The Foreigner on the Periphery

"My god, who in the world invented something like this?"

The one marveling was Asisphael, a Dragon living on Earth.

She repeatedly voiced her admiration for the Ring in her hand. Asisphael was a member of the Dragon Race who had just shed her Hatchling traits; naturally, it was her first time encountering an artifact like this.

Her lover's apathetic reply met her ears. The other Dragon present, Kaien, spoke while leaning against the wall.

"Who else? It has to be those tentacles."

"...Endelion?"

"Yeah. You saw it in Hong Kong that day, didn't you? They say only a tentacle monster like that could create something like this."

Both halves of this couple belonged to Earth's hatchling boomer generation. Right after the immigration routes to Earth opened, Dragons who had delayed laying their eggs in their home dimension due to complicated circumstances gave birth to children in rapid succession. This was the reason for the bizarrely high number of Dragons on Earth who had yet to even reach a hundred years of age.

Because of this, they naturally hadn't experienced anything like the wars against the Ancient Race, and they had only seen an Endelion in the flesh for the first time recently in Hong Kong. It was the giant monster that had flown in, bold and unhurried, from the southern seas of Hong Kong Island right when the Dragon Lord was found dead and his will made public.

"Endelion."

Even Asisphael knew they possessed the highest level of technological prowess among the Ancient Race.

Yeah, it would take at least that much to create a miraculous item like this.

Muttering inwardly, Asisphael decided to test it one more time. She brought the Ring she held to the entrance of her lair, where she was alone with her lover.

Vwoom!

Despite having witnessed the sight once already, her astonishment remained unchanged. The barrier crumbled without any resistance. Yet during this process, no alarm was sent to Asisphael, the master of the barrier, to warn her of the breach. Furthermore, when she pulled the Ring away, the barrier restored itself flawlessly, as if nothing had ever happened.

This was the power of the artifact she held.

It didn't take an exceptional imagination to think of an efficient use for this tool.

"Are you saying this will work on 'that barrier' as well?"

"Yeah. The only tool capable of piercing a tentacle monster's barrier would have to be an invention from the exact same tentacle monster."

It made sense. While accepting the logic, Asisphael realized anew that Kaien was completely serious. She repeated the plan he had just shared.

"You want to use this to steal... the Dragon Lord's heart?"

Kaien answered firmly.

"Exactly!"

The body of the previous Dragon Lord had initially been sealed beneath the Hong Kong Terminal before being relocated to the Korea Terminal. What Kaien had his eyes on was the state of the barrier protecting it.

"The head of the Committee Earth Representative Office who cast that barrier... right, the tentacle creature we saw in Hong Kong is currently missing. Although an existing barrier wouldn't just vanish out of nowhere, right now—when they can't manage it in real time—is the perfect opportunity!"

Furthermore, Jenkinson, the Ancient Dragon who held a stake in the Korea Terminal, was currently staying in Hong Kong to prepare for the Lord's election. Kaien passionately argued that a golden opportunity like this would never come again.

The plan was simple. They would pierce the barrier protecting the Lord's corpse using this Ring. Then, they would extract the Dragon Heart, and he and Asisphael would split and absorb it. Finally, they would vanish without a trace, as if nobody had ever come or gone. The end! How simple was that?

"By the time the Ancient Dragons gather to check the corpse on the day the Lord mandated in his will, it'll be too late. They'll just find an empty body with its heart ripped out. Doesn't that sound thrilling?"

Hostility toward Earth's Ancient Dragons burned in Kaien's eyes as he muttered. Asisphael understood why he harbored such emotions.

Kaien was the second child the former Dragon Lord had fathered on Earth.

Sparks flying from his eyes, he spoke in a harsh tone.

"Hand the heart over to the next Dragon Lord? Hmph, it might be my father's will, but I refuse to accept such nonsense. I am the Lord's rightful direct descendant. I have the right to inherit the Dragon Heart!"

Kaien intended to seize the heart by any means before the next Lord could inherit it according to the will. Asisphael knew just how hard he had been laying the groundwork for his goal. She often felt this way, but her lover was truly adept at coming up with un-Dragon-like ideas. Inciting his peers in similar situations to veto the election by playing on their inferiority complexes was not a tactic a Dragon would easily devise.

"You instigated the election boycott to buy time, didn't you? To delay the birth of the next Lord and smuggle out the Dragon Heart in the meantime."

This was the very root of the problem giving Jenkinson such a headache lately.

Arguing that the system where only Ancient Dragons could run for the Lord's seat was the product of extreme ageism, a strange movement had recently taken root among Earth's young Dragons. If their election boycott became a reality, the quorum wouldn't be met, which would be disastrous for leading candidates like Jenkinson.

"Yeah. That was also what 'they' wanted from me. They asked me to prevent the election from being moved up much earlier than the date specified in the will."

"Then did they give you this artifact, too?"

Worry laced Asisphael's voice as she asked. In response, Kaien moved quietly instead of answering right away. He draped his long neck over his lover's nape, wrapping around her. The sound of their scales rubbing smoothly against one another rang out. When Kaien spoke in this position, a pleasant vibration transmitted through Asisphael's skin. She felt her anxiety settle, if only a little.

He whispered soothingly.

"Don't worry. Everything will be fine. My father was such a strong Dragon that it'd be hard to find anyone who could rival him, not just on Earth, but in the entire dimensional system. Just the two of us will share the Dragon Heart left by such a Dragon. Then, we can instantly gain strength comparable to an Ancient Dragon. After that, we'll be able to live without envying other Dragons no matter what dimension we go to."

Listening to his words, Asisphael quietly etched a doubt in her heart.

'If we succeed in this plan... sure. The two of us get the Dragon Heart. But what do "they" get in return?'

She knew Kaien had accomplices. He absolutely refused to speak of them, but Asisphael had a vague guess as to their identity. Who else could secretly procure an Endelion artifact for him?

The rational judgment Kaien had cast aside out of greed frightened her. To a Dragon's mind, pure goodwill that expected nothing in return did not exist. The act of reaching out to someone else was only possible when one was confident they could reap a benefit commensurate with their effort and trouble. This was a truth she had learned and personally realized since her days as a Hatchling.

Because of that, she felt all the more anxious.

'There is no such thing as kindness without reason in this world... Kaien.'

   *

Choi Taeksu, an emergency medicine specialist working at Hyehwa-dong University Hospital, thought in despair. On days like this, he felt as if the world was filled with an uncontrollable malice.

Also, on days like this, he naturally came to regret his choices. Why had he picked emergency medicine? If he had chosen plastic surgery like his other dwarf peers, he would be making a fortune right now. After all, if their species' unique manual dexterity, strong memorization of details, manic temperament to obsess over one thing once hooked, and uncompromising craftsmanship combined with academic brains, they could become renowned surgeons who completely overwhelmed other races.

The number of Supernatural Ability Users and artifacts in the world was limited, and they couldn't meet the demands of everyone in society. This was the reason why doctors still earned a fairly decent income in a world where all sorts of Supernatural Abilities were rampant.

"Ugh! Urgh... Uuuu!"

The dwarf specialist quickly erased those thoughts and ran to the emergency room bed. The moment he stepped onto the footstool prepared by the intern, the patient's condition—which had been hard to see due to his short stature—came into view all at once.

"An orc woman. Forty-five years old! Suspected full-body fractures and organ damage!"

Covered in blood, the patient was teetering on the crossroads of life and death even at a glance.

Just how many fatal injuries had he seen today?

To him, tonight felt like a nightmare he couldn't escape. Right after a terrorist attack erupted at an event hall in the Hotel three kilometers from the hospital, patients had been rolling in without end.

Burning with the will to save her no matter what, he palpated the patient's entire body. It didn't take long to confirm that her bones were so severely broken and crushed that finding an intact one was rare.

Looking at the CT scans a moment later, he saw that bone fragments had embedded themselves deep inside her body, tearing her organs apart. After hanging up a massive amount of Rh- D blood and IV fluids, he inserted a thick Chest Tube into both of her flanks. Blood that had pooled in her body poured out through the tubes, turning the floor into a soaked sea of blood. In the meantime, someone mentioned that this orc was the family member of a National Assemblyman, but the words didn't properly register in Choi Taeksu's ears.

Whose family she was, what did that matter?

Seeing as a Divine Power user wasn't by her side, she had been pushed down the priority list. In that case, the only way to save this patient was for an ordinary doctor like himself to cling to her as if his own life depended on it.

After the terrorist attack on the group containing assembly members became known, the country urgently dispatched Divine Power users—whom they had secured in preparation for emergencies—to the hospitals. The capabilities of those Divine Power users who weren't bound by sponsorship contracts with Ancient Dragons and didn't have years' worth of backlogged reservations were obvious. Even then, they were short on numbers, so even the critically injured assembly members were currently waiting their turn to receive treatment.

Under these circumstances, someone like an assemblyman's family member would be pushed far to the back. It was obvious that the Divine Power of the dispatched personnel would be completely depleted before her turn ever arrived.

"Ugh... Uuuu!"

The patient continuously muttered something in a mangled voice. The situation was grim. Covered in blood, Choi Taeksu was seized by a dark premonition of death. He gritted his teeth.

The orc woman was losing blood at almost the exact same rate she was receiving it via transfusion. Choi Taeksu knew full well that even if they kept pouring near-infinite amounts of blood into her like this, she wouldn't be able to hold out for long. If a blood transfusion dragged on for too much time, the body would eventually show rejection symptoms. As if it knew that this wasn't 'originally its own.'

Beeeep! Be-be-beep!

Her blood pressure was dropping rapidly. The patient's consciousness was fading as well.

"Surgery is impossible at this rate!"

Unless her condition stabilized, opening up her chest and abdomen was out of the question. But Choi Taeksu knew it would take something close to a miracle for a patient like this to regain stable vitals.

Was another one going to die like this?

The only thing the medical staff could do now was pray.

It was then.

"...!"

The hyper-focused specialist hadn't noticed it, but the atmosphere beyond the emergency room curtains had grown extremely chaotic.

The sound of people gasping in shock could be heard here and there, along with the voices of hospital officials who rarely ever came down to the emergency room. On top of that, conversations with a tone unsuited for this location were being exchanged as people searched for the head of the emergency room, but Choi Taeksu—the one actually on duty and in charge today—failed to hear them.

It was immediately after someone roughly swept aside the curtain that he confirmed the source of that atmosphere with his own two eyes.

"...Huh?!"

For a moment, Choi Taeksu wondered if he was hallucinating from extreme stress.

The young man who had roughly pulled the curtain back. That foreigner with neatly slicked-back blond hair had an oddly familiar face. Whether looking at his appearance or anything else, he was definitely not the patient's family member.

Whatever his identity was, Choi Taeksu wanted to scream that he couldn't just barge in like this during emergency treatment, but he hesitated. Something flickered ticklishly in his mind, right on the verge of surfacing. It was an intuition that made him hold back his scolding even in this urgent moment.

Only then, a beat late, did he see the high-ranking hospital officials lined up behind the young man. All of them wore nervous expressions.

Just who was that man?

He couldn't remember the name, so why did he look so familiar?

"Ah!"

Choi Taeksu felt as if lightning had struck inside his head.

Right! It was him!

But how was he here?!

This university hospital where he worked had originally been owned by a Lightning Dragon named Changcheon, but after she died, it had been acquired by another Ancient Dragon.

The human facial form frequently adopted by the Red Dragon who became its new owner was exactly...

Yeah, it looked exactly like that.

"...Chairman Jenkinson!"

Jenkinson had intended to return straight to Hong Kong right after handling the aftermath of the terrorist attack at the Hotel and isolating the culprit. However, a certain thought lingering in his mind held him back.

His contemplation did not last long.

In order to Teleport the vast distance between Hong Kong and Seoul, even an Ancient Dragon would expend an enormous amount of energy. And Ancient Dragons, who were inevitably self-preservationists, highly loathed meaningless wastes of energy (by Dragon standards).

Despite this, Jenkinson had immediately Teleported back to Hong Kong, picked someone up there, and then relocated to Korea once more. After that, he had identified the hospital where the injured from the terrorist attack were transported and headed straight there.

Jenkinson checked Choi Taeksu's name tag. The head of the emergency room at this hospital. However, he didn't seem to have the luxury of exchanging a long conversation. Looking at the blood-covered patient on the bed, he gave an order to the man standing beside him.

"Do it just like we discussed earlier."

Only then did Choi Taeksu realize the presence of the other man. Although he had a bucket hat pulled down low over his ears and wore both sunglasses and a mask, a few stray strands of blond hair were visible.

Following the order, the man reached his hand forward. In that instant.

Flash!

Choi Taeksu witnessed a miracle.

   *

Dell thought to herself.

Was this... a miracle?

"Just what did you do to me?"

She asked, looking at Minjun.

Her dizzy senses gradually found their proper place and recovered.

"How did I recover to this level in just half a day?"

Time had passed since she opened her eyes, and it was now the middle of the night. Seeing that the color of the moon and the constellations had changed, she reaffirmed that the dimensional jump had successfully concluded. Hearing the sound of crashing waves, it seemed the ocean was not far away. The silence waiting for an answer was filled by the damp wind.

Before losing consciousness, Dell remembered that the state of her body had been a total mess. Because of her aged flesh, her life force had hit rock bottom. To the point where she had even worried that she might not wake up again while attempting the dimensional jump. It had deteriorated so badly that even Yuntus's Divine Power would hit its limit.

And yet, right now...

"How is this possible?"

Her ex-husband listened to her words in silence.

After Dell had regained consciousness during the day, Minjun had moved her Polymorphed body to land. Then, like a mother bird constantly ferrying food to the nestlings, he repeatedly vanished somewhere and returned. And every time he did, he poured an immense amount of life force into Dell's body—something even she, an Endelion, couldn't have imagined was possible.

A strange light flickered in her eyes.

"If you can do something like this... then even the Ancient Race wouldn't have to commit such 'horrific acts' to achieve eternal life...!"

Knowing what Dell had misunderstood, Minjun shook his head.

"It's just a stopgap measure. What I'm doing right now is akin to refilling a jar whose bottom has cracked and its water level has drained away, without actually repairing the jar itself. As time passes, your life force will hit rock bottom again."

"Anyway," Minjun said, changing the subject.

This was after he had asked the Dragon and the priest to step away. Currently, Dell and Minjun were sitting face-to-face on the shore of this world, which they had chosen as a layover because it purportedly had a sizable Dragon population. It was the first time they had a moment alone since he kidnapped her to serve as both a hostage and a substitute Jump Ship.

Right now, Minjun was trying to resolve a long-standing question. Something he had grown even more curious about since recovering his memories.

He had heard the story about Dell from Yuntus, and he had formed a hypothesis in his mind. The question he was about to ask was meant to prove that hypothesis.

"The deceased Dragon Lord kept something like this stored away inside a vault. Where could that Dragon have gotten such a thing? I don't even need to mull over the answer. This... you were actually the one who gave it to him, weren't you?"

Asking this, Minjun pulled a small object out of his pocket. Seeing it, Dell's eyes wavered quietly.

It was the metallic Cube Minjun had inherited from the Dragon Lord.

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