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Dawn Traveller - Chapter 04 - Two Lives
Yeon Woo came back to reality.
After eating and sleeping for a few days as a baby, he woke up in his own bed.
“Time to eat breakfast and go to preschool!”
“Yes, mom.”
Yeon Woo could finally wrap around his head the fact that he came back to reality through that familiar word.
“Hah…”
His little brother and sister were sitting at the table; his older brother, who was an elementary school student, had eaten earlier and had already left for school.
It was easy to think that the eldest was a little different to everybody else, but there was nothing different about his older brother.
All he did was just going to school, eating lunch, playing, sleeping through lessons, and coming home.
‘I've been having weird dreams because, presently, my body is unhealthy. Shouldn’t mom make me some herbal medicine to help me grow stronger? Anyway, I can’t believe I was younger than these ignorant kids who can’t even go to the toilet by themselves… I couldn’t even lift my head by myself! That’s horrifying…’
“Yum yum~”
He helped feed his little brother and sister. His parents were watching of course.
“Our Yeon Woo is so kind…”
“Honey, did you give him some money to buy a hotdog?”
“Yeon Woo, do you need some pocket money?”
“Yes please!!!”
His parents' thoughts were generally the same.
'Don’t be ill… Please, grow up big and strong. '
'My son… My dear son.'
Yeon Woo felt a little guilty for taking advantage of their innocent thoughts.
It was easy to get money off his parents, because all he had to do was do something mature and kind for kids his age.
Yeon Woo didn’t think about it for too long. It gave him a headache.
'It’s just how the world is…'
A six year old, compromising with the world at such a young age!
But he shouldn’t let his guard down, especially with his parents.
Just like him, as his parents get older, their thoughts get corrupted too. It was dangerous when they came home after hearing a few comments from other people.
“Your child is so clever, I think he would be really smart when he grows up.”
“He looks smart… From what age are you going to try and teach him English?”
“Could our child possibly be a prodigy? If he is, he needs to start studying at a young age.”
“It would be more effective if we start teaching him English at an earlier age, right?”
“If he is to go to a good, prestigious university, he should start having three or four tutors in primary school…”
Yeon Woo let out a heavy sigh.
“Ignorance is bliss.”
“Eh?”
“Nothing. You guys are too young to understand. Mom, Dad, I’ll be going to school now!”
Yeon Woo called his mother’s name first on purpose.
He knew that pocket money and snacks mostly came from her.
Time in his preschool went by quickly when he made a little mischief, he played 'doctors' and with toys with the girls, and he played outside for a while.
‘Another ordinary, pointless day. When will I become an adult?’
At that moment, Lee Hee Jin came to him, smiling.
“Yeon Woo, can I come over to your house next weekend with my parents? I promise I’ll bring lots of yummy chocolates!”
Her hair was plaited beautifully and she spoke smartly with a cute voice. If he had been a normal child, he would have given into temptation and said ‘yes’ immediately.
“You can’t. It’s too early in our relationship to do that!”
“Eh?”
He had seen too often society’s ways through other people’s thoughts.
‘I want to grow up quickly so that I can drink as much as I want… Smoking is bad for my health so I shouldn’t even start. I'll be able to meet many pretty women when I go to parties and clubs. A man should follow the trends, after all!’
The man who lived in unit 1103 sometimes thought to himself, ‘A man having multiple women is definitely not a bad thing. I may be having an affair right now, but this is love too… People should love all throughout their lives.’
Even if he wouldn’t be as bad as the man, he couldn’t just live life sitting there and following the world!
He came home, ate dinner, and went to sleep earlier than usual.
‘I wonder if I’ll have that dream again? I kind of liked it because it was out of the ordinary…’
Ever since that strange dream of him being born in another world, he felt that he was constantly attached to the string of fate that could take him to it.
*
He was in the other world. Yeon Woo was on the dark elf Grona’s back and being carried out of what he first thought was a dungeon, but turned out to be a noble's grave.
His parents and their friends managed to get home safely, and with a huge amount of riches.
Just like any other baby, he could do nothing but watch. He could not help them, or do anything, for that matter.
All he did was just keep his eyes wide open and watch them, eat, then take a nap.
He wanted to get up and take a look outside, but he was stuck on the bed next to the fireplace.
“Aaaaaheeem...”
He let out a huge yawn.
‘Even here, being a baby is quite boring. It’s not something I want to experience twice. But there are a lot of interesting things inside too, I guess.’
His father, Rendal, had a well-developed physique. His muscles were enough to make any man or woman stare in awe.
Rendal always defeated the monsters in a majestic flurry of speed, strength and balance. His skills were flawless.
His mom, Riley, was so beautiful and slim that it was hard for anyone to believe that she just had a baby.
Riley whispered, her voice loving.
“My baby, it was very exhausting for you, wasn’t it? You’re home now, so rest. Mommy is so happy to be able to hold you like this.”
At least that’s what Yeon Woo assumed she said.
The reason for him not reading thoughts was that he had grown exhausted from concentrating so hard all the time. After eating, he was sleepy. After sleeping, he was hungry.
Even while sleeping off most of his time in that world, he kept track of what was happening around him.
‘I have to learn the language first…’
Time still went by quickly, even if all he did was just eat and sleep.
After about 3 months of switching back and forth between reality and the dream, he could understand the basic words of their language, but it was almost impossible for him to understand the Magician Hersey.
He spoke to himself with words that no one else in the group spoke.
“The opposite tendencies of the Mana…. Minimizing the resistance… Force- merging… and creating a tornado… creating a spin in the pressure… so high-level magic involves creating a pattern in the midst of unconfirmed magic energy, huh?”
Hersey often read books by the fireplace and did not come up for a long time after going into the basement.
Yeon Woo, with wide, wondering eyes, learned their language through the people around him.
A baby, learning the language of magic, and at such a young age! It was something that any parent would cheer for.
‘It’s hard… very hard.’
Yeon Woo gulped.
‘What kind of language has words that have completely different meanings depending on what words are put together? That word has a different meaning than the definition I learned over the last month.’
It wasn’t like he was officially learning magic, so he was just keeping track of what each word meant.
Sometimes, when Hersey held him, he could see magnificent battles of magic from the wizard’s memories.
‘You can minimize the spell casting time and strengthen the explosion if you control three types of Mana at the same time…'
'Would that be the power he used during that battle with monsters?’
Every time he looked at Hersey, he became more and more curious about the unknown forces known as Magic.
It was the most interesting, because while Rendal used physical strength and skill, Hersey used magic.
Yeon Woo could feel a deep and explosive energy within Hersey, and sometimes outside of him too, when he practiced magic spells.
‘So that’s what they call Mana… If it’s magic, I’m kind of interested in learning it…’
Compared to the ever-so-complicated ways of spell casting, the art of summoning spirits was very simple.
When the dark elf Grona called her friends, the spirits, they helped to clean the house and keep the fire at the right temperature.
‘So it’s like bossing around your younger siblings…’
Yeon Woo liked the spirits very much, but apart from the elf, only people with great friendliness and purity could call them up.
*
Nine months passed in the dream world.
It wasn’t like he lived one day in one world at a time, but he grew a little in the real world, too.
Amazingly, no matter how much time he spent in the dream world, only one night went by in the real world.
‘That’s convenient.’
Yeon Woo learned to understand almost everything in their language now, because all he did in that world was sit around and listen to their conversations.
It was a stretch to say that he learned all this because he was talented in languages, it was just that he tried his best to understand everything that they were saying because there was danger around every corner, danger that he did not want to run into.
But since he still had the body of a baby, he had to try to seem like he didn’t understand at all. He was used to this, since it was what he had been doing in the real world ever since he was born.
“About the map that we bought last time… Don’t you think there will be a few tombs near the valley? Since there’s usually a lot of sunlight, the valley waters run dry, it would be a good spot to build them.”
“Hm, it shall have to be another noble’s tomb, since just a normal rich man’s grave barely has any gold.”
“It lies where the Lowes Kingdom used to be, so we could stand to gain a lot if we found a royal tomb or something.”
Yeon Woo thought about his future in this dream world.
‘I wouldn’t have to go to school.’
It might be tradition for children to fall in their parents’ footsteps here.
'Tomb raider' was one of the highest-paying jobs in this world.
They did not have to pay taxes, and earned money according to their level of power.
Yeon Woo, whilst riding on Grona’s back, had gone on a total of 9 raids.
He did not have any brothers or sisters from Rendal and Riley, and it wasn’t safe for them to leave the baby alone in the house because the area was unstable.
They did not find treasure every raid, and some raids they just fought a lot of monsters and came back with empty hands.
They could still sell the monsters' body parts or their armor and weapons, but they weren't worth a lot, so they couldn’t earn much from doing so.
There had been lots of dangerous situations in the raids that he went on.
Huge battle with monster mobs was common now, and big boulders sometimes rolled their way to try and kill them.
One time, a bucket of scolding hot metal was poured right in front of their feet.
Finding a pile of bones and bodies of the previous tomb raiders was as common as finding a burger shop in the real world.
“GYAAAAA!”
“WAAAAH!”
Yeon Woo screamed at the top of his lungs every time he went into those tombs.
Normally, he didn’t cry often and was a calm baby, but it felt like a horror movie every time he went into the tombs.
The bigger the tomb, the larger and more dangerous and frequent the traps got, plus strange creatures like monsters were more likely to inhabit the place.
Weapons like arrows, swords and axes flew around like toys.
“I think the baby might be scared.”
“He can’t be… he’s too young to even comprehend the things around him.”
“But just in case, let's try covering his eyes.”
It was even more terrifying when they covered his eyes with a white cloth.
Step. Step.
Swish, swoosh!
He heard something for sure.
Even in horror movies, the scariest part was the anticipation of something happening.
He smelt the disgusting smell of saliva and the stench of rotting bodies.
As time went on, even the sound of raindrops from up high was terrifying to him, and his heart seemed to skip a beat every time an arrow shot past.
A human’s imagination sometimes created the most horrific thoughts.
“I heard something move… I think we just set of a trap. Ah! The ceiling is falling on us!”
“Run, Grona!”
“Okay! I’ll run ahead and see if this is linked to the next trap as well.”
The dark elf Grona sprinted in a zigzag pattern to avoid the falling rocks above them.
“Gyaaaaarrg!”
Such unbelievable speed and violent turns! The vibrations as the boulders fell connected with the ground!
He learned with every bone in his body that hearing was much more terrifying than seeing.
‘Let’s not think about it. I’m not even going to imagine it because it gets more terrifying if I think about it. I’m at home playing with toys. It’s noisy, but nothing’s happening.’
Crash!!
“The ground is splitting. Be careful Grona!”
“Poisonous needles on the floor!”
“Kyaaaa!”
Grona just managed to escape, by stepping on the falling stones and getting on solid ground.
She also dodged the spears being thrown at her by jumping consecutively and gracefully.
Dark elves have unique, lithe and graceful movements and quickly pick up knowledge of their surroundings.
Grona landed gracefully, but even her fast reflexes couldn’t avoid the stream of warm liquid running down her back.
“Oh! The baby must have peed!”
“Wah! Wah!”
Yeon Woo had not pretended to cry in a long time, but he did so this time, out of pure embarrassment and humiliation.
-
Translated by Hannah Kim
Proofread by Janowicz
This chapter was released on Monday the 7th of November, 2016.
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