The Foreigner on the Periphery

"Welcome, Lord Solada! I have been waiting for you. It is an honor to finally meet you!"

Solada stepped off the train at the rural station. A slender stanian stood on the rundown platform, greeting him with a deeply respectful bow.

"My name is Gulesh. I received word from Darkbara. I will be serving you at the estate from today onward."

Darkbara was the name of the employment agency director who had arranged this safe house.

Solada was privately surprised. Before arriving, he had expected to spend his days in quiet seclusion at an empty estate. He never imagined they would provide a servant.

The servant's next words surprised him even more.

"There are other servants waiting for you at the estate besides me."

'There are more of them?'

During the trip from the station to the coastal estate, Gulesh spouted a constant stream of transparent flattery.

He laughed, prattling on without a shred of tact.

To Solada's ears, the words sounded like a mockery. A taunt asking why someone of such high renown was hiding away in a place like this, utterly alone without a mate or children.

"Since we were born men, isn't it everyone's dream to fight as a warrior and rake in foreign currency? Unlike the trivial work I do. In that sense, I truly envy you."

Solada wanted to change the subject.

"Is this area always like this? The fog, I mean."

"Yes. It's a sight you would never see in the capital, isn't it? Since this is a coastal town, the sea fog gathers and scatters entirely on a whim. On a day like this, you can't even tell who is walking toward you from just a few meters away. Ah, we have arrived, Lord Solada."

While Gulesh dragged the luggage, the gatekeeper pulled open the main gate. Inside, the waiting staff all bowed in unison. Gulesh spoke in a cheerful tone.

"To tell you the truth, we only arrived here a few days ago ourselves. Because the estate had been empty for so long, we swept and scrubbed while waiting for our new master. Ah, speaking of which, you narrowly missed a very rare spectacle by a single day. If you had arrived yesterday, you could have seen it with us."

Solada replied half-heartedly.

"Seen what?"

As he headed toward his bedroom, his only desire was to slip into a hot bath and wash away the fatigue of his journey. Oblivious to the fact that his new master was barely listening, Gulesh kept babbling.

"A truly bizarre event occurred out at sea last night. The fog was just as thick then as it is now. Since it was night, the visibility was terrible, but there was absolutely no way anyone could have missed it."

At this point, Solada was genuinely a little curious, but sheer exhaustion won out, so he kept quiet. Undeterred, Gulesh passionately continued his story.

"My goodness, I have never seen lightning that massive. It shone right through the thick fog. But it was so strange. Usually, lightning flashes here and there, striking unpredictably before vanishing, right? But this lightning kept sizzling in a single spot. It was as if the bolts were stubbornly pulling at each other. It boiled like that for a few dozen seconds, I think? Then suddenly—flash! The light exploded outward. And right there in that spot!"

Walking ahead, Gulesh whipped his head around. It was an obvious attempt to build suspense, but Solada remained unimpressed. Never losing his serious expression, the servant declared,

"...A black star was floating right there!"

It was a good thing Solada's mind was completely clear, having just been released from prison. Had there been any lingering effects of drugs or alcohol in his system, he might have buried a fist right into that jaw and told him to shut the hell up.

Instead, Solada asked without an ounce of sincerity.

"A black star?"

"Yes! A black star. Ordinary stars twinkle by piercing the dark sky with sharp pinpricks of light. But this star was entirely different. It revealed itself by casting a dark silhouette against the flashes of lightning that filled the sky. And it was far more massive than any ordinary star. Some of the others claimed it looked like a starfish covered in countless jagged tentacles... but to my eyes, it looked just like a star!"

'What a load of bullshit.'

Arriving at the bedroom, Solada prepared to dismiss his overly enthusiastic servant.

But the attempt failed. It was not because Gulesh had started pouring out words again without taking a breath. The interruption came from outside the estate.

---!

It was a bloodcurdling scream from one of the servants.

   *

Ever since he first met Minjun, Ha Eunseong had never seen him make an expression like this.

No matter what the situation, Minjun always maintained a sliver of composed detachment. Yet right now, his face was painted in pure, unadulterated shock.

He froze like a stone statue, a half-drawn breath caught in his throat as he entirely forgot to exhale.

'What's wrong with him?!'

Standing beside him, Ha Eunseong could feel the dread beginning to infect him. What kind of incident could possibly leave that man in such a state?

Waking up to find your country erased, your family gone, your relatives vanished, and every cent of your wealth completely wiped out... short of some impossibly catastrophic event like that, what on earth could shock that man so badly?

Meanwhile, at that very moment...

'Damn it, where did it all go?'

He was completely frozen by this unexpected loss.

Upon arriving at the location Ha Eunseong had scouted, the sight before him completely contradicted his memories. Exactly as the ghost had reported, there was nothing but a single estate sitting utterly alone on the desolate wasteland.

It was absurd.

As he inspected the surroundings more closely, he could spot faint traces of a massive district that had existed in the distant past. The modern inhabitants of this world would likely consider this place an ancient ruin.

'How could this happen? I prepared everything so flawlessly.'

Months ago on Earth, when the stanian princess had spent a solid ten minutes vividly describing the beautiful nature of Gelanco, he had let it go in one ear and out the other. He hadn't been the slightest bit interested. He hadn't known if he would ever have a reason to visit here again.

But now Minjun knew. This was not his first time here. He had already visited this world in the very distant past.

'Where did it all go? How... how did they break that barrier?'

The area was blanketed in thick sea fog, making it nearly impossible for ordinary eyes to even make out the terrain, but his piercing gaze cut right through the haze and observed every detail.

And the moment his eyes landed on the estate.

'I see. Only that single building remains. They expanded it to look like some trivial piece of architecture, but it's just a disguise.'

Then where was the rest of it?

Right then.

Fwoosh!

"H-huh?! Agent! Agent!"

The dragon, having already been burned once before, shrieked in terror and scrambled back.

Minjun's agitation must have been severe, because the shadowy tendrils binding Dell to his back were breaking out of his control and violently thrashing around. This sort of thing never happened when he restricted the shadows to their monster form. But unlike back then, what he had drawn out now was the raw, primordial essence that formed the monster. It was essentially the undiluted source.

'Shh! Settle down. That's enough.'

Flare!

The cluster of tentacles, previously bound up as neatly as a chignon, came undone and began violently writhing once more.

'Stay still. That's right.'

The shadows soon settled down, but as if struck by a sudden realization, Minjun dismissed the summon entirely. Instead, he pulled a long leather strap from his coat. It was a Magic Tool designed for subduing criminals.

The moment he infused it with power, the strap coiled like a living creature, tightly binding the tentacles to his back. However, it wasn't quite as flawless and neat as the shadows had been; a few stray tendrils still managed to slip out. Minjun decided to just leave it as it was for now.

"Let's head over there."

His focus was locked entirely on the estate. Before they closed the distance, he did a final check on his group's condition. Outfits, check. Polymorph, check. Everyone had completely altered their appearances, and Yumtus had even Polymorphed into a human form.

Everyone's disguise was flawless, with exactly one glaring exception.

Wriggle!

The stray tentacles that had slipped past the leather binding continued to twist and squirm behind his back. Thanks to that, Minjun currently looked like a Medusa who had spilled a bottle of hair-growth serum all over his back.

'Dell...'

The last time he checked, the Magic power inside her body had been knotted into a chaotic mess. Her physical form, which had already solidified in an incomplete state, forcibly rejected any Polymorph cast by an outside source.

As a result, Dell was completely stuck in this grotesque half-human, half-tentacle form for the foreseeable future.

Because of this, Minjun had already cooked up a perfectly plausible backstory to explain away her condition.

"Huh? Who's out there?"

As they drew closer to the estate, the stanian guarding the front gate noticed their approach and called out. Exactly as Ha Eunseong had reported, the building was definitely occupied.

Just as Minjun opened his mouth to reply in the common tongue...

"H-heok?!"

The gatekeeper assigned to Solada's estate spotted the silhouettes approaching through the fog and felt every single scale on his body stand on end.

The unidentified group consisted of three individuals. Two of them had the silhouettes of perfectly normal humans. Humans were a species that lived in quite large numbers even within this kingdom, so that wasn't too strange.

The real problem was the figure in the center, leading the group.

The gatekeeper could swear on his life that he had never laid eyes on such a terrifying creature. Through the thick haze, the figure's skeletal structure somewhat resembled a human's. However, basic common sense dictated that a human only possessed one head. Yet this creature, aside from the head resting on its neck, had a second, slightly smaller head draped over its left shoulder. Even more horrifying were the 'things' violently squirming behind its back. Slithering out of the fog, the writhing mass looked exactly like a nest of massive vipers.

A creature with two heads and a back covered in massive slithering snakes... it had to be...

The gatekeeper let out a terrified scream.

"D-Demon! It's a demoooooon!"

   *

Hearing the scream, Solada didn't even bother unpacking before sprinting straight for the front gate. Despite his long stint in prison and his years of drowning in alcohol and drugs, he was still the absolute first to arrive on the scene. It was a reaction truly befitting a once-legendary Weapon Master.

And there, following his horrified servant's pointing finger, Solada witnessed a deeply bizarre entity.

The very first thought that flashed through his mind was—

'A chimera?!'

But it was a mistake. At a second glance, he realized he was wrong. An ordinary stanian's eyesight was no better than a human's, but the physical senses of a Weapon Master operated on an entirely different level.

'It's just a human man carrying someone else on his back.'

However, the state of the woman being carried was utterly appalling.

He quickly weighed his options. Regardless of anything else, for the time being, Solada was the master of this estate. How to handle this intrusion was entirely his call.

"Don't come any closer. Stop right there."

The humans in the fog halted exactly as they were told. After a moment, the man carrying the woman spoke up.

"Please help us."

A brief silence stretched between them.

Never once lowering his guard, Solada finally answered.

"...What the hell happened to that woman?"

A woman whose entire lower half was composed of writhing tentacles instead of legs.

The man replied smoothly, as if he had fully anticipated the question.

"As you can see, she is in terrible condition. We were desperately searching for a place to rest and somehow ended up here."

"I asked what happened to her."

"She was struck by a horrific spell. It's Magic."

"Magic?!"

That meant this grotesque creature had originally been a perfectly normal human woman. Having fought his way through countless hellish battlefields, Solada instantly recalled a certain word.

"A curse! Was she struck by a curse?!"

"Yes. She was."

"Then the culprit has to be—!"

The Weapon Master's sharp gaze pierced the fog and studied the human's face. Biting his lip as if gripped by agonizing frustration, the man hung his head. His eyes were burning with a fierce, unmistakable thirst for vengeance.

"It is exactly as you suspect. A vicious practitioner of Dark Magic inflicted this horrific curse on her..."

"A Dark Magician!"

Solada bellowed like a crack of thunder. At that booming voice, the servants staggered backward, several of them tumbling right onto their rears.

A Dark Magician!

Using innocent people as sacrifices, inflicting unimaginable pain, and ruthlessly wringing out their victims' blood and sweat—practitioners of Dark Magic were treated as heinous criminals in almost every known dimension. Having spent decades working as an alien mercenary, Solada was intimately familiar with their vile depravity. Just the thought of them made his skin crawl.

In his eyes, Dark Magicians may have been born human, but they were disgusting abominations that had long forfeited the right to be treated as such.

"Those pieces of trash are wandering around out here?! I'll rip their spines out and shove them straight up their own asses!"

Bellowing in a blind rage, he glared back at his servant. Gulesh frantically waved his hands in the air, pleading that he didn't know anything either since he had only arrived a few days ago.

'Damn it, I'll need to sweep the perimeter soon. I may have come down here for a quiet retirement, but there's no way I can sleep soundly knowing a bastard like that is prowling around my front yard!'

His deep-seated grudge against Dark Magic from his mercenary days was almost immeasurable. Any lingering suspicion he held toward the strange group instantly vanished. He couldn't even fathom the idea that someone would purposefully stage a curse like that on themselves. If they just wanted to play the role of the injured, there were countless far more believable and practical ways to fake it.

A vile curse that transmuted a victim's legs into slithering tentacles—it was a horrific atrocity that only a complete psychopath could ever concoct.

Solada asked one final question.

"What's your relationship with her?"

Sometimes, the actual truth required far too many complicated explanations. Minjun knew exactly what the simplest, most intuitive answer was.

"She is my wife."

Solada's eyebrows twitched.

He remained perfectly silent for a long moment before finally speaking.

"How did you two end up tangled with a Dark Magician?"

"He kidnapped my wife to use her as a living sacrifice. When we fought back and cornered him, the bastard cast this horrific curse as a final act of spite before fleeing..."

"I might have doubted any other mage, but knowing Dark Magicians, I fully believe it. Fucking bastards, even slicing them apart alive wouldn't be enough!"

"You are completely right. They are absolute scum that should be wiped from the face of the universe."

The conversation naturally tapered off, and Minjun quietly observed the stanian.

He intended to get inside that estate by any means necessary. However, he had absolutely no desire to randomly slaughter these innocent locals or forcefully drive them out of their own home. It brought back a few too many memories of the old days, for one.

But on the other hand, he wasn't exactly in a position to back down and politely leave. He quietly waited for Solada's answer. The stanian's next choice would drastically change how this played out.

'Well, what will you do? What's your answer?'

"Hmm."

Solada shifted his gaze between the husband and his cursed wife. The deep, devoted bond that he had spent his entire life chasing but had never managed to achieve—these two fragile humans had somehow found it.

A successful marriage.

Solada finally gave his answer.

"It would be a sin to turn away a man so deeply tormented over his sick wife. Come on in."

Only then did a faint smile touch Minjun's lips. To Solada's eyes, it looked like the grateful, exhausted smile of a man who was utterly relieved.

"Thank you so much. But... I know I am asking for too much, but I have one more favor to ask. I need to boil some porridge to feed my wife. Could we possibly borrow your kitchen for a little while?"

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