Chapter 92 - How on Earth Did He Do It?

A few days after the rank simulator beta test, which had yielded little because of an unexpected complication, I got some welcome news from Rokan: the guild had finally been officially registered. The new guild was called the Rebirth Guild. Rokan said he'd chosen the name because Sia, who had been reborn, and I, who would be reborn as a dragon, would both belong to it. I hadn't liked the name much at first, but once I knew what it meant, it made perfect sense.

Anyway, after coordinating schedules with Rokan, I sat down with him and Sia, and we filled out the contracts to join the guild together.

“It feels kind of strange—and amazing—to have all three of us here together, Oppa. You, Grandpa, and me.”

“It does. Apart from when we first met, is this the first time the three of us have gotten together?”

“Yep.”

She was right. Surprisingly, this was the first time Sia, Rokan, and I had all been in the same place since I first met him. Whenever the three of us had talked before, Sia had joined by video call through the screen in Rokan's lair. And on the occasions when I saw her—usually once a week—we generally met alone for a date. So this week, we'd decided to get together as a threesome and celebrate the new guild while we were at it. The restrictions on when Sia and I could meet made it hard for all three of us to gather, but we couldn't keep holding every conversation by video call.

After putting the final stamp on the guild membership paperwork, we decided to mark both the rare occasion of being together and the signing of our contracts with a grand meal.

“Wow... What's all this?”

Rokan had prepared more food than I could imagine three people eating. The table might actually collapse under the weight.

“Did you prepare all this yourself, Rokan?”

“No. Shasha helped too.”

Apparently, he'd originally planned to prepare everything himself, but when Sia heard about it, she declared, “I can't sit this one out!” and cooked some dishes at home to bring along. So that was why there was so much food.

“Eat plenty, Oppa. Thank you for the meal, Grandpa!”

“Thank you for the meal.”

“Of course. Eat your fill.”

We began eating in a warm, cozy atmosphere. The spread included Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Western dishes, with more variety than most buffets. I also spotted some unusual foods I'd never seen in my life.

“Why aren't you eating, Oppa?”

Sia tilted her head when she saw I hadn't picked up my utensils.

“I was looking at the dishes I've never seen before.”

“Oh, those? Of course you wouldn't recognize them. They're from Pangaea.”

Food from Pangaea. Come to think of it, when I'd ended up there before, I'd been surprised by how much of the food resembled Earth's.

“Grandpa never made you anything like that?”

“No. This is my first time seeing it.”

“I see.”

Sia nodded. I'd eaten alone with Rokan a few times before, but he'd never served food from Pangaea.

“Anyway, you went to Pangaea recently, remember? Maybe that put it in his mind, because yesterday Grandpa told me he wanted to eat Pangaean food again for the first time in ages.”

“So you made Pangaean dishes today?”

“Yep! I tried making some of his favorites that I could come close to recreating with ingredients from here.”

I turned toward Rokan. He was happily eating what looked like a Pangaean meat dish, a thoroughly satisfied expression on his face.

“How is it, Grandpa?”

Instead of answering Sia, Rokan smiled with his eyes and gave her a firm thumbs-up. He seemed delighted to taste food from home again.

“You should try some too, Oppa.”

“Yeah, I will.”

Since we'd been talking about it, I put some of the dish Rokan was eating onto my plate and took a bite. If I had to describe it, it tasted like dakgalbi made with more tender meat and added spices. The combination was familiar and unfamiliar at once, but it was delicious.

“What do you think, Oppa?”

“I can see why your grandfather likes it. It's really good.”

I wasn't just being polite. The flavor had already hooked me, and I took another bite while Sia watched me fondly.

“Good! Then I'll make some and send it to you through Grandpa tomorrow. Do you still have plenty of side dishes at home?”

“Now that you mention it, it's about time I made some more.”

“Really? Then while you're here, try the other dishes and pick whichever ones you like. I'll make those too and send them along.”

At Sia's suggestion, I sampled the various Pangaean dishes. I'd worried some might not suit my tastes, but thankfully that fear was unfounded. I couldn't even guess what many of them would taste like, yet, strangely, I liked almost all of them. Odd as it was to say about food from another world, something about it felt familiar too. Why was that?

When I told Sia how I felt, she said, “Well, even if it's another dimension, people still live there. Maybe that's why?”

“Hmm. Maybe.”

But humans weren't the only ones living in Pangaea. There were plenty of other intelligent races, so her explanation didn't quite click with me.

“Or maybe it's because some of their foods really are similar to Earth's.”

“True. I didn't have any trouble with the food when I went to Pangaea before.”

Maybe it was fate.

“Oh, and try this too, Oppa. It's Pangaean food as well.”

“This is?”

It looked exactly like ordinary bibim-guksu, the sort you could find anywhere.

“I know it looks like that, but it isn't. It's elf-style bibim-guksu, a favorite dish of the elves in Pangaea.”

“... Elves eat bibim-guksu?”

For some reason, picturing an elf eating bibim-guksu made my brain short-circuit.

“Yep! They make it with wheat noodles, herbs and mushrooms they've gathered, and things like that. Oh, and that elf-style bibim-guksu is one of Grandpa's favorite foods.”

She had barely finished speaking when Rokan pulled the bowl of bibim-guksu toward himself, took more than half the noodles, and started eating. Sia immediately turned to him.

“How are the noodles, Grandpa?”

“Excellent. Just the way I like them.”

“Oh, don't lie. I know you always liked Grandma's elf-style bibim-guksu best, whatever you thought of her other dishes.”

Rokan burst into a hearty laugh. “You're right, you're right. Whatever else you might say, your grandmother was one of the finest cooks around.”

He stopped eating and gazed into the distance, his eyes full of longing and loneliness. “Talking about her makes me miss home.”

“...” The mood suddenly turned serious.

“Do you miss Pangaea a lot?”

If I'd known this would happen, I would have picked up something from Pangaea as a souvenir.

“More than I can say. Life here isn't so bad, but I'd still like to go home before I die.”

I could feel the full weight of his loneliness.

“Unlike Shasha, I didn't come here of my own free will.”

Sia had chosen to come to Earth through dimensional travel magic; Rokan had been sucked into a rift against his will and settled here. His beloved granddaughter might keep him from being completely alone, but the rest of his family was still in Pangaea.

“Couldn't you learn dimensional travel magic from Sia? Or ask her to...”

After all, Sia had spent two thousand years developing that magic. It might be beyond me, but surely an ancient dragon like Rokan could learn to use it from her.

But Rokan shook his head with a bitter look. “I already asked Shasha once if she could show me the formula she used for dimensional travel magic.”

He said he'd asked her privately not long after they reunited on Earth. She'd readily shown it to him, but the formula had left him staring in disbelief.

“I've never seen such a complicated formula in all my life.”

“It's that... complicated?”

Given the difficulty of the magic, of course its formula would be more complex than other spells. But enough to leave even Rokan speechless? I'd thought someone like him could understand the formula and learn to use it in a few years, however complicated it was. And a few years didn't seem like much time to a dragon.

As I was thinking that, Rokan added, “The formula isn't the only complicated part. When I examined it, I found places where it relies on powers unique to Shasha, as well as elements throughout that defy what we know about conventional magic and dragon speech.”

And even after understanding the formula, a person would need separate training to cast the spell. All told, Rokan explained, it would take a considerable amount of time.

In other words... “So it was magic only Sia could use in the first place.”

“Exactly. I'm not saying this just because Shasha is my granddaughter, but she's no ordinary girl. Even among our kind, she was called a genius.”

Dragons, like humans, had their geniuses and their ordinary minds. Sia belonged to the former group, and that was why Rokan couldn't even contemplate mastering her dimensional travel magic.

“If only there were another way...”

“There must be another way. I'll find one, I promise!”

As the mood sank, Sia spoke up. Rokan asked, “Do you have something in mind?”

“I could improve the spell so it can transport other people, not just me. Or... we could try using gates. You came to Earth through a rift, Grandpa, and what happened to Oppa this time was similar, in a way.”

Gates. Come to think of it, weren't gates themselves fragments of dimensions connected to other worlds? I didn't know much about it, but if we studied them, maybe it could work.

“A rift. Yes, a rift...”

For a moment Rokan wore an expression I couldn't read. Then he smiled and nodded. “I knew I could count on you, Shasha.”

* * *

After their modest little party ended, Rokan waited until he'd confirmed Minjun had made it home safely, then called out to Sia as she was about to leave.

“What is it, Grandpa?”

“I've been thinking, and something doesn't add up.” Rokan's expression grew serious.

“As you know, most dragons who settled in this world came here through rifts.”

He'd wanted to bring this up earlier, but with Minjun there, he hadn't been able to.

“Yes. But... why?”

“I've heard of dragons coming through those rifts, but I've never heard of another race doing so.”

Dragons could conceal their identities the moment they reached Earth and live as though they'd always belonged here, so naturally the people here wouldn't notice. But if an elf, a dwarf, or a human had come to Earth from Pangaea, people would have found out somehow. They would have looked different from Earthlings, and they wouldn't have spoken the language.

There was also a decisive piece of evidence that other races couldn't survive being pulled through a rift between dimensions to Earth: the pain Rokan himself had endured on the way.

His whole body had felt crushed under immense pressure. The mana inside him had churned violently, leaving him feeling as if he were burning alive. It was like being sucked into a black hole and torn into tiny pieces.

Perhaps only because he was a dragon had he managed to pass through the rift with his mind relatively intact. An ordinary human subjected to that pain might well have died of shock.

And Rokan wasn't the only one who'd suffered it. Other dragons who had fallen to Earth through rifts between dimensions had testified to similar pain.

That would mean Minjun had suffered the same pain while traveling through a rift between dimensions. Yet when Minjun told Rokan about Pangaea last time, he'd said nothing of the sort.

“Then how on earth did Minjun travel back and forth between Earth and Pangaea?”