, continents could change names. Minos remained. And at last, Min-jun stood in front of him.
"Show me your Dragon Words."
"...I can't." Min-jun hated how inadequate the answer sounded after hearing everything. "It hasn't even been a month since I started using this sword seriously. I can draw out some power, but Dragon Words are still beyond me."
Minos had carried this unfulfilled longing for so long. Having heard his story, Min-jun wished he could put it to rest, and it pained him that he could not.
"You cannot use them?"
"Not yet. But if I learn, I'll come back and show you."
"No." Minos smiled. "You misunderstand."
He stepped closer. The smile never reached his eyes. "You will learn here."
"...?"
Min-jun stared at him. Minos had destroyed his own body chasing Dragon Words. How exactly was a dead emperor planning to teach him something even he had failed to master?
The answer made the air around Min-jun turn cold.
"You will not leave this place until you use full-fledged Dragon Words."
There was no lesson plan. No gradual training. Min-jun would shatter the illusion with Dragon Words—or remain inside it.
"And until then," Minos added softly, "you will not even be allowed the mercy of death."
A blood-red sword appeared in Minos's hand. He drove it into the stone. The world answered with a pulse of dark energy, and the system window appeared before Min-jun again.
Rank: EX
Clear condition: Reach the lowest level of Minos's tomb and use Dragon Words — 0/1.