The Foreigner on the Periphery

Bang!

Bang, bang!

Sharp gunshots rang out across the indoor shooting range.

The person holding the handgun was a deeply wrinkled elf. Lakefield had cropped his white hair short, abandoning the long, unkempt locks he had worn like a hermit wizard back when he ran the bookstore. Equipped with clear safety glasses and a bulletproof vest, he repeatedly pulled the trigger with a sharp, focused gaze. Anyone who remembered the owner of the Evergreen Bookstore would have fainted from shock at the sight.

Bang! Bang!

Bang, bang! Bang!

An outstanding elementalist, he had once suffered a severe injury that left him confined to a wheelchair. Most people didn't know it, but ironically, his exceptional Supernatural Ability had played a part in that outcome.

Simply put, it was a workplace injury.

Like many first-generation elf immigrants, he had started his life on Earth as a US citizen, and thanks to a government eager to use his abilities, he easily found employment despite his old age. At the time, the United States was looking for talent to help establish a new organization to replace the disbanded Office of Strategic Services, and Lakefield's abilities seemed perfectly optimized for espionage. Two years after he joined, the department officially opened its doors as the Central Intelligence Agency.

‘Still as good as ever.’

He hadn't picked up a gun for a long time after his body failed him. Even without a clear explanation, Lakefield could guess why he was suddenly able to walk again. This sudden change roughly coincided... yes, it had started right around the time Minjun went on a business trip to Germany.

He remembered the words Minjun had shouted the last day they saw each other.

“You can walk now, Lakefield!”

Tearing his gaze away from the target, he muttered inwardly.

‘That friend knew everything. Perhaps... this, too, is a gift he left behind for me.’

This time, Lakefield closed his eyes. He raised the gun in that state. His arm formed a perfect right angle, but without his vision, the stance seemed meaningless.

However, it wasn't.

Giggle! Titter!

Transparent figures invisible to others gathered around him, dancing.

Lakefield made a request to the spirits connected to his mind.

‘Could I ask a favor of you?’

The response came the moment he asked.

Bang! Bang, bang, bang!

Without opening his eyes, Lakefield resumed firing. Once again, he took exactly ten shots.

He opened his eyes only after the gunfire ceased.

‘Thank you.’

There were only two bullet holes left on the newly replaced target. One in the head, one in the chest. However, having just shared his vision with the spirits, he knew the bullets had pierced the exact same spots on the head and chest five times each.

Because the subsequent bullets had passed straight through the exact holes made by the first, there wasn't even a shot group to speak of.

“Wow...”

Taking off his hearing-protection headset, he heard a dumbfounded gasp of admiration. Lakefield winced inwardly.

‘Oops. Did I just crush his spirit?’

He turned his head to find a goblin dressed similarly to himself. The elf looked at the target Dong-cheol had just finished shooting at. Still, he had managed to hit one out of ten. That was progress. Lakefield offered him praise, but Dong-cheol muttered with a crestfallen expression.

“Boss... I'm sorry... I'm... I'm just too terrible at this...”

The elf shook his head.

“Don't blame yourself. Who is good at something right from the start?”

“But Big Sis... she started at the exact same time I did... The bodyguards... gave her a standing ovation... and even asked if she wanted to work with them...”

“...”

Lakefield, who had experience training multi-species recruits for espionage fieldwork, was about to tell him that this level of learning ability was borderline genius for a goblin, but he held his tongue. He figured it would sound like a racist remark. The elf silently looked at the monitor mounted on the wall.

They were currently in the training center of the security firm owned by the Elder Dragon, Jenkinson. The company's operations were focused entirely on protecting his assets rather than the employer himself.

Here, they offered training for various combat skills aside from marksmanship. The screen the elf was watching showed a training ground for mages, where Cathy was relentlessly bombarding a dummy with spells, as if she harbored a grudge against it from a past life. It looked more like stress relief than actual training.

Although her former employer had deemed her Magic mediocre, the bodyguards here were practically drooling over Cathy after witnessing her Supernatural Ability on top of her marksmanship. Larissa, a fairy who smelled heavily of sweet sugar, even brought an employment contract to tempt her, but Cathy firmly rejected it, stating she had no thoughts of changing jobs.

Dong-cheol grew depressed as he compared himself to the other two. Even though he was the youngest of the three, he was the slowest.

Looking back, his life had always been like this.

“I'm always slow... and terrible at everything.”

Ever since he was young, Dong-cheol had perceived himself as roughly ‘0.2’ of a person. He didn't notice it when he was just among other goblins, but the problem always arose when he mixed with other races. He was a deficient person who couldn't even manage a fifth of what a single member of another race could do.

Instead of comforting Dong-cheol, Lakefield put on a stern expression.

“Do you remember what I told you when I started teaching you how to shoot?”

“...Yes. You said that one day... a time would come when I would have to... protect myself.”

Like many elves, Lakefield fundamentally didn't trust people outside his own fence. Much less a species like a dragon.

“Chairman Jenkinson took us in and is looking after us right now, but there's no telling how long this situation will last.”

Furthermore, the elf had heard the aliens referring to Minjun as ‘Asif-666’.

It was unclear whether the dragon knew about that as well. If things went south because of that secret, he might withdraw his efforts to look after Minjun's people.

In Lakefield's mind, a dragon was a species that had no qualms about abandoning anything, stabbing someone in the back, and wiping their mouth clean the moment their interests conflicted.

Why else would they have created a word-binding Magic like draconic? They were a race so notoriously bad at keeping promises that they needed a tool to enforce their contracts.

With that thought in mind, Lakefield continued.

“And I probably won't live longer than you.”

“Boss...”

He was incredibly old, even considering his race.

Lakefield worried about how Dong-cheol would navigate this world with Minjun missing and after he himself passed away. Even if Jeongpal and Cathy were around, Dong-cheol still needed a minimum means of self-defense.

Although this was a world where the balance of power between individuals had completely collapsed due to Supernatural Abilities, one couldn't simply give up all effort just because of those outliers. In other words, Lakefield wasn't teaching Dong-cheol with the Committee's threat against Minjun in mind. Such a massive threat was akin to a natural disaster in the first place, far beyond the level that ordinary people like them could handle.

There were still far more people in the world without Supernatural Abilities, and it was highly likely that those types of people would pose a tangible threat to Dong-cheol in the future. Knowing how to properly handle even a single gun would at least increase his chances of preserving his life.

Listening to the elf's advice, Dong-cheol asked himself amid his anxiety. The impossibly clean shooting target he had seen just moments ago came to mind.

Will the day ever come... when I can truly pull the weight of a whole person?

*

Jenkinson issued a command with an attentive gaze.

“Alright, let's see you try it.”

Sitting where he was looking was a child who appeared to be... a blond half-elf young man. The Ancient Dragon inwardly clicked his tongue.

‘Now he's visually indistinguishable from Edward Mitchum. Even to me.’

The quadruplets born from the spider dragon.

These children were only a few months old, but they had grown to look like they were in their early twenties. They had become perfect physical replicas of their father, from whom their genes had been stolen—the half-elf who had recently risen to become the head of one of Korea's top six conglomerates.

The one present here right now was the youngest of the four brothers. As if arranged by fate, while the other children had each awakened a single Supernatural Ability, he was the only one who hadn't obtained anything.

“Then, I will begin.”

Blair approached with a nervous expression and exchanged a few words with the youngest. The child wearing the shell of a young man—simply called ‘the youngest’ because Jenkinson had intentionally withheld giving him a name—nodded and closed his eyes. He then assumed an expression of deep concentration.

And then.

‘What?!’

Jenkinson was flustered.

His acute senses had picked up a change. Mana was surging wildly around the youngest. However, since it was a different lineage of power from Magic, Jenkinson couldn't predict how it would function.

A moment later, Jenkinson moved beyond flustered into outright shock.

Flash!

“Wh-what? Blair. That...!”

As the youngest activated his Supernatural Ability, the Ring Blair was wearing began to glow!

The dragon remembered exactly how his secretary had acquired that artifact. It was the day the Stanian princess, who had attempted to smuggle the Lair's treasures off-world, was arrested. Endelion, who had suddenly crashed the scene and startled everyone, had gifted it to her, saying, ‘I'm sorry for mistaking you for the culprit and treating you so roughly.’

Presumed to be a piece of protective gear unique to their race, Blair had unknowingly agreed to an alien terms-of-service agreement the length of several books, causing it to fuse tightly to her finger. No matter what method they tried, they couldn't separate it. If they really thought about it, there was the option of chopping off her finger along with the Ring and calling a priest to regenerate it, but they left it alone because they had no idea how the Ring would react to such a threat.

Flash! Flash!

Right when a violent burst of light erupted from the Ring, a sharp mental wave pierced everyone present.

[Warning! Warning! Evanjul level hazard detected. Strongly advise the protectee to rapidly distance themselves from said entity!]

It was a psychic transmission that was clearly a pre-programmed message.

Jenkinson's eyes went wide at the content.

‘Evanjul level?!’

That was the terminology the Ancient Race used to express the severity of an event. If it was Evanjul level, it was a classification so important and sensitive that, in the Committee's terms, a High Commissioner would have to make the decisions personally.

Jenkinson's head snapped around. The youngest of the spider monsters didn't look surprised, as if he had seen this scene before, but he wore a deeply anxious expression.

Blair spoke in a trembling voice.

“I'm going to try stepping a little closer.”

Ignoring the artifact's warning, the elf secretary took another step toward the youngest.

In that instant.

Flash!

“Wh-what the!”

The Ancient Dragon couldn't believe his eyes.

The spot where the secretary had just been standing was completely empty. Blair had vanished!

“This is insane.”

Jenkinson analyzed the pulse of mana that had rippled outward in that split second.

“A Teleport?!”

Ring, ring, ring!

Someone seemed to be calling him just then. Jenkinson pulled his cellphone from his pocket. The caller ID showed it was Blair, who had just disappeared.

However... the number was a bit strange.

‘An international call?!’

He spoke urgently.

“Blair, where in the world are you right now?”

A pale, terrified voice came over the receiver.

The Ancient Dragon broke into a sweat at the words that followed.

“New York?!”

It was an absurd piece of news.

“That artifact... forcibly Teleported you... all the way to New York, on the other side of the Earth?!”

“Yes, it seems this is how the artifact reacts when you ignore its warnings.”

How did an artifact designed as protective gear defend its wearer?

It could create a shield upon encountering a hazard, or conversely, launch an attack against the threat itself.

However, crafted according to Endelion's way of thinking, that Ring opted to move the user far away from the danger as its primary response. If the threat still wasn't resolved, it would surely resort to other measures, but that was step one.

‘Right... It figured out the safest place on this planet. New York is far, yes, but... it's also where the Committee's representative office originally used to be.’

He muttered to himself.

“Still, isn't that taking it a bit too far... New York, of all places...”

Overkill.

Whatever the case, it was massive overkill.

Repeating that thought inwardly, the Ancient Dragon instructed his secretary to stay put and not bother catching a flight, as he would come pick her up shortly. After hanging up, he stared intently at the youngest. The child seemed slightly disheartened.

The Ancient Dragon asked.

“How did you... do that just now?”

The youngest answered cautiously.

The root of the incident was a feeling of inferiority and alienation. With the other brothers each awakening a Supernatural Ability, he grew anxious because he alone showed no changes.

At first, he comforted himself by thinking it was a problem that would be solved once his growth period ended, but now, their bodies and appearances were fully grown half-elf adults. It was easy to realize his growth had stopped. It was because he had transformed into the exact mirror image of ‘Edward Mitchum’ from the TV. And, as was typical of half-elf development, he remained locked in that state.

‘Am I going to just stop growing like this, without any powers at all?’

Given that they inherited dragon blood, there was a high chance they could learn Magic if taught, but because of their brief one-year life expectancy, Jenkinson hadn't bothered to hire a Magic tutor for them. Magic was a Supernatural Ability rooted in formulas, standardization, and equations; a single year wasn't even enough time to skim the basics.

Having awakened zero Supernatural Abilities on his own, the youngest eventually recognized himself as ‘powerless.’ As a result, steeped in frustration and humiliation, it seemed he had begun paying attention to things he usually ignored.

‘Prayer?’

He had been watching TV alone while his brothers went off to train their Supernatural Abilities. Aimlessly flipping through the channels, he eventually reached the specialized broadcasting stations in the 200s. He hadn't intended to pay attention at first. He had planned to cycle through to the end and start back at channel 1. Just like always.

“Everyone, believe in the power of prayer!”

The speaker on the broadcast was preaching about the correlation between a person's prayers and the miracles of a great being.

The youngest felt his ears perk up.

‘Really?’

The preacher claimed that ‘He’ was the master of mankind, and that people must serve ‘Him’ in absolute submission. From the youngest's perspective, however, it was hard to picture the ‘Him’ the preacher was describing in his head. After all, he had never seen Him. So, he mobilized his imagination. The painting the youngest colored within his mind began with a pure question.

Does such a being really exist?

A master... that I must unconditionally obey?

He was used to following orders. The four brothers had obeyed Jenkinson's orders, Blair's orders, and the orders of the people they hired. However, they were ultimately entities of reality, and there were practical reasons to follow their commands.

A being who rightly deserved unconditional obedience and worship?

Picturing an entity no dragon had ever even attempted to imagine, the youngest demanded what he wanted.

Please make me someone special.

Please give me a special power.

And then, miraculously, the youngest was able to imagine it. As if it had been inside him from the very beginning, or as if that knowledge had been engraved right into his blood, the youngest understood the concept of a master worthy of obedience.

“My god...”

Listening to the confession, Jenkinson unconsciously covered his mouth in horror.

That was far beyond a normal confession; it was a form of religious testimony.

“What you're saying is... no, it can't be... that's impossible.”

There was a simple way to confirm it.

Jenkinson resolutely raised a finger and slashed it across the back of his left hand. The human-mimicking flesh tore open, and blood flowed. Even while using Polymorph, the act of injuring one's own body was thoroughly un-dragon-like, but Jenkinson showed no hesitation.

Holding out his bleeding hand to the child, Jenkinson made a single demand.

The youngest nodded and did as he was told.

A moment later, Jenkinson looked down at the back of his hand, where the wound had cleanly vanished. He cast his heavily agitated gaze back toward the child.

Right now, sitting before this Ancient Dragon, was the first-ever awakener of Divine Power in the dimensional system to possess dragon's blood.

*

Minjun opened his closed eyes.

“What the, did someone just call me?”

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