The Foreigner on the Periphery

The human king asked himself a question.

'Why must I suffer this?'

"Your Majesty! You must evacuate immediately, Your Majesty!"

The retainer urged him to flee, his voice raw. But the man who reigned over the humans of the Gelanco dimension stood frozen, staring blankly out the window. At the end of his unmoving gaze, the ancient city that had withstood nearly a thousand years was collapsing in ruins.

He asked himself again.

'Why must I... why must we suffer this?'

"Your Majesty!"

The retainer's voice cracked, but the king remained motionless. With a frozen mind, he wondered.

'Why in the world?'

And their ship, which had vanished as soon as it arrived in this world, returned to the Terminal bringing the worst disaster in history.

Crack!

Rumble!

Boom! Crash!

The darkness that appeared in the center of the capital expanded heavily and ceaselessly. Houses and commercial buildings were crushed and destroyed one after another. That terrifying black mass absorbed every counterattack without slowing its spread.

The king's lips trembled.

"Just what did we do wrong...!"

It was closer to a natural disaster. There was speculation that the Committee had opened a door to the Abyss right in the middle of the capital, but the idea was dismissed. This was a catastrophe that defied the common sense of the humans here. Its true identity wasn't all that important right now.

Understanding it now would not change a thing.

"Dear God."

The number of people who lost their lives to natural phenomena like earthquakes, tsunamis, and storms every year was uncountable. Despite this, many never lost their faith, and the king was one of them.

But this... wasn't this truly... too much?

A despairing question rose in his mind.

'Is this how humanity falls?'

Since accepting the Committee's 'interference,' joining hands with the immigrants, and overthrowing the Stanians who once ruled the world, the humans of the Gelanco dimension had enjoyed unprecedented prosperity.

Did that glory end here?

A massive amount of military strength had already been spent on the shadow monster, and the economic toll from the capital's collapse was terrifying to even calculate. Fully restoring the damage would be impossible in this generation.

Perhaps the status of the human race would fall to a level similar to the Stanians. An inferior race, segregated and discriminated against by others.

Just imagining it was horrifying.

Flash!

It was then. An unusual light pooled in the sky above the capital the king was watching—a city rapidly turning into ruins. The next moment, the eyes of the king and his retainer simultaneously caught something.

Thump!

The retainer who had just urged the king to flee collapsed to the floor. Clack, clack. His teeth chattered endlessly. The king standing beside him stared in the same direction, unable to even breathe.

Ruuuumble!

Above the black mass that covered half their vision, an entity large enough to obscure the other half was descending.

It looked too heavy for the familiar cityscape, for that sky, to bear. Its massive body evoked that very illusion. It was something that inherently shouldn't exist here. The humans felt a suffocating sense of claustrophobia.

Twenty-six pillars attached to a main body the size of an island wriggled and stretched out. The movement seemed sluggish from afar, but a few guessed that it was actually flying faster than any bird.

The thing descending from the night sky was a colossal tentacled creature that the vast majority of witnesses were seeing for the first time.

The king recognized the species.

'Endelion!'

Why was the Ancient Race that supposedly never left its home dimension, treated practically as a legend by humans... here?

The king felt a sense of unreality, as if the world were mocking him. The world's malice seemed to deliberately warp all probability and reality just to torment him.

Meanwhile, the distance between the newly arrived 'monster' and the 'monster' ravaging the city center steadily narrowed. The night sky sandwiched between them felt as if it were being gradually crushed and crumpled.

What would happen the moment those two met? A certain concept sprang to the king's mind.

Hell manifested in reality.

The city burned. The ancient capital, the seat of the kingdom's wealth, function, and power, collapsed disastrously. What induced this destruction was a terror that couldn't be explained by reason.

The king's eyes grew bloodshot. He brought a trembling hand to his waistband. A moment later, cold metal touched his fingers.

The human king gripped the handle of a pistol.

*

The Princess of Endelion asked a question.

'Why must I do this?'

'This is also for atonement.'

Dell was fully aware of the sins she had personally committed against 'him', as well as the sins committed by the Endelion species.

Coming to Earth in the first place, docilely serving as a hostage during the escape, and what she was doing now—all originated from the same motive.

However, a question remained.

'By doing this, can I, can we be forgiven?'

Furthermore, could a severed and destroyed relationship be restored? In a way, it might be an unreachable wish, an expectation that would never be rewarded. Despite this, Dell could not stop. She believed this was the right thing to do.

Concluding so, the princess deactivated her Polymorph.

Flash!

A tentacled creature with a six-kilometer radius appeared in the night sky of the human kingdom. Maintaining that form, she lowered her altitude and approached the lava-like darkness. The monster spewing blood mist turned its head and stared at its opponent.

The boiling darkness and the gravity-defying tentacles confronted each other.

For now, it was a positive sign. It didn't launch an attack the moment it noticed her. Moreover, perhaps because it focused all its attention on the tentacles, its expansion had also stopped. It was a reaction that showed it knew exactly who to be most wary of here.

The single eye of the tentacle monster and the two eyes of the shadow monster pouring fresh blood met. Standing tall above the earth, she seemed to be waiting for her opponent's move. She felt a pang of doubt once again.

'Is he really in proper control right now?'

So far, her voice had not reached the inside. It was clear that the shadow was acting as some sort of barrier.

So the method Dell came up with was to get closer.

Sizzle!

One strand of her tentacles touched the boiling shadow. Then another, and another after that. The flexibly bending bronze tentacles landed on the monster's outer shell one by one. Even during that process, the monster showed no particular reaction.

Was it overwhelmed?

'Good!'

Endelion carefully moved her twenty-six tentacles and wrapped them around the bubbling shadow's 'eruption body'. She enveloped it as if embracing it.

Sssss!

A violent reaction occurred on the tentacles touching the surface of the darkness. It was akin to a human grabbing a fireball with bare hands. However, the flesh of an Endelion overcame the backlash. The tentacles burrowed deeper and deeper into the shadow. Then Dell became certain.

'The interior is practically a separate pseudo-dimension! No wonder my voice couldn't reach him.'

With her body entwined with the shadow, the princess shouted toward the inside of the rift.

She delivered it intensely, bearing a firm will.

=Cain!=

*

The primordial race asked a question.

'Why do I want to do this?'

'Why?'

Blaze!

=Ah, please! Please!=

=I was wrong. I was wrong. Please let me... let me go. To where I need to go... to where I belong...=

=No. It hurts. It's agonizing. Please. It hurts. It's agonizing. It hurts so much...=

The screams of Todd's wraith from the Jump Ship gradually faded until they vanished completely. The fusion was over.

Then, what filled the surroundings was...

Screeeech!

It was the shriek of the newly born shadow monster. The noise resonated ceaselessly, sharply piercing his mind.

The enemy was already gone. With flesh and soul crushed, Todd the individual had been annihilated. Despite that, the primordial race left the shadow monster out, letting it linger.

There was a reason for that.

Screeeeeech!

He wanted to savor it.

He wanted to savor the sight of that shadow, forged from Todd, suffering just a little longer. However, simply watching it did not give him any mental euphoria. He was appreciating it because it felt like this was what should naturally happen. He wanted to immerse himself in the lingering sensation.

He thought. Just like life, with revenge, the process of getting there was more important than the moment of achieving the goal. The revenge Minjun enacted just now stretched that moment of achievement out, transmuting the result itself into a sort of process.

An eternity of agony for the sinners.

He asked himself again. Why do I want to do this?

The answer was simple.

'Because I have the right to.'

He continued to stare at the shadow. He watched the scene of what used to be Todd suffering. Again, it wasn't enjoyable. Despite that, he felt like he could spend as long as he wanted just like this.

It was around then that he noticed a change.

=...!=

Someone's call.

At first, he ignored it. The meaning transmitted through space wasn't his name.

But it came once more, very anxiously. A mental wave pounded against his mind.

It was a sinner's name.

=Cain!=

The primordial race reacted.

'You?'

He felt something like a thick rope wrap around his surroundings. The act of binding him tight from outside the shadow felt like chains weaving into restraints, or a body enveloping another in an embrace.

Captured by something whose intentions he couldn't gauge, the prisoner listened.

=Let's go! We have to leave this place right now!=

'But I...'

He stared at the boiling shadow. Then the mental wave spoke as if scolding him.

=I won't deny the justification of your revenge. I won't force you to forgive, either. But... the real targets of your revenge aren't the humans here, are they?=

The primordial race thought that point was valid. What reason did I have to stay here?

It wasn't logical, and it wasn't efficient.

What was clouding my judgment? What was muddying me?

He tried to figure out the identity of this hazy and chaotic dust resting in his mind.

—!

A snickering laugh.

At that moment, he returned to being Minjun.

A cold and clear laugh continued to echo.

It came from deep inside the shadow. The source shedding the laughter was neither the shadow made of Todd, nor Minjun himself, nor Dell who was trying to wake him right now.

Minjun realized the identity of the invader trying to mix into his mind. He became aware of who had been continuously bouncing Dell's voice away until now.

It was the interference of someone who desperately wished for his complete, unrecoverable, and eternal ruin.

'Adkiel...!'

Dell shouted urgently.

=We are jumping right now! Retract the shadow!=

Minjun did as she advised.

Whoosh!

A moment later, the evacuating humans witnessed a miraculous scene.

"Look over there!"

"Oh my god... Dear Lord!"

The shadow was losing its power.

When the giant tentacle monster covered and bound it, the shadow looked as if it were finally drained of its strength.

The darkness shriveled, receding in the opposite direction from which it had spread. Seeing that, some people thought of an octopus's predatory behavior—the scene of it strangling and holding its prey with suction-cup-covered legs before opening its mouth and slowly tearing it apart.

Even those who didn't envision such specific actions mostly interpreted the current phenomenon like this:

The tentacle monster defeated the shadow monster!

"Ah, the tentacles... the tentacles!"

"The tentacles won."

"Then what's next? What happens next?"

Even while watching the sudden change, they were terrified. From the humans' perspective, both of them seemed like transcendent beings where it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe.

What would happen after the tentacles ate all the shadow?

That fear of theirs was betrayed in a pleasant way.

"What?!"

An auspicious light flashed from the body of the tentacle monster that 'ate all' the shadow. To the eyes of the people who had been plagued by the dreadful darkness until now, it was a dawn that felt almost holy.

The light swelled endlessly, completely covering the twenty-six tentacles and the central main body.

At that very moment.

Flash!

The light exploded, and the evacuating people temporarily lost their vision. In the place where the flash that colored the night disappeared, an intangible wave rippled before vanishing.

And then, there was nothing left.

*

Princess Stanin asked a question.

'Why did I do this?'

'I was crazy. I was out of my mind. I completely lost it!'

The news she'd received from her younger sibling was staggering. An incomprehensible disaster had swept through the human capital, the city was completely destroyed, and the king was missing.

The tables had completely turned. Yuria realized that by siding with the humans to usurp the throne, she had painted herself into a corner.

"Yuria."

The princess looked at her mother standing before her—the king of the Stanians. And before she even realized she was doing it, she fell to her knees. She quickly prostrated herself flat on the ground.

"Your Majesty! Please forgive me... I was wrong!"

A cold gaze poured down onto Yuria's back. A tangled mess of negative emotions exploded in the princess's mind. Despair like plummeting into an abyss, a suffocating sense of shame, and self-destructive guilt.

The king's voice rang out like a declaration.

"The reason I ordered them to keep you alive was to protect your... minimal dignity as a person, as a blood relative of the royal family. Because no one deserves to die so miserably."

Hearing those words, Yuria felt hope.

Was the king forgiving her?

However, the fluttering of her heart was brief. The following words were merciless.

"Regardless, you survived, so that is enough. My compassion and consideration for you as a person end there. The weight of the sin of treason plotted by a princess who should be an example for her species is hard to even measure!"

"Your Majesty! Mother! I was wrong. I was wrong!"

But the king had already made her decision.

The princess had forsaken her duties as a citizen and her obligations as a member of the royal family. Even if she repented and showed remorse, the evil deeds she had already committed could not be washed away.

Beneath that cold, monarchical judgment, she felt the agonizing pain of a mother whose heart had been pierced by a blade.

If the coup had succeeded, she wouldn't have escaped death. She thought this as she looked at the daughter who had tried to kill her. Some wounds do not heal just because the perpetrator feels regret. Forgiveness is solely up to the victim. Furthermore, the decision of whether or not to repair an already ruined relationship must also be made by the victim.

The king concluded not to repair it.

"Lock the 'sinner' in the dungeon."

"Aaah! Mother... Motherrr!"

The sinner who had craved love in the wrong way was dragged out. The king quickly turned her gaze away.

In this moment, the king of the Stanians turned her thoughts to the future.

She tried to do so, even if she had to force herself.

'The humans will be unable to recover for a while.'

The balance of the United Kingdom was completely shattered. It was a golden opportunity for the Stanians. The humans, as well as the other immigrant races, would be too busy picking up the pieces and scrambling for their own share of power to pay any real attention to the Stanians. The royal family and the secret society had no intention of missing this chance.

They had to move quickly. Quietly recalling the men sent out as foreign laborers was the first priority. In an era of tribulation, military strength was more important than anything else.

Only after reviewing these practical matters one by one did the king think of those who had brought them this blessing.

She didn't know the precise details or intentions behind their actions. Perhaps she would never know.

Even so, the king felt a profound gratitude toward the 'woman with tentacles on her back' she'd met near the Sanctuary. It was said that shortly after encountering her, an Endelion was witnessed in the human capital. Combining these facts, the woman's identity could be easily guessed.

The shadow monster and the tentacle monster. It was unknown which of the two was the true owner of the treasure, but one thing was certain. To the humans, they were a terrible disaster, but to the Stanians, they were saviors. Thanks to them, the conditions of the prophecy were also fulfilled. The day when the Stanians regained their freedom and her youngest daughter returned would soon come.

The king thought of the unidentified otherworldly beings and murmured inwardly.

'I don't know what your purpose is, or where you are heading... but I hope God's endless love and attention will be with you in your future.'

The king sincerely prayed for that and blessed them.

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