The Foreigner on the Periphery

Hong Kong had rapidly stabilized in the few days since his return. Minjun stood on the balcony of a luxury mansion situated 500 meters above sea level, lost in thought.

Hong Kong's wealthy preferred to reside by the beach or on mountainsides rather than in the congested city center. Reaching downtown required a drive of over 20 to 30 minutes, but they hardly considered this an inconvenience. This was especially true for the owner of this mansion. If he wanted to go anywhere, he could simply use Teleport or, on rare occasions, spread his wings and take to the skies.

Right now, Minjun was looking down at the city from the drawing room of Ancient Dragon Raymond Wong's residence.

Even though the landmark of the Guangdong Federation's capital had collapsed, an Ancient Dragon had been found murdered, and a tentacle monster with a 6-kilometer radius had appeared, the financial hub of Northeast Asia remained vibrant.

Of course, a closer look might reveal a different picture, but from a distance atop the mountain, the downtown area looked largely the same as usual. This was the result of media control combined with the state's fierce resolve. Hong Kong rapidly regained its original appearance. It even hummed with a bizarre vitality as preparations accelerated for the upcoming Lord election, just 95 days away.

Minjun looked toward the site of the ICC Building. Thanks to the dragons stepping in, the ruins had been cleanly cleared away as if nothing had happened. The corpse of the Ancient Dragon that had lain there just days ago overlapped with the scenery like a phantom. A sense of mourning, which he had pushed aside, welled up within him.

"..."

He knew immediate revenge was not his part to play.

Especially since he had concluded that the culprit who killed the Ancient Dragon was the Committee...

But what if the culprit wasn't the Committee?

'I should be able to grasp some clues when I meet that guy today.'

Minjun and Kentius were waiting for Raymond Wong. They had arrived exactly at the appointed time, but the other party had made them wait, claiming he was busy. It was a brazen attitude typical of an Ancient Dragon.

"Hmm?"

Just then, Minjun's thoughts were briefly interrupted. He sensed someone approaching.

Was the Ancient Dragon finally ready to show his face?

Knock, knock.

The drawing room door opened, and a face appeared. However, it was not the person Minjun expected.

The newcomer spoke up.

"...Kentius?"

He was an elf with his hair styled in a pink mohawk.

Various tattoos covered his face and arms. As if eager to fully utilize the advantage of having ears much longer than other species, piercings lined the entire curve of his auricles. He had even tattooed his sclera black, making it impossible to distinguish the whites of his eyes from his irises. If someone ran into him under a streetlamp late at night, his appearance would scare them out of their wits.

The addressed dragon recognized the visitor.

"Leo?!"

The newcomer was an attention-seeking dragon who frequently put on shows in Hong Kong's night sky.

The son of the Ancient Dragon who claimed Hong Kong as his domain.

Using Polymorph to assume an elf form, he happily exchanged greetings with Kentius. Apparently, they had interacted frequently since childhood. When Minjun came in from the balcony, Leo offered him a nod of greeting as well. It was an uncharacteristic reaction for a dragon of his age. They usually acted arrogantly or completely ignored non-dragon races.

"I heard you came as my father's guests."

"Ah, right. He summoned us."

After briefly catching up on recent events, Leo spoke.

"It looks like my father is going to take a bit longer because of some other business."

Kentius shrugged.

"It's fine, I guess... Can't be helped."

He tried not to show it, but he looked slightly uncomfortable. Kentius suspected Raymond of being the Lord's murderer. Having a conversation with the suspect's son, who also happened to be a childhood friend, could hardly be a pleasant experience for him at the moment.

Seemingly oblivious to that reaction, Leo asked,

"Hey, it won't take long, but do you want to step out and chat with me for a bit?"

"...Hmm?"

Kentius hesitated before turning to Minjun.

"I'll be right back."

   *

Leo led Kentius to a room a short distance from the drawing room. Once the two of them sat facing each other, he spoke apologetically.

"I'm sorry for dragging you out like this when things must be so chaotic for you. I offer my condolences again."

He was comforting Kentius for the loss of his father. However, Kentius himself didn't feel much sorrow. To him, settling the inheritance was far more important than sorting out his feelings.

While this was true for most dragons who had shed their Hatchling status, Kentius harbored exceptionally little affection or attachment toward his father.

The Dragon Lord had divorced his mother when Kentius was still a developing fetus inside his egg—more specifically, right around the time his scale colors fully settled. After that, their interactions consisted solely of exchanging a few words whenever they bumped into each other at official events.

"I'm fine. Anyway, what did you want to talk to me about in private?"

At this, Leo wore a deeply troubled expression. Kentius, whose head was full of other matters, mustered his utmost patience and waited.

After his lips parted and closed several times, Leo finally spoke.

"Actually, I have a massive problem weighing on me, and I don't know if there's any way to fix it. I felt so suffocated that I just wanted to pour my heart out to someone, and then I heard you were here... I'm sorry. I know your situation is a total mess right now, too."

Kentius replied nonchalantly.

"Every dragon in the world knows I didn't care much for the Lord. Stop beating around the bush. What's the problem?"

If it was a trivial topic, he planned to cut him off mid-sentence and leave.

It was a critical time that would determine whether he could track down the Lord's murderer and inherit the Dragon Heart. He was not in a situation to waste time on a childhood friend's petty confessions.

Leo hesitated before continuing.

"Honestly... I've felt confused for a long time."

What kind of nonsense was this out of the blue?

Frowning, Kentius decided to hear him out a bit longer.

"For some reason, I've had this feeling that... this body isn't my own."

"Of course it isn't your body. Cancel the Polymorph. The moment you do, all your problems will be solved."

"No, I don't mean this elf body."

Leo hung his head. As he remained silent for a moment, Kentius felt his already thinning patience draining even faster. Just as he couldn't hold back anymore and was about to snap at him, Leo opened his mouth. Between his lips, a tongue split in half like a snake's was visible.

A split tongue.

That wasn't molded through Polymorph. He had gone out of his way to transform into a perfectly fine elf body, only to pierce his tongue, gradually stretch the hole, and ultimately split it right down to the tip. In his dragon body, such damage wouldn't even count as a scratch. It was far too durable to mutilate like that even if he tried. But once transformed into another species, he could damage the body and simultaneously experience the vivid pain.

'Anyway, he was weird since childhood, but he's only getting weirder.' As far as Kentius could tell, that was nothing more or less than self-harm committed with the utmost dedication and effort.

Moving his split tongue, Leo spoke carefully.

"I've felt this way since I was young. It's like wearing ill-fitting clothes. Like this shell... doesn't suit my soul. It feels like this body doesn't belong to me. I'm not talking about my artificial body in Polymorph form; I mean my true body."

Only then did Kentius's expression turn serious. He straightened his back and sat up properly.

"I've always been uncomfortable. From the very beginning. This body doesn't feel like a real body... it feels like a prison trapping my soul. I want to escape it. This doesn't feel right. I don't feel like I'm truly living."

Kentius's pupils trembled.

"Since when did you feel this way?"

"It's been a long time. A very... very long time. I couldn't speak of it recklessly until now. But I just can't stand this suffocation anymore. I felt like I had to tell someone."

Leo weakly lowered his head. Kentius asked in a cautious tone,

"Could it be... you're talking about an identity issue?"

At that, Leo nodded, unable to meet his eyes.

"..."

Silence hung between the two dragons.

Presently, Kentius assumed a look of resolution. He broke the cold stillness, speaking with mustered courage.

"I see... That's a very strange thing indeed. Especially regarding the timing."

"What do you mean?"

"Actually, I've experienced something similar recently."

Leo put on an expression of utter disbelief.

"You're lying!"

"It was hard for me to believe, too. But I realized it belatedly. Well, I didn't figure it out all by myself; an external factor drove me to it, but..."

Leo was stammering now.

"You... you too? Really?"

Kentius spoke with a stiff face.

"The feeling that my body wasn't my own. The feeling that something was wrong if things stayed like this. The moment I tried to move out, I realized it. There was a much bigger problem I needed to solve before I could do that."

"...?!"

"Yeah, I'm exactly the same."

As if he couldn't hold it in any longer, Leo cried out.

"Oh my god! I thought I was the only dragon in the world like this. Since when have you felt it?"

"It's only been a few days."

"You suddenly realized it then?"

"Yes, Leo. I found out late. Unlike what appears on the outside, I'm actually... my true identity is..."

Right when Kentius affirmed his friend's words and was about to continue—

Leo shouted.

"So you also think you aren't a dragon?!"

...What?

"...?!"

Kentius froze stiff.

In that moment, words poured out of Leo.

"Ever since I was little, I thought this didn't make any sense. But whenever I brought this up with my father, I just caught hell for it. Everyone says it, right? Dragons are great beings. Dragons are beautiful. Dragons are a superior race. ...Tell them to go screw themselves! Every time I look at my body, I get creeped out to death. These hideous horns, these foul-smelling scales, these uselessly tough muscles, and on top of that, a face I can't even stand to look at... This is wrong! I hate dragons! I hate that I am a dragon!"

Looking at Leo, Kentius fished a single phrase out of his mind.

'Species identity disorder.'

This was different from a half-orc trying to be reborn as a perfect human through plastic surgery.

As far as Kentius knew, it was a mental illness where someone perfectly born as a specific race claimed their identity belonged to a completely different one.

For example, it was like a perfectly healthy human insisting they were a troll and chopping off their own leg just to prove it, genuinely believing the foot would grow back from the stump.

"..."

Kentius let out a groan.

"Polymorph doesn't solve it. It doesn't satisfy me. I want to discard this body forever. I don't care what race I become as long as it's not a dragon. I want to be reborn... as another species!"

Kentius asked back, utterly baffled.

"I always thought... you were intensely proud of being a dragon."

Anyone would think so, seeing him flaunt his draconic body while soaring through Hong Kong's night sky whenever he was bored.

Everyone had simply pegged Leo as an attention-seeking dragon.

"I consulted with psychologists, and they said it was a kind of emotional regression. Because I hate this body so much, I'm deliberately degrading its value. It's like hanging the noble body of a dragon out in a public place like a product on display. A great member of the Dragon Race playing the clown. It was certainly enough to piss my father off. But rather than doing it on purpose, it was closer to a desperate fit of rebellion."

Kentius swallowed a sigh.

This bastard... he really was a complete nutjob, wasn't he?

A genuine psycho... As a normal, rational dragon myself, I can't even begin to understand it.

"Kentius, you've had the same worries, right? Isn't there some way? A way to throw away a dragon's body."

He threw question after question at Kentius.

"You said you were just like me. Have you never felt that urge?"

"Ah, no... I'm... a somewhat different case."

"Different? How so?"

Kentius agonized over how to answer.

   *

"Gasp!"

Somewhere in Seoul, the precognitive ability user snapped her eyes open, her whole body drenched in sweat.

The orc standing guard beside her asked,

"Did you see the exact same future again?"

Choi Seona slowly nodded. The face of Assemblyman Choi Panseok, looking at his adoptive daughter, was full of anxiety.

Over the past few days, she had seen the exact same point in the future whenever she attempted a precognition. It was an unexpected situation that arose while precisely tuning the simulation as Minjun had instructed.

They were flustered. This situation presented several major problems. First, they couldn't even gauge whether this was the scene the entity who had brainwashed Choi Panseok wanted, because the images depicting the future were far too blurry.

Furthermore, the time frame was far too close. The point in time where her Future Sight had anchored itself over the past four days was exactly 95 days from now.

"...Ughhh!"

The capillaries on her forehead bulged and subsided repeatedly. Escaping the afterimages, Choi Seona barely managed to mutter,

"I think a massive event that flipped the future occurred four days ago. I got swept up in it as well... and that's why I keep seeing only this exact future."

"Did you only see those incomprehensible scenes again?"

Choi Seona shook her head.

"It was a bit clearer today."

The scene—which was 99 days in the future relative to four days ago—was gradually coming into sharper focus.

Choi Seona described it.

"I saw a dragon."

The smudges that had previously looked faint were now sculpted with enough precision to understand they were dragons.

"I saw many dragons. Countless dragons."

Choi Seona's voice trembled.

"The dragons were walking in a line, heading somewhere. One by one, in order. They were all moving in the same direction. Waiting for their turn, going there willingly. Approaching it on their own two feet."

At the end of the line lay a shadow massive enough to cover the entire world.

A colossal darkness surging and overflowing, threatening to swallow everything in its vicinity.

"Today, I realized what it was. The entity I saw... that shadow was the Lord of Dragons... the master of the dragons."

The prophet shivered, as if merely recalling the sight terrified her. What she had seen did not end there.

"And then."

With a voice stained by terror, she barely managed to continue.

"That black shadow waiting at the end of the procession constantly flicked and extended its tongue... and used that tongue to crush the dragons' brains!"

"...?!"

The orc lost his words.

"One by one... in order... endlessly... until all the dragons standing in line... all of their brains... with that black tongue..."

"..."

"..."

The orc pondered for a long while before opening his mouth.

"If we interpret that vision..."

The results of future precognition were not always delivered in intuitive forms. The future was often expressed in highly abstract and symbolic imagery.

Therefore, the assemblyman didn't panic. He needed to report to his master—the one who had ordered the prophecy—in the most organized form possible.

They concentrated.

"Usually, in visions of the future, a shadow signifies a hidden entity, someone secretive who doesn't readily reveal themselves on the surface."

"And the 'tongue' means 'speech.' I think crushing the brains means blurring their reason and muddying their minds."

The orc and the prophet had no intention of interpreting the future scenery literally.

They excavated its hidden meaning, dusted it off, and refined the contours to sculpt its true message.

"The dragons could literally mean dragons, but we could also interpret them as the ruling class who holds immense power."

"Then the primary interpretation is... an entity moving in secret, away from the public eye, will deceive and dominate the powerful with words. 95 days from now."

"Right. But we need to refine it further. Tell me more about what you saw and felt in the dream."

The father and daughter's discussion continued throughout the night.

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