Episode 179

Hwangdo's daily routine was simple.

In a huge house where the temperature was always kept pleasantly comfortable, he would flop around on the thousand-dollar bed that existed solely for him, sleeping as much as he wanted and waking up whenever he felt like it.

Then, when he headed to the kitchen to fill his empty stomach, either the house manager or Jeong Seora would have fresh meat ready for him.

He didn't have to bother hunting, nor did he have to go through the trouble of picking out bones; he could just dig in and enjoy the meal right away.

Pure happiness.

His body was still small enough that he could climb onto someone's shoulder and act cute, but he was a dragon in name and truth, so he devoured huge slabs of meat down to the bone, leaving not a single scrap.

"Kyuu!"

Of course, compared to this kind of meat, gold was qualitatively far superior when it came to satisfying his hunger. However, since he could barely even see his so-called master's face these days, he had long since given up on the idea of enjoying such a feast.

'Be satisfied with the life you have now!'

Even though he spent all day lazing around the house, Hwangdo the Gold Dragon didn't really have any complaints.

He thought this was normal.

He couldn't help it.

He had been born in Kim Buja's hands, and the only humans he had ever known since then were Kim Buja and Jeong Seora. Everything he had ever seen or heard was limited to this house.

The few times he had gone back and forth to dungeons in the early days didn't matter much.

The thrill of hunting and the rush of survival of the fittest didn't appeal to him as much as a dragon's instinctive boredom with anything less than absolute power.

That was why it was possible.

He could enjoy life on his own while his master, who had spent the last year wandering all over and lately hadn't even shown his face, left him alone.

On top of that, Jeong Seora came by almost every day to play with him.

At first, he had been a bit wary of her, since she was another female and someone who received his master's affection, but he had grown to like the way she fed him, played with him, and brought all sorts of fascinating objects and toys.

Then, for the first time, he went out alone.

It happened for a trivial reason.

"Kyuu?"

As he was sprawled out like he owned the place in the penthouse of a high-rise apartment over twenty floors up, watching human culture on the TV as usual, Hwangdo spotted a living creature strolling through the air far beyond the window.

He had thought this was a world where only humans lived, but there was another life-form out there!

Hwangdo knew enough to tell that it was different from pets like dogs or cats.

A monster.

The kind of thing he had only ever seen in dungeons was now appearing in the world where his master lived.

He suddenly grew curious.

'How did those things end up here?'

Even dungeons were a different world from this one. Yet humans invaded them to hunt monsters, so why were they leaving monsters like that one alone to wander around?

"Kyuu!"

He wanted to find out.

How?

The method wasn't difficult.

The windows were designed not to open because they were so high up, but even without taking a direct route, Hwangdo knew how to get out of this big house.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP—.

He flapped his wings and flew over to the door that humans used every day, then lightly pressed down on the handle and pushed.

It was a very simple mechanism.

He might look like a sparrow, but he didn't have a bird brain.

Hwangdo easily opened the door, rode the elevator down, and left the building.

No one stopped him.

The elevator was for the penthouse only, and although he passed by the human managing the first floor, even a low-level Hwangdo could avoid someone's gaze without breaking a sweat.

It was his first time stepping out into the world without Kim Buja since he was born, but he spread his wings without the slightest hesitation.

His fluttering wings were unbearably cute, yet the speed they produced was impressive enough to draw admiration.

He quickly flew in the direction the flying monster outside the window had gone.

Three to five minutes.

That was how long it took Hwangdo to get outside.

Even if the distance between them had grown, it should have been by a lot, but Hwangdo's speed allowed him to catch up.

"Kyuuuu!"

"Squawk!"

Hwangdo swooped in from behind, landed on the back of the flying bird-type monster, and looked around.

Judging by size alone, the difference between them was at least tenfold. The giant bird was startled by Hwangdo's ambush, but it had no choice in the matter.

It thrashed and tried to shake him off, even performing aerial acrobatics, but it was all pointless.

In the end, it landed on a nearby mountain.

Just as Hwangdo looked pleased and prepared to ask his questions, the bird jabbed its beak straight at him.

"Kyuu!"

Hwangdo was furious.

From the bird monster's perspective, this was a perfectly natural reaction to some stranger suddenly appearing and taking over its back. That might make sense if you applied human logic, but in the monster world, which was ruled by survival of the fittest, there was no such thing.

Only the strong were law and truth.

And from that perspective, the bird monster's defiance was, to Hwangdo, an incredibly arrogant act of resistance.

"Kyuuuuu!"

He dodged the beak and sank his teeth into the back of its neck.

Even though the bird was ten times his size, the innate power of a dragon was something that 1- or 2-star monsters simply could not withstand.

"Scree!"

The bird monster soon declared its surrender.

If this had been a dungeon, a declaration of surrender like that would never have been accepted.

In a world ruled by the ruthless law of survival of the fittest, a monster's surrender to a human was no different from saying, "Please, make it easy and cut my throat."

Everyone knew that, but when faced with the threat of death, anyone would beg for mercy.

At that final, desperate cry, Hwangdo released his grip on its neck.

"Scree…"

A pitiful whimper.

Its body sagged.

Its gaze dropped to the ground.

It showed all the signs of submission before a stronger being, and Hwangdo let out a victorious roar.

"Kyuu!"

He didn't get carried away, though.

Hwangdo was a dragon.

A dragon did not get excited over forcing a mere small fry to submit.

"Kyuuuu!"

Instead, he focused on the reason he had come here, the reason he had spread his wings outside the house for the first time.

'How did you get here?'

"Screee!"

'The door was open, so I just came out.'

"Kyuu!"

'Then can you go back?'

"Kriee, scrie!"

'No. When I came out, I didn't see any door to go back through. Instead, humans tried to kill me, so I've been running away.'

"Kyuu!"

'How far are you running?'

When Hwangdo asked that question, he saw it.

The bird monster's eyes.

The eyes of a wanderer with nowhere to go.

Not the eyes of a free spirit who took the whole world as its home and the clouds as its blanket, but the sad eyes of someone with nowhere to set down roots, barely clinging to life only because it happened to have wings.

Hwangdo asked quietly.

"Kyuu!"

'Let's go see.'

The two birds took to the sky again.

* * *

As the door opened, two heads turned toward the entryway.

The house manager never came in if Kim Buja or Jeong Seora were home.

Even if the house was empty, they only came in between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. to tidy up; they never showed up in the evening, when things could get awkward.

But the door was opening.

On its own.

For an ordinary person, it would have been a hair-raising situation.

"Did you order something?"

"No, it's probably Hwangdo."

Of course, the two of them were not ordinary.

The high-rise apartment they lived in was so expensive that the price alone would make you wince, and the penthouse was nice enough to have its own private elevator.

There was no way some mysterious uninvited guest could casually ride that elevator up and punch in the door code like it was nothing, and even if someone like that did exist, they wouldn't pose much of a threat to these two players.

Not unless they were a top-tier ranker of at least level 60.

"Kyuu?"

As if she were already used to it, Jeong Seora explained.

Her guess was spot on.

The small dragon that came through the door flew straight over and rubbed his cheek against his master's face, which he hadn't seen in a long time.

"Hey, where have you been? You have dirt all over you."

His golden fur, which usually shone, was caked with mud and leaves, so filthy that you could tell at a glance he had been somewhere rough.

His master's scolding carried a note of worry—what if, in this dangerous world, some player mistook him for a monster that had escaped in a dungeon break and killed him?

"The world is a scary place right now. If you see humans, you run first, okay? And even if they try to lure you with tasty food, don't follow them. If you go chasing after some delicious meat, you might end up giving that guy the first chance in his life to taste dragon meat. Got it?"

"Kyuu!"

It wasn't exactly a warning to stop wandering outside.

Even Kim Buja had some conscience.

He had neglected Hwangdo all this time, so he could at least show some consideration for how the dragon spent his days.

There was just one thing.

"If you die, I can't go get another dragon somewhere, so you absolutely cannot die. Understand?"

"Kyuu!"

A master with no conscience, and a dragon who nodded solemnly at his words.

Watching the two like-minded creatures, Jeong Seora clicked her tongue.

Buja said, "Starting tomorrow, I'll earn some gold and offer it up, so let's grow up fast, Hwangdo."

Listening to him toss out those words like they were nothing, she couldn't help but feel a surge of excitement.

To someone else, it might have sounded like he was just talking big, like he was trying to show off, but from her place at his side, Jeong Seora knew.

In the entire year that had passed, he had never once spoken this directly about investing in Hwangdo.

And that once he made a plan, he always pushed it through somehow.

She was excited.

Anyone who had watched the channel from the early days and knew Hwangdo would be excited too.

A player who had a dragon as a pet.

Just the title alone made it impossible not to look forward to it.

'If I were the owner, how would I raise him?'

'What kind of build would I go for?'

There were countless comments from people saying they would sell their organs if that was what it took to raise a dragon like the ones in fantasy novels.

It wasn't just talk, either; many people had donated purely for Hwangdo's sake.

Even so, up until now, Hwangdo had remained nothing more than an adorable little dragon.

"Can Hwangdo get bigger?"

A simple, childish question, but the one everyone was most curious about.

Kim Buja answered firmly.

"Of course."

Hwangdo was a Gold Dragon.

Most people thought of "gold" dragons in novels as just one color of scale among many, but the "Gold" Dragon that Kim Buja had obtained was gold for a very different reason.

It was a pet made solely for a Gold Maker.

A dragon that ate gold.

Even its skills were learned with gold, and its levels were raised with gold. It was, in every sense, the true embodiment of a Gold Maker.

"If we feed him gold, he'll grow."

So he could chuckle and be sure of it.

If they fed him gold and raised his level, his body would grow as well.

At the very least, the game would throw in that much as a free bonus.

"Let's start by feeding him the gold we have left."

Strike while the iron is hot.

The remaining gold poured down on Hwangdo.

* * *

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.