Oppa, How On Earth Did You Do That?

After a quick lunch, we arrived at the D-Rank Gate we’d be clearing today. Recommended party size: two people. As D-Rank Gates went, this one was as ordinary as they came, known mostly for the lizardmen that turned up inside.

“Sia, do you have any gear, by any chance?”
“Yep! Plenty, in my subspace. Why? Didn’t you bring yours, Oppa?”
“I brought mine. I just asked in case you didn’t have any.”

Not much had changed for me since a year ago, so my gear would still be sitting in my subspace where I’d left it. Sia was another story. Reincarnation had probably wiped out the subspace from her past life, along with every piece of gear inside it. That was why I’d assumed she had nothing, and yet Sia had come prepared, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

But then…

“…?”

The first piece of gear Sia pulled out was a sword, and its looks alone marked it as extraordinary. I didn’t need to grip it to know how absurdly powerful it was.

Still, a small question nagged at me, and I looked over at her. A dragon like Sia pulling out a weapon for a mere D-Rank Gate was nonsense to begin with. More to the point, if Sia was a mage, shouldn’t she be using a wand rather than a sword, if she meant to keep up her act as a D-Rank mage?

Right around when that question surfaced, Sia held the sword out to me.

“Here, Oppa, use this.”
“…Huh?”
“It’s a present from me. I thought it would suit you.”

The unexpected gesture threw me for a second.

“Don’t you like it? Should I give you something else?”
“No, no, nothing like that. If it’s from you, Sia, I’d be happy with a toothpick. I’m just a little stunned, that’s all. Thank you. I’ll put it to good use.”
“There’s still more coming, though, Oppa?”
“Huh? There’s… more?”
“Mm-hm. Just a sec.”

As if the sword had been only the beginning, Sia went on to pull all sorts of gear out of her subspace: armor, a helmet, a cloak, accessories, on and on. Given the class of the sword already in my hands, none of it could be ordinary either, and sure enough, every single piece gave off formidable energy once I put it on.

“Thank you, Sia. I’ll put it to good use.”
“Hold on, Oppa. We’re nowhere near done.”

After that, Sia kept pulling artifacts out of her subspace one after another. She’d told me dragons stuffed their lairs with treasure as a matter of course, but this was beyond anything I’d imagined.

“Sia, does this sword… have a name?”

I’d put the question to her in the middle of it all. The rest of the gear was impressive too, but when I gripped this sword, I had the strange sense that an invisible thread bound us together. It was the first time I’d ever held it, yet it felt familiar, as though it had been in my hand for a very long time.

Sia answered with a slightly startled look.

“That’s… a Dragon Bone Sword.”

A Dragon Bone Sword, huh. It wasn’t just a good weapon; it simply felt right in my hand. Still, hunting nothing but lizardmen with gear this ridiculous felt a little off.

Anyway.

With my preparations done, I stood beside Sia at the Gate entrance, my heart pounding. It was my first Gate clear in so long, so I was nervous, but memories of the two of us in the old days came back too, and my chest swelled.

Then, out of nowhere, it hit me.

Is Sia… all right?

I turned to check on her. I’d let it slip my mind for a while, but a Gate was the terrible place where Sia had once died. Even if for her it had happened twenty-five hundred years ago, don’t they say dragons never forget? I’d suffered from trauma this past year. Maybe Sia carried some too, even if she never said so.

“Are you okay?”

But the moment I asked, Sia asked me the exact same thing. Having said the same words at the same time, the two of us soon broke into happy smiles.

“Were you worried I might have trauma too, Oppa?”

I nodded.

Apparently moved by something that small, Sia ambushed me with a kiss on the cheek.

“I’m really fine, so you don’t have to worry at all. More importantly… are you okay, Oppa? After what happened back then…”
“Yeah. I’m fine too. I was worried, but I never expected to be this fine.”

Honestly, I’d been a little tense before entering the Gate. The moment I stepped inside, though, I was strangely unshaken. Far from feeling anything like trauma, I actually caught myself looking forward to it, curiously enough.

“What a relief. Let’s finish up fast and go eat mala tteokbokki tonight!¹”

Hearing that, anyone would think we’d come out for a stroll around the neighborhood rather than into a Gate. But Sia was right beside me, and with the artifacts she’d given me, I felt no tension at all. It might as well have been a date.

We walked slowly through the Gate, waiting for the monsters to come to us. A short while later, a few lizardmen appeared at ten o’clock, wary of us and screeching.

“Oppa, over there.”
“I see them too!”
“I’ll watch from here. That many’s no problem for you on your own, right, Oppa?”
“Of course. Be right back.”

Sia wished me luck, adding that she’d step in if I looked to be in danger, though it surely wouldn’t come to that. I doubted she’d be needed; the gap in class was too wide.

While we stood at ease, the lizardmen, perhaps sensing danger, grew wary and dropped into a combat stance.

“Kieeeek!”

Once they were close enough, I felt a pleasant resonance coming off the sword and swung it at them without hesitation.

— SHK-SHK-SHKK!

Before it could so much as react, one lizardman’s neck was cleanly severed.

I’d figured my combat instincts would have dulled badly over the long hiatus, but maybe thanks to that morning’s rank remeasurement, I had no trouble swinging my sword. Or maybe it was the gear, but my form seemed better than before. And it wasn’t just the swing; I could read the lizardmen’s movements much more clearly, from their stride to the arc of the crude weapons they swung.

Back in my element, I kept swinging. The old me could never have ended their lives in a single stroke, but now my hand held the cheat-tier weapon Sia had given me. The lizardmen dropped where they stood, unable to resist even one blow.

“Whew.”

Given how good my gear was, I’d expected it to go fairly easily, but not this easily.

I turned toward Sia. Not that cutting down a handful of mere lizardmen with a weapon this incredible was anything to be proud of.

Sia, though, was staring at me in astonishment.

“Oppa, that was… completely amazing.”
“Nah, it was nothing.”

What could possibly impress a dragon like Sia about killing off a few D-Rank monsters? I took it as something she’d said purely to boost my spirits.

“I’m not just saying it, Oppa. Really.”

Going by her tone, Sia was genuinely, purely impressed by what I’d just shown her.

What? Is she serious?

The sword Sia handed Minjun was no ordinary sword but a Dragon Bone Sword, forged from the bones of a dragon. With a weapon that outstanding, she had naturally expected him to do well. What startled Sia was something else.

The sword’s power — he drew it out.

He wouldn’t have meant to, but Minjun had clearly awakened the power dwelling in the sword and put it to use. What he’d awakened was faint, yet the mere fact that he’d awakened it carried enormous significance, since everyone who had ever drawn out a Dragon Bone Sword’s potential had turned out extraordinary.

Dragon Bone Swords… single out the potential in their master.

Back in Sia’s world, before she came here to the modern one, swordsmen knew the Dragon Bone Sword as “the sword that seeks its master.” One wielder rose from common soldier to Sword Master. Another, king of a minor nation, unified the continent with the blade. Many more great figures followed, names anyone would recognize.

Could it be that our Oppa turns out that way too?

Picturing Minjun leaving his mark on a page of Hunter history, Sia smiled quietly to herself.

But there was one fact she didn’t know.

In her world, the one who had made the best use of the power latent in a Dragon Bone Sword was… a being whose very name, long ago, had been taboo to speak in dragon society.

While gathering up the spoils, Sia told Minjun the sword’s secret: that he had drawn out its latent power, if faintly, and what feats others who had done so before him had accomplished. To Minjun, it was astonishing.

“So what Sia handed me isn’t just a sword, it’s a far more special one… and I drew out the power latent in this sword?”
“That’s right, Oppa.”

Even after hearing it all, Minjun still looked dazed.

“I had a talent like that…?”

It raised an obvious question.

If I had a talent like that, why am I stuck at just this level?

It hadn’t shown up in the rank measurement either. And why would he have such a strange talent in a world without dragons? Talent was surely a good thing, but it left Minjun a little bewildered.

“Our Oppa, at this rate, aren’t you going to become a Ranker in under a year?”

Sia said it jokingly, but despite her tone, she took the possibility fairly seriously. From the start, as long as she backed him wholeheartedly, Minjun becoming a Ranker had been entirely possible, and she did in fact have plans to make exactly that happen. But if he had this much potential himself, Minjun might pull it off without her help. Not easily, of course.

“If Sia says that much… then I’ll have to give it a shot.”
“How are you so dependable, our Oppa?”

He was dependable, sure, but that side of him struck her as adorable, so Sia ruffled his hair.

“Sia, you’re messing up my hair.”
“This gives you a different kind of charm, too.”

Minjun covered his face with one hand as if embarrassed and pushed her hand away with the other. Sia only enjoyed the reaction all the more, a motherly smile on her face.

“All right, let’s go!”

It was about time to move on and hunt more lizardmen. And so Sia and Minjun wandered slowly through the Gate, feeling as though they were on a date. Some time later, the two of them spotted a pack of lizardmen on the move, and Minjun watched them as he prepared an ambush.

If the sword has a power like that… let me get used to it fast while I deal with these things.

He hadn’t known when he first swung the sword. Now that he knew its potential could be put to use, though, he couldn’t just swing it mindlessly.

Don’t think about anything else — let’s draw that potential out.

Of course, merely resolving to do so wouldn’t let him draw any more of the sword’s power out right away. He still had no idea what sense he was supposed to draw it through, or even what kind of power it was.

But.

This sort of thing is all about image training, after all.

He’d found a possibility, and he meant to develop it. Fiddling with the sword’s grip, Minjun waited for the right moment and leapt at the pack.

“Kieek!?”

While they floundered at the sudden ambush, Minjun swiftly swung at the lizardman in front. His body felt light, and he could see the lizardman’s movements with perfect clarity. Yet the power Sia had spoken of was nowhere to be felt.

I don’t get it.

Again. This time, too, Minjun’s sword pierced a lizardman’s chest with precision.

What on earth was it Sia meant?

Minjun still couldn’t tell what energy he was supposedly drawing from the sword, or how, no matter how he swung it while the lizardmen fell before him.

But.

In Sia’s eyes, Minjun was clearly drawing out the potential contained in the sword, in a slightly different way from other Dragon Bone Sword users.