Beyond Merely Outstanding, A Dangerous Talent

Time passed, and still Rokan showed no sign of coming back to his seat.

Had he really just needed a moment’s rest, the way he’d said, or was there some other reason I didn’t know about? I had no way to tell.

I asked Sia whether anything came to mind, but no luck.

“No, I’m not sure either. He didn’t look especially tired to me.”

She tilted her head too, just as lost as I was. In the end, all we could do was wait.

The awkward mood had dragged on for a while when, to clear the air a little, I asked Sia a question.

“Sia. That sword energy. Do you happen to know how it came about?”

Not once since the Gates opened and the Awakened came into being had anyone reported aurora-light sword energy. I had no idea myself, but I thought Sia, who had lived so long in another world, might have seen it before.

Sia, who had been replaying the video in silence, lost in thought, soon shook her head.

“Hmm… I don’t really know either. I was curious myself and meant to ask Grandpa about it, and now of all times he’s stepped away.”

So even Sia didn’t know what it was.

“Feels like we’re sinking deeper into a maze.”
“My point exactly. The mana pattern the wearable cam caught is strange too. I’ve seen just about every pattern there is… but this one is completely new to me.”

Normally, Sia explained, a mana pattern lets you make a rough guess at the power behind it, but she had never seen a pattern like this one, so even that was hard. She seemed every bit as curious about the sword energy as I was, and she looked thoroughly frustrated.

“Still, Grandpa will know, won’t he?”
“He probably will.”

While we waited for Rokan, we kept replaying the stretch where the aurora-light sword energy began to manifest. He didn’t return to his seat until some twenty minutes after he’d left it.

“I’m sorry. For stepping out so suddenly.”
“It’s all right. Grandpa, are you okay now?”
“It was only a brief throbbing in my head. I’m fine.”

He said he was fine, but he didn’t look it. A faint frown lingered, as if his head still throbbed. And the calm I’d felt in him every time we met seemed to be gone, which bothered me too. He looked as if something had shaken him.

“Let’s finish what we were saying. Sword energy… that was the subject, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I asked Sia, and she said this was the first time she’d seen sword energy like that too.”
“Grandpa, what on earth is that sword energy?”

Now, at last, the riddle would be solved.

And yet.

“Right now… it would be difficult to tell you.”

Rokan’s answer was curt. Not “I don’t know” but “I can’t tell you”? Sia and I turned to him at almost the same moment.

“I’ve said before that you have an outstanding talent, haven’t I?”

He hadn’t said it as flattery to make me feel good; Rokan had always added that remark whenever he gave me advice.

But what he said next came as a shock.

“I was wrong. That talent of yours is not merely outstanding — it is a talent dangerous enough that it could swallow you whole.”

“…!!!”

Sia started at his words and clapped both hands over her mouth. And I was no different.

I looked at the scene frozen on the screen in front of me. That aurora-light sword energy, beautiful enough to leave you dazed, the power that had pulled me back from the brink of death… had it been something that dangerous?

“Minjun, for the next few days, stay out of the Gates until I tell you otherwise.”
“I-is it… that dangerous, Grandpa?”

Sia’s voice trembled as she asked.

“Did I not just say so? That it is a power dangerous enough to swallow Minjun up if he handles it wrongly.”
“Th-then our Oppa…”

The worst case must have crossed her mind, because the color drained from her face.

“He is all right for now. This is only so that we are prepared even for the remotest possibility.”

Having soothed her, Rokan went on.

“If he grows strong enough to handle a dragon’s power completely, then at least that power won’t wear him away. At the very least.”

The way he repeated ‘at least’, leaning on it, left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

“Until then, you will have to wear a control device that can suppress this power.”
“A control… device?”
“That’s right. Even if I begin making it now, it will take several days at the least to finish. Until it is done, Minjun, don’t you even dream of going into a Gate.”

He said it so firmly that neither Sia nor I could work up the nerve to argue.

“You must have had many questions, and I’m sorry to have been so little help.”
“Not at all.”

Normally he’d have said something like that with a kindly look, but right now Rokan’s face was deadly serious.

“Shasha will tell you about everything apart from this sword energy. I’ll be off now to make the control device you’ll use.”

With those words, Rokan was gone.

For a while after he left, Sia kept her mouth shut, still looking dumbfounded, before she finally spoke.

“Oppa. I’ve never seen Grandpa act like that.”
“It’s okay. It won’t be anything serious.”

Rokan had reassured us any number of times, yet Sia still looked uneasy. I told her nothing would come of it, and that if you flipped it around, this might even be good news.

“If I use it well it could become a powerful weapon, right? And Lord Rokan said the chance of something going wrong with me because of that power is slim. If I’m careful until the control device is finished, there’ll be no problem at all.”
“…That’s true. You’re right, Oppa.”

After a lot of coaxing, Sia finally relaxed, and her usual smile came back.

“Shall we finish watching, then?”
“Mm!”

Rokan had left, but the feedback still had to go on, so we restarted the video we’d kept paused for tens of minutes.

“Okay, looking at it with that sword energy left out, Oppa.”

As if she’d never been anxious at all, Sia calmly picked up her commentary again.

“Even though you were at a disadvantage, pushing forward into the enemy was the right call. If you’d run, you wouldn’t have been able to draw the dragon’s power out properly. A dragon never runs away, whatever the situation. Understanding what dragons are as a species will keep helping you handle a dragon’s power from here on, too. But, looking here…”

Her tone was gentle, but she laid out, point by point and as coolly as she could, everything I’d need to improve going forward. The engagement itself had lasted hardly any time, yet the feedback ran on for quite a while, perhaps because Sia wanted so badly to explain every detail to me. Some time went by.

“Done!”

With that, the long, long feedback was over.

“Finally done. Thanks for watching the video all that time. Your eyes don’t hurt?”
“I’m fine! And actually, it was fun.”

She had to be tired from watching so long, yet Sia looked a little sad that there was no more feedback to give. Either she genuinely enjoyed teaching me, or she wanted to spend time with me in any form she could get.

Maybe both.

I put the question to her casually.

“Sia. Is there anything you want to do right now?”
“Something I want to do?”
“Mm. It feels awkward to just go home, and Lord Rokan told me to stay out of Gates for a while, so I’ve got a lot of free time… Hang out with me.”
“Yes! Absolutely yes!”

Sia was so happy she all but jumped. Judging by her reaction, she’d secretly been hoping I’d bring it up from the start.

“Anything’s good with me as long as I’m doing it with you, Oppa. Isn’t there anything you want to do?”
“Same for me. Anything’s good as long as it’s with you. So this time, tell me what you want to do, Sia — not what I want.”
“Something I want to do…”

She thought it over for a moment, and then her eyes flew wide, as if she’d hit on a good idea.

“How about we finish watching that video?”
“We already watched all of it. Is there still feedback left?”

The feedback was already over, so I couldn’t see why we’d watch it again, and together at that. If we were going to watch something together, a movie would surely be more fun…

“That’s not it, but there are parts we haven’t seen yet. Not the scenes of you fighting — the chatting in the dungeon, the resting… I want to see scenes like that too.”

As far as I could make out, Sia wanted a peek at my everyday life. My everyday life inside a Gate, to be precise. From where she stood, she might well be curious about what I got up to in Gates while she wasn’t around, and how I got along with other people.

But while I didn’t particularly mind showing her that ordinary side of things, there was exactly one problem.

Then… she’d see me killing the Villains, too.

They were bastards who deserved to die a thousand times over, but I didn’t want Sia watching me kill them if I could help it. Worse still, the thought of her hearing the insults the Villains had spat out just before they died bothered me more than anything.

“You want to see… all of it?”
“Yes! All of it!”
“There’s really nothing to it. You might get bored watching.”
“No. There’s no way I’d be bored. I think it’d feel like watching a vlog?”

I kept trying to put her off along those lines, saying the video wouldn’t be very interesting… but it was no use. Those bright, wide eyes told me she meant to watch it no matter what.

In the end I changed tactics and decided to tell her the truth, so she’d at least skip that one part.

“Actually, at the end of the video there’s footage of me killing the Villains. So it might be a bit much to watch. How about we watch it with just that part skipped?”

Nobody enjoys watching a person die, so I figured that much would be enough to get Sia to agree.

But Sia didn’t so much as change her expression.

“No. I don’t mind. Let’s watch it together.”
“Are you sure? It’ll be brutal.”

Before her reincarnation, Sia had shied away even from horror films, afraid they’d turn up in her dreams. Yet now she just nodded gamely at my words.

“In the old days I might have been like that, but now? Not really. And besides, they aren’t human — they’re beasts wearing human masks.”

That, she said, was all the more reason she wanted to see it, and she kept pestering me. In the end I couldn’t hold out against her pleading and agreed to watch the video together the way she wanted.

For now, while we watched, I’d have to come up with a way to keep her from seeing that scene.

…There’s a way, isn’t there?