The Foreigner on the Periphery

Solada opened his eyes to head-splitting agony.

He had just woken up.

It was dark outside the window. Dawn still felt far off. How many hours had he slept?

'This is maddening.'

His body was a wreck. Vertigo washed over him, the world spinning around him. He felt completely drained, as if every drop of moisture had been wrung from his body.

He fumbled through his memories, his vision blurry. Even without a single ray of light, the Weapon Master could make out the unfamiliar patterns on the ceiling.

Where was this again?

A moment later, the unfamiliar ceiling became one he wished he didn't know.

Right, his exile. The safe house arranged by the employment agency director, Darkbara. An isolated estate without a single civilian home nearby.

'How cheap was that garbage to leave such a filthy hangover? Damn it.'

Because he had met Darkbara and boarded a night train immediately upon his release from prison, yesterday had been his first real night out. A night spent alone in total freedom. Once the sun set, Solada had found himself completely unsure of how to handle his own emotions.

His mind was a mess, yet he had nothing else to do.

Absolutely nothing.

He had abandoned his training long ago. He hadn't read a single page of a book since coming of age. Compared to the other seven nations of the United Kingdom, the terribly backward Shutan Kingdom possessed not a single decent form of entertainment.

Nor did he have any desire to head downstairs and chat with the servants. Their lack of refinement and knowledge wasn't the issue. Solada was likely at a similar level anyway.

The problem was their gender. To reiterate, Solada was utterly sick of men. A bunch of males gathering to run their mouths for a hundred days wouldn't be fun, enjoyable, or fulfilling in any way. It would be nothing more than a worthless, meaningless waste of time. Just as it always had been.

The Weapon Master naturally felt his throat grow parched. The night was dull and long. His deepening thoughts brought on depression, while introspection and reminiscing only summoned helplessness.

He needed something to erase this time he had to endure alone.

Just then.

"Umm, Lord Solada?"

The person who knocked and opened the bedroom door was Gulesh. He was the only male servant in the estate whose name Solada had memorized. Upon seeing what the man was holding, Solada found himself liking him for the first time.

"Liquor?"

"I prepared it, thinking you might need it."

Solada's hesitation was brief. He felt no guilt over dirtying the brain that had barely managed to get clean during his several years in prison.

What on earth was the point of staying sober anyway?

Ever since the day he gave up on marriage, the only times Solada felt even the slightest bit of happiness were when he was intoxicated. Every sober moment was hollow and miserable.

"Do you happen to have 'that'?"

Gulesh hesitated. His failure to answer immediately was an answer in itself.

"Don't worry about the money."

Darkbara had urged the Weapon Master to quit drinking and drugs while staying here. The servant's actions defied the will of his employer. It was obvious what he wanted in return for going so far.

When Solada handed over some coins, the servant stealthily pulled out a small envelope. The moment he opened it, a sharp, tingling fragrance wafted out. At the same time, Solada felt an intense rush pierce his brain. He wanted that more than anything else.

It was the moment his several years clean went up in smoke. It was always like this. No matter how long he stayed off the drugs, catching a whiff of that scent would make him lose his mind all over again. It was the reason he couldn't quit.

"Lowly guys like me can only get our hands on cheap stuff like this. Is that alright?"

"I don't care."

After dismissing the servant, he mixed the drug into the liquor bottle and downed it straight.

And then, he became very happy.

For about thirty minutes, anyway.

'Urgh!'

Back in the present.

Waking up after passing out drunk, Solada was currently very miserable.

'It feels like my whole body is being torn apart.'

Having traded a few dozen minutes of pleasure for a full day of pain and misery, Solada writhed beneath the bedcovers. For a Supernatural Ability User like him to feel the effects, he had to consume a massive dose.

'The drugs the humans in the capital got me were clean, without side effects like this.'

It was likely due to the drug's poor quality.

Meanwhile, he focused on a question that had slipped his mind yesterday while he was distracted by the drugs.

'How did Gulesh manage to get that much? In a rural backwater like this, too. Ah, he did mention he wasn't from around here anyway. Did he bring it from the capital?'

And one more thing.

'Why did I wake up?'

He had lost much of his sharpness, but he was still a Weapon Master. His senses as a Supernatural Ability User seemed to have caught something.

However, whatever he had felt in his half-asleep state faintly drifted away again.

'Was I imagining it? Doing drugs after such a long time must be making my brain run wild.'

Abandoning his suspicions, Solada closed his eyes again. Soon, he fell fast asleep, snoring loudly.

And there was a ghost who watched this unfold before quietly vanishing.

   *

"Cough!"

Having returned to the dragon's body, Ha Eunseong coughed a few times before speaking.

"That massive crocodile noble is dead to the world. Looks like he drank himself into a stupor. The other servants are fast asleep, too."

They were in the second-floor guest room. Though it was the dead of night, everyone except Dell was awake. Minjun nodded as he listened to the ghost's report. He then turned his gaze toward the alien, whose entire body was bound by shadows.

"So this guy was acting alone."

"Mmph, mm-mmph!"

He tried to struggle, but the shadowy tendrils constricting his body were firm. This was Gulesh, who had been caught by Minjun and dragged to this room. Tears streamed down his scale-covered cheeks. It was clearly a physiological reaction rather than an outpouring of emotion.

There were times like that. When the uvula was poked the wrong way or when someone was gagging, tears would flow even if they weren't sad.

Seeing the state the crocodile had been reduced to, Ha Eunseong made a vow to himself once again: never, ever mess with his creditor.

"Mmph! Grrrk!"

Gulesh's appearance was beyond bizarre—it was enough to inspire pure terror. His jaw was thrust upward, pinned tight against the wall. A Frying Pan handle was shoved down his slightly parted snout. The handle had supposedly enlarged itself to match the length of the crocodile's maw. By human standards, it was basically a club.

Minjun, who had reduced his prisoner to this state, had done nothing but hurl questions at him without giving him a single chance to reply. Naturally, even if Gulesh wanted to answer, he couldn't. Not with a piece of cookware sealing his mouth shut.

After concluding what seemed at first glance to be a pointless exercise, Minjun stepped forward. He placed his hand on the part of the pan sticking out of the alien's mouth.

Having scoured the crocodile's surface thoughts, the Frying Pan spoke.

=I've figured out just about everything! This guy isn't your average assassin. But he isn't someone sent by the Committee, either.=

"He wasn't targeting us?"

=No! He definitely intended to kill everyone in this room. If you were ordinary travelers, you'd be witnesses and had to be killed, and if you were spies, you had to die anyway. He suspected the Shutan Royal Family's Pro-Human Faction might have leaked information to the humans.=

Minjun frowned. He couldn't grasp the context of this story at all.

"Spies? Pro-Human Faction? And what's this about witnesses? What were we going to witness?"

=The sight of the assassin and the assassination target together!=

"...?!"

Minjun's gaze turned toward Gulesh. Even while he conversed with the Frying Pan, the handle remained shoved down the crocodile's throat. Bloody foam bubbled around the edges of his mouth.

"Grrr!"

Because the tip of the handle was relentlessly poking his uvula, the crocodile's tears streamed endlessly.

With his eyes wet with tears, Gulesh thought back to the past.

   *

"Kill Solada for me."

A few days before the Weapon Master's release from prison, when Darkbara—known to the public only as a capable employment agency director—spoke those words, Gulesh couldn't believe his ears.

He knew full well that this wasn't a request, but a direct order. He also knew it wasn't Darkbara's independent decision, but the will of the higher-ups.

"Was this decided by those at the top?"

The old Stanian slowly nodded, and Gulesh let out a low groan.

"But for a Weapon Master who has contributed so much to the kingdom..."

"That is a tale from the past. Solada has no intention of working anymore. It's been decades since he washed his hands of it."

"Even so, isn't killing him going too far?"

"Those above have judged it an unavoidable measure to prevent any further drain on our national wealth."

"Pardon?"

Darkbara peered deeply at Gulesh.

"Do you have any idea how much Solada is currently worth?"

"Hasn't he squandered a lot of it by now? From what I heard, he wandered around high on drugs every day outside of prison, and with that kind of wealth, he must have exclusively bought the most expensive stuff... Urk!"

He cut his sentence short because Darkbara had written a certain number on a piece of paper and shown it to him.

Just as he hadn't believed his ears, Gulesh now found himself unable to believe his eyes.

"His... his fortune is still this massive?"

"It's all in liquid assets. In terms of liquidity, Solada is practically a walking corporation."

The economy of the Shutan Kingdom relied heavily on gold, and even that was heavily devalued due to the manipulations of the other seven races.

Under such circumstances, the foreign currency brought in by mercenaries was one of the two major sources of income driving the kingdom's economy.

"When he first touched drugs, Solada's wealth was exactly twice what it is now."

Gulesh looked stunned.

"He blew half his fortune on drugs in that short amount of time? Realistically, that makes no sense... Ah!"

The young Stanian briefly shut his mouth.

When he spoke again after a short silence, his words held a subtle anger.

"The drug dealers must have been price-gouging him to a ridiculous degree."

"The humans' pharmaceutical skills advance day by day. They continuously develop narcotics that deliver stronger highs and sell them off at exorbitant prices."

Proper manufacturing facilities were hard to find within the Shutan Kingdom, and industrial products like drugs were imported at absurdly high prices from the nations of the other races making up the United Kingdom. Though the United Kingdom had been formed to allow the free movement of goods and manpower, the Stanians were always the exception.

"I'm told the human-run pharmaceutical companies forced him to invest in all sorts of garbage projects if he wanted to buy better drugs. They'd claim they were going to build a drug production line within the Shutan Kingdom. Naturally, the deals always foundered at the final stage, yielding a return rate close to zero. That was how they siphoned Solada's wealth out of the kingdom. He might be excellent at fighting, but in other areas, he's a bit... let's just say, gullible."

Investment fraud targeting someone ignorant of economics and common sense?

It was a classic trick.

"If we just leave him be, he'll dump the rest of his fortune onto the humans for drug money too. But it's not like the Shutan Royal Family can freeze his funds or confiscate them by force. You know why, don't you?"

"If they did, the other unmarried men would realize the truth. That no matter how hard they save their money, the royal family can seize it whenever they please."

"Going further, they might genuinely start believing the stories that are currently dismissed as conspiracy theories."

The vast majority of Stanian men never succeeded in getting married, living out their entire lives alone until they died of old age. Because their society viewed extravagance and debauchery as the pinnacle of immorality, their wealth was never properly spent; it simply sat piling up in bank accounts.

Their inheritances were passed down to their relatives, but a significant portion of it evaporated during the transfer process. This was especially true for foreign currency.

That was precisely the source of the Shutan Royal Family's secret funds, completely unknown to the other races and nations of the United Kingdom.

To prevent that truth from spreading widely, the royal family suppressed it, branding it as fake news and working hard to shape public opinion to view it as an absurd conspiracy theory.

"How many times has he been in prison now? Won't Solada finally quit drugs this time? Killing him is just too harsh."

"Why do you think Solada kept getting hauled off to prison for trivial offenses? That wasn't incarceration—it was rehabilitation! The royal family pulled the strings so he could break his addiction while cut off from the secular world. And yet..."

Darkbara let out a profound lament.

"Whatever drug they hooked him on, it definitely isn't ordinary stuff. Even when we released him after confirming his withdrawal symptoms had completely vanished in prison, the moment he caught the scent of anything in the same family of drugs, he'd revert right back to being an addict."

He handed the prepared item to Gulesh.

"Blend in among the ordinary servants and infiltrate the estate. Then, feed this to Solada. There's no hope of taking him in a one-on-one fight, so you'll have to use poison. Don't go trying to off him carelessly just because he looks dead drunk. He'll take you out. Feed this to him consistently for about ten days straight, and the drug will take effect. Kill him then."

"Then..."

"He will be written off as having died of a drug overdose in the countryside."

Tucking the poison into his coat, Gulesh hesitated before speaking.

"Wouldn't it be better to just lock him up in prison for the rest of his life instead?"

"When even narcotics have been legalized due to human pressure, on what pretext?"

"Then, what about offering Solada the chance to join our society?"

"A severely addicted junkie who's beyond curing? And do you think I didn't try offering that before things reached this point? I didn't give him the details, but I subtly felt out his intentions. It was no use, though. Solada despises the Shutan Royal Family. He thinks our royal family are nothing but dogs to the United Kingdom. He views them as a den of scum ruled by the Pro-Human Faction. Which, well... is partially undeniable."

"Or what about resolving the core reason he relies on drugs in the first place? Have him get married. We can convince him to submit a marriage application again."

Gulesh passionately argued his case, as if he had finally found a viable alternative.

"I know his appearance is horrific enough to cause nightmares, but he has an obscene amount of wealth, doesn't he? Surely at least one woman out there would choose him..."

"And yet, there hasn't been a single one so far. Just as you said, you'd think at least one would choose him. Why do you think that is? Truly, did every single mature woman in our kingdom who received a marriage right pass on a man that wealthy just because of his looks? Truly? Without a single exception, every last one of them?"

"..."

"Is it not possible that a vast number of them never even got the chance to see Solada's marriage application?"

Gulesh recalled the existence of the organization that controlled the reproduction of their species.

He remained silent for a moment before speaking.

"There's no other way. Understood. I will send him off as comfortably as possible."

"It can't be helped."

Darkbara muttered, seemingly trying to convince not just Gulesh, but himself as well.

"The situation is just that dire."

His voice was filled with deep regret.

"If only Princess Vermi were still alive, so much would have changed."

   *

Having heard the truth through the Frying Pan, Minjun felt a headache coming on.

'What the hell? How did things end up this bad? It's a complete, utter shitshow...'

He realized it once again. This was far too different from the Stanian society he remembered.

Originally, before coming into contact with the Committee, the only intelligent beings in this world were Stanians and humans. At the time, the human nations were overwhelmed by the Stanians and treated as vassal states. That power dynamic was now completely inverted. By joining hands with the newly immigrated races, the humans had won the race war and utterly demolished the Stanians' political standing.

Furthermore, before their defeat in the war, Stanian men and women had freely dated and married. Naturally, gender-based segregation measures like the current ones hadn't existed back then.

Minjun recalled the name of the organization that governed the Stanian birth rate and managed the price of gold.

'The United Kingdom.'

Having practically hijacked the 'negotiation rights with the Pan-Dimensional Relocation Committee' that the Shutan Kingdom once held, the organization appeared on the surface to be an equal coalition of eight races and eight kingdoms, including the Stanians. The reality, however, was devastating. What they had forced upon the Stanians was, in a way, an even more wicked act than stripping away their right to life and death.

Because they had stolen their freedom to produce offspring.

The Stanians could only bear children within the limits permitted by their invaders. Minjun had never witnessed a more heinous form of colonization.

An attitude that completely ignored their dignity as living beings and treated them solely as economic resources.

A mindset that calculated the value of an intelligent species using numbers in a ledger.

"..."

And then, Minjun quickly realized something.

That this partially resembled the attitude he himself had maintained toward the dragon after regaining his memories.

'No, this isn't the time to be dwelling on that.'

Minjun asked the Frying Pan the most crucial question.

Darkbara was someone with close ties to the Shutan Royal Family. On paper, this estate belonged to him, but in truth, it was a location managed by the royal family. Therefore, it was obvious that the royal family's hand was involved in how the surrounding area had become so desolate in the meantime.

They knew something.

"Where the hell did those royal bastards siphon off everything that used to be here?"

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