The Foreigner on the Periphery

'A million Talents? What kind of dragon-grazing nonsense is that...'

His confusion was brief. Ha Eun-seong quickly figured out the truth.

'A bounty? The Committee put a million-Talent bounty on my head! And my crime is probably... just traveling with the agent?'

What a terrifying man—whose mere company earned you a one-million-Talent bounty.

But how had the body's original owner been identified?

...No. Come to think of it, they probably just recognized his face rather than uncovering his exact identity.

Ha Eun-seong had already been spotted by plenty of people in the Shutan dimension. If the Committee was as formidable as he'd heard, they had definitely obtained footage of him. Strangers might not know who he was, but the body owner's blood relatives would have recognized him instantly. Ha Eun-seong had practically served himself up on a silver platter to those waiting for an opportunity.

Waiting for an opportunity.

Repeating that phrase in his mind, Ha Eun-seong felt a nauseating wave of disgust.

Someone who would sell out their own brother without hesitation for money, and who would ruthlessly draw a blade for profit.

Right. This was a dragon.

Graaaaar!

With a roar, the dragon lunged at him.

'Just hold out until the agent gets here!'

Thinking that, Ha Eun-seong dodged desperately. A relentless pursuit followed. Closing the distance in an instant, the dragon attempted to ram him midair. Just before the collision, Ha Eun-seong tensed in panic.

Bam!

'Huh?'

Ha Eun-seong, having braced for a tremendous impact, opened his eyes wide. His attacker looked just as bewildered.

Pretending not to be surprised, the dragon immediately launched a flurry of follow-up attacks. Ha Eun-seong dodged some and took the rest head-on. The feeling was exactly the same.

He muttered inwardly.

'It doesn't really hurt?'

For an attack possessing the momentum to split a body in half with a single blow, it barely hurt at all.

'Was this guy naturally this tough?'

Still, there was no need to be a punching bag, so Ha Eun-seong continued to flee. As he did, he noticed another strange thing.

'Why is he so predictable?'

He was referring to his pursuer's flying skills.

Since the dragon claimed to be the older brother, he had to be older than this body, meaning he possessed far more flying experience than Ha Eun-seong could ever fathom.

Despite that, the trajectory the dragon carved through the sky was incredibly plain. His next moves were completely predictable.

Seeing that, Ha Eun-seong naturally recalled his experience from yesterday.

The time he had crossed the night sky of the Shutan Kingdom, chasing a butterfly made of Magic.

Back then, Ha Eun-seong had performed highly difficult acrobatics he'd never thought possible. Since he couldn't get too close or fall too far behind the butterfly, he hadn't dared relax. He had painted a path bordering on art just to keep up with its nonsensical directional changes and rotation angles.

He remembered it. His wings and every muscle in his body had ached, and he had been out of breath, but an intense elation had welled up inside him. He'd been intoxicated by the sheer speed, the colors of the night, and the scent of the wind. The feeling that he could fly as fast as he wanted. The absolute certainty that he could push forward as far as he wished.

In that sky, where two types of moonlight faintly blurred into the dark blue, Ha Eun-seong had showcased a flight that transcended his limits.

'Should I try it? Here again?'

Ha Eun-seong tried to revive that sensation.

'Focus. Let's focus. Just like back then... focus!'

However.

That focus broke after only a few seconds.

'Ah, damn it. Why isn't it working again now?!'

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't fly as flawlessly as before.

Still, having done it once, he managed a roughly similar imitation. Every time he did, the dragon who called himself "older brother" recoiled in surprise.

'What is with this guy? He couldn't pull off moves like that before.'

The name of this dragon—a name Ha Eun-seong hadn't even heard yet—was Kirgzail.

Kirgzail grew annoyed as the distance he had painstakingly closed kept widening again, so he filled the gap with Magic. When a bombardment of Magic rained down instead of a physical ram, his long-lost younger brother was too busy fleeing to counterattack with spells.

'Yeah, that's more like it. As if the likes of you could counterattack!'

But his underlying doubt didn't disappear. His youngest brother's physical abilities had bizarrely skyrocketed since they last met.

From what he remembered, his brother had always been a pathetic dragon. Amassing wealth required a fair amount of peer-on-peer violence—permitted by the Ancient Dragons—but his younger brother hadn't even had the strength to endure that.

Because of that, he had astutely pivoted his life's direction. If he lacked the strength to build his own hoard, he would simply leech off someone who was already sufficiently rich.

Kirgzail vividly remembered scoffing at the plan to seduce a 'rich, easily bored female Ancient Dragon who frequently changed partners, lusted after young dragons, and didn't have much time left to live (by dragon standards).' His brother had plotted to extort her wealth, and if lucky, marry her to aim for a massive settlement. It was highly doubtful whether a dragon meeting all those ridiculous criteria even existed in the first place.

He didn't know what had happened in the meantime to make his brother—a weakling forced to concoct such a pathetic plan—so physically strong...

=It seems your Magic skills are still a mess!=

His complete inability to defend against the spells was quite a sight.

Meanwhile, Ha Eun-seong gritted his teeth, enduring the explosions going off against his back.

'How am I supposed to learn Magic when no one teaches me!'

Minjun was still nowhere to be seen. It was strange. Just how far had he gone?

Regardless, he couldn't just let himself get caught. Ha Eun-seong racked his brain. What was a way to counter long-range attacks?

The answer came to him quickly. The innate talent of a dragon—something that, unlike telepathy, didn't require study or training.

'A breath!'

The last time he had unleashed fire with all his might was a few months ago in Germany. After that, he had almost breathed fire once at Solada's house, but that fell through when Minjun arrived. Then he tried again at an aircraft carrying humans, but that was ruined when Dell stepped in.

Inhaaale!

He puffed out his chest. The surrounding air rapidly rushed toward his maw.

Watching that, Kirgzail sneered.

Exhaling a breath capable of damaging another dragon inevitably took a long time to charge.

'Hmph, a breath in the middle of an aerial dogfight? As if I'd just stand by and watch such a sluggish attack...'

He had no choice but to stand by and watch.

---!

'What?!'

Kirgzail was stunned.

Considering the time needed to charge a breath, he had planned to leisurely draw an arc, prepare his evasion, and then pour down Magic to end the fight.

But then.

Fwoooosh!

A heat ray tore across the blue sky stretching over the vast, untouched forest—a domain no one could enter because the dragons had forbidden it. A raging firestorm split the two dragons' field of vision perfectly in half.

'This is insane!'

As far as Kirgzail knew, no dragon could breathe such powerful fire that quickly. Yet his younger brother had made the impossible possible, spewing an enormous torrent of flame. Caught mid-evasion, Kirgzail met the blast in the exact posture he'd taken to change direction.

'N-No!'

Whoooosh!

The devastating breath—which the dragon herder with the longest career in the universe had once evaluated as "excessively hot for something not even a hundred years old"—engulfed him.

Kirgzail lost consciousness amidst agonizing pain, feeling as if his lower body were exploding.

   *

“So, you did this to him?”

“...Yes.”

Minjun had arrived a beat later than Ha Eun-seong expected. The very first thing he did was extinguish the forest fire.

Once he subdued the rapidly spreading flames, the trail Ha Eun-seong's attack had left behind was clearly revealed. Minjun stared in that direction and scratched his chin.

'He got stronger over the last few months. To the point where it feels excessive.'

Across the ground he was observing, a massive, semi-circular trench stretched out—as if a giant excavator had plowed right through, carving away dirt and solid rock alike.

The breath Ha Eun-seong had fired at Kirgzail had drawn a downward-sloping trajectory, evidently continuing without losing momentum even after grazing its target. Even after striking the earth directly, it had maintained its sheer kinetic force and plowed straight across the terrain.

The result was a massive fire.

The dragon herder, who had utterly despised forest fires since the old days, only looked over at Ha Eun-seong and the sprawled dragon after suppressing the blaze out of pure habit.

“You two certainly look alike.”

“He claimed he was my older brother.”

Minjun observed the fainted dragon. The creature looked like a steak that had been shoved only halfway into a blazing oven with zero temperature control. Above the waist, he was completely untouched; below the waist, his scales were charred completely black.

'It's not life-threatening. He dodged the main blast, so only his lower half was briefly exposed to the flames. He was hit while moving, so the burn didn't linger. It was literally a fleeting exposure of less than a second.'

Even so, the pain had been severe enough to make him pass out.

Had he been exposed for even a few more seconds, he would have been cooked thoroughly past his scales and wouldn't have escaped death.

'So this is how I get hints about the body's original owner.'

It was a matter Jenkinson would have taken deep interest in, but unfortunately, Minjun had far more important priorities.

He visually gauged the size of the fallen dragon. He didn't have the slightest intention of using such a young beast for food. It was so small it wouldn't even serve as a palate cleanser.

Instead, he would at least be able to extract a list of the Ancient Dragons nesting across this world and the locations of their lairs.

When Minjun pulled out a black Frying Pan, Ha Eun-seong had a dreadful premonition of what would happen next.

“A job like this is easy for you now, right?”

At his creator's question, Asiph-1 radiated a telepathic wave brimming with confidence.

=Oh my, what are you saying? It's a piece of cake! I could handle over a hundred young dragons like this.=

The fragment it had absorbed in the Shutan dimension must have been quite a hefty chunk. This was a stark contrast to its past whining about how brainwashing anyone else would be too difficult.

=At my current level, I'm not bound by strict ingredients like before either. That being said, boiling plain water would still be problematic... giving him a rough sense of satiety should be enough.=

“That's exactly what I wanted to hear.”

With that confirmation, Minjun walked over to a nearby patch of dirt untouched by the fire, roughly yanked out some weeds, snapped off some stray twigs, and tossed them into the pan.

He then turned to Ha Eun-seong, who was watching him with a 'what on earth are you doing' expression.

“Fire.”

“...”

After dialing back his intensity to the absolute minimum, Ha Eun-seong exhaled through his nose. A flame no thicker than a finger flowed out, scorching the ground. Minjun placed the pan over the tiny fire and began to stir-fry the contents, his movements looking lazy but actually possessing extreme efficiency.

As he continued to act as a living stove, Ha Eun-seong marveled inwardly.

'Wow, even a dog wouldn't eat that...'

That concoction had long since lost the right to even be called dog food.

Minjun's expression remained painfully bored as he cooked the bizarre meal—which could only be dubbed 'stir-fried weeds and twigs.' Yet at the same time... he also looked a bit fatigued. Perhaps even utterly exhausted.

'Come to think of it, why did he make me light the fire? With the agent's skills, he could easily conjure a flame in the exact shape and temperature he needed.'

Now that he thought about it, Minjun had also taken much longer than expected to arrive.

Even if Teleport was impossible because he hadn't been here before, his Magic should have allowed him to travel faster than Ha Eun-seong's top flight speed.

“Stop.”

At his signal, Ha Eun-seong cut off the flame. Because Kirgzail's upper half was perfectly unharmed, shoving the "food" down his unconscious throat wasn't particularly difficult.

“Ah...”

The dragon regained his senses and immediately stared up at Minjun with sparkling, adoring eyes—even though the searing pain should still be present. Instead of stowing the Frying Pan away, Minjun handed it to Ha Eun-seong for safekeeping. Asiph-1 had guaranteed the brainwashing, but Minjun figured he might need to cook up another batch if the effect faded.

For Ha Eun-seong, it was the first time he had held the Frying Pan in a long while. Asiph-1 seemed to recognize him as well, greeting him gladly. The Magic Tool projected a languid telepathic wave, carrying the lingering afterglow of the rapturous joy it had just inflicted.

=Oho... The million-Talent man. It's been a while.=

“...”

The Frying Pan had given him that nickname back when he'd stolen a million Talents and run away. Now that he actually had a million-Talent bounty on his head, the moniker just sounded unpleasant.

Ha Eun-seong swiftly changed the subject. Minjun was too busy interrogating the dragon to pay attention to their exchange.

“He must be in an agonizing amount of pain from getting scorched like that, but he isn't even showing it.”

He was referring to Kirgzail's newly worshipful attitude toward Minjun.

The Frying Pan answered proudly.

=Of course! Since my power is overflowing now, I made sure to make him overwhelmingly happy. Right now, there probably isn't a happier dragon on the entire planet!=

A happy dragon.

Ha Eun-seong felt a bizarre sense of incongruity at that combination of words.

Did a dragon... really deserve to be happy?

The deep-seated hatred for dragons he had pushed aside for so long suddenly surged back into his mind—even if he was currently borrowing a dragon's body to survive.

'To sell out his own younger brother for money.'

From the perspective of a ghost who had sacrificed himself for his own two younger brothers even after his death, it was an act that triggered absolute repulsion.

Anyway, it was perfectly typical of a dragon. They possessed zero morals or ethics in the face of their own desires. Honestly, it was a miracle they didn't just eat each other. If it weren't for the Dragonic Code and draconic oaths, they would have slaughtered one another into extinction ages ago.

To make a dragon like that happy.

“...”

But a moment later, his thoughts shifted.

'Wait, is this actually better?'

At least he wouldn't be able to commit any more atrocities while completely brainwashed like that, right?

“Hey, if we go back to Earth later... couldn't you just brainwash all the dragons there like this? The dragons would be thrilled because they're happy, and everyone else would be thrilled because the dragons aren't tormenting them anymore. It's a win-win for everyone.”

Instead of a verbal answer, the Magic Tool responded with a telepathic wave that felt like a smug smile.

It was then.

“...!”

The atmosphere suddenly froze. Ha Eun-seong saw Minjun's expression twist into the face of a furious demon.

With a gaze radiating pure hostility, Minjun snapped his head to look beyond the horizon. It was exactly the direction where their party had been resting just moments ago.

'What's wrong?'

The reason he was glaring toward the coastline was simple: someone had just tampered with the barrier he'd placed around Dell.

Minjun turned back to Kirgzail. The dragon had been cheerfully rattling off the names and traits of the Ancient Dragons living nearby, but Minjun cut him off with a razor-sharp tone.

“Who is the dragon nesting closest to that ocean?!”

Minjun hadn't included the deep-sea dragons in his initial search perimeter, simply because hunting them down and cleaning up the bodies underwater was a massive hassle.

Should he have checked that direction first?! He hadn't expected his barrier to be spotted so quickly.

Facing the dragon herder's terrifying aura, the brainwashed dragon merely answered in a voice drunk with absolute happiness.

“The Sea Dragon... Kalisenar.”

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