The Foreigner on the Periphery

Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

Ba-thump! Ba-thump! Ba-thump! Ba-thump!

Jenkinson was still trapped inside Rod's memories. The albumen enfolding his skin was warm, and the heartbeat echoed endlessly. These were days spent in a prison of warmth and sound.

For an Ancient Dragon, it was the coziest hell in the world.

He felt like he was going crazy.

‘This isn't the time for me to be doing this!’

Could time in the outside world be flowing at the same speed? What if a day spent here equaled a day in reality?

It was a terrifying possibility to even imagine.

As the busiest Dragon on Earth, he couldn't welcome this rest even though he had longed for it. Naturally. This was closer to confinement than a vacation.

Unlike at first, he could now accurately gauge the flow of time within the memory.

Among the sounds he felt through his entire body inside the egg, there were heartbeats of beings other than the embryo. They belonged to the parents incubating it. The embryo flawlessly distinguished between its father's and mother's heartbeats, and what the embryo knew, Jenkinson naturally knew as well.

Rod's father and mother took turns incubating the egg every other day. Since Jenkinson started counting, they had switched places 156 times. That meant 156 days had passed.

Rod grew at an astonishing rate. Unlike before, when he could thrash his limbs freely without touching the shell, he now brushed against it with his slightest movement. Naturally, he felt suffocated.

The day was approaching. The embryo, its father, its mother, and Jenkinson all knew the decisive moment was imminent.

The embryo radiated impatience and irritation.

‘It's too cramped!’

The young Dragon Lord was itching to get outside. He wanted to see the world his parents had described. He wanted to capture the colors and shapes of all things in his eyes and smell their scents. He wanted to walk the earth and fly through the sky.

In stark contrast to his anticipation, Jenkinson felt apprehension.

‘Wait. Hatching? Don't tell me I have to experience that process with him too?’

What did breaking out of an egg feel like again?

His memories from two thousand years ago were faint. However, he had a lingering feeling that it had been incredibly difficult. And excruciatingly painful...

‘Now!’

Finally, the embryo made a firm decision.

‘I can't take this anymore!’

It was an instinctive urge and a practical judgment all at once.

The embryo positioned itself within the dense fluid. Its parents had taught it many things through the shell, but they hadn't taught it how to actually break out. It didn't matter. It already knew how. Its blood and its instincts whispered what to do next. The moment the embryo tensed its entire body, Jenkinson's mind also spiked with extreme tension. He tried to recall his own experience from two thousand years ago.

‘Right, it hurt. It's strange that I forgot all this time... It hurt incredibly...!’

Just then.

The Dragon Lord forcefully slammed his head into the egg's inner wall!

Thud!

‘Argh!’

‘Aaaaargh!’

The embryo and Jenkinson screamed at the same time. Screams that couldn't be carried by sound. Jenkinson, feeling the Dragon Lord's sensations exactly as they were, felt his mind going numb. He yelled out reflexively.

‘Hey, you punk! Take it easy!’

The shout was practically and logically pointless. Jenkinson had already tested it several times, and his words never reached the Dragon Lord in the memory. Furthermore, telling an embryo trying to hatch to headbutt gently was tantamount to telling it to die inside the egg.

A Dragon's eggshell possessed a level of hardness that defied comparison to other oviparous animals. Naturally, it had to be sturdy to contain and support a body larger and heavier than any other creature born in a similar manner, and breaking it was no easy feat even for a baby Dragon.

Lacking a beak, the Dragon continuously slammed the hardest part of its body into the shell. Namely, the horn sprouting from its forehead.

Thud!

With every strike, a terrible agony spread through its skull.

“Look here. The egg is moving!”

“My baby, the time has finally come! Yes, come on out!”

Realizing that hatching had begun, the parents continuously offered words of encouragement.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Seeing the light of the world was by no means easy. For the embryo, it was its first struggle for life. The creature, whose only previous activity had been curling up inside the egg and occasionally thrashing its limbs out of boredom, was doing something for the very first time. To break out of its current state—conceived but not yet born—and truly live.

The agonizing time continued. Every time Rod headbutted the eggshell, Jenkinson felt like he was being tortured. A pain that crushed the mind. Good heavens, was it always this difficult of a process? How could he have forgotten something like this?

And the hardest thing to understand of all was...

‘Just what sin did I commit in my past life to end up experiencing someone else's hatching pains?!’

He blamed the deceased Rod, the future of this embryo.

‘No, seriously, is there really a need to share a memory like this with the next Dragon Lord?!’

Rather, the hypothesis that this was a side effect of incomplete Magic seemed much more plausible.

‘Kaien! Asisphael! Those bastards... When I escape from here, I won't let them off!’

The fundamental culprits behind his suffering in this ordeal were that thieving couple. Jenkinson felt a rare murderous intent toward his own kind.

Thud! Thud!

Meanwhile, the embryo did not stop its painful attempts, driven by its own will. Thoughts and emotions raged like a storm within it. Jenkinson, who felt those just as acutely as the physical pain, was overwhelmed. It was enough to make him momentarily forget the agony.

A clear and intense cry.

I want to go out!

I want to experience!

I want to become!

Where he would go after hatching, what he would experience, and what kind of Dragon he would become didn't matter yet.

He could slowly decide and experience those things later.

First, he had to begin.

Life.

Crack!

A crack formed on the eggshell. The embryo targeted that spot relentlessly. After exhausting effort and continuous attempts...

Craaack!

The pitch-black world tore open in a blinding flash.

Then, a freezing chill that felt like it would ice over his entire body washed over him. It was so cold that Jenkinson momentarily suspected that Rod's parents were not Fire Dragons but Ice Dragons, and had built their Lair in a glacial zone.

However, warmth soon enveloped him. A different kind of warmth from what he had felt inside the egg. It was the energy of fire carried on the wind. One of his parents had cast a spell.

Rod, who had taken a few steps after breaking out of the egg, plopped his chubby bottom down on the ground, seemingly out of energy.

The Dragon, who had undergone a rapid rise in status from embryo to Hatchling just seconds ago, struggled to open his eyes. His blurry vision gradually sharpened. Two massive Dragons were looking down at him. The Hatchling stared back up at them. For some reason, he couldn't take his eyes off them. The young Dragon didn't yet know what the emotion pooling in their eyes as they gazed at his newly hatched form was. He simply thought he wanted them to keep looking at him with those eyes.

A moment later, perhaps having adjusted a bit to the outside...

‘I did it!’

The Hatchling was intoxicated with joy. He was completely triumphant. Dopamine exploded in his brain. For the first time in his life, he had achieved something. He had become a Hatchling. So such an arduous process was necessary to become something by one's own power. Regardless, it was over, so it was fine.

The baby Dragon was certain. Surely there wouldn't be anything this difficult in the future, right? This had to be the first and last time. Yes, absolutely. Living life couldn't possibly be a bigger deal than what he had just done.

The moment he solidified that conviction, the Dragon felt a tickle in his chest. His emotions became more intense and colorful. Joy, anticipation, the urge to shout a declaration to the world, a sense of immense relief and gratification, and a proud feeling of finally being completely whole swirled inside him. In contrast to his tickling chest, his stomach ached and felt unpleasant, as if someone were scraping it. The baby Dragon would soon learn that this sensation was called hunger.

His parents kept talking to him. Licking his scales with their tongues, they praised him for the magnificent feat he had accomplished. But the Hatchling was in no state to reply. Not only did he not know how to pronounce the language of Dragons yet, but before he could even get to that point, he was busy getting used to breathing with his lungs. Oblivious to his struggles, his parents kept talking. It was chaotic. His stomach continued to ache, and his emotions bubbled up. The baby Dragon pondered. How do I solve this situation?

Ah, whatever. Let's just cry for now.

Squeeeeak!

The Dragon Lord roared with (subjective) majesty.

The spirit and vigor were good, but the sound that came out was closer to a bat's screech than a Dragon's roar. However, Rod wasn't disappointed. He had accomplished something else. For the first time!

The two adult Dragons enveloped him with their heads and whispered. “Thank you for coming to us.” The Hatchling closed his eyes in satisfaction and purred.

Jenkinson was watching that scene alongside him. And he absorbed the Dragon Lord's thoughts and emotions exactly as they were, without the slightest filter. For Jenkinson, whose emotions had long since lost their edge and grown dull with age, it was an eruption of rawness he hadn't felt in a very long time. Overwhelming emotion and exploding euphoria. It felt as though not only Rod's eggshell, but also the thick shell protecting Jenkinson's reason and sense of self, had shattered and fallen away together.

It was just that intense.

So incredibly intense that...

‘...’

In this moment, Jenkinson could not clearly distinguish whether this emotion belonged to Rod or to himself.

*

“They say that to truly understand others, we must think from their perspective. Metaphorically speaking, we must climb into their skin and walk around in it.”

The one who brought up those words in the conference room where the ruling party assemblymen had gathered was an Elf.

He had just quoted an American novel. Like other first-generation Elf immigrants, he had acquired American citizenship when he first stepped onto Earth, so the first Earth culture he encountered belonged to the Anglo-American sphere. He became an assemblyman in Korea after going through an eventful series of incidents, but his cultural background leaned closer to the West.

The other assemblymen gathered here could also guess the floor leader's intention in suddenly bringing up a line from a novel.

“It seems many voters have started to view the world from the perspective of the Orcs.”

“Thanks to that, our party's approval ratings are rising. The public opinion polls for the bills being pushed by the Orc assemblymen are also favorable.”

This terrorist incident had also severely impacted the political arena.

The masses are bound to become generous toward the protagonists of a tragedy. The massacre that unfolded at the Hotel in broad daylight shocked even those who were hostile toward Orcs. An Ancient Dragon intervened at the last minute, but even the mysterious cleric he brought with him couldn't revive the already dead.

“Moreover, looking at the list of the deceased, there are many races other than Orcs.”

“This must be a situation that even the Human Rights Alliance didn't expect.”

The event organizers had placed a limit on the number of attendees. Minors were barred from attending, and accompanying family members were restricted to immediate family and their spouses. This was quite different from the usual custom where even distant relatives by marriage would attend. Naturally, there was space left over, and coincidentally, those seats were filled by invited guests of races other than Orcs.

The event scene the Human Rights Alliance had envisioned was probably a dense space that was half air, half Orcs, where shooting randomly would guarantee an Orc got hit and died. However, reality turned out differently. As a result, there were plenty of other races among those sacrificed to stray bullets and Magic.

Because of that, the public came to realize something. The obvious truth that it isn't only Orcs who fall victim to terrorism targeted at Orcs. If they were unlucky, other races could just as easily get caught up in it and die.

“At this rate, there shouldn't be any issues passing the special bill. The opposition party will feel the burden of continuing to sabotage it because of public opinion.”

Saying that, the Elf's gaze landed on Assemblyman Choi Panseok. The old Orc nodded with a grim expression.

Eyes filled with resolve.

He and his fellow assemblymen were in the middle of pushing several bills aimed at increasing the rights and interests of Orcs.

“To honor the seven assemblymen who passed away this time... we will definitely see this through to legislation.”

The terror masterminds probably expected the public's reaction too.

However, they believed it was necessary to kill the sixty-odd Orc assemblymen gathered at the scene even if it meant doing this. But due to the intervention of unexpected powerhouses and a Dragon, they ended up killing a number far short of their goal.

“Also, it seems Chairman Jenkinson has firmly made up his mind because of this incident. He promised to spare no active support in uprooting the Human Rights Alliance. He encouraged us to start proposing the necessary bills without worrying about the budget, as he would provide as much financial support as we need in the form of donations.”

At this point, the assemblymen couldn't help but be certain. This terrorist attack was the absolute worst move the Human Rights Alliance could have made.

They had practically plucked the whiskers of a sleeping Dragon.

“I hear there's a high possibility that the Chairman will become the next Dragon Lord?”

“To offend the mood of such an Ancient Dragon... the Human Rights Alliance has practically self-destructed. The day they are completely exterminated isn't far off.”

The ruling party assemblymen spent a long time discussing future strategies. Just as the meeting ended and everyone was getting ready to leave, the Elf serving as the floor leader approached Choi Panseok.

“How are the assemblymen who are currently recuperating doing?”

The vast majority of the Orc assemblymen were absent from today's meeting. Their bodies, which had been at the scene during the terror attack, had completely recovered, but the mental shock still lingered, so the party had made accommodations for them. Choi Panseok was communicating with them as their representative.

There was a reason why only Choi Panseok attended the meeting while most of the Orc assemblymen were recuperating. This five-term assemblyman hadn't been at the scene of the terror attack that day. He had been absent because an urgent matter came up at home.

“It seems everyone will resume their legislative activities starting next week. It's true that the shock was severe, but a consensus has formed that we can't just sit back and collapse like this.”

“I see. Understood.”

Leaving a request to keep in touch with them steadily, as encouragement from their fellow Orc Choi Panseok would naturally be a great help, the floor leader left.

Inside the vehicle heading back home after parting ways with him, the Orc made a phone call. The recipient's name appeared on his phone screen.

Assemblyman Park Jeongpal.

“Assemblyman Park, it's Choi Panseok.”

An answer came from over the receiver.

“I feel sorry and cautious about bringing this up, but there's something I'd like to discuss face-to-face before you return to the National Assembly. Could we meet briefly sometime this week?”

After hearing a short reply, he added.

“I'd like to see you as quietly as possible, in a place away from the eyes of reporters.”

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