Book 1-2.4 Looking for the Sand Dragon
“Shall I start heading out too?”
Chun Myung Hoon muttered to himself as he stood far away, watching Yulian leave the Paoe.
He spoke to his disciple as if it was natural, but he definitely did not want his one and only disciple to be in an accident.
Of course before Chun Myung Hoon told Yulian to go catch the sandworm, he went to confirm the abilities of the monster.
This
old man played around with the Sand Dragon, the strongest monster in
the desert, as if it was a toy to determine its abilities. He only
directed Yulian to kill it after determining that it would be difficult
but Yulian had the abilities to kill it.
Nonetheless, he knew that
there were many things in the world that did not go the way you want it
to, and because that worm has a skill that’ll send you directly to the
afterlife if you get hit directly, he was secretly following after
Yulian.
Since the Pareian tribe secretly sent the family’s
warriors to look after the children completing the coming-of-age
ceremony, he determined that even if it was revealed later, it would not
hurt Yulian’s pride.
‘Little rascal, it’s obvious that you can
beat that worm, I shall watch just how you take care of it. You better
not make a mistake. If you do, I will increase the severity of the
training when you return.’
He was saying this type of thing because he was feeling embarrassed at the amount of love he had for his disciple.
Riding
on his Pirma, Yulian headed directly to the Monster’s Desert, which was
crawling with monsters. (TL: So far there are times the author talks
about the Monster Field and Monster Desert, I presume they are
different)
The majority of the children going through the
coming-of-age ceremony would head towards the Monster’s Desert and catch
monsters wandering by itself around it. Or, they would head towards the
wilderness to catch a wild beast. But Yulian, half on his own accord,
half because he was told to do so, needed to head to the center of the
Monster’s Desert to catch the Sand Dragon.
“Did I make the wrong decision?”
Yulian
questioned his decision as he was anxious. The Sand Dragon was a
monster he had heard about, but had never seen. Even Baguna, who often
took Yulian and Pere with him, never took the two of them when he was
heading to subjugate the Sand Dragons.
Even when the strongest warriors headed together, this was somewhere they may end up with some casualties.
Although he was not afraid, Yulian could not help but to feel a bit nervous.
“Whatever. Monsters are also living beings. I’m sure they will get split in half by my greatsword.”
Yulian patted the greatsword on his waist and started to stroke the Prima’s neck as he started to mutter again.
“I’m really sorry. It’s heavy, isn’t it?”
Due
to the two greatswords, his Pirma looked like it was slumping over a
bit. The weight and size of his greatswords were no pushover. Yulian was
proud of his ability to freely swing these two greatswords, and that
made his anxiety completely disappear.
As the desert was long and
wide, it took a couple of days to reach the Monster’s Desert. On the
journey, he did catch a couple small monsters; because the process of
catching them were so easy, Yulian started to become confident.
Yulian
had just caught a Giant Scorpion. As he was putting the scorpion’s
Monster’s Soul (the monster’s innards, heart, etc, used for magic and as
ingredients for medicine, and sold for a lot of money) that was said to
be worth a lot into his pocket, Yulian was becoming even more
confident.
The Giant Scorpion was a difficult monster that even
veteran warriors would have issues facing, unless there were at least
five of them.
After being giddy by himself, Yulian started to
think about growing the tribe’s warriors as Monster Hunters, thinking
they could buy a lot of iron with the souls they collect.
In
addition to martial arts, Yulian had been reading a lot of different
books as well. Yulian knew that in order to achieve his dream, in
addition to a strong force, he also needed a strong economic power.
The
desert had the unique commodity known as the burning water, but in
comparison to the amount of people needed to meet the demands of the
large kingdoms, the profit was too low. Until he could gather a
significant amount of power, he had no choice but to avoid confronting
these large kingdoms, so he was looking for other methods.
As Yulian continued to ponder while leading his Pirma, he suddenly heard a loud noise in his ear.
Caaaw, caw.
He
could not see it with his eyes yet, but seeing as how he could hear it
all the way here, he knew he was getting close to the Monster’s Desert.
“Great.”
Yulian
comforted the Pirma which was getting startled by the Monster’s cry and
got off the Pirma’s back. This was a way to handle the monsters that
traveled underneath the sand.
Yulian could feel the blood inside
of him start to boil. He was feeling light and excited, and just
slightly tense. This was a thrilling pleasure. Everything was mysterious
and new.
‘I guess this is the mind of a warrior?’
Feeling the excitement of a warrior as they headed for a war, Yulian slowly headed towards the center of the Monster’s Desert.
Only a strong wind filled with the fishy smell of monsters greeted Yulian’s visit. (TL: I didn’t know Monsters smelled fishy).
Before he knew it, a week had gone by since Yulian entered the Monster’s Desert. A face shot out of the desert sand.
Dry
lips. Pointy black hair. Two red eyes. With a quick glance, it almost
looked like a humanoid monster. Yulian pushed aside the sand around him
and dusted himself to get rid of the sand surround his body.
“Pweh. Pweh.”
He then put his hand in his mouth to swipe and spit. Even the inside of his mouth was filled with sand.
“I almost died from suffocation. It must be difficult for the monsters too. How many times has this happened already?”
Yulian
was complaining about the tens of times he had to deal with a sandstorm
in the past week and pulled the leather cloth hanging above the sand
with all his might.
Snort.
As Yulian lifted the cloth, the
Pirma, which was hidden from the sandstorm pushed forward its legs,
causing the sand to fly everywhere.
“I barely got rid of all the sand; did you have to do that?”
Yulian
once again removed all the sand on him while complaining to his Pirma.
Then he sat down and started to control his breathing.
The
Monster’s Desert was definitely not an easy place. Dealing with the
sandstorm every day was the second issue. The most urgent issue was that
Yulian could not sleep well at night. He could not sleep well in a
place where there were a lot of nocturnal monsters, as well as monsters
that can travel inside the sand. So nodding his head a few times as if
he fell asleep for a bit was the extent of Yulian’s sleeping.
If a
person cannot sleep, their judgement falters, and their body can feel
like it’s being lifted and stop moving the way they want it to. Even the
actions that you’ve trained in for a long time can feel unfamiliar to
you.
He was using the Heavenly Aura that his Master taught him to
freely handle his two greatswords to reduce his level of tiredness, but
controlling his Ki and sleep were inherently different, so Yulian could
not do anything about this odd feeling in his body.
“You damn sandworm. When I see you, I will destroy you for making me suffer like this.”
He
could not even find one scale of the Sand Dragon he had been looking
for, and ended up hunting just a bunch of small monsters.
In fact, his leather pouch was already full of low level Monster’s Souls to the point that he could not add anymore.
But
Yulian was still feeling proud of the fact that he could remain alert
after being out here for a week. As he dusted himself and started to
move…
“Oh!”