My Girlfriend Returned as a Dragon - Chapter 36

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ My Girlfriend Returned as a Dragon ◈

Chapter 36: I’ve Been Waiting for You.

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How much time had passed?

“Ugh...”

As Minjun slowly regained consciousness, he clutched his head and opened his eyes.

‘I was definitely inside the Imperial Tomb before I passed out.’

Where was he?

The ground around him was paved with stone tiles covered in strange patterns, while thick weeds grew beyond them.

Until just before he lost consciousness, he had been deep underground in the tomb. Now, when he looked up, a blue sky stretched overhead.

But something else was even stranger.

In such a vast open space, he should not have been able to see its end. Yet from a certain point onward, space itself literally came to an end.

As though it were a boundary dividing dimensions.

Beyond that boundary lay nothing but pitch-black darkness, stirring an instinctive fear within him.

And there was one more thing.

He could not identify it exactly, but the place was filled with an aura that felt both familiar and unfamiliar.

“What...?”

Everything was confusing.

But before Minjun could properly grasp the situation, the ground suddenly began to shake.

Startled, Minjun tried to move away from the source of the tremor. However, it quickly stopped, and then a figure began rising from the ground.

The figure was...

“...The Emperor?”

Dark brown hair and brown eyes of the same color.

Masculine features and a tall, well-built frame that suited them.

It was the Emperor as a young man, just as Minjun had seen him through Record Magic.

“You see the Emperor and call me ‘Emperor’? You have no manners.”

It was a language Minjun had never heard before, yet he could understand every word.

It was the same unfamiliar language he had heard and understood through Record Magic.

Minjun swallowed hard and cautiously watched the Emperor's reaction.

The man had said Minjun was rude, but he did not seem particularly angry.

If anything, he was studying Minjun with an intensely curious gaze.

There was no immediate hostility.

‘Still, I can't let my guard down.’

That was only a guess, not a certainty.

“Then should I call you Your Majesty?”

“Forget it. What is this ‘Your Majesty’ nonsense when I'm already dead? Just call me by my name. I am Minos.”

As though formalities were unnecessary, the Emperor continued.

“I'll get straight to the point. There is only one reason you came here.”

Minos pointed at Minjun's Dragon Bone Sword lying beside him.

“Because you are, like me, a user of the Dragon Bone Sword. No one who does not use that sword can enter this place.”

At Minos's words, some of Minjun's suspicions finally fell into place.

‘Right. There was no way all of this was a coincidence...’

Then why?

Before Minjun could ask, Minos began explaining, as though he already knew what Minjun wanted to know.

“You must have seen it through Record Magic. Using the dragon's power contained within that sword, I changed not only my own fate, but the fate of my homeland as well.”

The record Minjun had seen was one Minos had ordered the royal mages to leave behind for whoever found his tomb.

So they would know who was buried here and what kind of life he had lived.

“I, one of the furthest from the line of succession, became king of a nation. I turned that weak country into a great unified empire.”

It was a story from a past so distant that it was impossible to fathom now, yet Minos still remembered it vividly.

The moment an unfamiliar guest first placed the Dragon Bone Sword in his hand.

The man had never revealed his identity, but Minos had instinctively suspected.

He was probably one of the dragons Minos had only heard about in stories.

And as time passed, that instinct became certainty.

The confidence that he could overwhelm anyone, and the immense power proving that confidence was not empty bravado.

Only dragons possessed both.

‘You have a talent that others do not. Let that talent bloom.’

The unfamiliar man had turned away, telling him not to disappoint him.

Watching him leave, Minos had become completely captivated by dragons.

‘If I were a dragon.’

Words about talent had not reached his ears.

His attention had been completely fixed on dragons.

‘If I had been born a dragon instead of a weak human.’

Then he would not have suffered such humiliation at the hands of his brothers and retainers.

If he had been born a perfect being, a dragon, he would never have had to experience such shameful, painful things that he wished he could erase.

From then on, Minos began nurturing a dream he could not tell anyone about.

Defeating, through martial arts, the brothers who had looked down on him and ascending the throne.

Ascending that throne, then turning a weak borderland nation into a great unified empire.

Those were only accomplishments that had naturally come to him while pursuing his goal. To him, they meant nothing.

There was only one dream he had carried in his heart until the day he died.

To become a dragon, a perfect being.

To possess the same strong body as them, to excel in every field, and to live for thousands of years, perhaps close to ten thousand.

That was his dream.

After long years of training, he achieved the extraordinary feat of manifesting Dragon Speech in a human body at the early age of thirty.

“But I could not say that I had manifested Dragon Speech perfectly.”

Everyone else believed he had wielded Dragon Speech perfectly, but Minos knew.

The Dragon Speech he had manifested was half-formed, perhaps so incomplete that even calling it half-formed was too generous.

It had been vividly recorded in the Record Magic Minjun had seen.

‘I want to wield perfect Dragon Speech. Not half-formed Dragon Speech, but perfect Dragon Speech exactly like that wielded by dragons!’

Unlike Minjun, no one had kindly offered him advice. Still, Minos instinctively understood.

In Minos's eyes, the most important requirement for becoming a dragon was the ability to wield perfect Dragon Speech.

So he did not settle for that. He relentlessly pushed himself through training after training.

Until mana reflux ruined his body.

‘Damn it...!’

At some point, even using imperfect Dragon Speech or drawing the slightest bit of the dragon's power from the sword made him cough up blood from mana reflux.

At first, it only occurred when he used that power. But over time, it grew worse until he suffered from mana reflux even in his ordinary life.

From that point on, Minos's body weakened beyond recovery.

His dream of becoming a dragon seemed like an empty wish that could never be fulfilled in this life.

However.

Even so, Minos did not abandon the dream he had held since he was a thirteen-year-old boy.

Was this Imperial Tomb, designed so that only the owner of a Dragon Bone Sword could reach its lowest floor, not proof of that?

However.

The more Minjun listened, the more Minos reminded him of Icarus from ancient Greek mythology.

Icarus, who was not satisfied with flying through the sky and tried to fly higher toward the sun, only for the wax on his wings to melt and send him falling to his death.

And Minjun was afraid that perhaps he, too, could become like Icarus.

Like Minos standing before him.

“You look troubled.”

“...I can't help it.”

Minos seemed to vaguely understand what Minjun was feeling.

“So.”

Minos spoke slowly.

“I have waited here for a long time for someone who would fulfill my dream in my place.”

He had died long ago.

Yet his powerful desire had left behind a lingering will, allowing Minos to stand before Minjun now.

Some might think his obsession with becoming a dragon was excessive.

For humans, wielding Dragon Speech itself was nearly impossible. And Minos had managed to wield it, however imperfectly.

But.

Minos's blind admiration for dragons became a sick obsession, and that obsession eventually gave rise to a twisted dream.

Even if he had failed, he wanted to witness someone else shatter the limits they had been born with and become a dragon despite being human.

That was why he had remained here as a lingering will, waiting for someone to fulfill his dream in his place.

Someone who possessed an artifact containing a dragon's power, like the Dragon Bone Sword, or someone with the same potential Minos had even without such an artifact.

He had waited for eons, longer than any human could imagine.

And at the end of that wait, Minjun had finally arrived.

“So I would like you to show me Dragon Speech.”

“...I'm sorry, but it has not even been a month since I began properly wielding this sword. I would like to show you that I can wield Dragon Speech right away, but at the moment...”

Minos had carried this unfulfilled longing in his heart for a long time.

Now that he knew the full story, Minjun wished he could grant that wish.

That made it all the more regrettable that he could not realistically do so.

“So you cannot wield Dragon Speech?”

“Yes. I'm truly sorry. But if I ever see the possibility of it, I will return and show you, Minos.”

“No. That will not be necessary.”

With a chilling smile, Minos moved closer to Minjun.

“I will make it so that you can wield Dragon Speech.”

“...?”

Minjun stared at Minos, unable to understand.

Minos himself had failed to wield perfect Dragon Speech.

So how could he make someone else capable of wielding it?