The Foreigner on the Periphery

Sitting on the beach of an alien world, Ha Eunseong reviewed the story he had heard today.

The cold moonlight fell silently over the night-swept sand, blurring into a pale blue across the ground. An immaculate contrast of colors unfolded along the writhing boundary where the dark waves met the bluish earth. Staring fixedly at the scenery, Ha Eunseong directed a question inward.

'Mister.'

Though the original owner of this body was a young dragon by their race's standards, to Ha Eunseong, he was an older man. Chewing over Kirgzail's story, he spoke.

'Mister... you were basically a gigolo, weren't you?'

As expected, no answer returned.

During the day, Ha Eunseong had heard what kind of dragon he was from the body owner's older brother. He had gone missing while traveling to another world, but it seemed his trip to a high-end resort favored by the Dragon Race wasn't simply for a vacation.

He had another goal: to seduce a wealthy, older dragon woman and drain her fortune. Ultimately, he aimed to marry her and extort a massive alimony payout.

'But Mister.'

'Of all people, why did you have to pick a woman like Changcheon...'

Earth's Lightning Dragon, Changcheon, perfectly matched his target profile.

A wealthy Ancient Dragon who frequently changed men, lusted after young dragons, and didn't have much time left to live by dragon standards.

Ha Eunseong had only found out later, but in dragon society, Changcheon had built an infamy that went beyond a mere 'cougar' and bordered on a 'serial killer of younger men.' It meant she changed lovers frequently and in high numbers. And having seized control of Korea's finance and medical sectors, she certainly had the wealth.

There was just one problem: it was true that Changcheon desired the bodies of young men, but her reasons differed from what people assumed.

And she wasn't a serial killer as a metaphor or a joke—she was a literal one.

'I can pretty much guess what happened.'

The body's owner must have approached Changcheon, and things probably went very well. He must have assumed he had completely won her over.

But he was kidnapped right in the middle of his scheme. The Ancient Dragon's meticulous cleanup would have left no trace of their time together. Destroying evidence and silencing witnesses would be basic procedure. Changcheon was that kind of woman.

'But Mister. Even so, why can't you wake up?'

He had uncovered the body owner's identity, but one mystery remained unsolved.

Why was his soul still asleep?

Back when the Talents, Ha Eunseong's spirit, and the body owner's spirit had coexisted in this flesh, Ha Eunseong had unconsciously consumed the Talents to absorb the owner's spiritual power. As a result, Minjun declared that his soul had acquired a status comparable to a dragon.

Minjun had also said this: given time, the body owner's soul would recover.

Yet Ha Eunseong was currently experiencing the one and only instance where his creditor's guarantee had failed to materialize.

'I thought it was because you were a special dragon, Mister.'

But after asking Kirgzail, it turned out this body's owner was the most ordinary of dragons.

Thus, Ha Eunseong reached a conclusion.

'If you aren't special, Mister. If the reason doesn't lie with you...'

The reason had to be with him.

That was why he felt so confused.

"Grrr!"

Just then, a wet groan sounded by his feet.

Ha Eunseong broke from his thoughts and glanced down. At Minjun's request, he and the priest had stepped far away from the others. Yumtus, having finally found a moment of free time since they set out together, had slipped into meditation. Ha Eunseong checked the unconscious priest's forehead and noticed a sudden surge in the blood pouring out. Without panicking, he wiped it away with a practiced hand.

Right then.

Flash!

"Ah, you're back."

Instead of looking at the priest's body on the ground, Ha Eunseong looked up at the sky. A sight invisible to ordinary people unfolded above. With a burst of light, the sky tore open for a brief instant before sewing itself shut. Just before the jagged black rift completely healed, a soul shot out through the crack.

It was Yumtus.

The priest's soul dove straight toward his own body sprawled on the ground.

"Cough! Grrr!"

Having ended his out-of-body projection, Yumtus twitched and convulsed. A moment later, he spoke in a voice still heavy with lingering traces of his journey.

"Ah, thank you, Sir Ha Eunseong. You kept watch over me all this time."

"You keep an eye on me when I leave my body, Priest. We help each other out."

Shrugging, Ha Eunseong spoke, seemingly unable to shake the sight he had just witnessed.

"You just got back from 'there,' right? In your spiritual body state."

"Correct."

Ha Eunseong marveled at the thought.

The phenomenon he had just seen was, to borrow the priest's phrase, a 'dimensional leap in a spiritual body state, completely devoid of material intervention or influence.'

Simply put, only his soul had crossed dimensions and returned. While physical matter had to overcome immense physical repulsion to pierce the dimensional barrier, Yumtus's mental body had easily traveled to his destination without any such burden.

However, if everyone could do this, ghosts would take trips to outer space whenever they felt bored.

Even knowing this, Ha Eunseong couldn't give up his lingering attachment to the idea.

"I can't do that, can I?"

Yumtus wore a benevolent smile.

"I will tell you again: if you convert to our religion and deeply fortify your faith, you too might receive such grace and blessings. That is the only method I know of."

'If I could do that, I could just pop my soul back over to Earth! Then I could check on my siblings myself.' Ha Eunseong had initially thought exactly that.

But after hearing more of the explanation, it seemed impossible even if he became the Pope of the Dreamland Church. The only dimension they could reach in their spiritual bodies was the place called Elahu-Praga, where their god slumbered. On top of that, the process apparently consumed an exorbitant amount of Divine Power.

Giving up, he asked another question.

"Did you successfully meet your fellow priest?"

The way Yumtus communicated with the priests from his home dimension without fear of wiretaps was by meeting them in Elahu-Praga, with both sides in an out-of-body state.

"Yes, we met after a long time and exchanged information."

As he said this, his face looked somewhat dark.

"I had gone far too long without seeing them. Whenever my Divine Power recharged, I was busy trying to heal the Princess of Endelion."

But today, thanks to Minjun, he finally had some breathing room.

"I explained the changes that occurred in the meantime. Unlike our initial plan, we no longer need the Terminal's facilities or a Jump Ship."

Upon hearing the plan to use Endelion as a mount, the other party had nearly fainted, even in his soul state.

"And I urged them not to neglect their preparations for welcoming the avatar."

Their next destination was Yumtus's Home World, the very place where the Elahu-Praga Church Headquarters was located.

Because it was a location they could reach from here with a single leap, Minjun had decided to go there right away. Finding the other fragment of Asiph-1 could wait until after they absorbed the Talents hoarded by the church.

"But why does your expression look so grim?"

Upon asking, Ha Eunseong was taken aback.

Intense wrath was pouring out from the eyes of the priest, a man who rarely showed any anger.

"It seems the atmosphere took a strange turn while I was unable to stay in contact."

"How so?"

He spoke, grinding his teeth.

"Truly disgraceful as it is, the voices harboring doubts about the avatar's existence are growing louder!"

*

The dwarf medical specialist, Choi Taeksu, stood frozen before the miracle he had just witnessed.

'What on earth just happened?'

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. When he put them back on and looked, the scene in front of him hadn't changed.

He felt the urge to yank at his beard but couldn't actually do so. The prickly stubble covering his chin, shaved barely three hours ago, grew at an astonishing rate compared to a human's, but it still wasn't long enough to grasp. It was the karma of working in one of the few professions that required a dwarf to shave every day.

'My god.'

Choi Taeksu stared at the carpet of mold densely covering the emergency room floor beneath their feet.

A tangled mix of black and whitish fuzz, it was a sight that absolutely should not exist in a hospital. Mold spores carried in on people's clothes or skin couldn't grow or multiply here. With regular disinfection, that was only natural.

However, when the young man Chairman Jenkinson had brought in a moment ago—the man wearing a bucket hat pulled low—unleashed an explosion of golden light from his hand, the impossible occurred. The floor by the bed, which had been practically a sea of blood, was now completely overrun with flourishing mold.

"..."

In front of the slack-jawed onlookers and the Red Dragon who narrowed his eyes in pure absurdity, the young man scratched the back of his head. 'Oops, my aim was off.' And then, a golden flash erupted once more.

'And then it ended up like this.'

Turning his gaze from the carpet of mold, Choi Taeksu looked at the second miracle that had occurred today. Though some time had passed since he witnessed those two miracles, he still hadn't escaped the shock. Another medical staff member's voice drifted into his ears.

"Vitals are stable. Ms. Park Jeong-yuk! Ms. Park Jeong-yuk! Can you hear my voice?"

He could see the orc patient twitch. The thick Chest Tube inserted into her flank had naturally been pushed out and had long since fallen to the floor. The hole had healed over flawlessly. They had already checked, but they palpated her once more. Her full-body fractures hadn't left a single trace, and all her bones were perfectly fused back together. The blood that had pooled tautly in her abdomen had vanished completely, and no external injuries were visible either. There was zero sign of additional internal bleeding.

Choi Taeksu had eaten hospital food long enough to be an industry veteran, and he had plenty of experience witnessing Divine Power right up close. Yet, up until now, he had never encountered 'something like this.'

The patient had perfectly recovered.

Literally, in the blink of an eye.

"An ability user like this exists in the world?"

He remembered the conversation the young man had with the dragon right after performing the miracle.

Chairman Jenkinson had asked the ability user this:

'How many more people can you do this for?'

Then, a mumble came through his mask.

'...I'm not really sure.'

The chairman and the medical staff misunderstood that answer as a negative one. They thought it meant he had no confidence in how many more he could heal. It was understandable. He had just perfectly revived a patient who was at death's door.

But upon hearing his next words, they realized that wasn't the case.

Jenkinson's eyes had widened in shock.

'You think you can keep going no matter how many there are?!'

The young man's 'I'm not sure' meant this:

He didn't know exactly how many people he would have to heal before this power was completely depleted.

He honestly wasn't sure, but for now, it felt like he could just keep going endlessly.

It was an answer that defied common sense.

But now, with a little more time having passed, no one in the emergency room could scoff at the young man's words as a bluff.

Tearing his gaze away from the orc patient, Choi Taeksu watched the scenes unfolding everywhere. After finishing his business at this bed, Jenkinson's secretary had verified the locations of the most critical patients with Choi Taeksu, the head of the emergency room. Roaming around under her guidance, the 'miracle ability user' with his eyes, nose, and mouth covered had proceeded to save the critically ill patients one by one.

"M-My word!"

"She lived! She's alive! Oh my god, thank you, doctor. Thank you!"

"A-Ah, no. This wasn't my doing... That man over there with the sunglasses..."

"Mother! Are you awake? Sob... Mother!"

"My god, this is a miracle!"

Of course, not every attempt was flawless. Even Choi Taeksu, who lacked a Supernatural Ability himself, could easily tell that the young man was still clumsy at controlling his own power.

Flash!

"Ah... I missed again."

Fzzt!

"Ah... I wasn't trying to shoot it there just now."

Instead of concentrating in one spot and hitting the target, the golden light exploding from his hand scattered widely, bounced off into strange places to pierce the ceiling, or blew right through the wall to blanket the nursing hospital in the adjacent building.

As a result, the miracles didn't just stay confined to the emergency room.

Although word hadn't reached Choi Taeksu's ears yet, various incidents were breaking out in every corner of the university hospital. A human senior hospitalized for severe dementia looked in the mirror, freaked out at his own disheveled state, and demanded his discharge papers in a perfectly lucid voice. A half-elf pianist who had been diagnosed with an unusable arm from a car accident froze in horror as she looked down at her suddenly perfectly mobile fingers. A middle-aged orc who had been in a vegetative state for three years opened his eyes and demanded to see his already-remarried wife, turning the nurses' station completely upside down. Such events were occurring one after another.

As time passed, the treatment for the emergency room patients was almost completely wrapped up. Those whose lives were saved and their guardians shed tears, dropping to their knees to bow, but the young man hid behind the secretarial staff as if the attention burdened him. However, he didn't leave the premises immediately; it was Jenkinson's order to stay on standby in case more critical patients were transferred in.

Meanwhile, a few of the ER doctors threw their hands up and gave up on treating anyone altogether. Even if they wanted to work, there were no patients left. Choi Taeksu was one of them.

Staring blankly at the priest of miracles, he muttered.

'Just what kind of god does that cleric serve?'

If the world was flooded with priests like that, doctors would become obsolete.

Even knowing this rationally, the dwarf felt a powerful urge to convert to that religion.

"..."

On the other hand, among the various gazes pouring onto the young man with the covered face, there was one laced with considerable concern.

The person casting that look was none other than Jenkinson.

'Incredible. He surpassed my expectations by a mile.'

It couldn't be helped for those who were already dead, but the youngest spider monster he had urgently brought over from Hong Kong succeeded in saving everyone who still had even a breath of life left in them.

The more astonishing point was that, even when asked how many more he could handle based on his current state, the kid gave the exact same answer.

'I don't know.'

The Red Dragon felt goosebumps break out across his human-modeled body.

And he focused on the question he still couldn't shake.

'Just what kind of god is that child imagining to believe in?'

He had already asked multiple times, but the youngest's answers hadn't been specific enough to satisfy Jenkinson.

He merely replied that he pictured a master he had to follow blindly. Because it was a concept an ordinary dragon couldn't even fathom, Jenkinson felt like he had hit a brick wall.

'He wields this level of power while his god's name, doctrine, and attributes are completely unestablished?'

The question he threw at himself carried a sliver of dread.

Divine Power grows stronger as one's understanding of and faith in a god deepens.

Yet the youngest of the spider dragons was wielding such terrifying Divine Power just by conjuring the concept of a master.

Then, what if the identity of the god he imagined and felt became more fleshed out?

What if, like the founders of all religions, that youngest child successfully internalized a much more detailed doctrine and a comprehensive story regarding his god's existence?

Being a dragon himself, Jenkinson did not believe in gods. He had no doubt that they existed solely within the realm of human concepts. That was exactly why he felt fear.

'If the portrait of that god inside that child's daydreams is completed with even clearer brushstrokes and vivid colors.'

How far will that ability reach?

Masking his shock and apprehension, Jenkinson stared at the terminally ill young man who had just become the founder of a religion serving a Nameless God.

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