Kaeul

Kaeul is a gold dragon hatchling taken in by Yu Jitae during her first Amusement. Her desire to be loved makes public performance both her greatest natural gift and a profound danger. Across her life at Lair, her bond with Chirpy, and her eventual work as a guardian deity, she gradually discovers that she finds purpose not in receiving attention but in giving care.

Biography

The gold hatchling and her dangerous dream

Before meeting Yu Jitae, Kaeul had already attempted to live among humans. Her fondness for cameras, fashion, sweets, and attention drew her toward streaming, but an exploitative contract pushed her into disturbing work and frightened her into hiding in the Amazon. Yu Jitae won her trust with familiar dragon scents, food, and patient attention, then brought her to live with Bom and Yeorum. The unnamed gold hatchling recognized the household's seasonal pattern herself, and Yu Jitae formally gave her the name Kaeul. (Chapters 7–9)

Life at Lair immediately revived Kaeul's wish to perform. A producer noticed her while she watched a rehearsal, and Bom argued that a gold dragon's desire for attention should not simply be suppressed. Yu Jitae, remembering how public malice had destroyed earlier versions of the same hatchling, allowed one entrance-ceremony performance but made Kaeul promise not to enter the entertainment industry. During the declarer audition, Kaeul immersed herself in the emotional memories he had shared, transformed private anguish into a commanding declaration, and won the central role. (Chapters 18–33)

The declaration spread widely, bringing admiration, intrusive attention, and hostile comments in the same wave. Although Kaeul still wanted the stage, she declined television invitations because her mother had taught her to value promises like her life. Her choice established the central tension of her early Amusement: public expression made her feel vividly alive, but her unusually deep empathy also made strangers' malice capable of entering her inner life. Yu Jitae's protection preserved her, yet it also taught her to surrender important choices to him. (Chapters 33–38)

Chirpy and learning to speak about pain

Kaeul found an injured yellow spirit beast near Lair, patiently fed it, and followed it even after it refused to trust her. When spirit-beast cats carried it into an entertainment district, she broke Yu Jitae's restriction to rescue it, brought it home for Bom to heal, and named it Chirpy. She confessed the broken promise before she could be reprimanded. Yu Jitae explained that his restrictions were meant to shield her from predatory attention, and Kaeul accepted the boundary while beginning a relationship founded on care rather than applause. (Chapters 70–72)

That protection was tested when a video accidentally exposed Kaeul and drew both intense praise and organized hostility from fans of Wei Yan. Yu Jitae redirected the media response, but his more important intervention was private: he asked Kaeul to reveal every feeling instead of concealing hurt to spare others, and promised that he would remain on her side. Kaeul continued at Lair, caring for Chirpy and largely enjoying school, while a masked singing contest offered her a smaller and safer way to approach the performance she still loved. (Chapters 84–88, 172–173)

Chirpy also changed how Kaeul measured her own worth. Feeding, bathing, protecting, and sleeping beside the spirit beast gave her a responsibility that did not depend on talent, popularity, or praise. The bond became her first sustained experience of being needed by another vulnerable life. It was still sheltered by the household—Bom healed Chirpy and Yu Jitae controlled external dangers—but Kaeul was the one who chose the relationship and performed its daily work, laying the foundation for her later idea of guardianship. (Chapters 70–72, 119–172)

Performance, magic, and self-worth

Under the Baby Chicken mask, Kaeul entered Lair's singing contest while enduring belittlement and manipulation from Jung Yuran. Her gold-dragon immersion gave her singing exceptional emotional force, but it also pulled her close to feelings deep enough to frighten her. Yu Jitae used memories associated with Baby Yellow, an earlier-iteration identity who had lived under worldwide attention, to show Kaeul the cost of remaining passive. Kaeul recorded Jung Yuran's conduct, confronted her directly, and forced her to leave the contest and their society, choosing self-protection without turning the conflict violent. (Chapters 173–177)

When Chirpy's eventual departure made Kaeul want healing power, her first attempt killed a chimera because her enormous output overwhelmed the target. Yu Jitae reframed power as a way to carry conviction and offered combat training instead. Bom then taught Kaeul Magic Bullet, Magic Arrow, Barrier, Blink, and lightning attribute enchantment under severe time pressure. Kaeul initially lacked control, but intensive repetition taught her to combine movement, defense, and attack rather than releasing mana as undirected destruction. (Chapters 216–228)

Kaeul revealed that training in Lair's formal field test. She used Blink with extraordinary range, moved enemies instead of merely destroying them, killed a charging minotaur with a condensed Magic Arrow, and spent precious time searching for a simulated survivor's missing mother because she believed a guardian should answer such a plea. She completed the test with Teleportation despite that delay, and the public response placed her beside established rankers. The result gave her evidence that power could serve compassion, though the attention and physical backlash showed that talent had not removed her vulnerability. (Chapters 228–230)

Her growing ability to defend herself also changed her place in the household. When Yu Jitae prepared to disappear after being confronted with his past, Kaeul argued that a guardian who brought children into his care had to remain responsible for their happiness. She refused an easy conciliatory gift and demanded a vow that he would not abruptly leave. This was a marked reversal from the child who had obeyed every restriction: Kaeul now treated her own fear of abandonment as something she could state and require him to address. (Chapters 247–250)

Finding a guardian's vocation beyond home

Kaeul joined Team Lair with Yong Taeha, Ling Ling, and Tyr Brzenk, choosing a group that needed her protection rather than the strongest available team. When rival teams manipulated the competition, she did not answer by abandoning her companions. Team Lair gathered testimony and exposed the scheme during a live confrontation, forcing an admission and withdrawal. Continued field work raised Kaeul to a three-digit world ranking, but the work also showed her that combat alone did not resolve her uncertainty about what kind of life she wanted. (Chapters 253–254, 267–284)

Chirpy's return to Anum forced Kaeul to face the separation she had spent years preparing for. She gave up school and other opportunities to spend their remaining time together, sent him through the closing fissure with an anklet, and initially insisted that she was fine. Afterward she withdrew into Team Lair's missions, lost pleasure in her work, and blamed herself whenever her power might have harmed someone. She concluded that she was useless and proposed sleeping away ten years of her Amusement, but a crisis perceived through Chirpy's Reverse Scale drew her into Anum before she could retreat. (Chapters 306–309)

In Anum, Kaeul fought to protect Chirpy, the World Tree, and its inhabitants from the King Bees. The Authority Adaptor let Yu Jitae support her as an authority without taking over her choices. Kaeul healed mass casualties, interpreted the enemies' pheromone commands through mana, used Dragon's Voice to coordinate the mythical creatures, killed the Queen Bee, and exhausted her dragon heart to keep an egg-filled airship aloft. The people acclaimed her as their guardian deity, giving her one complete experience that disproved her belief that every effort ended in failure. (Chapters 309–313)

Kaeul still returned to Earth, but no longer because the outside world had rejected her. She left Anum only after Yu Jitae used a wish she had previously given him and after she promised its people that she would visit again. Her farewell with Chirpy was painful yet deliberate: she recognized that caring for him had shown her value lay in giving love, not collecting it. On the journey home she also recognized how consistently Yu Jitae had sheltered her, turning his protection from an invisible restriction into a model she could consciously emulate. (Chapters 313–318)

Farewell, abduction, and independent guardianship

When Yu Jitae admitted that he had gathered the hatchlings by force and intended to send them home, Kaeul was devastated by both the approaching separation and the reinterpretation of their family. She eventually chose to spend the remaining time making memories rather than fighting an unavoidable departure. Before boarding the Dimensional Cruise, she prepared sweets for the family, asked Yu Jitae to remain healthy and happy, thanked him, and entered the ship smiling even while holding back tears. Her conduct showed that the lessons learned through Chirpy now applied to the guardian she had once depended on. (Chapters 369–390)

The voyage did not proceed safely. The Dimensional Cruise was damaged from within, and Kaeul, Yeorum, and Gyeoul were found unconscious and restrained after Bom's hidden black-dragon plan seized control of the journey. Kaeul had been knocked unconscious by a blow to the back of her head rather than killed, and Yu Jitae's pursuit of the ship brought the endangered household back together. Her limited role in the confrontation underscores the change that followed: independence was not granted by invulnerability, but by what she chose to do with the life preserved through that rescue. (Chapters 397–405)

Three hundred years after returning to Askalifa, Kaeul served as the guardian deity of a gnome village under her mother's supervision. Protection now meant resolving disputes, providing material security, listening to distressed wards, and enduring the emotional fatigue created by her own deep empathy. When a difficult child resisted punishment, Kaeul recalled how Yu Jitae had adjusted himself to her needs and opened a genuine conversation with the child instead. Even when a suicidal gnome required weeks of sleepless care, she remained present, using the love she once received as a practical standard for her own guardianship. (Chapters 417–418)

Returning to a happier everyday life

After the long separation, Kaeul reunited with Yu Jitae in the same Amazon forest where they had first met. She had retained her gold hair, gold eyes, and youthful form, but her former fragile smile had matured. Regretting how much she had only received during their first life together, she brought him alcohol while he again brought her bread and sweets. Their exchanged gifts turned the pattern of their first meeting into a reciprocal one, and Kaeul then carried Gyeoul's egg back to the restored household. (Chapters 426–427)

The family resolved to rebuild an ordinary daily life while also correcting unfinished relationships. Kaeul specifically chose to bring Chirpy back because she believed he would not survive without her, and later continued caring for troubled spirit beasts with the patience developed during her guardianship. She shared in the household's games, teasing, celebrations, and Bom's wedding preparations, while retaining responsibility beyond the home. Her ending joins the two needs that had once seemed incompatible: she can receive love from her family without abandoning the lives that rely on the love she gives. (Chapters 428–434)

Appearance and personality

Kaeul's human form has bright blonde hair compared to a chick's down, bright golden eyes, and a beauty explicitly described as beyond ordinary humans. When first found, she appeared roughly two years younger than Bom; during her Lair field test she was measured at 158 centimeters. A millennium later she deliberately retains the same youthful face, gold hair, and gold eyes. She enjoys fashionable clothes, photographs, bread, macarons, fried chicken, and other sweets, and her room and shoes tend to be less orderly than the rest of the household. (Chapters 7–8, 228, 390, 426)

She is cheerful, talkative, affectionate, and sometimes slow at reading a tense atmosphere, but she makes a sincere effort to understand it. Her defining trait is emotional permeability: she empathizes so deeply that another person's feelings can become almost her own. This supports her artistry and caregiving, yet also leaves her unusually exposed to hostility, grief, and the accumulated problems of her wards. Kaeul habitually blames herself for failure and hides pain to avoid burdening others; her development lies in learning to state her needs, trust her judgment, and persist without losing her tenderness. (Chapters 31, 84–88, 174–177, 308–313, 417–418)

Powers and abilities

• Gold-dragon body and mana: Kaeul possesses a dragon heart, polymorph, dimensional storage, and the common dragon authority Transcendence (S), whose aura makes weaker beings reluctant to approach. Her outstanding trait is raw output: even elementary spells become ranker-level attacks when she condenses and focuses her mana. That output initially makes fine control difficult, can destroy a healing target, overheats her heart, and eventually leaves her bleeding or unconscious. When depleted at Anum, she cannot safely add dragon breath to her other magic. (Chapters 9, 216–230, 311–312)
• Combat and dimensional magic: Bom teaches her Magic Bullet, Magic Arrow, Barrier, Blink, and Attribute Enchantment – Lightning. Kaeul learns to maintain defense, attack, and movement together, uses Blink at a publicly measured distance exceeding sixty meters, and can cast long-distance Teleportation with a natural ease far beyond human rankers. She applies dimensional movement flexibly, including relocating a hostile creature rather than attacking it and changing firing angles around defenders. Her strongest displayed uses still carry severe recoil through her hands and dragon heart. (Chapters 226–230, 309–312)
• Healing magic: Kaeul's selfless desire to end suffering suits healing magic, but intention alone does not solve her control problem. Her first attempt floods a chimera with too much power and kills it. In Anum, after broader training and real battlefield pressure, the same immense flow heals numerous poisoned or wounded beastmen and spirit beasts at once. Healing remains part of a shared mana budget: combining it with combat magic, movement, and Dragon's Voice drives her to collapse. (Chapters 216–220, 307, 311–312)
• Emotional immersion and performance: Gold dragons can move beyond sympathy into immersion that reproduces another person's emotions as if living them. Kaeul's early first-stage immersion copies emotion and atmosphere from Yu Jitae's memories; later, it gives her declaration and singing the depth of a lived story. The ability is not emotionally safe. It can persist after a performance, disturb her ordinary behavior, make her dizzy, and draw her toward layers of feeling she regards as dangerous. With control, it also helps her interpret and soothe the people under her protection. (Chapters 30–33, 174–177, 417–418)
• Dragon senses and communication: Kaeul possesses Fallen Babel (S), although as a young hatchling she lacks enough magical understanding to interpret spirit-beast speech through it. She can detect danger through a Reverse Scale entrusted to Chirpy, enhance her sight with immense mana, read intent carried in mana-based pheromones, and use Dragon's Voice to impose commands across a battlefield. Dragon's Voice can coordinate many different creatures, but its range and coercive force consume enough mana to cause nausea, blood loss, and dizziness. (Chapters 71, 308–312)
• Guardian practice: Kaeul's latest strength is not a new attack but the sustained application of her abilities and temperament. As a guardian deity she provides safety, mediation, education, emotional support, and emergency care to roughly five hundred gnomes. Her deep immersion makes this work exhausting and creates a risk of emotional burnout, so she learns to listen without immediately judging, fit her care to the ward, and remain a stable point of reliance. (Chapters 417–418)

Power progression

Relationships

• Yu Jitae: Kaeul first treats him as the guardian who gives her a name, home, and protection from public malice. That protection also makes her dependent on his judgment, and she later forces him to acknowledge that guardianship entails responsibility rather than unilateral control. His patient care becomes the model she uses when protecting the gnomes, while their reunion finally lets her answer his gifts and care with her own.
• Chirpy: Kaeul rescues and raises Chirpy, who becomes the first life to depend primarily on her. Their bond teaches her the daily labor of care and the pain of a deliberate farewell. His danger draws her into Anum and toward her vocation as a guardian deity; after the final return, she chooses to bring him back into her life.
• Bom: Bom is Kaeul's elder sister, healer, confidante, and magic teacher. She explains Kaeul's gold-dragon traits to Yu Jitae, receives her worries, trains her through dangerous output-control problems, and celebrates her return from Anum. Kaeul in turn challenges Bom to recognize her own wishes rather than defining every choice around Yu Jitae.
• Yeorum: Yeorum's blunt protection repeatedly pushes Kaeul to resist manipulation and speak directly. Their personalities clash—Kaeul dislikes emotional fights while Yeorum distrusts passivity—but Yeorum believes in Kaeul's resilience during the Anum battle, and Kaeul later remains invested in Yeorum's future even after returning to Askalifa.
• Gyeoul: Kaeul initially carries Gyeoul in a polymorphed dragon egg and becomes one of her affectionate elder sisters after she hatches. Centuries later, the two still share memories of Unit 301 and confide in one another about their separated family. Kaeul also carries Gyeoul's egg back after their return to the past.
• Jung Yuran: Jung Yuran begins as a friend but covertly undermines Kaeul before the singing contest. Kaeul's decision to document and confront that behavior is an early act of self-defense. Seeing Jung Yuran later succeed as a singer also makes Kaeul question whether her own path in military work truly suits her.

Items

• Authority Adaptor: Yu Jitae places this bracelet on Kaeul before she enters Anum. It allows him to appear to her as an authority, share guidance and encouragement without openly entering the battle, and observe her decisions. He retrieves it after the victory.
• Origin Fragment: Like the other hatchlings, Kaeul has an Origin Fragment attached beside her dragon heart. It contains inherited authority organs tied to the protection and eventual recall of infant dragons; after the final return, its Emergency Summon and Long-distance Dimensional Intersection remain the mechanisms expected to end the hatchlings' Amusement after twenty years.
• Dimensional Cruise: Kaeul boards Yu Jitae's self-navigating ship for the voyage to Askalifa. The cruise becomes both the setting of her farewell and the site of the later abduction: it is damaged during the internal attack, and Yu Jitae finds Kaeul unconscious inside before rescuing the children.
• Kaeul's Reverse-Scale Anklet: Kaeul crafts an identification anklet for Chirpy and pierces her own reverse scale into it. The cross-dimensional bond warns her when he is endangered in Anum, though it cannot reveal a precise direction or protect him by itself. (Chapters 307–309)
• Wyvernip: Kaeul receives the first specimen from Tyr and eagerly shares its calming scent with the household. After it withers, Jitae buys a preserved replacement for her. (Chapters 285–286)