Screams, the scent of blood, the blue sky, the rushing water, the clear air, and the scorching sunlight all churned together in a dizzying spin. The pain melted into the sunlight and shattered.
A vivid, overwhelming agony burned across the left side of her body.
Thrashing in agony, Kalisenar suddenly felt something sharp slice through her right side.
—!
Another chunk of flesh tore away.
Stripped of yet more flesh by an outside force, the dragon lost her mind.
She flailed blindly, driven only by raw instinct. The seawater around her turned crimson. The two massive chunks of flesh tumbled through the bloody foam before slowly sinking into the depths.
Watching her, Minjun calmly assessed the situation.
‘That takes care of her most dangerous weapon.’
Just as a Fire Dragon breathed fire and a Lightning Dragon summoned lightning, a Sea Dragon used the vibrations emitted from those vents to manipulate the ocean and summon devastating tsunamis. But Kalisenar couldn't do that anymore. Minjun had carved the organs out entirely.
Minjun turned his head to gauge the distance to land. Thanks to his relentless pushing, he had already driven the dragon close enough to see the coastline.
Fwoosh!
He gained altitude and aimed his sword at the dragon below.
Shadows boiled. Instead of covering Minjun's body, they wrapped tightly around Asiph-1 in its sword form. Using the dagger as a root, the shadows splintered outward like black veins, branching out into a massive construct. Shaped somewhere between a clawed hand and a jagged rake, it plunged into the water and seized its prey. Like the jaws of an excavator, the shadow hand scooped the dragon out of the ocean along with a massive torrent of water.
And with a mighty heave, he hurled her toward the land!
Roooar!
The dragon flew in a massive arc. The Sea Dragon, a creature meant to swim the ocean depths, soared through the sky like a Fire Dragon or a Lightning Dragon. Once again, it was a violently forced flight.
Her first and likely only experience being thrown through the air ended abruptly. Plummeting from the sky, the Sea Dragon slammed brutally into the coastal shore.
The sheer impact shook the earth. Her massive body bounced and tumbled across the ground, carving a deep trench through the coastal forest before finally skidding to a halt.
Amid the thick clouds of dust, Kalisenar struggled to drag herself back toward the ocean. Curled up and thoroughly bathed in blood, her long neck swayed weakly—like a newborn giraffe struggling to stand on wobbly knees.
A moment later.
Thud!
Her long neck collapsed limply against the ground. The dragon stopped moving.
Minjun knew she wasn't dead yet. He could clearly see the abundant life force still pulsing within her.
Swish!
Minjun touched down on the ruined shoreline, which looked as though a typhoon had ripped through it. He walked toward the fallen dragon. His downward gaze remained razor-sharp.
‘To think a mere Sea Dragon managed to find and shatter my barrier... My strength really is depleted. Going berserk in that last dimension was the deciding factor. Slaying Todd would have been enough, but I pointlessly wasted power taking my anger out on the humans there.’
Adkiel's attempt to cloud his mind had failed to destroy Minjun completely, but it had still inflicted considerable damage.
Blood gushed like waterfalls from the severed flesh on both of the dragon's flanks. He didn't consider it a waste. He had a way to retrieve it.
=Are you going to brainwash her?=
‘No, she's completely unconscious.’
The heavy scent of blood surrounded him. The very air felt like it was growing thicker, stickier. Dense and sweet.
Thump. Thump. His heart pounded. Unlike Raymond Wong, who was half a corpse from long-term, intensive blood drain, this blood was vivid and potent.
The vigorously pulsing scent of life.
Minjun felt all his senses locking onto Kalisenar. An overwhelming urge flared within him to squeeze out every last drop.
Yet, amid that intoxicating haze, he recalled an old vow.
‘Someday, when all of my kin awaken... I promised I would persuade them.’
A way to survive without consuming sentient dragons. He didn't know if such a method existed, but he'd sworn to at least try to find one.
One of the reasons he'd made that decision was a certain letter.
‘But thinking about it now, that letter was a mass of contradictions.’
Its arguments, relying entirely on appeals to pity and empathy, harbored a glaring, self-contradictory flaw.
The sender of that letter, the Dragon Lord, and the very dragons he sought to protect and defend... had also once eaten sentient beings.
Their reasons varied. It suited their tastes, and sometimes, they staged public acts of predation purely to plunge their subjects into fear and despair.
And looking back, there was an even simpler reason that eclipsed all the others.
They ate simply because they could.
‘Then what about the other reason?’
Jenkinson.
He remembered. It was because of a certain dragon he had befriended during his time as a prisoner.
But now, even his connection to that friend felt like a distant dream. The sense of reality—the sheer weight of his existence back then—had grown faint.
‘No, is this even important in the first place? The issue of whether or not to eat dragons.’
He muttered inwardly.
‘Even with sentience, it's not like they're people.’
At this very moment, a profound shift was occurring within Minjun. Depending on one's perspective, it could be called an erosion of empathy, or simply a realignment of priorities.
‘Of course, I can still show consideration for other races like I did in the past. But does their freedom and happiness truly hold more value than the pain and hardship we suffer?’
Unsurprisingly, Minjun's kin hadn't historically referred to themselves as the primordial race. A much simpler word existed.
People.
‘In an era where my kin... where my people are treated like livestock, does agonizing over the welfare of our former cattle really matter?’
He asked himself one last question.
Why do I keep obsessing over this? What truly matters, and what doesn't?
Ethics were subjective; what one deemed moral, another could condemn as depraved. Even an ideology once dismissed as archaic garbage could be celebrated as a revolutionary truth in a different era.
The conflict raging within Minjun was a war between his differing egos, and simultaneously, a clash of eras and their moralities.
Minjun was the exact opposite of Telesia. The time he had spent living as a free man far outweighed his years as a prisoner. Naturally, as time went on, his ego would increasingly lean toward his original self.
Even so, he still couldn't coldly sever and cast away his identity as Asiph-666. The memories forged over those few short centuries clung to him like shackles.
After all this internal debate, the member of the primordial race arrived at his usual conclusion.
‘For now, I just need to focus on what has to be done.’
To live in the present. In reality.
With that thought, Minjun parted his lips. He began chanting a spell he had personally developed ages ago. It was a Dark Magic spell meant to manipulate blood.
Hsssss!
The torrential waterfall of dragon blood instantly vaporized into mist. The crimson pools soaking the earth vanished, rising into the air as microscopic, floating particles. Soon, a dense fog of blood completely enveloped them both.
Remaining perfectly still, he resolutely chanted a single additional command.
The crimson mist immediately spiraled into a violent storm. The vaporized blood rode the surging winds, all rushing directly toward Minjun.
Standing in the eye of the storm, he began to absorb it.
A thrilling rush swept through him as he drank it in greedily. As if relying solely on his mouth and throat was too slow, his entire mist-drenched body drew the blood in. His nose, his mouth, and every pore of his skin drank deep of the dragon blood.
A smile of pure ecstasy formed on his lips.
In moments like this, all the days he had lived as Ye Minjun... as Asiph-666... truly felt like nothing more than a fleeting illusion.
*
“This isn't a dream...”
Park Jeong-yuk (45 years old, full-time housewife, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul) quietly pinched her left cheek while staring into the mirror.
It hurt. Enough to cleanly remind her that this was reality.
“Yeah, it's really not a dream.”
The middle-aged orc studied her reflection in the vanity mirror. Her features were marked by the undeniable passage of time—she looked exactly like a typical orc her age.
She tore her gaze away to look at her phone. The news article displayed on the screen was a feature on the newly elected orc assemblyman from the recent by-election.
The man in the article's photograph bore a striking resemblance to the face she had just seen in the mirror.
“I can't believe our youngest is actually a government official now.”
Strictly speaking, his previous job as a police officer was also government work, but in her mind, being a politician was in an entirely different league.
“Oh my god, our Jeongpal. Good heavens!”
Park Jeongpal was the youngest of eight orc siblings.
As the sixth child, Jeong-yuk had always boasted to her neighbors that her brilliant little brother would achieve great things someday. But truthfully, when he had become the very first resident of their Orc Community to pass the police exam, she had secretly believed that was the absolute peak of his career.
Given the era they lived in, it was a perfectly natural assumption. She still vividly remembered the celebration when Jeongpal first passed the exam—banners had been hung all over the Orc Community, and their mother had thrown a massive feast for the whole neighborhood.
So, when that dependable little brother announced he was quitting the force with only five years left until retirement to run for office, the family couldn't believe their ears. They had genuinely worried that despite his brains, age had caught up to him and he had been duped by a scammer.
But the moment the ruling party stepped in to officially back his campaign, the family had no choice but to admit the truth: their youngest brother had caught a massive wave of fortune far beyond their wildest imaginations.
“Oh, listen to me ramble. This is no time to be sitting around daydreaming.”
She snapped back to reality and carefully resumed drawing her eyebrows. Today was the day the ruling party's orc assemblymen were hosting a celebratory banquet to welcome Jeongpal to their ranks.
It was an exclusive event where all sorts of high-ranking VIPs would gather to congratulate her brother, and to their immense gratitude, family and friends had been invited as well.
She absolutely could not show up late and damage Jeongpal's reputation on such an important day.
Hurrying to finish her makeup, she shouted toward the living room.
“Taek-su's father! Why are you still sitting around like that? I told you to put on the suit I ironed for you!”
“...Jeez, we don't have to be there until seven. Why are you already making a fuss?”
Grumbling to himself, her husband ground his fangs. He pointed out that it was only three in the afternoon, and even with heavy traffic, the drive would barely take an hour. But Park Jeong-yuk was unyielding.
“If we're even a minute late, everyone will glare at us and Jeongpal will lose face! What if the senior assemblymen get a bad impression of him?!”
“Wow, talk about an overreaction.”
Her husband slid a hand under his undershirt, vigorously scratching his belly as he sluggishly got to his feet. Watching him dawdle made Jeong-yuk feel like she was going to explode.
But she forced herself to breathe, barely suppressing her temper.
‘Right, let's hold it in. Be patient... Today is a good day. Don't get worked up. If my face gets hot, my makeup will streak.’
Finished with her preparations, Jeong-yuk inspected her reflection one last time. It was a momentous occasion where they would be taking hundreds of photos; she couldn't afford a single flaw.
As a final touch before standing up, she reached for a bottle of perfume. Her son had given it to her for Parents' Day two years ago, and she treasured it so much she hadn't even used it ten times. Today, however, she spritzed it on generously. She then checked her phone to see the updates in the siblings' group chat. Jeongsam, the third child, had closed up shop for the day and was personally driving their elderly mother to the venue.
Reading her family's frantic, excited messages, the middle-aged orc's face beamed with pure joy and anticipation. Everyone was already buzzing with excitement.
Humming a cheerful tune, Jeong-yuk smiled to herself. Today was going to be the absolute best day of their family's lives—a day they would remember forever.
She didn't doubt that for a second.
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