Our Oppa Definitely Has Talent, Doesn't He?

The wooden sword had looked perfectly fine only a moment ago, and now a crack ran through it.

Cracking a mere wooden sword with a Dragon Bone Sword was hardly difficult. When the one holding that wooden sword was a dragon, though, it was bound to be a different story.

“Shouldn’t you switch to another sword?”
“No need. Let’s keep going until this one breaks.”

The sword might be damaged, but the test wasn’t over yet. It looked ready to snap at any second, and still Rokan showed no sign of stopping.

If anything.

“From here on, I’ll use my sword as well.”
“Sorry?”

He’d said at the start that he wouldn’t attack, but he must have changed his mind somewhere along the way, because Rokan adjusted his grip on the cracked blade and shifted his stance.

“Don’t worry. You won’t die of it.”

He wore the easy look of a man out for a stroll around the neighborhood. Before I could answer, he strolled in close and swung at my chest.

Luckily he wasn’t moving all that fast, so I thought I could block it. I’d misread him completely.

In an instant the wooden sword changed its arc and caught me clean on the ankle.

“Agh!”

A numbing jolt of pain shot through me, and I screwed up my face.

“Don’t be such a baby.”

Rokan was smiling kindly, but the attacks that followed were the exact opposite of that smile, vicious. His sword wrenched sharply around and cracked into my right shoulder, and the shock knocked my own sword out of my grip for an instant.

In a real fight, the match would have been decided right there.

I snatched the fallen sword back up and tried to hypnotize myself into calm.

Stay calm. Calm.

The moment that wooden sword broke, it would all be over anyway. But as soon as I caught myself thinking I should break it as fast as I possibly could, I shook my head.

No. That would only backfire.

What mattered in drawing out a dragon’s power was the mindset of domination. Swinging with nothing in mind but breaking his sword would get me nowhere. To use that power properly, I had to draw it out intending to dominate anything and everything.

Ignoring the pain, I closed the distance instead of opening it. I wasn’t thinking about breaking his sword anymore. I was thinking about forcing my opponent to his knees and dominating him.

I aimed boldly for Rokan’s heart and drove the sword in with everything I had.

He moved at an unbelievable speed to block, but my blade had already punched through his. The wooden sword in Rokan’s grip shattered into fragments too small to see.

“There. Done.”

I’d gone for his heart, and one slip could have turned the whole thing dangerous, but Rokan only broke into a soft smile. He swept the splinters of his ruined sword aside with one foot, then clapped me lightly on the shoulder, as if telling me well done.

“Now that I’ve seen your talent for myself, it’s time we had a deeper talk.”

The words were barely out of his mouth before the scenery changed again. We’d definitely been out in the field a moment ago, and yet in the space of a blink I was back in the study.

“Sit.”

As soon as I took a seat, Rokan brought out tea. Its deep fragrance was one I’d never smelled before, but not an unpleasant one. I breathed in the aroma, then took an awkward sip.

“Is it to your taste?”
“Yes.”

I had no idea what kind of tea it was, but it suited my palate well enough.

“Judging your swordsmanship on its own, it was well below par. Every move you make telegraphs itself, and your swing form is dreadful. Honestly, I couldn’t find a single good point.”

That didn’t sting, and it didn’t make me angry either. Without the Dragon Bone Sword, I really was nothing more than a mediocre D-Rank Hunter, the kind you could find anywhere.

“But in your case, at least, that is no obstacle. What you’re aiming for isn’t to become a Sword Master.”

Rokan took a sip of his tea and went on.

“You will be able to handle our clan’s power better than any human alive.”
“…Sorry?”
“Sword Master, continent-unifying emperor, whoever it was: in several thousand years I have not seen a human with talent to match yours.”

I couldn’t believe it. I’d heard from Sia before that I had some talent, but…

It was on that kind of level?
Me, nothing but a measly D-Rank Hunter?

I couldn’t hide how pleased I was at such lavish praise. I already wanted to brag to Sia, to tell her that her grandfather had praised me like this, that as long as I worked hard from here on there’d be no problem at all.

But what came next went far beyond anything I’d expected.

“Ironically, that very thing is why you and our Shasha have no choice but to live apart.”
“What?”

The unexpected words hit me like a blow to the back of the head.

In other words.

The reason I’d had no choice but to live apart from Sia in the first place wasn’t only her overwhelming power, but…

this talent I hadn’t even known I had?

“Could you… tell me more about it, please?”
“I can’t tell you now. When the time comes, I will.”

Rokan was so firm about it that I didn’t even dare beg. All I could do was nod, my expression stiff.

“It is far too dangerous a thing for you to know yet, so don’t take it too hard.”
“I’m not taking it hard at all. I was simply curious.”
“It’s written all over your face that you are.”

I’d been worried the mood might turn awkward, but his joke set it right again. As a faint smile settled at the corner of my mouth, Rokan returned to the main subject.

“Now, back to the talk of your talent. Minjun, where do you think our clan’s power comes from?”

The source of a dragon’s power, then.

I’d only just learned that dragons actually existed in this world, so how was I supposed to know a thing like that? Still, if I had to hazard a guess…

“The mindset of domination, isn’t it?”

I answered with a mix of guesswork and what I’d felt wielding the Dragon Bone Sword.

“Domination isn’t a wrong answer, but what matters more than that is will. Domination, too, can be seen as a kind of will.”
“Will…”
“Then in what form do you suppose a dragon’s will manifests?”

Could something as abstract as will manifest in any form at all? I couldn’t make sense of it, but an answer came out of my mouth on instinct.

“The Dragon Word.”
“Yes, that’s right. Any dragon, even a hatchling not yet ten years old, can at least imitate the Dragon Word, if not use it properly.”

The more I heard, the more the dragons’ world amazed me. Even a young hatchling, practically a newborn by dragon standards, could use the Dragon Word.

“If you’re to be recognized as a dragon, you’ll have to be able to wield the Dragon Word, at the very least.”

I knew full well that my final goal was to handle a dragon’s power completely. What I’d never imagined was the Dragon Word coming up right at the start. I’d assumed it was something I’d learn after a fair amount of training, not this very moment.

“Because it is the foundation.”

While I sat there blank at his unexpected reply, Rokan went on as though he’d read my thoughts.

I didn’t know much about it, but common sense said wielding the Dragon Word in a human body would be anything but easy. My nerves already felt stretched to breaking.

Could I really wield the Dragon Word in a human body? Could I use magic like teleport through will alone, with no incantation and no complicated calculation? If I were a mage, maybe, but I was a Swordsman, wasn’t I?

“Don’t be impatient. We start from the basics and work through them step by step. To begin with, the goal will be to wield the Dragon Word imperfectly at least, borrowing that sword’s power.”
“Imperfectly… meaning?”
“Succeeding at wielding it even one single time.”

So even if I couldn’t use the Dragon Word freely, trying dozens of times, no, hundreds, and pulling it off just once would count as success.

“After that, we train you to wield the Dragon Word without borrowing the sword’s power. One success in several thousand attempts is fine. Even stirring up a gentle breeze with it is fine.”

All I needed was to get my sights zeroed in even once, Rokan added.

After that would come wielding the Dragon Word completely with the sword’s power, and then wielding it without the sword at all. Rokan had laid out this curriculum for me alone.

“I’ve lived a little under ten thousand years, but teaching a human to wield the Dragon Word is a first even for me. It won’t be easy by any means, but for my part I’m glad. It feels like I’ve found a fun hobby for my old age.”

He called it a pastime, but the scale of it hardly seemed like anything you could call one.

“For you, though, it’s something you’ll have to stake your whole life on, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“So I too will teach you without thinking of it as a pastime. Not for your sake, but for mine, and above all, for our Shasha.”

He could say that all he liked, but I felt the warmth in every word. Honestly, my first impression of him had been a little frightening, but now it sank in that he was a grandfather who sincerely wanted his granddaughter and the man she loved to be happy.

“Ah, that’s right. Our Shasha asked me to get in touch.”
“Should I step out?”
“No need. You’re our grandson-in-law. You should come along.”

At that word, ‘son-in-law’, something in my chest gave a pang.

Before her reincarnation, Sia had lost her whole family to a Gate Break back in high school, so there had been no one left to call me their son-in-law.

And that was no different now.

I meant to marry Sia, but we hadn’t held a wedding yet, and I wasn’t a dragon like them, so I’d never let myself hope to be called that. If he was calling me his son-in-law, I could take it to mean our relationship had been officially acknowledged.

Holding back the tears that threatened to spill over, I bowed ninety degrees at the waist.

“Thank you. Truly.”
“What is there to thank me for? If anything I’m the one who should be grateful. When you think about it, I only got to meet our granddaughter here at all thanks to you, didn’t I?”

Rokan waved a hand, insisting that he was the one in debt.

In any case.

He had a phone, so I’d naturally assumed he would call on that, but instead of dialing straight away, Rokan headed for the great cavern. This was the very place I’d first seen when I opened my eyes after losing consciousness. Not much time had passed, so little had changed.

But for one thing.

“Was that always here?”

The enormous screen mounted on one wall.

That definitely wasn’t there before.

“I had it installed. I’d meant it for watching films, but it occurred to me it would do for video calls with Shasha, so I put it in earlier than planned.”

He was going to use a screen that size for a video call?

While I was still marveling at the scale of it, Rokan placed the call to Sia. A moment later, the screen linked up with the phone somehow, and Sia appeared on it.

“Grandpa! Minjun-oppa!”

Sia waved to us in delight, as though she’d been waiting for exactly this moment.

Seeing her on that big screen instead of a tiny phone display gave me the strangest feeling. Glad, bewildered and amazed all at once, I waved back just as happily.

“How was he, our Oppa? He definitely has talent, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he?”

Sia gazed at Rokan with bright, sparkling eyes. She must have been terribly sorry not to be there with us, because she looked as if she wanted to hear everything that had happened as soon as she possibly could.

“About that boyfriend of yours.”

Rokan opened his mouth. Sia swallowed hard, not moving a muscle. He gave a short laugh and said:

“He’s a far more talented brat than you think.”