Chapter 45

[45] A Dungeon (That Used to Be)

‘He’s going to turn that Gate into a training ground…?’

How could he just toss out a bombshell like that without explaining anything?

At this rate, he might as well have waited and told me later.

Anyway, after Rokan declared that he planned to turn the Gate into a training ground, my head became a jumble of thoughts.

The dungeon belonged to the Maple Guild, so how was he planning to buy it? And why did he want to turn it into a training ground for me?

I had so many questions, but he’d said he would explain after our sparring match. For now, all I could do was swing my sword as hard as I could for the hour ahead.

I clenched my teeth and traded hundreds, even thousands of blows with Rokan.

This wasn’t sparring. It was practically torture.

I was sprawled on the ground, unable even to speak, when Rokan brought me a bottle of water along with a healing spell.

I drained the bottle in one go and let out a ragged breath.

“...I thought I was going to die.”

“But you didn’t, so it’s fine.”

Swinging my sword without a moment’s rest was hard enough. Having every strike blocked effortlessly was mentally exhausting, too.

There were so many moments when I wanted to drop my sword, but I gritted my teeth and somehow endured the grueling hour.

And finally—

“Well done.”

Rokan called an end to the spar.

The moment it was over, I collapsed on the spot, unable to say a word.

After swinging my sword for over an hour, my palms were red and raw, and my wrists throbbed. Even the slightest movement hurt.

Rokan joked around, but he also praised me for keeping up despite how hard it must have been.

I took a sip from another potion he gave me, then panted and silently stared at the sword Rokan had planted in the ground.

It had been in perfect condition before the spar.

Now that I saw the nicks along its edge, I could really appreciate just how grueling the match had been.

Rokan pulled the sword from the ground, then used Dragon Speech to take us back to his lair.

I still hadn’t fully recovered, so I slumped into a chair and asked him,

“Lord Rokan, can you tell me about the dungeon you mentioned earlier now?”

He was planning to turn an entire dungeon called the Dragon Sword Garden into my training ground.

After hearing that beforehand, I’d spent the whole hour feeling like I was going to go crazy with curiosity.

“Of course. You must be very curious.”

“Of course I am. Why didn’t you just tell me now instead of making me wait?”

When I lightly complained, Rokan smiled and said,

“I told you on purpose. I wanted to see how well you could keep your focus with that on your mind.”

So that had been part of my training, too.

He hadn’t just been teasing me.

...But could something like that really help with training?

“Right. Then I should start with what happened at the dungeon.”

Anyway, Rokan said that yesterday he had gone into the Dragon Sword Garden with representatives from the Maple Guild and the Hunter Association for a second investigation.

For the first investigation, I had been part of the team instead of Rokan. As expected, though, they had come away empty-handed.

They should have known from the moment they confirmed the dungeon’s conditions had rolled back. But when they actually entered, the dungeon had returned—as if by magic—to how it had been before that incident.

One of the guild representatives had asked, “Is there some secret to your sword, Min-jun?” They asked me to take it out and open the entrance to the tomb.

But my sword had been completely broken after that incident, so I made that excuse and refused.

It didn’t seem right to let the world learn about this secret involving dragons.

So the first investigation had been a dead end, and the Maple Guild, eager to uncover the dungeon’s secrets, had expanded the team for a second investigation.

That was when Rokan had quietly joined them.

But the second investigation had come up empty, too.

They needed another artifact containing a dragon’s power, like the Dragon Bone Sword, to enter. So the result was only to be expected.

In the end, they had wasted their time again and left the dungeon empty-handed.

“After I made sure everyone else had left, I slipped back inside.”

After secretly sneaking into the dungeon alone, Rokan took an extra Dragon Bone Sword from his storage space and used it to open the entrance leading down to the tomb.

He thoroughly explored the inside of the tomb and eventually reached the space belonging to Minos, where I had been trapped.

At first, I wondered how he had been able to come and go from that space freely. But thinking about it again, Rokan was a real dragon. He could probably enter and leave as easily as if it were his own home.

Besides, no matter how sophisticated the dungeon was, there was no way a dragon could be trapped inside one made by a mere human.

Anyway, Rokan entered the space where he believed I had been trapped and began his investigation.

I say “believed” because what Rokan saw looked quite different from the scenery I’d first seen when I was trapped there.

It was a bizarre landscape, as though countless dimensions had been shattered into pieces and stacked on top of one another.

On top of that, the dimensions were cracked in places, making the whole scene unpleasant to look at.

To quote Rokan, it was like watching performance art by an artist suffering from hallucinations.

And, most importantly—

“I couldn’t find that man, Minos. He was obsessed with Dragon Speech, yet he didn’t react at all when a dragon came in person. Perhaps…”

“Because he was scared?”

“No. I couldn’t find even a trace of his lingering thoughts. Seeing you use Dragon Speech may have fulfilled his obsession, and erased some of the intense resentment he’d left behind there.”

...So he really had just wanted to see a human use Dragon Speech.

In a way, wasn’t that the truest form of madness?

“But that’s not the important part.”

Rokan must have gotten thirsty from talking for so long. He fetched a glass of water, drank, then continued.

“That man Minos seemed out of his mind in more ways than one. Even though he was an emperor, I never imagined he could gather so many artifacts capable of bringing out a dragon’s power.”

Rokan said he had found the Dragon Bone Sword, along with many other artifacts that could manifest, amplify, and sustain a dragon’s power.

“I can only guess, since he lived in a different dimension from mine, but by the standards of the world I lived in, each item would have been worth as much as two or three years’ budget for a mid-sized territory.”

Remembering it, Rokan clicked his tongue.

It wasn’t strange for an emperor to own a few such precious treasures. But Rokan had found well over a hundred of them.

“All the artifacts he collected were linked to a single magic circle. When I examined it, I found it packed with formulas that could help someone use Dragon Speech.”

In other words, the place wasn’t merely designed to manifest and amplify a dragon’s power. The entire space had been constructed to have a significant effect on the use of Dragon Speech itself.

“I’m thinking of taking Shasha there soon and showing her.”

If even Rokan, a dragon, was saying that, the magic circle’s effect on Dragon Speech must have been astonishing.

The more I learned about Minos, the more insane he seemed.

He had not only spent eternity lingering in his own tomb just to see someone use Dragon Speech, but had also poured an incredible amount of money into it.

And from what Rokan said, the magic circle carved into the tomb was no ordinary one, either.

I’m sorry for misjudging you, Minos.

I thought you were a deranged psychopath, but you’re really just an extraordinary lunatic.

“Looking at all that, I had only one thought.”

“That it would be the perfect place for me to train?”

Rokan nodded.

“Exactly. It’ll need a few adjustments, but that place is more than suitable for your training. Even for us dragons, it wouldn’t be easy to build a system so perfectly tailored to a human Dragon Speech user.”

If Rokan said so, that settled it.

The thought that I could train in an even more organized way than I did now made it hard to hide my excitement.

But only for a moment.

Come to think of it, that was a tomb.

So I’d be spending a long time training near someone’s grave. In another world, no less. And it belonged to an emperor who had been praised as a wise ruler by his people during his lifetime.

‘That’s going to feel pretty unsettling.’

Who trained for hours inside an imperial tomb from another world?

As I sat deep in thought, Rokan gave a small laugh.

“I can roughly guess what you’re thinking, but try to put it aside. Thanks to that man, you did take your first step toward understanding Dragon Speech.”

...That was true.

Even though I’d gone through all kinds of hardships there, I’d made meaningful progress in learning to use Dragon Speech.

You could even say that, thanks to Minos, I was closer to seeing Sia again.

“...You’re right.”

“Anyway, now you know. I’ll be busy buying and renovating the dungeon.”

“But, Lord Rokan, what if the guild refuses to sell it?”

Now that the imperial tomb had been discovered, the dungeon’s value had probably skyrocketed. Besides, it was an incredibly useful place for training rookie hunters.

If I were the Maple Guildmaster, I wouldn’t want to sell it easily.

But Rokan answered as if I’d asked something obvious.

“They’ll sell it. Don’t you humans have a saying? ‘If money can’t solve the problem, you aren’t offering enough money.’”

Ah.

Even Sia carried countless expensive artifacts and treasures of gold and silver.

And Rokan had been the Dragon Lord. Just imagine how much he must have.

As I marveled at his unimaginable wealth, I felt grateful that he was willing to pay such an enormous sum for me.

“Yes. Thank you so much, Lord Rokan.”

“No need to thank me. Rest a little longer, then do some recovery training before you leave.”

“Thank you!”

“Oh, and…”

Rokan called out to me, hesitated for a moment, then said,

“I seem to have a lot of good news for you today.”

“You mean…?”

Full of anticipation, I looked at him.

“I think we can increase the amount of time you spend with Shasha now.”