Episode 36
Keurasiaseu had existed since the primordial beginnings of Kurayan.
Though he bore the form of a dragon, no one in Kurayan—not even his fellow dragons—thought of him as a dragon.
Keurasiaseu’s epithet was Tamryong, the Greedy Dragon.
It was because he coveted and collected all the miracles and supernatural abilities that existed in Kurayan.
His colossal body, spanning three kilometers, was a veritable amalgamation of supernatural abilities.
He existed at the apex of the world called Kurayan, yet Keurasiaseu exerted no influence whatsoever.
He merely observed, as if he were a god.
In truth, among the gods that had existed in Kurayan, there was not a single being with power comparable to Keurasiaseu.
Beneath Keurasiaseu’s watch, a bystanding that was not mere bystanding, war broke out daily within Kurayan.
Kurayan was a place vastly different from Earth.
The development of civilization was similar to Earth’s, but the methods were entirely different.
Magic and all manner of supernatural abilities had enlightened humanity’s civilization in place of science.
Its inhabitants were also different from Earth’s.
Humans, elves, dwarves, and other races, as well as magical beasts, each firmly held their own territories and maintained a balance.
The land was finite, and with so many races existing, war never ceased.
Had any one side held clear superiority, the war would have ended far sooner.
But the military strength of humans and the other races was nearly equal.
The war, stained with hatred and rage, continued for thousands of years until it suddenly ended one day.
Because the end had come for Kurayan.
The sudden apocalypse brought everything to ruin.
The earth overturned, and the world was covered in magma.
The seas and rivers evaporated, and the sky was blanketed in black ash. And the planet itself began to collapse.
Neither the reason nor the cause was known.
When the apocalypse struck without warning one day, over two-thirds of the other races and humans perished.
The last being to come to the minds of the despairing humans and other races was none other than Keurasiaseu.
They begged Keurasiaseu to save them.
Keurasiaseu spoke.
“The destruction of this world is inevitable. For the beings of this world to live, another world must pay the price. Is that still acceptable?”
To that, the representatives of humanity and the other races replied thus:
“The desire to live is the fundamental instinct of all living things. How could one call that evil? We wish to live. Even if it means trampling upon another world, we wish to live. If it means survival, we will do anything. Are you not the guardian deity of Kurayan? O great one, whose power surpasses that of the gods. Please look upon us with favor. We are all no different from your children.”
At their entreaties, Keurasiaseu pondered for a long while.
“Very well! I shall see if there is a world to which you can migrate.”
Keurasiaseu used dimensional detection magic to find a place where the lifeforms of Kurayan could migrate.
Even at that moment, Kurayan was collapsing, and its destruction was near.
Therefore, Keurasiaseu had to hurry.
In the end, the place he found was Earth.
Had more time been given, he might have found another planet devoid of life, but unfortunately, there was no such leisure.
“The land I have found already houses billions of humans. If you wish to live there, you must inevitably kill them and seize their land. Is that still agreeable?”
At Keurasiaseu’s words, the humans, the other races, and even the other dragons said it did not matter.
No—there was one who raised an objection.
It was Achirukeu, one of the human representatives.
“No. How could we steal another world just to survive? I am opposed.”
Achirukeu’s epithet was the Noble Knight.
Achirukeu, a man who was the very embodiment of knighthood from head to toe, simply could not tolerate migration to another world.
War among themselves was one thing; the invasion of another world was an entirely different matter.
Alone, he raised his voice in opposition and fought back with a single sword.
But one hand cannot stop ten, and moreover, those gathered there were among the strongest beings in Kurayan.
In the end, Achirukeu was slain by them.
It was the Gold Dragon Haieltun who turned the dead man into an undead.
Haieltun turned Achirukeu and his subordinates into undead and made them Guardians.
It was in preparation for the migration to Earth.
Keurasiaseu exerted all his might to open the dimensional gate. And he was the first to cross over to Earth.
It was possible because Keurasiaseu possessed power equal to that of a planet.
The first thing Keurasiaseu did upon arriving on Earth was to alter the environment to resemble Kurayan—so-called terraforming.
It was absolutely necessary for the lifeforms of Kurayan to successfully settle on Earth.
However, this terraforming caused a problem.
Keurasiaseu’s power was truly immense; the terraforming magic seemed to succeed.
But at that moment, an enormous backlash crashed over him.
It was as if the planet called Earth refused to be subordinated to Keurasiaseu and Kurayan.
Earth’s backlash brought about tremendous consequences.
It turned the entirety of Earth into a desert and brought about Keurasiaseu’s death.
As Keurasiaseu perished, all the powers and supernatural abilities he had coveted spread across Earth.
It was thanks to this that the humans of Earth awakened.
And so this world became a desert, and the Awakened emerged.
“Whoa! Fuck! So Earth ended up like this because of those Kurayan bastards?”
Jeon’s face twisted after hearing the story.
He had never once imagined, even in his dreams, that such circumstances lay behind Earth’s desertification.
Only now did he understand why Deiodeun would tremble with rage at the mere mention of other races.
Had he himself known all of those circumstances a hundred years ago, he would have been consumed by fury just like Deiodeun and killed every other race he came across.
Deiodeun asked.
“If you are a Guardian, that means the dragon is not far from here?”
“That is so.”
“Heh heh! The Gold Dragon Haieltun, you mean.”
Deiodeun laughed, baring his white teeth.
Achirukeu’s body trembled.
The madness radiating from Deiodeun was so severe that even as an undead, Achirukeu felt fear.
“Human!”
“Speak, Noble Knight.”
Deiodeun’s tone changed.
Deiodeun hated everything of Kurayan, yet he could not do so toward Achirukeu.
Achirukeu was a true knight.
When everyone had decided to migrate to Earth to survive, only he had raised an objection.
He had fought alone to stop a wrong decision, and in return, he became undead.
One could not treat a man who knew honor and justice with disrespect.
Achirukeu spoke.
“Dragons are strong.”
“I know.”
“You are strong now, but you cannot face a dragon.”
“I know that too.”
Deiodeun answered calmly.
He had already hunted a dragon before.
He had not been alone.
He had been with hundreds of Awakened.
At the time, two-thirds of the Awakened who participated in the dragon hunt perished, and most of the survivors became crippled.
The injured survivors did not live long and followed those who had gone before.
Those who survived intact were extremely few, including Deiodeun.
He had felt in his bones just how strong a dragon was.
A dragon was the very culmination of magic itself.
It also possessed tremendous anti-magic power.
Because of that, the attacks of magic-type Awakened were useless.
Not only that, but scales harder than adamantium deflected even the attacks of martial-type Awakened.
If countless Awakened had not stopped the dragon with suicidal charges and self-sacrificial attacks, it would have been impossible to kill.
Even then, Deiodeun possessed formidable strength.
Yet even he had felt despair before the overwhelming might of the dragon.
Moreover, the dragon they had hunted then was the youngest and weakest among the dragons that had crossed over to Earth.
Even capturing such a dragon had cost the lives of most of the early Awakened.
Thus, he could not even begin to guess how strong the Gold Dragon Haieltun might be.
Yet Deiodeun never despaired.
For a hundred years, without a single day of rest, he had wandered the desert and honed his strength.
His prowess had now grown to a level incomparable to when he had first hunted a dragon.
Achirukeu held out his sword to Deiodeun.
“Take my sword. It is a blade blessed by the gods. It will be of help to you.”
The sword Achirukeu offered was covered in indecipherable patterns.
They were divine characters engraved at the time he received the gods’ blessing.
With the fall of Kurayan, most of the gods perished, and the blessing upon the sword had considerably faded.
Yet even with only the remaining energy, it would surely be of help.
Deiodeun received Achirukeu’s sword.
“I will put it to good use.”
“It was the humans and other races who persuaded Keurasiaseu, but it was the dragons who incited them. I ask only that you know this.”
“That does not erase the responsibility of Kurayan’s humans and other races.”
“I... know.”
By now, Achirukeu’s body had nearly turned to dust, leaving only part of his upper body and his face.
Achirukeu murmured, gazing at the ashen sky.
“I had wanted to see the blue sky... before I died.”
Psssh!
In an instant, even his face turned to dust and vanished completely.
It was then.
The undead knights who had stood quietly until now stepped aside.
A path formed between the undead knights.
Deiodeun and Jeon were not so foolish as to not know what that meant.
“Let’s go!”
“Yes!”
The two walked down the path the undead knights had opened.
It was when they were about halfway through.
Suddenly, the undead knights raised their swords high into the sky in unison.
It was a ritual uniquely theirs, mourning their lord Achirukeu while simultaneously blessing Deiodeun’s future.
Jeon took in the faces of the undead knights one by one.
On their faces, which had radiated nothing but murderous intent moments ago, he now seemed to feel traces of warmth.
Their appearance stirred a strange emotion in Jeon.
He felt he understood what it meant to have a will that did not bend even in death.
It was when the two had nearly passed through the undead knights.
Psssh!
The undead knights began to crumble into dust, still in the posture of their raised swords.
With Achirukeu finding his rest, they too were freed from the bonds of undeath.
It was not only the undead knights who scattered as dust.
The massive ancient castle standing in the middle of the desert also turned to dust and scattered, as though unwilling to leave a single trace.
And so, the massive castle and the undead knights all vanished behind them.
But Deiodeun never looked back.
Nothing could make him turn back.
Deiodeun walked looking only ahead, and at the end of this path, a dragon awaited.
The being he had sought for so long was now not far away.
Hummm!
Deiodeun suddenly looked at Achirukeu’s sword.
As if aware of its master’s death, the sword was keening.
Keureion was doing the same, unleashing its blade cry.
Deiodeun, gazing at the swords in both hands for a moment, overlapped them into one.
Then, something astonishing happened.
Click!
Keureion and Achirukeu’s sword disassembled into individual parts.
Keureion’s blade and Achirukeu’s blade merged into one.
Already tinged with red, the blade blazed red like the sun.
The hilts did the same.
The two hilts combined into one, born anew in a different form.
And so the two swords combined part by part, taking on a new form.
In that instant, a blinding light burst from Deiodeun’s entire body.
Jeon closed his eyes for a moment against the powerful, blinding light.
Even with his eyelids shielding his vision, his eyes swam and he felt dizzy.
Because of that, Jeon had no choice but to wait for the light to fade.
Fortunately, the light disappeared shortly after.
Only then did Jeon carefully open his eyes.
“Wow!”
Jeon exclaimed in spite of himself.
It was because of Keureion’s changed appearance after merging with Achirukeu’s sword.
The characters that had been engraved on Achirukeu’s sword were now etched onto Keureion’s massive blade.
Not only that, but its overall form had changed to become far more intimidating.
It felt as though his very soul would be shredded just by facing Keureion.
Deiodeun gripped Keureion’s hilt tightly and murmured.
“My friend! It won’t be long now.”