Chapter 256: The Thousand Curses Dragon (8)

Kwon Oh-Jin looked at Song Ha-Eun, whose legs trembled pitifully. Her lips were tightly pressed together. She clenched her fists with a pale face and eyes filled with fear.

Was I pushing Ha-Eun too hard?

He wondered about bringing her here in the first place. He hadn’t realized that she feared Barbatos this much.

I thought she would be fine.

Maybe the memory of losing her sight became a deeply rooted trauma for her. Maybe he had just assumed that she would be okay and laugh it off or push through. He had acted on a baseless belief all this time.

“Sorry...”

Looking back, it had been a selfish thought. No one could ever truly feel a hundred percent of another person’s pain despite trying to empathize. In the end, pain belonged to the person who carried it. Deciding what was tolerable for someone else was deeply disrespectful.

“

Huh?

What are you apologizing for?” Song Ha-Eun asked.

“I just didn’t know you felt that strongly.”

Even after more than twenty years together, the fact that he didn’t fully understand her left him strangely bitter.

“So what if you didn’t? Just cause you’ve seen all of me on the outside doesn’t mean you know everything on the inside.” Song Ha-Eun playfully smiled and poked him in the ribs.

He knew her all too well and yet, for some reason, her smile felt unfamiliar right now.

“This isn’t your problem. It’s mine. No need to apologize.” She lightly patted his shoulder a few times.

Only she could face and overcome her own problem. The moment she leaned on someone else for comfort, the meaning of overcoming it herself would be lost.

Kwon Oh-Jin deeply sighed and stepped back. “

Haa

, fine. You go face him alone, but I’m jumping in the moment it looks even slightly dangerous.”

For now, he would respect her decision. However, he wouldn’t put her life in danger even if she were facing her trauma or not.

“Okay.” Song Ha-Eun nodded and took a short breath.

She forced her trembling legs to steady and turned toward Barbatos.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Barbatos asked in an icy tone.

Sometimes the mind turned cold when anger surpassed a certain point.

Barbatos furiously bared his fangs as Song Ha-Eun approached him alone. He couldn’t recall ever being this humiliated before as a dragon. A rage more intense than anything he had ever felt rose within him.

It made sense. He had planned to enjoy a sweet revenge against those who had attacked him by receiving a blessing. Now, out of nowhere, the woman who had been trembling in the corner wanted to fight him alone. Anyone in this situation would be furious.

“What am I doing? Didn’t you hear me? I said I can handle someone like you on my own.” Song Ha-Eun smiled, feigning composure, and pulled out a cigarette from her pocket.

The tip of the cigarette shook in her hand, but she lit it with some effort and inhaled. “

Haaa

.”

Her superhuman body had long since grown immune to nicotine. Perhaps out of habit, she still felt a faint sense of calm settling her nerves.

“Well then, shall we begin?”

Her lips twisted into a grin as she loosened the eyepatch covering her left eye. The skin around her eye, veined and warped, looked grotesque. The reptilian eye, glowing with an amber light, stared straight at Barbatos.

Barbatos stared at her in disbelief. “That eye is...?”

How could a human possess a dragon’s eye? Before he could get an answer, Song Ha-Eun flicked the lit cigarette with her middle finger.

“Burn.”

A fierce flame erupted from the tip of the cigarette, wrapping around her like a living creature.

Whoosh!

The searing fire took the shape of a dragon and shot straight toward Barbatos.

“

Hah!

Just because you got your hands on a dragon’s eye, you think you can take on a real dragon?!” Barbatos sneered and flapped his wings violently.

A black veil of cursed energy wrapped around him like a shield. The curse was so strong that even inanimate objects couldn’t get past it. The roaring flames lost their strength and scattered away.

“This is just the beginning, you bastard!” she shouted.

Song Ha-Eun continued to unleash flames without pause as she clenched her fists. Breaking through the cursed veil with long-range fire attacks seemed impossible.

I’ll have to break through it myself.

She stepped toward the cursed veil. Her legs, which just barely calmed down, began trembling again. Her breathing also grew shaky. She felt scared, almost unbearably so.

A memory from six years ago resurfaced.

“Ha-Eun, are you okay?!

After losing consciousness in the fight against the Thousand Curses Dragon, she woke up in a hospital bed.

“Huh?”

Complete darkness engulfed the world. She flailed her arms in terror.

“What’s wrong, Ha-Eun?”

Kwon Oh-Jin had grabbed her hand, but she couldn’t see him anywhere.

“Oh-Jin... t-this is weird. I-I can’t see.”

The world became dark as a moonless night. She curled up on the hospital bed and sobbed like a child left alone at home.

If it hadn’t been for Oh-Jin, I wouldn’t have overcome it.

This wasn’t just when she was cursed. Her life only began to blossom with Kwon Oh-Jin.

It’s always been like that.

He always stood next to her. Even when the world hurled its cruelest malice at them, he never once backed down and shielded her. Wasn’t he afraid too? Didn’t he feel fear?

She already knew the answer, but still curled up behind Kwon Oh-Jin's shadow because it felt comfortable. Even if she did nothing, he would give everything to protect her.

“Damn it.” Song Ha-Eun gritted her teeth and harshly bit her lip.

Hadn’t Isabella once called Kwon Oh-Jin her only hope? If he represented hope to Isabella, then he was salvation for Song Ha-Eun.

Outwardly, she acted tough and cocky. In truth, he protected her weak and vulnerable self that no one else knew about.

And yet I dared to call myself older than him...

She laughed self-mockingly. It should be her protecting him as the older one, but she hid behind him and received all his protection. Even so, she wanted to be someone he could lean on.

“It’s time to break free.”

Song Ha-Eun couldn’t keep hiding behind him forever. At the very least, she needed to be able to stand beside him to share life’s hardships side by side. She had to move forward toward the very being that embodied her deepest fear.

“

Krrrr!

You insolent wretch! Do you truly believe you can pierce this cursed veil?!”

“

Haa, haa.

”

With just one step, her entire body grew heavy, and a crushing fatigue washed over her. After two steps, a splitting headache and nausea washed over her. At three steps, a bone-chilling cold wrapped around her. With four steps, a stabbing pain spread through her like poison. Five steps, and her breath hitched as if she had climbed a tall mountain.

At six steps, her skin felt like it was melting from acid. At seven steps, she felt a horrifying sensation like bugs crawling in her ears, accompanied by piercing screams that battered her eardrums.

At eight steps, an illusion flickered before her eyes of her mother and father, whom she had only seen in photographs. They looked at her full of hatred and hurled vile curses at her.

With the ninth step, her vision went dark.

“

Ah

...”

The suffocating darkness, like a moonless night, swallowed the light from her eyes.

Barbatos looked down at Song Ha-Eun, frozen in place, and cruelly laughed. “

Kehaha!

It’s been a while since you tasted that sensation, hasn’t it?”

Just like six years ago, when he had stolen the sparkling light from her eyes, the intoxicating thrill of that moment crawled up his spine once more.

Song Ha-Eun curled up in the suffocating darkness. “

Ugh...

”

The same despair and helplessness from losing her sight flooded her mind.

She instinctively called his name, “Oh-Jin... Oh-Jin.”

If she stayed here, huddled and still, he would come to help her. He would probably defeat the dragon with ease and rescue her just like he always did.

Song Ha-Eun raised her head.

No.

Hadn’t she made up her mind to no longer hide behind his back? She drew in a deep breath. A sharp pain tingled at the corner of her left eye. Within the endless darkness, a single beam of light began to appear.

She felt the sensation of a dragon, made entirely of fire, enveloping her.

Whoosh!

A total of nine dragons surrounded and guarded her. Their flames illuminated the darkness.

Before her stood a dragon cloaked in black scales, the Thousand Curses Dragon, Barbatos. The one who had cursed her with the most horrific nightmare glared down at her.

Barbatos staggered back in fear and shouted, “Y-You b-burned the curse?!”

Song Ha-Eun dryly chuckled. “

Ha

.”

In her nightmares, the dragon had always seemed utterly terrifying. Now that she stood face-to-face with him, he looked pathetic and even pitiful.

It was the same back then too.

She recalled a memory much older than six years ago of the orphanage director who used to beat her. To the young Song Ha-Eun, that man felt like a demon or monster straight out of a fairy tale, an unbeatable godlike figure.

“F-Fire, what?!”

When she saw Kwon Oh-Jin prank and outwit that demon with a lie, she couldn’t help but laugh at that man fleeing shoeless and stumbling.

“He’s not a big deal after all.”

She took her tenth step. A searing pain bloomed on the left side of her chest as if being branded by fire, but it wasn’t because of Barbatos’s curse. This pain would make any Awakener cry out in joy. A tenth stroke was being carved beside the Stigma of Draco.

Then, the tenth Fire Dragon emerged and coiled around her.

Whoosh!

Song Ha-Eun clenched her fist as though grabbing something from the air, and the ten fire dragons gathered at her fist.

“Burn.”

She readied her flaming fist and charged forward.