The Black Dragon
Seo Ga-eok!
Baek Seo-ha's blade carved straight through the Black Dragon's body.
Wh-what! How!
The Black Dragon recoiled in sheer disbelief, wrenching herself backward.
I had clearly lost all sense of former life...!
A Heart Demon strikes at the most fragile part of a person. The reason is simple — the Heart Demon is that fragility itself. No one in this world is without a weakness. Every person has lived their life instinctively covering theirs. Some suppress their emotions, some bury their hearts, some force down their very nature just to fit in with everyone else.
But for true growth, one must face that weakness and overcome it. That is the Heart Demon — confronting the weakest part of yourself, refusing to be devoured by it and instead tearing into it in return. To defeat the Heart Demon means exactly that.
"Hah!"
Baek Seo-ha poured her strength into the sword. White mana blossomed like a flower, petals of light scattering on the wind.
Krrrrshhh!
A dizzying chain of sword strikes rained down.
Kraaaaaagh!
The Black Dragon wailed in agony — but Baek Seo-ha did not pause. As if furious at herself, she drove her blade in even more mercilessly.
"I'll admit it, Black Dragon."
She whispered low as she swung.
"You are me."
What...?!
"The me I wanted to hide. The me I thought I had to throw away."
The people around her had always said the same things. Too cruel. Nothing like a child. Not a single cute bone in her body. And she had to be that way — because she couldn't spend all day crying just because it hurt. To survive, she had no choice but to hammer herself down into the depths.
'Kill your true nature. Think realistically.'
That was what she had been taught — when swinging a sword, when facing other people. And so the true nature of the girl called Baek Seo-ha had always crouched in the black abyss beneath her.
'The truth is...'
She had wanted to say it. Don't abandon yourself. Give me one more chance. She had wanted to reach out and pull back the shoulders of the figure walking away.
"So from now on, I won't hesitate."
She had already let the chance slip twice. She couldn't afford to miss the third.
Shrrk!
The blade split the Black Dragon's body down the center.
Damn it... damn you...!
The Black Dragon ground her teeth in fury. I had almost won! I could have shattered your heart and taken my vengeance for all those years of imprisonment!
Baek Seo-ha simply stood, sword in hand, quietly watching her.
...If you're going to kill me, then hurry up and do it!
"No. I'm not going to kill you."
With that, she drove her sword into the ground and sat down right where she stood.
Wh-what are you doing now?!
"I'm sorry."
Astonishingly, what left her lips was a heartfelt apology.
"I turned my back on you all this time."
...
"I kept telling myself it was to survive, that the world didn't want to see that side of me — and I rushed to bury you behind excuses."
The Black Dragon was Baek Seo-ha. She was the part of herself that had to be discarded for Baek Seo-ha to become the White Dragon.
And now, of all times, you say this...?
"Because if not now, I might never get to."
Baek Seo-ha bowed her head.
"Truly. I'm sorry."
From the White Dragon to the Black Dragon. From Baek Seo-ha to Baek Seo-ha. The deepest apology there could ever be.
...Do you remember that day?
The Black Dragon spoke softly.
The day we quarreled for the first time.
"I remember."
It was still vivid. The day the stinging wounds on her body burned at the touch of water, and for the first time in her life, she talked back to the orphanage director, refusing to bathe. The director had spat a stream of curses and slapped her across the cheek. It had hurt. More than anything she'd endured before.
The Black Dragon closed her eyes.
Perhaps that was the moment I first slithered down into the depths and coiled up there. To survive. To never repeat that shocking pain. An unconscious defense mechanism had carved out a pit the Black Dragon could never climb out of. Even when she tried to deny it, she couldn't help but admit it — as long as I existed, you suffered, and you were hated.
"..."
Still, I wanted to live. Even as a fragment of you. I lived in silence, biting my own tail, holding my breath. And so, when the slightest sliver of light leaked in, I found myself crawling back up without meaning to.
That was how the Black Dragon became a Heart Demon.
How pathetic of me... right down to the very end.
The Black Dragon drew in a long, relieved breath.
Now, devour me. Surpass the Heart Demon and achieve your growth, Baek Seo-ha.
"...No. I'm not going to devour you."
She rose and extended her hand toward the Black Dragon.
"I'm going to keep carrying you with me. Because you are me."
Are you insane?! You intend to simply leave the Heart Demon in place?
The ending was the same for anyone who failed to eliminate their Heart Demon. Their mana circuits would burn out from catastrophic internal injuries, or their body would break down until they could no longer work as a hunter. That was why some called the Heart Demon a curse.
Stop talking nonsense and kill me! Only then will you survive!
"No."
You have people you love to go see! Are you seriously going to throw away your life over some cheap pity?!
"It's not pity."
Baek Seo-ha shook her head.
"It's responsibility. For leaving you neglected all these years."
You're completely out of your mind. Do you honestly believe you can live a normal life while carrying a Heart Demon?
"You're me before you're a Heart Demon."
She smiled like sunlight breaking through.
"It would be strange, wouldn't it — for me to abandon myself?"
Hah... hahahaha! You really are... insane. Just as insane as Lee Tae-hyun, the man who called you insane.
"...I'm not that insane."
And why does that man's name come up out of nowhere?
Baek Seo-ha's cheeks flushed faintly red.
"A Heart Demon, and the Black Dragon, and me."
She had no intention of leaving any of them behind. So she settled into a cross-legged position and began circulating her mana — carrying the Heart Demon along instead of cutting it down. It was a mad idea no one could easily attempt, no different from living with poison held in your mouth at all times.
But then, it was always the rare few 'geniuses' whose mad ideas changed the world.
"Hoooohh..."
And Baek Seo-ha was, indeed, a genius.
A Heart Demon is wandering your soul.
The dark power within it is achieving extreme harmony with your body.
If two forces could not merge, then they only needed to circulate around each other. Their energies interlocked in the shape of a taiji, maintaining a razor-thin equilibrium. Sweat beaded on her forehead, drop by drop.
To coexist with a Heart Demon was never an easy feat — but a genius's senses made it possible. Instinctively, she grasped how to hold the balance of power, how to let the two forces meld into each other without backlash.
The Heart Demon now moves freely through your body.
A new skill is beginning to take shape!
At last, all of her senses converged into one.
Thank you, Baek Seo-ha.
The Black Dragon's quiet gratitude reached her.
Thank you for not abandoning me. Thank you for letting me see the light once more, in the end. For the rest of my life, I will remain at your side, together with you.
Heavy eyelids lifted slowly.
"Mmm... where...?"
"You're up."
Through her bleary vision, a face came into focus. A man with distinctively sharp eyes.
"T-Tae-hyun?!"
"You were out cold. Snoring and everything."
"I... I was snoring?!"
"Kidding."
Lee Tae-hyun snickered and shrugged.
"You were sleeping quiet as the dead. And I heard you haven't been able to sleep lately, so..."
"...Where did you go?"
"Huh?"
Expecting some offhand deflection, he was caught off guard by the crawling, low voice.
"I asked where you went. Leaving nothing but a single message behind."
"Ah... it was n-nothing, really. Personal business, I guess you'd call it."
"Personal business. What kind?"
"Do you know what the word 'personal' means?"
Lee Tae-hyun let out a baffled laugh.
"Wait... is it something to do with the Tower Master?"
"The Tower Master? Ji Yeon-ha?"
Why did that woman's name come up out of nowhere? He tilted his head.
"Did the two of you go on a date, or... take off abroad for a week or something?"
Astonishingly, that was the most reasonable hypothesis Baek Seo-ha had managed to construct. A man who suddenly vanishes without contact — what else would he be doing with his lover (pretty, capable, and popular)?
"Wh-what, wha—what are you— with who, going where?!"
Naturally, it was enough to make Lee Tae-hyun's brain short-circuit. They say when a person hears something too absurd, their thoughts simply stop — and right now, he was living proof.
"Huh? You and Tower Master Ji Yeon-ha aren't a couple?"
"Are you insane?! Me, dating her because I couldn't find any other woman?!"
Not that Ji Yeon-ha was a bad woman, of course. It was just that she'd happily burn through fortunes on magic research funding at the slightest opportunity and disappear into her lab for days on end. As a sucker — no, a business partner — she might be the best in the world, but as a lover? She couldn't have been further from his type if she tried.
"Why on earth would you think that?"
"Well... the truth is..."
Baek Seo-ha honestly confessed what she'd seen before — the two of them wrapped around each other in that café.
"Ah. That was... haaaah..."
Lee Tae-hyun explained as best he could. Through certain circumstances, he had gotten his hands on research data she'd been chasing her whole life, and he'd been trading it to her. The embrace had been entirely Ji Yeon-ha getting carried away — an action taken without mutual consent, he stressed.
"Oh... so you and the Tower Master aren't dating."
"That's what I've been saying?! Unbelievable."
He fanned his face with his hand.
"S-so that's how it is... hmm..."
Baek Seo-ha forcibly dragged down the corners of her mouth as they kept trying to curl upward. All she'd learned was that Lee Tae-hyun didn't have a lover — so why on earth was her mood soaring like this?
"Anyway, forget that. Let's hear about you now."
"Me?"
"The Heart Demon. You didn't cut it down, did you?"
"...!"
Baek Seo-ha's mouth fell open in shock.
"How did you know?"
"One look and it's obvious."
Lee Tae-hyun recalled his memories from before the regression. Among them were moments when he'd witnessed hunters tormented by their Heart Demons up close — and whenever a Heart Demon vanished, it was almost always with a bizarre parting spectacle.
'Kraaaaagh! Curse youuuu!'
'I will return! Mark my words, I WILL come back and drag you down with meeeee!'
That was how they dissolved — screaming threats. But Baek Seo-ha's Heart Demon hadn't vanished at all. Instead, it had crawled back inside her, as if absorbed somewhere.
"What on earth did you do to make a Heart Demon do that?"
"I embraced it."
"Embraced it? A Heart Demon?"
Was that even possible? At the very least, it was near-impossible by everything Lee Tae-hyun knew.
'Well... not strictly impossible.'
In theory, a Heart Demon was still a form of energy. If you wanted to be precise, it was an energy of yin — dark, receptive nature — much like the 'Dantalion' currently dwelling within his own body. 'Flame Soul,' by contrast, carried an intense yang nature.
'But the fact that a Heart Demon is energy and therefore can be housed within the body is pure theory.'
It was like saying you could travel through time by running at the speed of light. To begin with, a Heart Demon wasn't the kind of energy suited to being carried at all. It lay in wait every second of every day, hungry to devour your soul — could anyone really coexist with that in peace?
"Yep. And then I got a skill out of it."
"What skill?"
"...Grade-wise, it's... SS, I think?"
Not even S-rank — SS-rank? In all his life, he'd never once heard of such a grade existing.
"Oh. That's high."
"...That's it?"
But Lee Tae-hyun's reaction was oddly lukewarm — as if he were used to skills in the SSS or EX range himself.
"So what does the skill do?"
"I'll activate it right now."
Baek Seo-ha unleashed the skill without a shred of hesitation. Because she trusted the Black Dragon. Because she trusted the other self who had hidden herself away all this time, solely to protect her.
Using 'Blackening.'