The Foreigner on the Periphery

Asiph-1 unleashed a torrent of mental waves, but the transmission crumpled instead of forming a clear message. Its intent frothed into nonverbal bubbles—a testament to its immense shock. It was like a stammer, its racing thoughts too fast for it to articulate.

Minjun quietly observed the chaotic mind, fished a few distinct questions from the mess, and voiced them aloud.

His voice remained bright.

"If that was the plan, why did I make you in the first place? And why am I calling you my son now?"

=...!=

The Magic Tool felt Minjun's tone return to normal.

The untouchable, transcendent aura radiating from him gradually subsided. The suffocating tension and pressure that had stretched the surroundings taut finally settled.

"You were my first plan, the very first attempt I put into action. An arrangement to exact revenge on them and awaken my kin. Unfortunately, it failed."

The first counterattack against the Committee.

A failed tale of revenge.

"I tried to brainwash them and open the doors to our slumbering place using methods far more violent and radical than when I controlled the minds of my own kin in the past. But a creation forged by me alone wasn't enough. You were caught. Yet, admirably, you pretended to be brainwashed while secretly founding the order in the shadows, plotting subversion to hand me victory."

Asiph-1 finally managed to collect itself.

=In the end, that attempt was discovered as well.=

"And your soul scattered across the periphery to hide. It became hard even for me to find you. I didn't have the strength left to create another being like you. Like I said, I had to endure a massive sacrifice to forge you in the first place. Doing it again was impossible."

Asiph-1 focused on the past conversation between Minjun and Ha Eun-seong. When the primordial race crafted tools for mind control, they supposedly used souls as the core material.

It asked itself: Then whose soul was used to create me?

"So I had no choice but to devise a different plan."

Even after facing back-to-back failures, Minjun never gave up.

=Is your new plan related to the Kavite conspiracy to re-domesticate dragons?=

"Exactly."

He had lost Asiph-1 and could not create another.

The primordial race had pondered what could possibly be done in such a situation.

"I decided to use the enemy."

The new rulers of a universe devoid of his kin.

The ones wielding the absolute peak of military and political power in this era.

"The Kavite think they've unraveled the secrets of the universe. They clutch that information tight and refuse to share it with the other Ancient Races. They believe dragon blood was the secret behind the primordial race's eternal life. Forced to rely on a flawed, incomplete immortality, the Kavite desperately want to mimic exactly what we once enjoyed."

Minjun continued in a delighted tone.

"To do that, the Kavite need to solve two problems. First, establish a system for mass-producing dragon blood. Second, suppress their own biological rejection of the blood. They firmly believe that 'the two of us' are the keys to solving these problems and unlocking their bright future."

Asiph-1 suddenly realized what he was going to say next.

"Now then."

A soft smile spread across its creator's lips.

"How on earth did they... learn all these secrets?"

His voice carried a faint, rhythmic lilt.

"Why do the Kavite know this when the rest of the Ancient Races are in the dark? The fact that the primordial race drank dragon blood, I mean. The absolute conviction that this is the only path to perfect eternal life. Who do you think planted that idea in their heads?"

=Did you brainwash the Kavite?=

"Of course not. Even if I wanted to, I didn't have you around to do it for me."

Minjun kindly explained.

"The Kavite hatched their plan to domesticate dragons right before 'Asif-666' was born."

He muttered as an afterthought.

"Besides, brainwashing isn't the only way to guide someone's thoughts."

   *

Dimensional Center.

Alone in his room, a Kavite High Commissioner stared at a hologram. The records of a certain prisoner scrolled across the display.

Asif-666.

He was reviewing the traces left behind in the seven different dimensions where the sinner had been deployed to carry out missions before his eventual prison break.

Eight hundred years... A fleeting moment to some, yet an eternity to others.

Once he was deployed to a dimension, the Committee practically left him unsupervised.

He would have been furious to hear it, but it was the truth. Instead of locking up such a highly dangerous criminal, they had dropped him in a peripheral dimension. Without a proper warden or surveillance. Considering the core duties of the prison authorities, it bordered on a total dereliction of duty.

Although you are a prisoner, we tried to grant you as much freedom as possible.

They had wanted to see exactly where he would go of his own free will in a restricted environment after his memories were wiped.

Stripped down to the bare essence of his ego, they had observed him with minimal interference, waiting to see what choices he would make.

There is no such thing as a predetermined fate; the future is built upon the accumulated choices of all beings. Yet the prophets our race secured failed to predict your future perfectly. It was as if someone were deliberately blocking their sight, refusing to allow it. The only answer we could derive... was that we had no choice but to rely on your free will. All for the sake of the future we desire—the future where the Kavite possess a whole and intact Asiph-1.

The Kavite of that future would finally attain perfect eternal life.

It seems our choice was the right one, Asif-666.

Asif-666 had been repeatedly reassigned, spending around a hundred years in each dimension. Every time he was transferred, his soul and his belongings were subjected to rigorous inspections. All to verify whether he had managed to recover a piece of Asiph-1.

Over the course of six different transfer deployments, his soul never once showed any anomalies. Furthermore, Asif-666 rarely took any personal belongings with him. The sole exception had been a Dagger he carried when transferred from Ashtal to Earth. Naturally, they didn't find any soul fragments inside it.

But an anomaly had occurred in his seventh dimension.

Asif-666's prison break.

For him to suddenly regain fragments of his memory and stage a prison break... it can only mean he finally made contact with Asiph-1.

If they captured him now, Asiph-1 would naturally fall right into their hands.

The very first soul fragment to be found.

Eight hundred years just to recover a single fragment. But we can afford to wait. We are prepared to endure sacrifices far greater than this.

After capturing Asif-666, they would wipe his memories once again and dump him in yet another peripheral dimension. There were countless frontier dimensions they hadn't sent him to yet. There was simply no way to know when this agonizingly long process would finally come to an end.

The High Commissioner recalled the day they had first apprehended Asif-666. Looking back on it now, it was nothing short of a miracle: capturing him in the first place, and the sheer coincidence of Kavite eyes spotting him so he could be isolated in secret from the other Ancient Races.

It could only be explained as a stroke of immense luck.

"Why won't you tell us? We just want to know. How did your people do it? Even with Talents in our grasp, our race is far from perfect. We are forced to constantly sacrifice our own children just to transfer into new bodies. This existence can't possibly be the absolute limit of our potential. There has to be a better way. What is it?"

Torturing a species endowed with inexhaustible regenerative powers was an incredibly taxing endeavor, both physically and mentally.

Todd and Endelion could never have imagined in their wildest dreams that Asif-666 had already been captured. For the longest time, the torture had taken place in a black site known only to the Kavite.

It was grueling, but deeply rewarding.

It happened when a member of the great primordial race, a being that had existed since the very dawn of time, finally had its mental barricades broken down and its endurance eroded away until it confessed the secret.

The Kavite felt an electrifying wave of euphoria, like being struck by lightning.

It was the moment they had finally brought a race that once boasted god-like supremacy to its knees, utterly subjugating its noble spirit.

"Dragon blood?!"

This traced back even further, to the moment the Kavite first encountered the primordial race.

He had demanded that the Kavite gather the blood of countless different species. The only condition was that the blood had to be fresh, still brimming with life force.

Dragon blood was included in those requests, but they naturally assumed he merely intended to use it as a sacrifice for the bizarre power known as Dark Magic. At least, that was what they thought at the time.

"I see. Dragon blood was the secret to securing perfect eternal life. The dragon blood wasn't a sacrifice; it was meant for you to consume!"

But dragon's blood was a deadly poison.

Furthermore, modern dragons were hardly suitable beasts to be treated as domestic livestock.

Not in their current state, anyway.

"There has to be a way."

The Kavite drafted an incredibly ambitious plan based on that information.

"Livestock should act like livestock. The dragons need to change. And so do we."

They needed a weapon capable of manipulating the minds of dragons.

They bitterly regretted their past attempts to obliterate Asiph-1's soul. How were they supposed to find the scattered fragments now?

"You must be capable of doing it."

Neither then nor now did their technology possess the capability to perfectly brainwash Asif-666.

At the same time, forcing him to wander through various dimensions without the other Ancient Races noticing was totally unrealistic.

"We need an official reason for you to wander the frontiers. An excuse that everyone will readily accept."

They possessed the technology to wipe memories.

Would it actually work on a member of the primordial race? They attempted it, half in doubt.

Surprisingly, it worked. They assumed it was because of the spiritual components he had lost while creating Asiph-1.

And thus, the prisoner Asif-666 was born.

But.

Drawing his mind back to reality, the High Commissioner muttered to himself.

I still think about it from time to time... but something about it feels incredibly strange.

The circumstances surrounding Asif-666's arrest had seemed perfectly plausible at the time, but looking back now, it left a distinctly bitter aftertaste.

Moreover, it made zero sense that the memory wipe had held so flawlessly for over eight hundred years.

How could the very creator of Asiph-1 lack immunity to technology derived directly from Asiph-1?

After agonizing over it for countless years, the High Commissioner had arrived at a terrifying hypothesis.

Is it possible... you let us capture you on purpose?

Just then.

"High Commissioner!"

His train of thought was derailed by an urgent incoming transmission. A subordinate Kavite's face popped up on a fresh hologram window, rattling off a rapid-fire report. Endelion had begun to display suspicious behavior.

"The Gelanco dimension? So he fled there... Excellent. While those squirming tentacles focus on retrieving the Princess, deploy our own personnel separately. Make it as covert as possible. You know our true objective, right? Capture Asif-666 alive. Secure every single item on his person, and detain the rest of his companions, excluding the Princess."

They would arrest Asif-666 under the guise of an official operation, but there was absolutely no reason to retrieve Asiph-1 where the other Ancient Races could see.

"Understood, sir!"

"And be absolutely certain this intel doesn't leak to Todd and those other fools."

"I'll make sure of it!"

The Committee had already officially resolved to deploy a dimension-wide response to capture Asif-666.

But beneath the surface, a silent internal civil war was steadily brewing among the Ancient Races.

It was inevitable. If everyone became a superior, transcendent being, then superiority itself would lose its meaning.

After issuing the command, the High Commissioner turned his attention back to the files. An image of Asif-666 hovered there. His face was practically identical to the day he had first awakened from his ancient slumber so long ago.

Savoring the rush of old memories, the elder muttered to himself.

"Whether you were captured on purpose, or whether you planned to use us all along... it doesn't matter. Far too much time has passed for your little schemes to amount to anything."

He let out a low, clucking laugh.

The Ancient Races had conquered the dragons, and the Kavite's absolute dominion stretching across the universe was infinitely stronger than it had been back when he was first captured.

"To attempt a coup now... the world has changed far too much. To begin with, your slumber simply lasted far too long. Just long enough for us to uncover your existence and devise a way to reach you."

Basking in the deeply satisfying afterglow, he added one final thought.

"And you... woke up far too early."

   *

The Shutan Royal Sanctuary.

"...!"

Minjun's expression suddenly turned fierce. He snapped his head around, his gaze seemingly piercing straight through the thick stone walls to stare at something incredibly far away.

"The interlopers are on their way."

=What?!=

Before the Frying Pan could say another word, a seething wave of darkness erupted directly behind Minjun.

Whoosh!

The veil of darkness swelled in a fraction of a second, completely blanketing the interior of the sanctuary.

—!

And within that crushing abyss, the Frying Pan detected an eerie wavelength it couldn't usually sense.

Was it because Minjun, its summoner, had absorbed so many Talents?

Or had it gained this new awareness because Asiph-1 had recovered another fragment?

Ah... Aaaah!

Asiph-1 felt like it could hear someone screaming from deep within the shadows. Before it could focus entirely on the sensation, Minjun spoke up.

"We've already secured what we wanted, so we could just run away..."

One part of his gaze still seemed to be staring deep into the past, while the other remained firmly anchored to somewhere in reality.

The Frying Pan read a chaotic storm of conflicting emotions violently swirling in its creator's eyes. Anticipation. Ennui. Hostility. Euphoria. Conviction. Agony.

But above all else, shining through the chaos, was an endlessly deep, coldly refined abyss of absolute rage.

"...But I think I'll torment them a little more before we leave."

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