The Foreigner on the Periphery

A planet in the Dimensional Center.

A brief flash of light flickered across the darkened plains.

When the light faded, two men stood in its wake.

"Phew. We finally arrived."

Asiph-1 muttered, battered in body and mind. His voice carried a mix of relief and exhaustion. He looked at his creator, his tired eyes betraying the hardships of their journey.

"I knew you were the type to sprint straight ahead once you'd set a goal and a plan, but..."

The journey had been a stark reminder of that terrifying drive.

After breaking Asiph-1 out of prison, Minjun had crossed seventeen dimensions without a single rest. It would have taken the Committee longer to dispatch a fleet from their base to the order's headquarters.

Every time they crossed a dimensional barrier using Jump Magic, a crushing pressure threatened to obliterate them. Yet, just as his creator had promised, Asiph-1 endured.

Standing beside Minjun, Asiph-1 marveled.

'Maybe it's because he ate his fill along the way, but he doesn't look the least bit tired from this forced march.'

Minjun had deliberately targeted the oldest Ancient Dragon in each dimension they passed through, simply because it allowed him to gorge himself in a single sitting.

Reflecting on that process, Asiph-1 offered a silent prayer of condolence to the corporate-state head of Dimension #24-105; the imperial guardian dragon ruling Dimension #62-777; the shadow power behind the saintess symbolizing the theocracy of Dimension #04-589; and the longest-living Dragon Lord of Dimension #55-209.

All of them were surely suffering from crippling lethargy right now, having been drained of their blood to the absolute brink of death.

"..."

Asiph-1 followed Minjun's gaze. Ever since they arrived, Minjun had been silently staring at a single spot in the night sky.

Even from this planet, Yongreung, an unusually bright star was visible to the naked eye. An artificial halo of light enveloped it.

"That's a mining base."

It was an artificial planet designed solely to extract Talent from the dimensional rifts.

The Committee expected Minjun's ultimate target to be the mining base. The halo of light surrounding the artificial planet was the massive space fleet they had gathered.

But Minjun had no immediate intention of infiltrating it. He would wait until every unit dispatched to other dimensions had returned.

His target for today was right here on this planet.

"...We'll enjoy the main dish later."

Minjun activated stealth magic and took to the air, with Asiph-1 following close behind.

Below them, the desolate earth faintly reflected the moonlight. Looking down at the sight, Asiph-1 murmured.

"The scars of war are still perfectly preserved."

The dark, bluish wasteland showed the wounds of the past. The sprawling landscape looked like the exhibition of an ambitious artist who lacked the resolve to finish their work. Forms that resembled chunks of clay haphazardly molded and then abandoned at an awkward stage stretched out on a geographical scale.

Terrain that had jutted up like crashing waves before instantly solidifying, valleys that looked like the marks of entire mountains driven upside-down into the earth and yanked back out, massive craters the size of Earth's American continent, and plains resembling the flayed hide of a mangled beast rolled past one after another.

"Hmm?"

Not all the land had been reduced to ruins of dirt and rock. Asiph-1 soon spotted traces of civilization. Massive buildings scaled to the bodies of a gigantic race lay crumbling, shattered and weathering away.

"Are those ruins from when the dragons lived here?"

"Yes. It seems they didn't feel the need to clear this sector."

"Long before those buildings were erected, your pasture must have been here, Father."

"Strictly speaking, the entire planet was my pasture."

Minjun explained the history of the planet.

"And that pasture was closed long before I fell asleep."

Asiph-1 looked puzzled.

"Wasn't being a dragon herder the duty of a noble?"

"In the beginning, yes. But as people's lifespans increased, the importance of improving dragons was pushed down the priority list. And by the time the pasture closed, I was too busy."

"Suddenly?"

"It was around the time everyone had lived so long that they began to hate each other. They didn't die, so the hatred never faded. It was an era when madmen committed horrific crimes on a whim."

"Ah, I understand. That was when the world turned into hell."

"Yes. People who would have lived near-eternity barring an accident pathetically began slaughtering one another, so I couldn't peacefully raise dragons anymore. I sent the dragons to another planet and started using this one for something other than a pasture."

After the dragons left, the native fauna rebuilt the ecosystem. The most prominent among them were beasts like the Kavite and the Todd.

Minjun speculated on what had happened on this planet after he and his kin fell asleep.

"The two races must have evolved rapidly, climbing to the top of the food chain. In the midst of that, the Endelion discovered them."

"Ah, I know of this. The entire race supposedly migrated to confirm the existence of God."

"But the tentacles didn't find God on this planet either."

"Of course they didn't. The 'Tentacles that Coil Around the Stars' they worshipped was actually you. And you would have already been asleep by then."

"Instead of the God they were searching for, the Endelion found two races that had just crossed the threshold into sapience."

Meanwhile, the fragmentation of the universe had begun, preventing the Endelion from returning home. They showed an unexpected reaction to the newly encountered species.

"Animals that have just stepped over the threshold of intelligence are in a gray area. It's hard to judge whether to recognize them as people or not. Yet, those tentacles elevated the Kavite and Todd to the status of neighbors, granting them personhood."

The gap in their civilizations was so vast that comparing it to heaven and earth wouldn't do it justice.

Normally, such a dynamic naturally led to the superior race subjugating the inferior one, but the Endelion didn't enslave them.

Instead, they passed down their civilization. They elevated the level of those primitives until they reached a stage where they could converse with them.

It was a past that the vast majority of the modern Ancient Race had long since forgotten.

"Why would they do that?"

"Who knows? Those bastards who believed the universe revolved around them deliberately built up another's strength. They didn't even occupy the planet; they just left the two species to live as they were. The tentacles found a suitable planet nearby and made that their new home."

Minjun had a rough guess as to why they had gone through such a hassle.

"Perhaps what they needed wasn't slaves, but accomplices?"

"...What do you mean?"

"The Endelion didn't find God on this planet, but they did find traces. Up to that point, they couldn't completely deny God's existence, so they might have needed someone to share the burden of their sins."

"You mean co-conspirators."

"And that target couldn't be a slave. Slaves aren't people, they're property, and if they commit a sin, the master takes the punishment."

"I understand. Only people can share a sin with other people."

As a result, the Endelion and the other Ancient Race factions maintain an efficient symbiotic relationship to this day.

Thanks to that, not a single Endelion died during the war against the dragons. Because they provided the technology, the Todd and Kavite took exclusive charge of fighting on the front lines.

"Of course, their motives are just my speculation. It doesn't matter much to me, either. We'll find out the answer once we confront the Endelion king, who would have inherited all the secrets."

The individual he referred to was naturally Minjun's former mother-in-law—and the figure Asiph-1 recognized as his maternal grandmother.

Asiph-1 had a premonition that wherever his creator and she eventually met again, there would be a terrible stench of blood and severed tentacles rolling around.

"As more time passed and they studied the traces, they redefined God's identity as the primordial race, convinced they would never meet in the same era. So they decided to go into hibernation until the primordial race returned."

After that, it was exactly as Asiph-1 knew. The awakened Ancient Race picked a fight with the dragons and lost, and after that, the Kavite found Minjun.

He remembered the brutally betrayed and shattered promises.

"Using the technology I provided, the very first place they invaded was this planet. After the Ancient Race disappeared, the dragons had migrated to the empty world and claimed it as their territory long ago. Since it was originally used as a pasture, it offered the perfect conditions for dragons to live."

"Did they invade here first because it was the homeland of the Kavite and Todd?"

"That was part of it. But the decisive reason was... because I told them to."

"...What?"

The conversation between the Holy Father and the Holy Son, revered by the three-eyed ones, paused for a moment.

Because they had arrived at their destination.

"That's..."

In a place where everything else had been destroyed and turned into weathered ruins, a single city that maintained its form stood before their eyes.

Complex emotions swirled in Minjun's eyes.

Yongreung meant this planet, but it also meant that city.

The ones who built it were neither the Ancient Race nor the dragons.

"We built this city."

As already explained, after closing the pasture, Minjun had used this planet for another purpose.

"I hid this sector away tightly so no one could find it, and then I went to sleep. That's why the Kavite, the Todd, and even the dragons who migrated here later lived without knowing such a thing existed. Until I told them."

"Then..."

"I told the Kavite bastards to conquer this planet first and take Yongreung. On the brink of starvation at the time, I didn't have the strength to wake my kin. The Kavite promised to do it for me, and the Key was buried in Yongreung."

Minjun spoke of a secret that not even the dragons living in this era knew.

"This is the warehouse where we stored the hearts of the Ancient Dragons we butchered in the past."

"...You mean Dragon Hearts?"

Minjun nodded in affirmation.

The two of them entered the roads woven between complex buildings that didn't resemble any modern architectural style. Just as before, the magic and surveillance equipment failed to detect them.

Minjun guided Asiph-1 toward the building at the center. It was an inverted pyramid balanced precariously on its tip—a bizarre building whose design intent and maintenance method were hard to understand.

Asiph-1 gave his honest assessment.

"Security is tight, but the composition is highly biased. So its limits are clear."

On the way here, Asiph-1 hadn't seen a single Todd. They were the most populous of the Ancient Race and possessed superior anti-personnel combat capabilities compared to the Kavite.

He also couldn't find any golems or robots directly controlled by the Endelion.

The security personnel here consisted solely of Kavite.

"After the victory, the Kavite bastards touted their contributions and gained control over Yongreung."

"Contributions... Ah."

He was referring to the contribution of finding, luring, deceiving, and betraying the primordial race. Realizing that, Asiph-1 stopped questioning, and Minjun didn't bother explaining further.

"They strictly prohibit the involvement of Todd or Endelion here. Now that they're preparing for war, they exclude them even more thoroughly."

"It's hard to understand. At times like these, they should need the Endelion's technology and the Todd's numbers more than ever."

"It means they distrust the enemies inside as much as the ones outside. That's their nature."

And Minjun was certain that this nature would drive the beasts to their ruin.

"Furthermore, they couldn't have anticipated the existence of an intruder arriving here barehanded via dimensional jump. They're probably warier of the other Ancient Race than of me. Now, let's head in this way."

Stepping inside the building, Minjun soon spotted Kavite guards patrolling in pairs.

After putting up a barrier to prevent magic signals from leaking, Minjun sent out a mental wave.

=Let's test it on those guys.=

The air rippled, and Minjun and Asiph-1 revealed themselves.

When human-like creatures suddenly appeared out of thin air, the guards freaked out and drew their weapons.

"Wh-who are you!"

As trained, one immediately chanted a spell to attack, and the other pulled out a Communicator. But the attempt to report to the command room failed. Minjun's barrier had blocked all signals.

At a light gesture from Minjun, both guards collapsed, spewing purple foam from a hole connected to their ventral nerve cords. Lacking knowledge of Kavite anatomy, Asiph-1 decided not to wonder what kind of curse that was.

"Kyaaagh!"

"Grrrrrrrr!"

However, judging by their screams, he was certain it was a curse vicious enough to make them wish for death.

Leaving the two guards paralyzed, Minjun gave a look.

"Now, give it a try."

Asiph-1 reached out both hands. A clear light flickered in his eyes.

="Obey!"=

But there was no desired reaction.

Asiph-1 had intended to make them puppets oblivious even to pain. Yet the two were still twisting their earthworm-like bodies in a seizure. Minjun clicked his tongue.

"They've planted weapons to resist brainwashing in these guys too."

The Ancient Race, having suffered terribly from Asiph-1's terrorism in the past, had prepared countermeasures. This had already been confirmed through the prisoners on the Space Mothership.

Asiph-1 offered his opinion that he could probably dominate them if he spent some time, but they couldn't afford to.

"It looks like we won't be able to take the easy way with brainwashing. We'll just have to completely erase all traces of anyone who blocks us. Like this."

Saying so, Minjun gestured again. Then the Kavite guards began melting into a thick slime from their extremities. Like chunks of meat dunked in strong acid.

It was a good thing he had set up a barrier; had it leaked out, desperate screams that would have drawn every Kavite in the base followed.

A moment later, not a single drop of bodily fluid remained where they had been.

'There must have been a way to erase their traces without killing them so slowly.'

It was a method of killing that radiated the creator's tenacity to inflict the most painful death possible if he was going to kill them anyway.

"Let's go up to the top floor like this."

"Is the Mana Crystal production line up there?"

"Yes. And the Dragon Hearts we gathered in the past. The Kavite bastards must have been squandering them all this time, so there's no telling how many are left."

A secret unimaginable to the general public was hidden up there.

The Mana Crystal, evaluated as the most efficient resource in the dimensional system and the miraculous fuel that changed history, could only be supplied by the Kavite. Not even the dragons knew its raw materials and manufacturing process.

Minjun muttered, as if reminiscing about the past.

"Dragons... really were beasts that kept on giving."

He turned his gaze back upward.

Just as much as plundering an enemy to fill allied armories, cutting off the opponent's supply before starting a war was obvious common sense to Minjun.

"There's more than one or two things to get back from them, but I should start here. Come on. Let's go rob them of everything."

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