I shouted with joy. And then I heard a strange sound that was presumably my own voice.
What's going on? All I wanted was to shout ‘Yaaaaah!’!
But the sound I made defied my intentions.
It sounds like some dinosaur's cry? All right, one more time!
I tensed my throat again. For some reason, it felt as though my neck had grown longer. I decided to try shouting loudly.
“KREEEEE!”
What is thiiiis?!
Was I in there too long? Even if my voice has cracked, isn't this a bit much?
I tried to open my eyes to take a closer look at my bizarre condition.
“Urr...... Urr......”
My voice must have been badly cracked. The sound was still unfamiliar.
For the first time in my life, I realized opening your eyes could be this difficult. I'd never noticed as I went about my everyday life, but opening your eyes really was hard.
By my reckoning, I hadn't used my eyes for about a week. Trying to open them suddenly wasn't going well.
‘What isn't used is forgotten, and what is forgotten degenerates.’ That evolutionary idea came to mind.
Anyway, I managed to open my eyes with some effort. Feeling my vision return, I decided to look over my body. I slowly directed my gaze to my arms, legs, and torso to examine my current state.
Good. Perfect. A splendid body covered in red scales.
Red scales?
What? Sca......les?
The instant I turned pale with shock (to be so startled that your face loses its color) at the sight of my body, with its thick-looking skin densely covered in red scales, I heard a voice. No, should I say I felt a voice? It seemed to ring inside my head.
[Oh my, you've finally come out.]
Huh? A woman's voice? But why does it feel so comforting and warm?
I looked around. My surroundings were a completely unfamiliar, neatly formed cavern (a hollow space), with something like an enormous red mountain.
What? What's this?
At that moment, an enormous eye appeared in front of me.
Eeek! What is this?!
[I was starting to think you were taking too long to come out of your egg, but you've grown that much bigger before coming out. How...... can you be so beautiful?]
The eye(?) seemed to move slightly, then something I took to be an eyelid(?) came down and went back up. I stared blankly, marveling at the size of the eye staring straight at me, before remembering that something had just spoken to me.
What?! Did that eye just talk to me?
But...... something's missing if I call it just an eye?
In other words, calling it the eye of an enormous creature would fit.
[Congratulations on being born, baby. I'm your mother.]
WHAAAAAT?!
5 days had passed since I'd been born(?). Only yesterday had I finally understood my situation. Yes. I was dead. I'd died. And somehow I'd been ‘reincarnated’ with my old memories intact.
Uooooh! Damn it! Why did I have to die?! Leaving her behind!
What's more, the form I'd been born in was a ‘dragon’, a very, very common presence in fantasy novels and a consistent contender for the top spots among protagonists.
So what I'd thought was a capsule was actually the egg I was to hatch from. The bundles of tubes on my back were wings, and the enormous pipe attached to my sacrum was a tail.
Haah! I'm going crazy! A dragon?! And reincarnation? Eat shit! Why me?! Why?! Couldn't I even die? Leaving her behind? I can't see her anymore! My friends! My parents! What about the world I'd built for myself? Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! My 21 years of life vanished in an instant!
I'd never again see my ever-gentle father, my mother who cherished me so much, my older brother who always gave me grief but whom I couldn't hate, or my sweet little sister who delighted me by calling me big brother, big brother every day. My closest friends. The friends who shared my sadness when I was sad, rejoiced as if it were their own good fortune when I was happy, and swore we could give our lives for one another. I'd never see them again.
And she, who'd lost me without ever hearing my proposal....... The path of life I'd built until now, friendship, love, memories, had all collapsed in an instant.
I can't ever go back! To who I used to be! I can't go back to being Jun-yeol, who liked to bluff and show off as though he were full of confidence! I should've just died! Why was I born again?! Why......? Why?!
10 days after my birth, I was still caught in an immense gulf between realities. The disconnect between the reality I'd lived in and this place, and the alienation of this body that wasn't even human, tormented me.
Of course there would be enormous differences. This probably wasn't meant to be my body. But for some reason, my mind, my soul, had entered it. The gulf between soul and body, and my separation from the reality I'd lived in before, left me unable to do anything.
No, I didn't want to do anything. The dragon who'd given birth to me seemed very worried because of it, but I paid her no attention.
Why, why?! Why am I ignoring her?! She's still the one who gave birth to me! She let this wretched soul, this sin-stained mind, this being full of resentment and lingering attachments see the light of the world again, even if it's nothing like my original world! Why do I keep avoiding her eyes?! Why?!
I let out a deep sigh. While reading novels, I'd sometimes thought it would be wonderful to go to another world.
But what would I do there? The odds of such a strange connection were lower than being struck by lightning from the sky and then winning the lottery. Surviving a lightning strike was unlikely enough, but winning the lottery was actually less likely than getting struck by lightning.
How impossibly small would the odds have to be for those things to happen in succession? Besides, remembering that I was a weak fellow who couldn't even take responsibility for himself, and would only die sooner if I went to another world, I'd dropped the idea.
However dissatisfied I was with myself or with the reality I lived in, I thought running away from my own reality wasn't right. That was why I'd abandoned the thought.
But now it was real.
That was an enormous shock to me.
15 days after my birth, I decided to accept it. Since I'd started a new life anyway, I'd try all the things I'd thought about while reading fantasy novels.
I'd been reincarnated as a dragon. The strongest being on earth, born with absolute strength, innate magical power, and a near-infinite lifespan. As a newborn with every possibility ahead of me, I could fill this blank slate of knowledge with all sorts of things.
Yes, let's live! Survive! To survive, I have to eat!
For that reason, I looked for food. I was terribly hungry. Now that I thought about it, my body really must be a dragon's. I'd survived without eating anything for 15 days.
I spoke to the dragon who'd become my mother in the language I'd somehow already learned. I found out later that this was a language dragons instinctively learned at birth. Hmm, surprisingly convenient? They don't have to learn their own language separately?
“Mommy, I'm huuungry.”
I spoke in a sweet, cute voice. I'd better act as much like my age as I can.
Good grief, starting all over again from childhood.
Still, thank goodness this isn't the Republic of Korea. If I'd been born there again, I'd probably have killed myself as soon as I could move. I don't want to go through that entrance-exam hell a second time. You're telling me to go through that hell again, after I barely, barely managed to squeeze and force my way out?
But this is a new life, isn't it? Besides, if my assumptions are right, and there aren't any strange beings out there, I'm a dragon, the strongest being on earth. What have I got to fear? Let's do everything and have all the fun we want! Yes! Let's live! Let's survive!
I suspect the greatest reason I'd started thinking this way was my immense hunger. It played the biggest part in settling me into reality. In the end, I was a fellow true to his instincts.
The dragon who'd become my mother looked at me and spoke with a gentle expression. Though she was a dragon, a big lizard, after all. If half-closing her eyes and slightly lifting the corners of her mouth could be called a gentle expression, that was probably it.
“Are you? Come to think of it, it's already been fifteen days today. No wonder you're hungry. All right, wait here.”
She, or should I say he? Honestly, I didn't feel she was my mother. It couldn't be helped in these circumstances. Still, she'd gone to the trouble of giving birth to me, so I should call her Mom. She seemed to think about something, then disappeared somewhere.
Hmm? Magic?
But making that enormous body disappear somewhere in an instant is really impressive. Should I work hard at learning magic too?
I'd be able to use magic myself before long anyway. I understood dragons were born masters of magic.
Hehe, I'd wanted to try using magic....... While I was thinking these things, Mom caught and brought back something like a large wild boar. Roughly 2 meters in size?
Oh, the animal life here doesn't seem all that different? I'll have to investigate later.
As I smacked my lips, Mom slit its belly with her enormous claws and cut out the meat for me herself. I munched and swallowed the meat she cut out.
It tasted bloody because it was raw, but eating it wasn't such a big deal. It smelled bloody, but I had to eat. I was a dragon, a hatchling, so I had to become a dragon through and through.
But I should live as a human in spirit. Still, has blood always tasted this good? Who'd have thought the blood dripping from the meat would be so delicious......
After that, I ate another wild boar. I decided to simply call them wild boars. That finally satisfied all my hunger. Wow, even to my own eyes, this is a small body. It's amazing that 2 animals that large could fit inside it!
After eating the boars, I stretched my neck out along the floor and tried to fight the demon of sleep (the demon that brings slumber) tempting me as post-meal drowsiness swept over me. But mmm...... I'm sleepy....... In the end, unable to resist the sleep demon's lure, I fell asleep.
When I woke, I was hungry again. How...... How long did I sleep? After eating that much, I'm hungry the instant I wake? Maybe I wasn't a glutton because I was a dragon, but had been one all along?
As I sat there in a daze, I heard Mom's voice.
“You're awake. It's been 5 days. Aren't you hungry?”
“Mmm...... I'm hungry!”
Did I sleep for 5 whole days? Haha...... How bewildering! Even if dragons sleep a lot, can they really sleep this much? No, don't they say babies grow while they sleep?
Come to think of it, my body felt a little bigger. Anyway, after crunching up several deer- and rabbit-like animals Mom gave me, bones and all, I fell asleep again.
I must have spent about a year eating and sleeping, eating and sleeping, eating and sleeping. Now I didn't get that sleepy after eating, and about 10 hours of sleep was enough.
Hahaha, all the time since I was born has consisted entirely of eating and sleeping.
It turned out hatchlings normally spent their first year repeatedly eating and sleeping. I was given the trite, instructive explanation that this was how they grew into fine dragons.
Hmm, am I finally going to get somewhere as a dragon?
To turn the gaze I'd focused solely on eating until now toward something else, I rubbed my eyes for a moment and began surveying the place around me. Turning my neck this way and that, I took in information about my surroundings through my eyes and sent it to my cerebrum. My cerebrum drew on the knowledge in my soul to assess the situation.
As I'd suspected, this was a dragon's lair (nest), and I was a Red Dragon, the fiercest, strongest, all-weather combat weapon(!) among dragons. It was easy enough to tell just by looking at my scales, but since I'd spent my first year doing nothing but eating and sleeping in a daze, I hadn't had the chance to establish even those basic facts.
Anyway, though Red Dragons were said to be the strongest and fiercest, I was still a hatchling, nothing more than a powerless child. Only after reaching about 1,000 years of age and becoming an adult dragon would I be able to use a certain amount of power.
Oh, right. And only today did I finally get to see the dragon's famous Polymorph. Mom suddenly lowered her head a little, seemed to think about something, then, FLASH! With a burst of light, for some reason she transformed into a human today. Her human form looked quite domestic.
She wore a modest white-and-black two-piece outfit, with a white apron trimmed in white frills. Her long red hair was neatly tied back at the nape of her neck. Was it because she was a Red Dragon? A sort of racial pride, perhaps? Around 160 to 170 cm tall? And of course(!), she was beautiful.
Wow! Is she really a mother with a child?
My eyes rounded as I asked.
“Mom, what's that? That form?”
“Well, baby, today marks a year since you were born. So we're going to get you a name. You need to meet your grandfather, grandmother, and father too.”
I nodded in acceptance. Come to think of it, never mind my grandparents, I hadn't even met my father.
Hmm, what sort of people are they?
I'm terribly curious.
Could they all have eccentric personalities or something?
Maybe Father's an adventure fanatic who did the deed(?) and is roaming about outside, while my maternal grandfather hates him to death, and whenever they meet, a battle erupts with magic and sword energy flying......?
Ahem, an overly lively imagination isn't good for children!
And a name....... Mom's been calling me ‘baby’ ever since I was born, so I definitely need a name.
Mom explained that we were going to Grandfather's lair. There, we'd find Grandfather, Grandmother, Father, and the dragon who served as the chief (leader) of the Red Dragon clan. I understood about the family, but why would the chief attend a naming ceremony?
From what she said, a dragon's name signifies the meaning of its existence. Since it's something sacred, spoken because that dragon exists, the naming ceremony must always involve careful deliberation, and a name can only be chosen after thorough discussion between the family and the chief? But the whole family gathers to name someone? Why do things keep turning out the same as, or similar to, the novels I used to read? Surely we won't get there and find them fighting over whether this name or that name is better?
With frightening accuracy, my prediction hit the mark.