The Foreigner on the Periphery

Jenkinson shifted awkwardly under Minjun's thoroughly unimpressed stare.

For a brief moment, he even wondered if the man before him was an imposter in disguise. Minjun would never turn down Talents. If anything, he should have demanded more.

But Minjun had his reasons. He was absolutely certain that his prisoner account would soon be frozen. Having Jenkinson wire Talents there, complete with a hefty special gift tax, would only line the Committee's pockets.

Furthermore, Minjun no longer needed digital Talents deposited into an account. He needed the physical currency. And he highly doubted Jenkinson could procure a meaningful amount of physical Talents on such short notice.

And then there was the final reason.

"Besides, I figure this is the last favor I'll be doing for you anyway. For a while, at least."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Stay here for a bit. Don't even think about following me."

Considering the nonsense spouted by the Tax Collection Command bastards he'd just killed, they had to be the same ones wreaking havoc on Inais's end.

A chance to steadily thin their numbers while they had only dispatched what they considered an appropriate force.

"W-Wait! Minjun!"

Jenkinson panicked as darkness suddenly smothered his vision. He had lost sight of Minjun entirely. He shouted into the pitch black.

"Even if you know the coordinates... how do you plan on getting there alone?!"

A Teleport spanning all the way to the other side of Earth required a colossal amount of magic. It was the kind of magic only an Ancient Dragon or a member of the Ancient Race could reasonably cast.

"Minjun!"

Ignoring Jenkinson, Minjun reached into the empty air. Something flew toward him out of the darkness. It was the alien, still unconscious and bleeding profusely from his brow. Seizing Yumtus by the scruff of the neck, Minjun used his free hand to fiddle with the artifact he had been holding.

It was a Spatial Condensation Magic Tool. The Todds had been unable to lift their own isolation to flee, left trembling in irrational terror before they were annihilated.

Grumbling about its crude design and clunky controls, Minjun adjusted the Magic Tool so that the barrier trapping Jenkinson would automatically dispel after some time had passed.

Tying the dragon down just long enough to keep him from following was all he needed. If he didn't, Jenkinson would undoubtedly ignore his warning and chase him straight to the Amazon.

Minjun's brow twitched. That dragon would likely survive until the day they crossed paths again. Assuming no unforeseen accidents befell him, of course.

'But what about the others?'

Several faces flashed through his mind as he calculated the lifespans they had left.

"..."

With deeply sunken eyes, Minjun drew upon his power. There was no chanted incantation. There was none of the sluggish activation time so typical of Dark Magic teleportation spells.

In an instant, Minjun and Yumtus vanished.

   *

Inais felt herself reaching her absolute limit.

'My egg... my egg...!'

Her eyes were tightly shut to protect them. She could not see the raging flames surging all around her; she could only feel the excruciating heat.

Trapped in an inferno where no living creature other than a dragon could possibly survive, she repeated the words endlessly to herself. She was halfway to delirium. Inais was terrified. She feared her own impending death, yes, but even more than that, she was terrified that the protective barrier she had focused entirely around her egg would shatter and she would lose it. The crushing despair came from knowing that, at this rate, it was only a matter of time before those terrifying futures became reality, one after the other.

'No. I can't let that happen.'

She was now siphoning away the very magic keeping her alive and pouring it into the egg. Thanks to this, the hellish heat ravaging her back didn't reach the shell. The price she paid was the sheer agony of being roasted alive.

The hunters were relentless. They truly deserved the title of dragon hunters. The Todds had no interest in an efficient slaughter. It seemed they were actually enjoying this process of cornering a dragon and slowly roasting her alive. Their deep-rooted hatred for the Dragon Race, cultivated during the last war, compelled them to savor this long-awaited opportunity.

'Help is coming.'

She whispered it to both the egg and herself.

'Someone will come to save us.'

It was the last shred of hope she had left to lean on.

Unconsciously, she once again thought of the deceased dragon.

'Rod.'

She recalled the conversation they had shared across the ocean, right before his death.

'Inais, you know, don't you? This egg you've laid is incredibly special to me, too. All of my children are special, but... this one even more so.'

'Yes, you understood. You didn't agree or sympathize with my views, but you knew what I wanted and respected it. I want to leave behind as many children who resemble me as possible in this world. It might sound arrogant, but I believe they'll be a vital asset for the future of dragons.'

'Our kin's birth rate is downright abysmal. Even though we're biologically designed to bear as many children as we want, very few dragons show any interest. In order to defeat the Ancient Race, we need to increase our numbers. And... to prepare for an even greater threat that might emerge in the distant future.'

'Hm? There's no knowing what that danger might be. We never expected the Ancient Race to return in the first place, did we? What if other nightmares we dismissed as myth and superstition become reality...? Ah, forget I said that. It sounds a bit paranoid, even to me.'

'Anyway, no matter what happens in the future, the more of us there are to face it, the better we'll be able to respond and overcome it. ...Even if only by a little. In that sense, this egg is extraordinary. Both in terms of increasing my own children and increasing our race's overall numbers. I scoured the records again, but there has never been a case like this. If we can uncover the secret hidden in this egg's genetics...'

'Oh, don't worry! I won't do anything to it until it hatches. And until then, it's best we keep it a secret from the other dragons. They might suspect it's some sort of deformity. Either way, I'm already preparing for that day. Here, look at this. It's a Magic Tool I won in a bet against Raymond. Endelion made it. ...Ah, don't give me that look. You don't have any combat experience anyway, right? Besides, it's not a weapon; it's the kind that protects its wearer. So, now that you know what it does, are you interested?'

'Why only one? Don't worry. I'm going to study this and make an absolutely perfect replica...'

Fwooooosh!

Inais's thoughts were severed.

Horrific agony. With all the poisonous plants burned away, her exposed flesh was already charred and half-cooked.

Alongside the desperate urge to pass out, she felt a powerful impulse to writhe and thrash in pain. But she couldn't. She tried to open a subspace to hide the egg, but the space remained frozen solid, utterly unresponsive.

She fought tooth and nail to stay conscious. But the physical torment made it nearly impossible to hold her focus. Moreover, she was already bordering on total exhaustion.

Slowly, the protective barrier she had forged began to waver.

'No, no!'

A single, pathetically frail layer of shell.

She focused on the texture of the object cradled in her arms. She had tried so hard not to let it get warmer than her own body heat, but she could feel the surface slowly growing hotter.

Just as she was about to scream in despair.

Swoosh!

"...?!"

For a split second, Inais was so startled that she even forgot the pain.

The heat was dying down.

The roiling flames that had been incinerating everything in all directions vanished like a lie. In their place, a pitch-black darkness filled the space. It swallowed everything at a phenomenal speed, draping the world in heavy shadows.

Soon, Inais could not see a single thing other than her own body.

Then, a voice pierced straight into her mind.

=Stay curled up right there, dragon.=

She didn't know who was speaking, but she had no intention of moving anyway. She felt the frozen space finally thaw. Even so, utterly exhausted, the dragon didn't dare to so much as twitch. She simply gathered every last ounce of her strength to keep her body rigid and protect the egg.

Amid a tidal wave of sorrow, elation, and sheer astonishment, she wondered.

Was it Jenkinson?

Did Jenkinson intervene on her behalf?

Her guess was quickly confirmed.

=Jenkinson is the creditor of this debt. Just remember that.=

With those final words, the unknown entity's mind withdrew from hers.

Then, total silence descended. The darkness blanketing her horribly mangled flesh felt peaceful, almost cozy. Bizarrely, Inais felt the pain slowly ebbing away. Though she was reduced to a ghastly sight, looking like stripped and scorched meat, a cool sensation seemed to wash over her thoroughly ruined, oozing skin. Perhaps the sheer relief and euphoria were playing tricks on her brain. That was the only explanation Inais could come up with.

She curled herself even tighter.

And whispered to the egg.

'It's okay now.'

A telepathic ripple answered from within the shell.

=...Really? Is it okay now?=

=Really? Does it not hurt?=

Just like before, the answering mental wave came in two distinct strands.

But unlike during the peak of their confusion and terror, she could now clearly distinguish the contents of the two minds. Inais perfectly understood the whispers from the egg.

And she whispered back to the twins, quite possibly the first in all of dragon history.

'It's okay. Everything will be okay now.'

   *

Minjun finally dragged his lingering gaze away from the darkness.

His throat still burned with thirst, and beneath his feet lay a dragon, completely unable to move.

But he had no intention of laying a hand on her. Sparing a beast nursing its young was only natural.

His throat burned.

That craving swiftly warped into irritation and wrath.

"Hey, where is everyone? Damn it, the communicator is dead!"

"This damn dragon... just what the hell did she do?!"

"Zero visibility! Zero visibility!"

Minjun turned his head and glared at the Todds stumbling blindly through the dark in a panic.

The very culprits who had been slowly roasting the dragon alive.

A dragon brooding her egg, no less.

'Rod, what exactly... were you expecting from me?'

Minjun had sensed the two souls sharing a single eggshell.

Multiple embryos resulting from excessive follicle production.

In other words, twins within a single egg.

Among the dragons living in this era, such a thing was considered impossible, but it had been a fairly common sight in ancient times. Back then, it was even seen as a symbol of good fortune.

But to the modern Dragon Race, an unprecedented biological anomaly was inevitably treated as a deformity. To prepare for the worst before it hatched, the Dragon Lord and Inais had kept this a strict secret from their kin.

'You're not the type to make a slip of the tongue. You had something you wanted to tell me.'

But he decided to shelve that question for the moment. There, in the darkness, were noxious pests that had dared to attack a mother nursing her young.

It had not yet been fully decided what kind of future would be gifted to the dragon species. In other words, until then, all the dragons in this world belonged to them. They were still the masters of the dragons.

And any pests that laid hands on what was Minjun's had to be exterminated.

Fwoosh!

The darkness boiled over.

-------!

High above the jungle, where the forest fire had been snuffed out in an instant, horrifying shrieks began to echo.

They did not last very long.

   *

The prophet's eyes snapped open, her body drenched in sweat.

"The prophecy has changed."

"What? Are you sure?!"

The waiting Orc's expression instantly turned grave.

The prophecy had been deadlocked for a long time. For days, she had been repeating a vision of a future exactly 93 days from the present.

Had something finally changed? If so, he might be able to deliver new intelligence to the man he placed his absolute trust in... to that agent.

The Orc, Choi Panseok, looked at his daughter with a face brimming with anticipation. His nostrils flared instinctively as he waited in nervous suspense.

Choi Seona steadily brought her ragged breathing under control and softly closed her wide eyes, retracing exactly what she had seen.

"..."

After a long silence, she parted her lips slightly as if to speak. The Orc couldn't take the wait.

"What happened?!"

His daughter muttered in response.

"No... maybe it hasn't changed?"

For the first time since his adoptive daughter had grown out of puberty, the Orc felt a violent urge strike him.

But he ruthlessly suppressed his impatience and asked.

"...Are you saying it was the exact same scene?"

She answered slowly and calmly, her tone sounding as though she were chewing over her own words.

"Compared to before, the scene definitely changed. But I can't tell if that means the future itself changed, or if the metaphorical vision I'd been seeing just became more concrete."

Upon hearing that, the Orc finally understood what she meant.

"Mmh."

A deep, heavy hum.

"I'm going to need some time to think."

He rose from his seat and stared out the window. Both the Orc and his daughter sank into their own deep thoughts. Choi Panseok cracked the window open. The noticeably brisker October breeze tickled his flat nose.

He flipped through the calendar in his head. 93 days from now. Coincidentally, that day was December 31, 2020. 'New Year's Eve' already held plenty of meaning on its own, but this year it would be even more monumental.

'The day Earth's new Dragon Lord will be elected.'

This fact had already been widely broadcast by the media.

He mulled over the prophecy Choi Seona had just recited.

The timing was identical. The last day of 2020. The sight of dragons marching forward in an orderly line was no different from before. But the entity waiting at the very end of that line had changed.

The overflowing shadows flooding the entire world were exactly the same, but sitting right in the center of it all, waiting for the dragons, was a person both father and daughter knew all too well.

'Agent Ye Minjun.'

Even when she could only see shadows in the prophecy's landscape, Choi Seona had guessed the figure was the agent. Since her visions revolved entirely around Minjun, it was the only natural conclusion.

But this time, his face had been unmistakably revealed, confirming her hunch as absolute fact.

When the Orc heard up to this point, he was profoundly confused.

'There's no way the agent is actually going to smash a dragon's skull... don't tell me he's going to...?'

Choi Seona said she saw it in her vision. The dragons marching in a neat line looked as though they were showing absolute reverence to someone seated at an impossibly high altitude. That someone was Minjun, sitting directly before them. Looking closer, the chair he sat on resembled a throne. The dragons were stepping forward in perfect order, as if granted an audience with a king.

And the moment all the dragons in the world—every last one of those obedient, docile creatures—finally gathered together.

They prostrated themselves flat on the ground. Then, with boundless, profound respect and reverence, they cried out.

'Guide us. Lead us on the righteous path. O our master, be praised for all eternity. O our Lord, who has transcended endless time to return to us!'

The language the dragons used to praise him was not Korean.

The Orc chewed over the implications of those words.

No matter how much he thought about it, it was undeniable. In the vision, Minjun had ascended to a position of supreme importance to them. On modern Earth, that position was less a monarch ruling the Dragon Race and more a representative consolidating their voices. Even the actual election process took the democratic form of a vote.

But what about in the distant past?

The Orc quietly muttered the title to himself.

"Dragon Lord."

Just as a master of slaves need not be a slave, and an owner of livestock need not be a beast.

The Lord of Dragons need not be a dragon.

"Dear God... you're..."

The Orc came to a startling, agonizing realization of exactly what Minjun had become in the future Choi Seona had foreseen.

He was Earth's new Dragon Lord.

   *

D-93.

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