Chapter 77
Chapter 77
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 77
Chapter Title: Seraphim and the Dragon's Memory
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Han-gyeol opened her eyes.
It had been a week since she awoke from her mutation.
In that week, her daily life had changed dramatically.
“……Yawn.”
She let out a yawn.
Covering her mouth with tiny hands she couldn’t even have imagined before her mutation, she squinted her eyes.
At the same time, the space above her head brightened suddenly as a halo appeared.
The symbol of an angel.
And the reason why she, who had always been so active, now had to hole up in her room.
“Ah, I guess I can’t go out today either…….”
Han-gyeol sighed.
The reason she restrained herself from going out was simple.
She was an Angel-type mutant.
And South Korea had a huge number of Protestant and Catholic believers.
What would they say if they saw Han-gyeol?
Oh, the Lord’s messenger has come.
They’d try to use her like that, wouldn’t they?
Just imagining it made her feel nauseous.
“This damn…… Ah, moth…… damn.”
In this situation, she couldn’t even lament freely. It was truly awful.
At first, flying around had been pure fun.
But the moment she faced reality, she realized that every part of her daily life from before was gone.
Only then did she truly understand what Seo-hyun had said before.
How precious the everyday life she’d taken for granted had been.
If she’d been an Oni-type mutant like Tae-hoon.
If she were a mutant with no ties to religion, she wouldn’t be feeling this much stress.
But she was a mutant deeply connected to religion.
If she got caught, they might suddenly demand she go to the Vatican.
‘……I can’t let that happen.’
She wasn’t uninterested in the Vatican. Han-gyeol was a fairly devout Catholic.
Of course, her devotion was within normal bounds.
Not the kind that threw caution to the wind in fanaticism.
So she only had ‘interest’ in the Vatican.
She had zero desire to live there.
At that moment, Han-gyeol felt an intense headache.
“Urgh……!”
Like someone was forcibly cramming knowledge into her head.
Her vision went black, and an image floated before her eyes.
It was a terrifying form covered in eyes and wings, wreathed in flames.
The moment she met those eyes, Han-gyeol couldn’t help recalling a passage from the Book of Revelation.
‘The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes all around and within.’
‘Day and night they never stop saying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.’
“This damn……!”
She couldn’t even say “crazy,” so “moth” slipped out, but Han-gyeol was genuinely shocked.
She had realized what being she had mutated into.
Seraphim.
The seraphim who attend God.
Han-gyeol was dumbfounded.
How had she become such a sublime being?
‘Isn’t this stronger than Seo-hyun?’
The thought crossed her mind, but she shook her head.
No. When she became an angel, she had definitely felt something from Seo-hyun.
An immense pressure she’d never sensed before.
It was unmistakably what could be called fear.
What on earth was Seo-hyun’s true nature?
If even she, an angel, felt fear, what kind of dragon had Seo-hyun mutated into?
Maybe not just any dragon.
But even knowing such an enormous truth changed nothing.
‘I’ll just lay low like a dead rat for a while.’
It was a fact only she knew, and she had no intention of going out anytime soon anyway.
‘I should take a leave of absence.’
For different reasons than Tae-hoon, she seriously considered taking time off from school.
* * *
I had a dream.
I realized I was dreaming.
Otherwise, there was no way such a brutal scene would appear before my eyes.
The ground was cracked open wide.
It seemed like the aftermath of a fierce battle. Blood from countless corpses had formed rivers.
The corpses were of all kinds.
Some human, some foreigner.
The blood of the races we had mutated into was surely mixed in that flowing crimson river.
Why was I having such a dream?
So vivid.
Gazing at the horrific scene, I strangely felt tears welling up.
It was odd.
Ever since becoming a dragon, I hadn’t felt emotions this intense.
Why cry at this sight?
Even seeing that horrific event in America, I’d only been shocked, not saddened.
Why was this so heartbreaking?
The moment that thought hit me, the scene changed.
Instead of the barren wasteland I’d just seen, a fertile, radiant field appeared.
In the center of that field stood the World Tree I’d seen in America.
Filled with nameless flowers and grasses, it looked like a paradise at first glance.
All life there gathered in harmony as paradise’s inhabitants.
But I knew.
This beautiful paradise was that same horrific battlefield from moments ago.
What had happened?
A book fell before me.
I picked it up and turned the pages.
It was someone’s memory.
The record of the world now unfolding before my eyes.
In the beginning, there were dragons.
Born from chaos, the dragons watched as the chaos enveloping the world gradually took form and stabilized.
As proof of that stability, the World Tree took root in the earth.
Thus, the world began.
The dragon watched countless lives born from the World Tree’s roots.
Seeing those lives, I couldn’t hold back a hollow laugh.
They were beings from myths and legends on Earth.
To me, familiar figures, but to the dragon, they must have seemed utterly beautiful.
The dragon wished for this world born from the World Tree to last eternally.
It declared itself the guardian of the World Tree and its surroundings.
Vowing not to forgive any who harmed this paradise.
But…… the countless lives from the World Tree’s roots suffered a strange longing.
A bizarre desire to escape this cradle-like paradise.
They demanded the paradise’s dissolution and sought to live freely.
Even as the dragon threatened them, they couldn’t abandon their longing and ultimately burned the World Tree.
Furious, the dragon demanded their severe punishment, but the World Tree stopped it.
For it was the World Tree that had birthed them.
The World Tree simply asked the dragon.
To just watch. To observe how the lives it birthed would live.
Unable to betray the World Tree’s request, the dragon observed strictly.
However, it entrusted one seed left by the fading World Tree to its first children.
High Elves.
They feared the supreme dragon, yet harbored the desire to revive their mother and kept the World Tree’s seed.
Hoping that one day it would sprout again.
But that day never came.
Because war broke out.
The lives that tasted freedom outside paradise deemed their own race supreme and fought one another.
Endless war began.
Yet the dragon did not intervene.
The World Tree had asked it to watch their rise and fall.
And in the end, even the High Elves guarding the seed perished, and the seed burned.
The World Tree could no longer sprout, and only then did the dragon rise from its coiled form.
The lives had crossed the final line.
They should never have burned the World Tree at minimum.
For that had been the chain binding the dragon at the World Tree’s behest.
Freed from those chains, the dragon sought to punish the lives that ruined paradise.
Thus, the dragon became the world’s calamity.
When the dragon breathed, the entire earth burned.
When it summoned clouds, the whole sky blackened, and life could no longer face the sun.
When it commanded death, all life withered.
But such acts burdened the dragon excessively.
The dragon finally exhausted its power.
Having exterminated all life, it breathed its last and wished.
To see the paradise it once beheld again someday.
For the World Tree to reappear.
For there to be no hatred or fighting among them.
For it to protect that place.
That was the dragon’s final memory.
* * *
I opened my eyes and gasped for blocked breath.
“Haa…….”
It was a dream, yet not a dream.
A record of a world.
Why had it unfolded before me?
The reason was simple.
The being I mutated into was that very dragon.
It was absurd.
It felt like watching a movie…… but realizing it was real made it all too real.
Only then did I understand why mutations began from the World Tree.
Why the mutation phenomenon occurred.
The mutation phenomenon stemmed from the dragon’s origin.
I also realized why, despite my immense power, I wasn’t savage, and why my mind stabilized immediately.
The dragon wasn’t inherently ferocious; it was a guardian dragon that sought to protect paradise.
In truth, less a mere dragon and more a godlike being.
And from glimpsing this memory, I learned one fact.
Mutations weren’t over.
Not all the races in my memory had appeared yet.
Mutations probably wouldn’t stop until they all did.
……What a mess.
I sighed. It felt like my workload kept growing.
Would I even graduate?
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