The Foreigner on the Periphery

‘I'll be seeing quite a spectacle for the first time in a while.’

To put it into perspective, his feelings were akin to those of a farmer gazing proudly at a barn full of cattle.

When Minjun readily agreed, Jenkinson sounded surprised.

“Thank you. To be honest, I thought it might be inappropriate to invite someone from the Non-Dragon Races to a gathering with so many dragons...”

Minjun shook his head with a sly smile.

“Why would you say that? Where else in the world would you find someone who loves dragons as much as I do?”

“...”

“...”

Blair and Jenkinson missed their timing to reply for entirely different reasons.

Meanwhile, Jenkinson had clamped his mouth shut because recalling Minjun's past before he came to Earth left him utterly speechless.

As far as Jenkinson knew, his friend was a prisoner with the highest dragon kill count among all the Non-Dragon Races. Granted, most of those kills were criminals who had clashed with the Committee and lost the protection of the Dragonic Code.

Minjun claiming to love dragons was no different from the rhetoric of the Ancient Dragons, who boasted that they loved China so much they tore it into dozens of pieces.

“Where is the meeting being held this time?”

“Hong Kong.”

Once a British colony, it had endured a long Chinese civil war to become the capital of the Guangdong Federation. From Korea, it was just a three- or four-hour flight away.

However, the dragon did not seem inclined to enjoy the conveniences of modern civilization.

“You can just travel with me via Teleport.”

They weren't exactly in a race against the clock, so why waste magic power?

Guessing his doubt, the dragon explained.

“We will be accompanied by a passenger who is far too sensitive to transport by plane.”

Minjun understood immediately.

“You mean the spider monster.”

The experimental subject was referred to internally at Jenkinson Company by the code name Spider. It was the monster Minjun had yet to decide whether to call a dragon-spider or a spider-dragon.

‘Makes sense. It's one of the major agenda items for this meeting, so it would be stranger not to bring it.’

Blair chimed in.

“On top of that, he plans to bring the children the monster gave birth to.”

She was referring to the four children the monster had birthed after stealing the seed of the half-elf, Edward Mitchum.

Hybrids who looked exactly like blond half-elves, but whose genetics must be incredibly complex.

‘Come to think of it, doesn't that mean the genetic information of four races is mixed together? Dragon, Ober spider, human, and elf... It might be the first time since the dawn of creation.’

“Then, I will inform Rod's secretariat that you will also be attending. We will contact you once the departure date is finalized.”

“Does that conclude our business for today?”

“No, there is one more thing. Minjun... I need to ask for your help.”

The Red Dragon explained that Jenkinson Company's internal research on the monster had hit a wall.

Discovering how a hybrid between a dragon and a spider could be born, and what kind of technology was involved, was incredibly important from the perspective of an Ancient Dragon. Moreover, considering the creature had been found in his own territory, it went without saying.

But when no progress was made, the Red Dragon decided to step in personally instead of leaving it entirely to the researchers. He resolved to conduct advanced Magic experiments alongside them—something only an Ancient Dragon could do.

“While continuing the research, I discovered a bizarre phenomenon.”

He couldn't interpret it at all. That was why he wanted Minjun to take a look.

Technically, Minjun had resided in a wider variety of dimensions than Jenkinson, who had fled into exile for political reasons. Because of Blair's presence, the dragon didn't explicitly mention that fact and chose his words carefully.

“Even an Ancient Dragon doesn't possess all the knowledge in the world.”

Without much thought, Minjun agreed to take a look. The dragon waved a hand in the air, and light swallowed the two of them, transporting them to his private laboratory.

*

Somewhere in Seoul, not far from Jenkinson's Lair, four boys were gathered in a room filled with surveillance cameras.

By sight alone, they appeared to be around seventeen years old. With their identical appearances, anyone would have concluded they were quadruplets.

However, they were far younger than that, and they weren't true multiples, either. Very few people knew they had been born just a few months ago, each a day or two apart.

The only sound echoing in the room came from a TV that had been left on, though no one was watching it. Not a single voice could be heard from the boys. That made the scene look bizarre. They sat facing each other, their expressions constantly shifting as they exchanged glances, but not one of them ever opened his mouth.

In reality, however, they were chatting noisily at that very moment through telepathic waves.

One of them shouted in his mind.

=Oh, come on! Just be quiet for a second!=

Clearly articulated thoughts. If they were normal humans or elves, achieving such a developmental pace just months after birth would be impossible. But for these four, it was only natural.

Having barely suppressed the chatter of his siblings, the Third continued speaking through the telepathic waves only they could share.

=You know, I learned something new from the spirit summoner teacher today.=

The brothers had shared a portion of their minds since birth.

Their method of communication differed slightly from a dragon's unique telepathic waves. The process of exchanging messages consumed no magic power at all, and only the four brothers could access that network.

Furthermore, they shared not just verbalized concepts, but emotions. It was a realm that an ordinary dragon could never reach, nor would they ever try.

Jenkinson had concluded that this trait was closer to that of soldier spiders than dragons.

=You already said that earlier!=

=No, forget that, listen to me. Remember that game console we saw when we went out last week? I begged our caregiver to buy it, and Mr. Jenkinson finally gave permission! It's getting delivered today, so let's play it together.=

=Change the TV channel. Put something on other than the news.=

=Ah, I'm hungry. Is there anything to eat?=

=Hey, hey, everybody just listen to me!=

The Third rang his telepathic waves stronger than before, causing the other brothers to frown in unison.

=We can't even see that spirit thing anyway! It's boring.=

=No, it'll be different this time.=

=Hm?=

The Third grinned with a confident look on his face.

=I told you, I learned how to summon it so other people can see it too!=

=Really? You're not lying?=

=Yeah! Here, watch.=

Shrugging smugly, the Third closed his eyes and concentrated. At that moment, the other brothers felt him temporarily lock the doors to his mind. They could no longer transmit their voices to him, and in turn, no voice leaked out.

A moment later.

Flash!

Only the Third, who possessed spirit affinity, could feel that something was approaching. It was a Supernatural Ability that almost never manifested in dragons.

A flexible ripple quietly resonated through the air.

Whoosh!

A form materialized in the air above, visible to anyone regardless of whether they possessed Supernatural Abilities.

=...=

=See! How about it? You saw it, right?!=

The Third was triumphant.

However, no answer came from his brothers.

They all stared blankly at the space above the Third's head.

Out of the eight legs shaped by the hazy light, only five were intact. The remaining three drooped limply like crushed earthworms. Its back was covered in reptilian scales, but its segmented legs displayed the traits of an arthropod.

The head wedged in its center was overwhelming. Rather than connecting naturally to a neck, it looked as if someone had taken a hammer and smashed it down onto the stump. The face looked like crumpled and torn paper. Chunks of flesh dangled everywhere, and its teeth and gums were completely exposed.

The form the spirit imitated, resonating with the spirit summoner's mind, looked like a creature born from mixing a spider and a dragon. However, it didn't look like they had been mixed very well.

It was an appearance horrific enough to make an ordinary child scream and run away. It was incredibly grotesque.

And yet.

=...=

The expressions of the other three brothers brightened as they looked at it. Like flowers blooming.

=Mom!=

=It's Mom!=

=Wow, it looks exactly like her!=

The Third, who had shaped the spirit, shrugged and laughed.

=Well? Identical, right?=

=Awesome... You're the best!=

=Make it move! Make it move some more!=

However, contrary to his brothers' wishes, the spirit soon returned to the spirit realm. The magic consumption was extreme because he couldn't control it properly yet.

When the spirit was reverse-summoned, the Third sank to the floor, looking a bit pale. The other children's telepathic waves poured onto him.

=How did you do it? Did you command the spirit? Tell it to appear like that?=

=No, I told you guys last time. Seriously, listen to me when I talk! It looked like that from the very first time I summoned it. But until now, only I could see it.=

=Why Mom, of all things? Is it a coincidence?=

=Can I learn spirit summoning too? What do I have to do?=

Questions flooded in, and just as the Third was busy fending them off one by one...

=...=

The boys stopped talking and turned their heads to look in one direction.

At the end of their gaze stood the youngest.

The Fourth, born just days after the Third, initially seemed to lag far behind his brothers in growth, but as time passed, his height and appearance became identical to theirs—to the point where a stranger would find it absolutely impossible to tell them apart by their faces alone. However, the expression the Fourth wore right now held a rigid stiffness that differed from the other three.

The rest of the brothers could sense his psychological state without even having to look at his face. It was the reason they had stopped talking. An emotion that could not be ignored had suddenly swelled in the youngest's mind.

Sorrow. Grief. Frustration.

The brothers knew it wasn't because he missed their mother. He wasn't sad because of the spirit's shape. The problem was the spirit itself.

They all tried to comfort the Fourth.

=Don't worry. You'll awaken to something soon too! Mr. Jenkinson said so.=

=Right. He said it was absolutely not normal for three of us to awaken entirely different abilities.=

=Yeah, we weren't born normal in the first place. So there's no way you're just a regular person, right? You're definitely a Supernatural Ability User!=

=Remember? I used to be super jealous of the older two before I first summoned a spirit, too. But eventually, I got this power, right? It's only a matter of time for you.=

It was then.

=...Huh?=

The First was the one who noticed it before the others. It wasn't that he was more observant than his brothers, but simply because the TV was easiest to see from the angle where he was sitting.

=Hey, everyone look at that!=

The First pointed at the TV. At the screen that had been left on but completely ignored.

Everyone's heads turned in unison. Even the gloomy youngest momentarily forgot his feelings and instinctively obeyed the voice in his head, and the moment he saw it, his melancholy vanished completely.

A brief silence followed.

=...How is that possible?=

The news was playing. Archival footage rolled as the reporter reeled off difficult words. They couldn't understand all of it, but the important keywords etched themselves clearly into the children's minds. Not one of them needed to remember everything. The other brothers would fill in the gaps through their linked minds.

What captured their attention was a man on the screen.

“...It was revealed yesterday that Robert Mitchum, chairman of the Mitchum Group—ranked fifth in the domestic financial sector—transferred holding company shares worth five trillion won to his eldest son, Edward Mitchum, through an off-hours block trade. It is expected that his eldest son, who has been undergoing succession training, will become heavily involved in management in place of Robert Mitchum, who is considered elderly by pure-blood human standards...”

The face of a blond half-elf man appeared on the screen. The children didn't know it, but it was the very first photo of Edward Mitchum that the conglomerate's PR department had deliberately distributed to the press.

The children stared blankly at the face before turning their heads to look at one another simultaneously, as if they had agreed upon it beforehand.

The exact same face they had seen on the TV was reflected in each other's eyes.

*

‘The smell of blood?’

That was the phrase Minjun muttered as soon as they arrived at the laboratory inside the Lair. A pungent odor stung the tip of his nose.

However, it didn't trigger his trauma. It was different from the incidents he had experienced before coming to Earth. This was the scent of blood from a completely different race.

Minjun's gaze landed on the wall of the lab. There stood a massive tank filled with a reddish-brown liquid.

The dragon explained.

“It's dragon blood. It's the reason the other researchers aren't allowed in here.”

There was no need to ask whose blood it was.

“I extracted it little by little after returning to my original form and stored it there.”

Minjun once again reflected on just how much of an impact the Jang Tae-jun incident had left on this Ancient Dragon.

A normal dragon wouldn't even conceive of such an experiment. For those narcissists to intentionally wound themselves and drain their own blood?

Despite that, Jenkinson was imitating something similar to what Jang Tae-jun had done. The wall that had limited his imagination had crumbled.

Of course, the goal he wanted to achieve through this act was completely different from that lunatic dragon's.

“Since dragon genes are mixed into that monster's blood, I thought it might show a magical reaction to my blood.”

But the results were unimpressive. The reaction was too faint to read any meaningful information.

“...”

Meanwhile, Jenkinson's explanation was going in one of Minjun's ears and out the other.

His eyes were fixed on the tank holding the dragon blood. He could feel that it had been sealed with multiple layers of Magic. Despite that, his nose caught the distinct smell of blood. Given an Ancient Dragon's skill, it would have maintained the exact freshness of when it was first drawn. The best preservation Magic must have been utilized. The result was right in front of him. So... fresh... and delicious-looking...

Gulp.

The dragon turned his head at a sound completely unsuited for the location.

Only then did Minjun realize his mistake. The version of himself that viewed dragons as livestock and the version of himself that was friends with an Ancient Dragon hadn't fully reconciled yet. He reproached himself for craving his friend's blood.

Minjun played it off with an indifferent tone.

“...My throat was just a little dry.”

Jenkinson tilted his head and continued his explanation.

“Anyway, the experiment using my blood wasn't giving much result, so I changed my approach. I stimulated the monster's blood with a magic wave. To create a monster like that, life and genetic Magic would definitely have been involved, and I thought traces of it would be left behind.”

Magical traces were bound to react to magic power.

However, carving a key that perfectly filled that gap was incredibly difficult. Unless one had Committee-grade equipment, it wasn't a task a machine could substitute for. One had to generate an almost infinite number of three-dimensional patterns and process the matching manually.

It was an impossible task unless you were a creature like a dragon, who could dedicate one of its six brains entirely to Magic.

And Jenkinson had finally managed it.

“I discovered that the blood reacts to a specific magic wave pattern. There were artificial traces left behind.”

His prediction had been correct.

However, he couldn't interpret the contents.

“I've never seen anything like it. Do you recognize it?”

At his gesture, a magic wave concentrated inside the vessel. The blood reacted to it, reflecting a deformed magic wave back out. A computer read the reflection and displayed it on a monitor.

“It looks like a drawing, but also like symbols... I've never seen a race that uses such symbols. I can only assume it's a fragment of the blueprint left behind during the genetic manipulation process. What do you think? Does it look familiar to you?”

“...”

Looking at the monitor, Minjun was momentarily lost for words.

The computer was schematizing and drawing the magic waves pouring out from the blood's reflection. It had simply copied them without understanding their meaning.

A pattern that yielded no matches even after searching through Jenkinson's entire database.

But Minjun could read it.

And he thought to himself.

‘I definitely... can't tell Jenkinson about this.’

Minjun kept silent for a moment before speaking.

“Did you happen to shoot the same magic wave you used to stimulate that into your own blood as well?”

“I didn't intend to, but my blood was exposed to that magic wave during the experiment. But there was no reaction. That's only natural. Why do you ask?”

Jenkinson believed that this was a trace of whoever had created the monster.

But Minjun thought differently. That was a footprint left behind from much, much longer ago. Most likely... information contained within the dragon genes used to create the monster.

Minjun read what the monitor was projecting.

.

.

.

Livestock Product Traceability System Information Access

- Individual Identification Number: Unknown

- Origin: Unknown

- Slaughterhouse: Unknown

- Date of Slaughter: Unknown

- Processing Plant: Unknown

- Genetic Information

Breed 1: Fire Dragon-Type 241 (Breed Improver: Latuma, Year Registered: 6,210)

Breed 2: Arthropod (Detailed information unknown)

※ Severe genetic damage limits access to accurate information.

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