The Foreigner on the Periphery

Blair Campbell found herself in a terrible bind these days.

She had navigated countless storms as Jenkinson's closest aide, but nerve-wracking experiences like this were rare.

If she had to name something comparable, it would be the incident a few months ago when she was threatened by the Crocodile Princess, boarded a Jump Ship to escape, and was promptly shot down by the Tentacle Princess.

Come to think of it, both disasters had happened this year. Was 2020 genuinely cursed?

Compared to back then, the current crisis posed no direct threat to Blair. The anomaly hadn't struck the elf herself, but someone precious to her.

"Larissa, please. This is the first time the Chairman has locked himself behind a barrier without saying a single word to me. I'm worried something terrible might have happened."

The fairy, having arrived in response to a secret summons, wore a dumbfounded expression.

"Seriously, sis? Do you think that makes any sense right now?"

The fairy, Larisa Andreyeva, had arrived at the Lair in her usual striking red suit.

Then, out of nowhere, a summons arrived from the secretary-general. Naturally, the fairy presented herself fraught with anxiety. Yet Jenkinson was nowhere to be seen, and the chief secretary was instead making an absurd request.

"The Chairman set up that barrier himself! And you want me to spy inside it? What kind of vegan dragon nonsense is that?"

The elderly fairy scrunched up her face. The wrinkles on her already weathered forehead deepened.

The fairy, who had been sitting with her legs crossed on the secretary-general's shoulder, suddenly took to the air. Her four pairs of transparent wings vibrated with a loud hum. She felt the need to speak to Blair face-to-face.

"I'm sorry, but I'm far too old to be taking risks like that. Furthermore, the Chairman is an Ancient Dragon. He's even the leading candidate for the next Dragon Lord. How could a dragon with that level of influence possibly be in danger?!"

"Larissa, you haven't forgotten why we're having this election in the first place, have you?"

It was a pointed reminder that if even the Dragon Lord could be murdered away from home, a mere candidate was hardly guaranteed safety.

But Larissa didn't look convinced. She considered that incident an anomaly that might happen once every few millennia. To put it in perspective, it was as rare as the ancient war between dragons and the Ancient Race.

"The man probably just needs some alone time! He's lived for two thousand years—imagine how exhausted he must be? If it were me, I'd be sick to death of everyone and everything."

"He's never done this so abruptly before. Every single one of his scheduled appointments has been completely blown off."

"Since when is an Ancient Dragon doing as he pleases news to anyone?"

"The Chairman isn't like that."

The relatively recently scouted fairy found that hard to believe.

As far as she was concerned, a dragon was still just a dragon.

"Please, Larissa."

The worry refused to fade from Blair's face. The day Jenkinson returned from meeting Kentius with a freeloader in tow, he had laid down strict orders forbidding entry and set up a barrier deep within the Lair. He hadn't stepped outside it in days.

The secretary couldn't peer past the barrier. With Ye Minjun and Ha Eunseong currently missing, the only helper she could think of was a fairy capable of crossing into the spirit realm.

In the material world, it was impossible to pierce or observe through that wall, but...

"The view from the spirit realm will be different."

In that dimensional layer overlapping the material world, magical traces accumulated, leaving marks like footprints. Blair was asking the fairy to observe that space.

So she could find at least a single clue about Jenkinson's condition.

"You want me to snoop around on my own, just so my name can end up on that man's lunch menu tomorrow?"

Larissa had absolutely no desire to be listed as "fairy meat (0.0000001%)" on an ingredients label.

"How many times do I have to tell you? The Chairman doesn't do barbaric things like that!"

"Do you think I'm deaf? Rumors are spreading everywhere that Chairman Jenkinson has started eating meat again. I heard the African Farm is in total chaos. The managers have gone into emergency mode, and the elephants are suffering from mass insomnia! Because he keeps flying in out of nowhere and snatching them up one by one!"

It was a fact Blair couldn't deny.

Larissa spoke in a sharp, prickly tone.

"If he can go back to eating meat he once quit, he can definitely go back to eating people he used to avoid! There's a reason dragons are dragons!"

"The Chairman is...!"

"Sis, listen to me. Do you know how cruel a person can become when they have the power to do whatever they want, the confidence they won't be punished, and the justification that the other side struck first? From that point on, crossing the line is completely justified as justice and revenge. If ordinary races act like that, imagine how violently a dragon would behave!"

Larissa finally relented only after Blair promised to bear all the responsibility.

Although her time living on Earth had been short, the fairy had properly localized when it came to these matters. She knew perfectly well that to survive in a Korean company long-term, dodging responsibility was often far more important than delivering results.

"Ugh, I'm still extremely nervous about this."

The pressure of spying on a dragon's private life squeezed her chest.

To gather her courage, the fairy pulled a small pouch from her suit's inner pocket. She sprinkled a dash of white powder onto the back of her hand, brought it to her nose, and—snort!—inhaled it rapidly.

It was very finely powdered sugar.

Immediately, her eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible. Larissa tilted her head backward, focusing on the sensation. After counting a few seconds in her head, the fairy leveled her chin and mumbled. Her voice was drenched in euphoria.

"Phew... That's the good stuff."

Her sigh was deep and sugary sweet. As her blood sugar spiked, her concentration and drive surged.

"Are you ready now?"

"Yeah, I got it. I'll go take a look. I'm going!"

With a deep flush spreading across her cheeks, Larissa melted into the air and vanished. She had shifted the anchor tethering her existence from the material world to the spirit realm. Blair waited with nervous anticipation. Just what would the fairy witness in the spirit realm?

Larissa returned much faster than expected.

Along with a piercing scream the likes of which Blair had never heard before.

"Aaaaargh! My eyes! My eyyyyeeees!"

"La—Larissa! Are you okay?!"

Blair had no idea what was happening.

Having returned to the material world, the fairy was covering her eyes and shrieking at the top of her lungs, as if she had witnessed something utterly horrifying.

"Water! Get me some cold water!"

Flustered, Blair instinctively brought her hands together and summoned a spirit.

Fortunately, the fairy—whose eyes were shut tight—couldn't see the summoned spirit: a two-heads-tall dragon whose head was roughly the size of its body. It looked like a caricature designed to make a dragon appear as adorable as possible.

The spirit, formed from clear liquid, collapsed its shape and created a small pool of water in the palm of the elf's hand.

Catching the scent of water, the fairy lunged at it. What followed was frantic chaos as she gulped it down and vigorously scrubbed her eyes. Only then did the sugar-induced sensory high finally begin to subside.

"Whew... I thought I was going to die."

"Larissa, what on earth did you see? What condition is the Chairman in?"

Still struggling to catch her breath, the fairy barely managed to reply to Blair's urging.

"Did I tell you about this before? If you look at a dragon in the spirit realm, they appear in a very unique form."

Suppressing the urge to yell at her to get to the point, Blair spoke as calmly as possible.

"I've heard about it. It's because of their Dragon Heart."

"Right. When you see dragons in the spirit realm, they look like creatures with a star embedded in their chests. But what I just saw..."

Larissa smacked her lips as if searching for the right words before continuing.

"That was a sun."

"...What?!"

Larissa wiped the moisture from her face with a wing and said,

"Sorry, but I didn't even have the leeway to check if the Chairman was alright. There was this incredibly intense, terrifyingly blazing sun of mana in there. The barrier was completely meaningless—the light pierced right through it. Anyway, I couldn't even see the Chairman because he was entirely swallowed by that light. It looked like the aftermath of activating some terrifying spell."

"A spell? What kind?"

"Sorry, I couldn't see that either. It must have been a spell the Chairman chanted himself. It's a sealed room he voluntarily locked himself inside behind a barrier, after all."

Blair's expression turned grave. She asked if there were any other clues, but Larissa just shook her head.

In truth, there was one strange detail lingering in the fairy's mind. But she hesitated to voice it aloud.

'I probably just saw it wrong.'

In the spirit realm, magical traces appear stacked in chronological order.

But that sun Larissa had just seen...

'It felt as though the spell had been sustained for thousands of years. It must have been an illusion, though.'

There was no such thing as a spell that lasted that long.

That amount of time would vastly outstrip even the lifespan of a long-lived elf, and it was enough time for a Hatchling to grow into one of the oldest Ancient Dragons. Because of that, Larissa chose to keep that detail to herself.

When the fairy ultimately failed to provide any solid answers, Blair felt like crying. It was then that her phone rang. As usual, she was about to forward it to the secretariat staff instead of answering it directly, but then—

'Oh no, of all people.'

Upon seeing the caller ID, she had no choice but to pick up.

— Inspector Park Jeongpal

'What could he want?'

She offered her condolences once again as a customary greeting. After exchanging a few more words, Blair's eyes went wide.

"A meeting with the Chairman?"

The person on the other end was an orc whom Jenkinson had promised a special favor. He had made that pledge to Park Jeongpal and a few others simply because they were Ye Minjun's people.

The missing agent was just that special of a 'friend' to Jenkinson. It was something Blair found difficult to understand.

'No matter what special treatment was promised, it's impossible right now.'

Blair, who would have ignored the call even if it were the President on the line, had no choice but to tell the inspector:

"The Chairman is currently unavailable for meetings due to an urgent matter. However, once his business is concluded... I will arrange it so that he meets with you first."

*

Park Jeongpal relayed the contents of the phone call to Choi Panseok.

The elderly orc wore a satisfied expression.

"That will do. Your name has been written at the very top of the Red Dragon Lair's waiting list. That is enough."

There had to be countless people who had requested a meeting before them, but Park Jeongpal had bypassed them all to become first in line.

"Even if I am first in line, there's no telling when the Chairman's business will conclude."

Choi Panseok smiled meaningfully and replied.

"We can't be sure of that. That day might come far sooner than we think. As long as you are the very first person the Ancient Dragon meets 'after he returns,' that is all that matters. That is the most important part."

Park Jeongpal looked as though he couldn't quite grasp what Choi Panseok was plotting, but he stood up from his seat after being promised a full explanation later.

After Park Jeongpal left, the expression on the old man's face shifted slightly as he sat alone in the living room.

"..."

He headed straight up to the second floor. Stopping in front of his daughter's room, he knocked on the door.

"Seona?"

After a silence longer than he expected.

"...Yes. Come in."

It was a strained voice, struggling to answer. Anxiety flashed across Choi Panseok's face. He opened the door and asked,

"Child, are you alright? What's wrong?"

The human girl with precognitive abilities, the adopted daughter of the orc assemblyman, looked completely drained of energy. Choi Panseok sat down beside her.

"Has the prophecy changed again? This abruptly?"

His daughter could neither shake nor nod her head, wearing an ambiguous expression instead. She spoke in a bewildered voice.

"It's strange, Father. Suddenly, the future... looks so blurry."

"What?!"

Choi Panseok couldn't understand.

Under the missing agent's instructions, the more she had repeated her simulations, the clearer the future had become. It had allowed the father and daughter to gather even more information.

"Does that mean..."

"Yes. The person with the greatest influence on the future. I think another change has happened to the Dragon Lord."

If scientists could perfectly simulate the movement of every single particle in the material world, they would be able to predict the future with one hundred percent accuracy.

Yet true prophecy was something only a select few Supernatural Ability Users were capable of. This was due to the existence of free will, which defied a deterministic worldview. Just as the Committee had ascertained, free will existed in a realm beyond the chemical and electrical interactions of brain cells.

The reason precognition was possible despite this was, paradoxically, because no one possessed completely unbounded free will. Everyone was influenced by their surrounding circumstances, their position, their possessions, and the relationships tying them down.

Under those conditions, precogs read the most probable choices each individual would make. The reason their prophecies often shifted was due to the uncertainty summed up by the word 'freedom'.

"That is hard to understand."

The orc groaned.

"Still, the grand scheme of things hasn't changed, has it?"

The precog pondered her answer for a moment before...

"No, it hasn't."

...she nodded. Only then did Choi Panseok breathe a sigh of relief.

"Then that is enough."

Even though the vision was a mess, as if its resolution had suddenly plummeted to disastrous levels...

She said one thing remained unchanged.

"The Dragon Lord will return to Earth."

*

Minjun opened his eyes.

He gauged how much time had passed by the state of his physical body and the scent of the air. Submerging into his inner mind and rummaging through Adkiel's memories seemed to have taken far longer than he had anticipated.

'Has it already been five days?'

It had been a long but meaningful span of time. Minjun felt his soul more liberated than ever before. Joy and surging emotion crashed through every corner of his body.

Focusing on that sensation, Minjun moved on to his next task. He had something he immediately needed Asiph-1 to do.

He sent out a telepathic wave to call his son.

=Come.=

A moment later.

'...?!'

When the expected answer didn't return, Minjun felt a twinge of puzzlement. Rather than ignoring the call, it seemed more like his son was in a state where he couldn't perceive it at all.

He had given him orders, so he shouldn't have been able to go far, right?

Instead of moving directly, the god decided to summon someone else.

In times like this, the easiest target was...

=Yumtus!=

Out of all the Grand Patriarchs, the priest—having bypassed even the former acting Pope to receive the god's summons—came running at full speed. Leaving behind a mix of respectful and envious stares, he opened the doors to the newly prepared Sanctuary.

"Did you call for me?"

Through the bishop's words, Minjun realized that exactly as much time had passed as he'd guessed.

"That should have given those bastards plenty of time to gather together."

Forced onto the defensive, the Committee wouldn't have scattered their forces across various dimensions and left themselves open to being picked off one by one.

Them gathering in one place was exactly what Minjun wanted.

"Where is the Pope?"

Uncharacteristically, Yumtus hesitated instead of answering right away.

"What is it?"

The moment the bishop forced the words out.

"..."

Minjun felt dumbfounded rather than angry.

And what followed was the typical reaction parents showed toward the beings who had split off from them, yet who could never be considered the exact same entity.

"Nothing ever goes the way I want it to, seriously."

Next, he recalled a proverb-like saying passed down in almost every civilization across the dimensional realms, each in their own language.

To put it in Earth's terms... the universal truth that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

"So,"

Minjun frowned, repeating the recent update on Asiph-1 that Yumtus had just shared.

"You're telling me he can't forgive himself for his sins... and is currently punishing himself for the sake of reflection and self-introspection?"

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