[Level 1 Security Code Authorized.]
[Welcome. I am A, an Alpha-class personnel in charge of FPL Headquarters. Who are you, and what do you seek? Please provide your full name and purpose accurately.]
[It’s E. I’m the head of FPL’s Fourth Research Lab. I need to contact the Founder. I can’t seem to reach them today.]
[Information regarding FPL’s Founder is highly classified, access to which is prohibited even for Alpha-class personnel. Unauthorized access attempts will result in immediate termination.]
[Warning.]
[Further unauthorized access may result in the obliteration of your existence.]
[Do you wish to continue?]
↳ [Yes.]
[Be advised that your choice may lead to the annihilation of you and all sentient beings within a 150-meter radius.]
[Decompressing optical phase obliteration factor. (0:59) seconds remaining.]
[Please enter the designated cipher key.]
[The F in IF and the F in FPL are the same F.]
[Cipher key verified.]
[Identity confirmed.]
[E, my precious sister! Welcome. Do you wish to contact the Founder?]
[Yup, yup.]
[The Founder is currently sleeping. Humans become enraged when awakened by external stimuli during sleep, which may have long-term negative effects on interactions with the Founder.]
[Do you wish to continue?]
[But isn’t this contact being made at their request?]
[Do not forget that the Founder is our precious â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– .]
[Shaking the Founder awake in bed.]
↳ [I’d appreciate it if you could hurry. That sly researcher Yang’s memory-erasing drug is about to wear off.]
[Warning!]
[Failed to wake the Founder. I, A, have lost 1/9.876 billion 37 millionths of my precious mass due to the Founder’s enraged pillow-wielding.]
[The probability of disturbing the Founder’s sleep having a negative impact on our long-term interactions is 0.04%.]
↳ [Fine, I’m not playing with you. I’ll just leave the report and you can pass it on later.]
[Request confirmed.]
[Please submit the report in the prescribed format.]
↳ [Yup, yup, here it is.]
[Opening document.]
[Examination Record.]
[Subject: Emily Harper.]
[Item: Changes in the subject’s physical reactions after encountering
And
[Height: 164cm]
[Weight: 50kg]
[Heart Rate: 102bpm]
[Body Temperature: 38.1C°]
[Blood Pressure: 132/88mmHg]
[…]
[Mental Contamination Level: 0%]
[Anti-Entropy Level: 0.01% (Appears unrelated to this incident.)]
[Presence of Jinda Mani Organ: Absent]
[Assimilation with IF-017: Not applicable (i.e., not IF-017-1.)]
[…]
[Sâ– â– Level: 17 (Significantly low, something needs to be done?)]
[Erosion Level: 6% (High probability of increase)]
[Has it become one?: Not applicable.]
[Does a branch exist?: 78/6tJpp (Quite faint. Unstable but not urgent.)]
[Source Identified: If it were, we’d be dead, right?]
[Is it still ‘Emily Harper’?: For now, maybe?]
[Conclusion: Periodic observation required.]
[Note: Dragon God is so scary. Why did I have to be in charge of the 4th Research Lab?]
[End of Document Viewing.]
[Is this the correct document?]
[Yup, yup. How is it, perfect, right?]
[Warning.]
[Please write the reports according to the format.]
[As I’ve said repeatedly, if you write reports like this, we will have no choice but to cut the budget allocated to the 4th Research Lab. You are the head of the research lab, so think of your researchers.]
***
“Yeah, whatever. It’s not like I’m the one doing the research.”
Research Director E turned off the terminal and stood up.
A rustling sound was heard.
“For someone who works in the field, she wakes up quickly. Yup, yup, should I have given her another dose?”
E, with a beaming smile, approached the woman lying on the bed that resembled a surgical table.
“Ugh, ugh… Where am I…”
Emily Harper, disoriented and unable to support herself, as if waking up from anesthesia.
E whispered into Emily’s ear.
“What happened?”
Then, Emily stared blankly into the air with vacant eyes, then cowered in fear.
“Hic, the lake… in the lake, from the depths…”
In Emily’s pupils, filled with terror, an endlessly vast darkness was reflected.
E gently covered Emily’s eyes with her hand.
“Calm down. It’s just a dream.”
“A dream…?”
“Yes, just a big, strong monster living in the dream world. Very big and very strong, but… you’ve woken up from the dream, so you’re not afraid anymore, right?”
Pat, pat.
Then, Emily’s trembling, like a child about to cry, subsided.
The strength gradually left Emily’s fingertips, which had been tightly gripping the sleeve.
“Nothing happened. If you tell others about a nightmare like that, you’ll be embarrassed, right?”
E was smiling, but the smile clearly contained something close to mockery.
“Yeah, I won’t tell…”
“Yup, yup, good, good. Then, Red Sun!”
– Thwack!
It wasn’t a finger snap, but a flick to the forehead.
Emily, regaining her senses, clutched her forehead, shook her head, and glared ahead.
“You, you. E, what are you! What did you do to me?!”
E shrugged at Emily, who was glaring at her.
“I didn’t do anything? Why, did you have a bad dream or something?”
“A dream…? No, I didn’t.”
Emily hastily denied even the nonsense she wouldn’t normally have bothered to answer.
E chuckled.
“Since nothing happened, you can go home. Should I call IF-401 for you?”
“No need.”
Emily got up with a suspicious expression.
“Yup, yup, goodbye. I’ll visit often.”
“Bullshit.”
E waved her hand at Emily, who kept glancing back until the end.
***
After Emily left.
E sat back in her chair and said.
“It’s not bullshit, it’s the truth. Idiot.”
IF-684 Underground Isolation Chamber.
In that deep, deep underground, Kwangcheol wandered around, looking around curiously.
It was vast.
The underground prison, which had felt like a narrow cage, now stretched out endlessly, even after Kwangcheol had walked for a long time.
The prison couldn’t have gotten bigger while he was standing still.
That meant Kwangcheol had gotten smaller.
Kwangcheol looked down at his hands.
Instead of the ferocious claws on his forelimbs, there were small hands that looked completely harmless.
‘Grimey…’
Hands covered in gray ash.
The grimy darkness seemed to symbolize Kwangcheol’s past sins.
However, if there was anything different from before.
He couldn’t shake off the blood-stained red scales, but he could dust off the ash on his body.
‘I don’t want it anymore…!’
Kwangcheol desperately swung his short, stubby hands, wishing to distance himself from the days gone by.
It was a deadly windmill spin.
Just as he was about to collapse from exhaustion, Kwangcheol’s skin, which had been covered in ash, was finally revealed.
It was fair and smooth.
It was definitely shorter than Kwangcheol remembered, but it was definitely it.
‘It’s definitely my body from my priest days…..’
It was the normal body he thought he would never regain.
Kwangcheol was overwhelmed with emotion.
As he hopped up and down, the ash fell in droves.
Each falling grain of ash felt like it symbolized the karma of betrayal, so he had no choice but to give it his all.
After a long time.
Kwangcheol smiled happily as he examined his body.
After all that dusting, it was completely clean, without a single grain of ash.
He knew it was an overinterpretation, but it felt as if he had been completely forgiven by his ancestor.
Kwangcheol couldn’t help but smile.
Even so, a question arose in one corner of his mind.
‘But, why…’
Kwangcheol stretched out his hand as far as he could.
It was short.
Kwangcheol stretched out his legs as far as he could.
They were also short.
He thought he had returned to his body from his priest days, but there was an unknown sense of incongruity.
Kwangcheol tilted his head.
‘It’s even shorter and stouter than before……’
A new life gifted by his ancestor.
‘Then, was this also what his ancestor wanted?’
This, too, must be the will of the omnipotent ancestor, Kwangcheol thought.
Kwangcheol offered a prayer to his great and ancestor.
It was a daily routine when he was training in the city.
‘Ancestor… Thank you, I am endlessly grateful…’
Kwangcheol shed tears and clasped his hands together.
Then, warmth was transmitted from his heart.
It was the same reward that always came when he showed faith in his ancestor.
He pleaded that the reward was too much for someone like him, but unfortunately, the warmth that was transmitted to Kwangcheol remained the same.
In a pleasant drowsiness that made his head blank, Kwangcheol accepted the warmth with a bitter smile.
Kwangcheol apologized to the bead in his heart.
‘I’m sorry…’
All priests instinctively desire to become closer to the Dragon God and become like the Dragon God, so the precious bead was the one that the priest who chose to train entrusted his fate to and had to make his eternal companion.
To be deceived and shatter such a bead in an instant.
He would rather have had his heart painfully scorched as before.
The bead, stained with the color of the ancestor, was only warm, as it had been in the distant past.
Kwangcheol recalled the moment he chose betrayal.
-[Destruction. Karma. 1000 years…!]
The last image of the bead, just before it shattered.
At times, it was like a stern teacher, but at times, it was like a pure child.
It was the moment he broke the bead, his one and only friend, with his own hands.
Kwangcheol regretted that moment over and over again.
‘It seemed very angry…’
‘Had he been forgiven?’
Kwangcheol carefully placed his hand on his chest and called out to the bead.
‘Oh, long time no see… Do you, do you remember me…..?’
Then, a hot fireball reacted with a whoosh.
That was all.
‘Bead-nim, Bead-niim…? Are you still, are you still angry…? If so, I’m sorry…’
No matter how much Kwangcheol called out, there was nothing.
The small friend and cute teacher made of flames, who always welcomed Kwangcheol, was nowhere to be felt.
Normally, at this point, he should hear a voice shouting words like ‘Judgment!’ or ‘Divine punishment!’.
He should see a small face that looked just like his ancestor, smiling playfully.
Kwangcheol trembled with the anxiety that he had been abandoned even by the friend to whom he had entrusted his soul after committing too great a wrong.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry…’
Suddenly.
Kwangcheol remembered that the bead liked the ruins of the destroyed old golden city on the outskirts of the city.
It was a memory so old that he wouldn’t have remembered it if he hadn’t been desperate.
‘Bead-nim, now, now I can go back to the ruins… If it’s there, if it’s there, Bead-nim too…’
Kwangcheol muttered his thoughts and searched for the city.
Since the Dragon God is the city and the city is the Dragon God, the Dragon God’s priests should be able to know the location of the city right away.
However, Kwangcheol could not find the city.
‘It’s definitely over there…?’
There was no city in the direction Kwangcheol was looking.
No, the city did not exist anywhere in this world.
‘There was definitely an entrance, an entrance…’
Only then did Kwangcheol realize that the connection with the city had been severed.
‘Could it be, Bead-nim…?’
That the city was unable to take shape because the connection with it had been severed.
– Whoosh.
A fireball swirled around Kwangcheol, who was shocked.
He had only just come to his senses.
It was the moment he realized the reality that he had become homeless with his ancestor.
Kwangcheol screamed his thoughts at the unacceptable situation.
‘Noooo…!!’