The Foreigner on the Periphery

Gadwick, a mid-ranking Committee official, waited with the heavy heart of a sinner.

An elder of his people had entrusted him with a mission, but he had failed to live up to expectations.

His love for the Kavite ran deeper than that of any of his peers. The Grand Committeeman had chosen him for this clandestine assignment precisely because he recognized that devotion. More than anything, Gadwick longed for the Kavite to become greater than they were now.

Already, the Ancient Races held the cosmos in the palm of their hands, but that was not enough. Ruling the dimensional realms jointly meant that two other factions stood on the exact same tier as the Kavite.

It was absurd.

They had brought the dragons to their knees in the ancient war; now it was time for the other two Ancient Races to follow. Hearing the Grand Committeeman's plan had only fanned that ambition. By re-domesticating the dragons, the Kavite would become the sole, undisputed power.

Gadwick's heart swelled with love for his people, who would soon be mightier still.

And for that very reason, he felt equally guilty.

"Enter."

"Greetings, Grand Committeeman."

"Report."

The Kavite began with the matter of Asif-666.

"We thoroughly searched the escape site at the New York Representative Office, but we failed to find any trace of which dimension he and the hostage jumped to."

"Could we locate them if we kept the search party on Earth longer?"

"I believe that would be difficult."

With no trail left on Earth, his report effectively meant they had no choice but to wait for fresh signs to surface in whichever dimension the fugitive had fled to. The situation had turned exceedingly foul.

"..."

A momentary silence lingered. Gadwick waited for a reaction, his nerves on edge.

He knew all too well how deeply his superior was invested in Asif-666.

No, 'interest' hardly captured it. That prisoner was supposedly the key to their kind's grand ambition. To ensure he could be put to good use one day, they had spared him from Soul Erasure, dangling an absurd retirement package to keep him firmly under their thumb. For a very long time.

And yet, that invaluable prisoner had escaped!

What made Gadwick's head spin even more was that despite mobilizing the Committee's full power, they could not track his movements.

There were far too many dimensions reachable from Earth in a single leap. It was no different from hunting for a single raindrop that had fallen into the open sea.

The silence, stretching on like an eternity, finally broke.

"Is that so? Then it cannot be helped."

"...?!"

The response was so calm that it knocked the wind right out of Gadwick's sails. The situation warranted blistering fury, yet the Grand Committeeman remained completely composed.

His next words were just as measured.

"Do not waste energy on a pointless search on Earth. Resources are finite, so we must deploy them where they will actually be useful."

Having braced himself for a thunderous order forbidding him from returning to headquarters until he found Asif-666, Gadwick felt the tightness in his chest ease slightly.

Yet alongside that relief, guilt welled up anew. The fact remained that he had failed to meet expectations.

"I apologize, sir."

He then added a few more points he had prepared.

"However, even if I relay that directive, the Todd are unlikely to back down easily. They are currently arguing that we should declare martial law across all of Earth and conduct an exhaustive investigation—all to root out any 'insiders' who might have colluded with Asif-666."

At this very moment, the Ancient Race reacting most violently to Asif-666's breakout was the Todd.

Burning with vengeance, they wanted nothing more than to seize the fugitive right now, skin him alive, and throw him into a Grinder.

"There was a similar reaction at the Grand Committee meeting."

He scoffed at the foolish race whose judgment was constantly swayed by emotion.

"We will absolutely not do as they demand. Even if the Todd insist, there is a race that will refuse even more firmly than we will."

"You mean the Endelion."

"Yes. With their princess kidnapped, they will hardly want to provoke Asif-666 like that."

The Grand Committeeman recalled the exchanges from the meeting. The Todd had wanted to capture Asif-666 immediately and subject his soul to Soul Erasure.

He muttered under his breath once more. "Ignorant fools."

"Dispatching a massive military force to blockade Earth and cordon off every single dimension connected to it? For one, we lack the resources, and suppressing the dragons' backlash would be impossible. The dragons would treat it as an outright declaration of war. As you should know by now, the Kavite stand to lose far more than we could gain from a third all-out war. Their numbers dwindled enough during the last war—what good does it do to kill off even more dragons?"

"You make a valid point, sir."

"The Endelion argue that we should assemble a surveillance network and tracking team stealthy enough to escape Asif-666's notice, securing the princess's safety first. Capturing Asif-666 alive comes only after that."

Both the Endelion and the Kavite agreed that subjecting Asif-666 to Soul Erasure was completely out of the question.

After all, it would only trigger a repeat of the incident with Asiph-1.

"Did the Todd Grand Committeemen agree to that?"

"They threw a fit. But they lost the majority vote."

Until that vanished race returned to the center of the dimensional stage, a majority vote among the Ancient Races would always yield a clear outcome.

A tie was impossible with the number three, as a majority was guaranteed in every case.

"Still, the Todd will remain relentless. And understandably so... One of their Grand Committeemen lost his son in this mess."

"His own child?"

"Yes. He was aboard the advance Jump Ship headed for Earth."

Gadwick's brown fur bristled involuntarily. He knew all too well the fate of the passengers on that ship, crushed between the dimensional rifts.

Not a single survivor.

Even with VIP Jump Codes implanted in their bodies, unless they were an Endelion, they were swept up by pressure no bare body could withstand.

"That committeeman has practically lost his mind with rage. Aside from his dead son, all his other direct descendants were apparently bred strictly for 'transferring' into later."

What meaning did descendants hold for a race that had attained a flawed form of eternal life?

Even today, with their vastly extended lifespans, the Ancient Races still bore children. They did so for diverse reasons—sometimes for self-satisfaction, other times to cultivate a loyal faction that would never betray them.

However, they remained exceptionally guarded when it came to loving the children born this way. The Ancient Races did not acknowledge all descendants as family, nor as their true sons and daughters. Certain offspring were isolated from birth for other purposes.

The father of the Todd adjutant who perished during that dimensional jump had several other direct descendants. But the father did not consider any of them his children, and he seemingly had no intention of elevating their status to son or daughter simply because his acknowledged boy had died.

Because he knew perfectly well that the moment that standard collapsed... the moment two groups that must never mingle began to bleed together, everything would fall apart.

Such was the reality for the Ancient Races with their imperfect immortality. The descendants who received their love were managed and segregated with extreme strictness.

Ironically, it was because those very descendants were the secret to their flawed eternal life—more specifically, the ones isolated and kept out of society. Genuine flesh and blood that, despite the engineers' best efforts, still could not be perfectly replaced by a Homunculus.

In the past, when the Kavite had proposed a certain method to Leo's father, the Ancient Dragon Raymond, it was because they had already seen it succeed firsthand in species other than dragons.

"In any case."

Shifting his stance from a Committee superior to an elder of their race, the Grand Committeeman asked a question.

"What is the situation with the dragons on Earth? Do you think you can acquire the dragon blood of Jenkinson?"

"It will not be easy. It's not like the old days when dragon blood was used as a weapon..."

"And the election? We must delay them choosing a new Dragon Lord for as long as possible."

At that question, a confident smile crossed Gadwick's face for the first time that day.

"Do not worry about that, Grand Committeeman."

He declared firmly.

"The Ancient Dragons' attempt to push the election forward will not go as they planned."

   *

Earth's Ancient Dragon, Jenkinson, felt a rising headache.

"Have these younglings suddenly all gone mad?"

After safely helping Minjun flee to another dimension, he had intended to move quickly to the next phase.

The other Ancient Dragons running as candidates for Dragon Lord had suddenly changed their tune and aligned with his views. The rest could be settled swiftly: convene an extraordinary Balaur Council, gather all dragons with voting rights, and elect a new Lord. Thanks to an inexplicable stroke of luck, Jenkinson's victory had seemed highly likely.

And yet...

"What? They're going to veto the election?!"

His secretary, Blair, nodded with a dark expression.

"Yes, sir."

The situation was taking a strange turn.

When a few young dragons first brought up the 'futility of the next Dragon Lord Election,' the Ancient Dragons hadn't taken it seriously.

In the end, the young dragons had no choice but to submit to the Ancient Dragons' will. If they wanted to protect their meager wealth—especially their stocks and real estate—they had to cater to the whims of the Ancient Dragon ruling their territory.

The Ancient Dragons possessed the power to turn their stocks into mere scraps of paper overnight, and force them to surrender legitimately purchased buildings and land for a pittance by wielding various ordinances against them.

Yet something bizarre began to unfold.

Naturally, coaxing dragons who lacked a Lord into collective action was extremely difficult; they were creatures who chased only their own self-interest.

Despite this, similar voices began ringing out in succession from the generation that had just reached adulthood. Looking at their faces, they were mostly of the hatchling boomer generation born on Earth—clutches laid one after another once the dragons, forced to leave their homeworlds for various reasons, secured stable dwellings after immigration routes to Earth opened. At this point, not a single one of them was even a hundred years old.

They had not formed an official organization, but what they were demanding was practically identical.

"The current Dragon Lord Election system has fatal flaws. A system where only Ancient Dragons can run as candidates is the product of severe ageism!"

"The same goes for the Dragonic Code. At this rate, no matter how hard young dragons work their entire lives, we can never surpass the wealth and power built by the Ancient Dragons. The Ancient Dragons have already bought up everything of value, leaving young dragons to receive only the crumbs they drop in exchange for 'obedience' and 'cooperation'!"

"It was not an issue in the past, when the total amount of wealth was near infinite. The wealth of the entire universe belonged to dragons, and if your share wasn't enough, you simply claimed a new domain. But that is the past, long before most of us were even hatched. Now, everything has changed."

"After the armistice, the dragons' share of wealth began to shrink. Yet the Ancient Dragons, who enjoyed the fortunes and luxuries of the past to their hearts' content, still cannot let go of their greed and hoard the wealth among themselves. At this rate, young dragons will be forced to live in poverty forever!"

"This is driving me crazy."

Jenkinson felt an excruciating headache as he reviewed the young dragons' arguments that Blair had compiled and delivered.

"So what do they want? When an Ancient Dragon dies, the wealth goes to their children anyway!"

Jenkinson himself had several sons, and he fully intended to leave them a proper inheritance according to the Dragonic Code.

However.

"Since it takes thousands of years to receive an inheritance, they argue that they are dissatisfied with the current situation, where they have to wait out that long span in poverty, only to inherit right before they die."

A dragon speaking of 'poverty.'

The word itself was practically a deception, but instead of dwelling on that fact, Jenkinson pondered his next move.

'If all these brats actually abstain, we won't even be able to meet the quorum. This is a serious problem.'

And then, an uncomfortable premonition washed over him.

'Someone is egging them on.'

Why now, of all times?

Right when he needed to align with Minjun, Asif-666, and keep the Committee in check?

He hesitated. The agenda of the previous Balaur Council had been shared with everyone, but the secret involving Minjun was known only to the Ancient Dragons.

Should he share the secret with those kids and yell at them that this was no time for such nonsense?

But if it ever leaked to the Committee, the repercussions would be unimaginable. It was too dangerous a secret for those immature young dragons to handle.

He asked Blair.

"The loudest among the dragons in that age group is him, isn't it? The late Lord's eldest son, I mean. He's got a wide network, he's strong, and he already has plenty of wealth. Is he joining this movement too?"

"No. Kentius disappeared from official events a while ago. According to rumors, he has been devoting himself entirely to decorating the new, expanded Lair he moved into..."

"...?!"

He couldn't fathom why a childless male needed a spacious Lair, but rather than wonder about it, Jenkinson gave an order.

"Try to schedule a meeting with him. It's obvious that some unidentified instigator has appeared among the kids. So we need to blow a headwind of our own."

"Understood. By the way, Mr. Chairman..."

Jenkinson was caught off guard by her next words. His secretary had brought up a matter he had temporarily pushed out of his mind because he was so busy preparing for the election.

"Those children?"

The 'children' she spoke of this time were not the young dragons they had been discussing.

"Yes. There seems to be a problem with the youngest of the children born to codename 'Spider'."

The boys born from a monster that mixed a spider and a dragon.

Because they were born with a limited lifespan of a single year, he had given orders to provide them with whatever they wanted as much as possible. Given the current circumstances, it had been a long time since he'd read the regular reports that came up.

Blair spoke with a darkened complexion.

"I understand that it's a difficult time... but I think you really need to come and see this for yourself, Mr. Chairman."

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