The Foreigner on the Periphery

Instead of answering, Minjun took a firm step forward. It looked like a refusal to explain, but that wasn't the Creator's true intent.

"This will make it easier to convey."

Holding Asiph-1 in one hand, Minjun placed his other hand on the crystal atop the altar. Instantly, the soul fragment's fluctuations turned violent.

Vooom!

Soon, an even greater change began.

Minjun ignited a flame using Talents as fuel. A radiant light flashed from deep within his body. It cast no shadows around the light source—a brilliance completely devoid of shade.

His gaze never left the soul fragment. This particular piece lacked a distinct ego. It had never freely dwelled within an object or a sentient being.

Therefore, the Frying Pan's free will was bound to dominate this fusion as well.

Fwoosh!

Without hesitation, it obediently followed.

The fragment separated from the sealing sphere and absorbed into Minjun's left hand. It traveled up through his body, brushing past his soul, before changing direction to surge toward its destination: settling into Asiph-1 in his right hand.

A fusion mediated by Minjun's own body.

Bursting with unparalleled joy, the Frying Pan became one with it.

Voooom!

At the same time, the sealing sphere lost its light.

The rest of the process went much smoother than when it had absorbed Blade. The rush of memories was heavy, but the conflicting ego was faint. Most of the surging memories didn't even belong to this specific fragment; they were from the time when Asiph-1 was still whole.

Minjun muttered.

"You've become a little more complete. Has your curiosity been satisfied?"

The Frying Pan groped through its newly acquired memories. This fragment had also brushed against the Creator's soul on its way in, bringing a portion of Minjun's memories along with it.

Observing this, Asiph-1 spoke with hesitation.

=I still can't understand it completely. Not with these memories alone.=

"Hmm?"

Puzzled, Minjun soon realized the reason.

"It mostly transferred my recent memories. I didn't intend for that to happen."

It was a side effect of neither Minjun nor Asiph-1 being entirely complete yet.

With that being the case, he had no choice but to explain with words. He turned the question back on his creation.

"Why do you think I got caught 'on purpose'?"

Asiph-1 spoke, relying on the memories it had received from Minjun.

=Earth's Dragon Lord pleaded through a letter.=

An Ancient Dragon who had agonized alone over the future of his race.

The letter of someone who had suffered while hoarding a secret in soul-freezing terror.

Uncharacteristically for a Dragon, it was a man who did not hesitate to sacrifice himself for his kin. Asiph-1 recited his sentences.

='I hope that you, who can be compared to gods, will understand us. I hope that you can empathize with me.'=

Gods.

=Yes, even that Ancient Dragon considered you to be akin to gods. The primordial race were such magnificent beings. And yet, you, classified as a noble among them, were captured by the Committee and forced into servitude. For an entire eight hundred years!=

It was only eight hundred years.

Instead of retorting out loud, Minjun merely jerked his chin, signaling for it to continue.

=I tried to deduce the reason in my own way. The marvels of your civilization could have entirely vanished while you slept. Just like the ruins around the Stanian mansion disappeared. And assuming your real body was still left behind in Elahu-Praga, if your soul somehow leaked out and drifted powerlessly until it was caught, then everything would make sense. But... that's not the case, is it?!=

Minjun had crafted Asiph-1 all by himself after waking up. It meant he was fully capable of restoring at least a portion of his kin's civilization on his own.

Furthermore, his current physical body was his original one.

=You created me. The Ancient Race stole your technology to defeat the Dragons. Even after my soul was shattered into pieces, you made arrangements so it could be gathered again. Moreover, most decisively... before you were ever caught, you had already sealed and hidden Talents in various places across the dimensional realms!=

"Why does that last point matter?"

=If you gathered them all, wouldn't they easily exceed five million Talents?=

"Handing that over to the Committee wouldn't have earned my release."

=But you could have used those Talents as weapons!=

The moment Minjun's eyes turned ferocious, Asiph-1 realized its mistake.

Talents were the lifeblood of his kin. He would undoubtedly be displeased if his creation so casually treated them as weapons.

"..."

Minjun fell silent for a moment. He had intended to explain simply by passing on his memories, but things hadn't gone as planned.

In order to do everything exactly as he wished, he would need more Talents and more fragments.

It was tedious, exhausting work, but he could endure it.

Because he had endured far worse up until now.

"I..."

The voice that broke the silence was terribly heavy.

His gaze slowly grew cold.

"From the very beginning, I hated doing this work."

=?!=

Asiph-1 was startled by the sheer weariness laced in his words. It rolled out on a faint breath, rustling like dry leaves. It was a voice that sounded as if every single word would crumble to dust.

Right now, Minjun seemed like an incredibly ancient book, and the words carrying his will were like pages on the verge of disintegrating.

Rather than a person, Asiph-1's Creator felt like a boulder that had weathered the wind and rain since the dawn of time.

"Yes, I hated it."

As his tone shifted, Minjun recalled something from several months ago.

Boramae Park. The secret rendezvous point disguised as an equipment storage.

The lament he had voiced in front of the doctor sent by the Committee.

"I hated this job."

'I don't want to work.'

"Because it was a task that took so long that no one could possibly endure it."

'I'm so sick of it I feel like I'm going crazy. I've been doing the same thing for too long.'

"But I couldn't find any other way. There was no one else to do this job but me."

'Isn't there a way I can live without working?'

"You couldn't really call this living. Still, I had to bear it. Because it was my duty."

'I'm exhausted. I wonder if this is the right way to live.'

"..."

At the time, the grumblings he spilled before the Tudel species doctor sounded like the lamentations of the prisoner Asif-666.

Yet simultaneously, it might have been the outcry of an erased, unconscious mind.

Asiph-1 instinctively realized it. The 'work' its Creator was talking about wasn't Asif-666's mission.

He wasn't talking about the missions the Committee ordered the prisoner to do using Talents as leverage, but something else entirely.

=What work is that?=

Minjun answered with an inorganic gaze.

"The job of falling asleep the latest among us, and waking up the earliest."

Silence lingered between them.

=...By us, do you mean the primordial race?=

"Yes. Someone had to observe and ensure our kin fell asleep properly, and later, that person had to wake up earliest to rouse everyone."

=So that was your mission.=

"Yes. Because I am a noble being."

But a problem arose.

"The moment I woke from my slumber, I already knew something had gone wrong."

There were two problems.

A problem concerning the entire race, and Minjun's personal problem.

First, the race-wide problem... The hibernation period was going to be much, much longer than anticipated.

"The instant I woke, I had a hunch. Far more time had passed than we ever expected. To what extent? ...Long enough for the beasts we raised to become sentient beings and dominate the cosmos."

=The Dragons!=

"Before we went to sleep, we never permitted Dragons to evolve and gain sentience. And we fully expected them to remain at a similar level even after our hibernation ended."

However, because they slept too long, because they left them unattended for too long.

The beasts were no longer mere beasts.

The shock Minjun felt when he read a letter—written by an animal that had once been food, pleading and begging not to be eaten—was beyond imagination.

"And."

One more problem remained.

Minjun's personal problem was... none other than the way he had woken up.

"According to the original conditions we set, I was supposed to wake first once the rest of our kin were ready to rise. Therefore, even if the hibernation period stretched on, I should have remained asleep until the proper day arrived. But I woke up before they were ready. It was because of an external stimulus."

=What kind of stimulus?=

"Sentient beings that only possessed insignificant civilizations when we went to sleep... survived until then and began fighting the Dragons."

=Ah!=

An emotion of utter disgust flickered in Minjun's eyes.

"It was a truly clamorous fight."

It was the most intense and widespread war since the primordial race had fallen asleep.

But there was a reason why Minjun was the only one to awaken amidst that pandemonium.

"I was sleeping in a different location, isolated from my kin. In order to wake up on my own later, I couldn't allow myself to be steeped in comfortable dreams."

He continuously had nightmares.

"Sometimes my sleep would thin and I would regain an incomplete consciousness. The flow of time I felt then was truly... closer to torture. To the point where nightmares were preferable. Just maintaining awareness while unable to move a single finger. You've experienced it too, haven't you?"

It was the time the Frying Pan had feared the most since gaining consciousness.

The periods when, amidst changing owners, this Magic Tool—unable to move on its own—ended up neglected for long stretches of time.

=Yes, I know it.=

It was the other reason why Asiph-1 constantly tempted new owners and lured them into grabbing it.

"What happens if you multiply that empty time by hundreds, or thousands of times? It is quite literally hell. Even though I only woke up briefly in between, it was still that bad. It was a shallower, more agonizing sleep than my kin, which is why I reacted to the external stimulus. Eventually, I ended up awakening completely."

Because he had awoken through an abnormal method, his condition was at its worst.

"Even Dragons fill their bellies before going into hibernation. It was the same for my kin. But my body lacked 'that' which was filled inside them."

The substance that existed inside the bodies of the primordial race.

There was only one thing Asiph-1 could think of.

=Talents?! Are you saying that you aren't born with the Divine Blood from the start?=

"It was artificially injected before we went to sleep. What should I call it in modern terms? Judging it as a fluid... Nutrient fluid? Antifreeze? Processing fluid? Solvent? Culture medium? Anesthetic? Mutation fluid? I can't think of a word that encapsulates all these concepts at once."

That substance mixed with what Minjun's kin originally harbored within their bodies, transforming into a new 'spiritual body/physical object'.

"I'll say it again, there was no such thing inside my body."

Happiness is the sensation of desires and needs being fulfilled.

Minjun wasn't allowed to feel such things.

Because he would lose his reason to wake up on his own.

"Whether I was maintaining an incomplete consciousness or losing it altogether... I was constantly plagued by hunger and agony."

Even though he was forcefully awakened after such a vast stretch of time.

His kin's hibernation period still had a long way to go.

"Having not drunk a single drop of dragon blood in all that time, I was practically starving to death. I was so weak I couldn't even hunt a single Dragon on my own. My mind wasn't whole, either. Think about it. Even after a twelve-hour sleep, you're groggy for a few seconds. I had endured for so long before waking up, so I was wandering in a haze on the border between reality and dreams for quite a while. That was when the Ancient Race approached me. Speaking with them, I came to a conclusion. I had to wake my kin up immediately."

Because the situation had changed.

"A new plan was needed. The hibernation would drag on much longer than anticipated. For us to complete ourselves, free ourselves from sin, and become beings capable of our own salvation..."

He weighed the past.

"It felt like sleeping for the same amount of time we had already slept wouldn't be enough. The problem was, I couldn't endure such a long time in my current state. So I had to wake everyone back up and restart the preparations from scratch. And another thing. We originally didn't account for other races when we made our plans. But in the meantime, they all grew far too smart. There were too many sentient beings across the dimensions. While my opinion would carry a lot of weight, it wasn't a matter I could decide alone."

But Minjun couldn't go to the place where his kin were sleeping.

"I couldn't go. Then, the Kavite made me a proposal."

They knew that what Minjun wanted was dragon blood. They procured dragon blood from somewhere and handed it over, thoroughly sealed.

Minjun still remembered the thrill he felt when he broke that seal alone.

A single drop touching the tip of his tongue plagued by hellish starvation.

It was the ecstasy of dried cells soaking in moisture. It was the euphoria of life returning to brittle branches.

"I needed a proxy to wake them in my stead anyway. Someone to go there in my place... and simply do exactly as I commanded."

Asiph-1 knew what happened next.

Betrayal.

"Yeah, it went to ruin. But I couldn't just collapse in despair. I had regained a fraction of my strength from the dragon blood, but I was still far short. Meanwhile, the Committee sank their straws into the resting place of my kin and began mining Talents. At that rate, it looked like the hibernation would never end."

=Then, what was your plan?!=

"To wake my kin in this state, I needed to recover my power too. To do that, I first had to recuperate my body by devouring an enormous number of Dragons."

=Ah...!=

"But hiding and roaming the fringe dimensions, hunting and eating Dragons one by one like a savage, would take an eternity. Too much time had passed. In this era, where the systematized, mass-scale Dragon slaughtering processes had vanished... what must I do to acquire massive amounts of energy?"

The moment it heard that question.

=...!=

Asiph-1 felt a shudder violently shake its soul once more.

It had salvaged a certain concept from Minjun's memories.

=Don't tell me... the Dragon re-domestication plan?!=

The conspiracy the Kavites were plotting against the Dragons.

=My god, I see it now.=

In the current era, the Dragon pastures and slaughter systems built by the primordial race were gone, and the Dragon Race was scattered across the dimensional realms. Furthermore, having regained their free will, they didn't lay as many eggs as before.

Minjun had absolutely no way of acquiring the vast amounts of dragon blood he needed as quickly as he required.

However, what if someone else built it for him instead?

Unable to hide its agitation, the Frying Pan asked.

=So you purposefully let yourself get caught? Letting the Kavites use you as a tool, and even secure me—your tool—as another tool, all so they could re-domesticate the Dragons? You waited for the Kavites to build a pipeline capable of producing and supplying massive amounts of dragon blood... just so you could hijack it?!=

The moment it threw out those words.

=...!=

Asiph-1 was bewildered.

Because Minjun smiled. The dark line between his lips gradually widened until it finally bared his teeth. A smile that looked as if he found this incredibly amusing and entertaining.

He didn't stop there.

—!

The Creator ultimately burst into uproarious laughter.

For a long while after, Minjun laughed so hard he could barely breathe. It was a violent laugh that threatened to burst his lungs and shatter his ribs.

Not daring to say a word, Asiph-1 watched the spectacle.

How much time had passed?

Minjun finally calmed down. His loud, explosive laughter subsided, but the Creator still wore a radiant smile the likes of which Asiph-1 had never seen before.

An expression of unbearable joy. Asiph-1 even spotted a faint madness in his eyes.

The being of the primordial race spoke, almost humming.

"No, my child. Not at all. As if I would do that!"

And he added in a clear voice,

"But they might certainly think so."

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