The Foreigner on the Periphery

The Grand Committeeman's attempt to resume the conversation fell apart.

A deafening explosion erupted in the distance.

Boom!

"What was that?!"

At first, he assumed something had gone wrong on the production line.

But the alarms did not sound. The artificial intelligence remained silent.

"Don't tell me..."

The Kavite was seized by the dread that his darkest premonitions were coming true.

*

Emerging through the swirling dust, Minjun and Asiph-1 kicked off the ground and launched into the air. Leaving the twitching, fluid-drenched Kavites behind, they shot forward.

"Stop them! Stop them!"

The guards rushed in. This time, the vanguard was composed of Weapon Masters. Unlike races with distinct limbs, human-style swords were utterly unsuited for the Kavites' ringed, serpentine bodies.

The long, tubular beings had forged weapons perfectly adapted to their physiology. The metallic artifacts wrapping their torsos functioned as both armor and armament. As they enveloped themselves in aura, curved blades sprouted from the tips of their helmets and across their bodies.

Whoosh!

They launched themselves at the intruders like an endless volley of arrows fired by an invisible hand. The Weapon Masters turned their very bodies into iron bolts, cleaving the air. Blazing blue flames painted their trajectories in lingering afterimages.

Faced with dozens of lightning-fast bolts hurtling toward him, Minjun did not slow down. Maintaining his pace, his lips parted.

In that instant.

Flash!

The Weapon Masters saw dozens of radiant crosses flare in front of Minjun. The time between their launch and the impending collision was barely a fraction of a second; by the time they registered the light, they were already slamming into it.

With terrifying precision, the clusters of light were summoned directly in the path of their speeding heads.

Minjun's counterattack was akin to tracking the trajectories of flying bullets with his bare eyes and conjuring an obstacle perfectly in front of each one.

The light tore through the Weapon Masters' defensive barriers like wet paper.

Riiiip!

The crisp sound of slicing flesh echoed out.

The guard unit and the intruders crossed paths, their backs now to one another.

While Minjun's forward momentum remained unbroken, the Kavites plummeted in a chaotic parabola. Multiplied exactly by four from when they had launched themselves, they tumbled through the air like a handful of discarded rubber bands.

That fourfold increase, of course, did not refer to their weight or volume, but to their sheer number of pieces.

—!

In place of screams, fractured mental waves of pure agony rang out.

Slamming into the intersecting blades of light, the Kavites' own momentum had cleanly quartered them. They had been sliced lengthwise into four strips. Meat chunks identical in length to when they took off, but a quarter of the thickness, rained down. Blood violently sprayed from the sheared flesh.

Just as when they were severed horizontally, their astonishing vitality refused to give out. The whip-thin remnants frantically writhed and thrashed on the ground in a desperate struggle.

Meanwhile, a few lucky ones had targeted Asiph-1 instead of Minjun. They were spared the agony of being quartered alive.

"You bastards!"

Just as someone had once stubbornly insisted, Asiph-1 wielded a Black Dagger in one hand and a silver Frying Pan in the other.

Relying instinctively on the more powerful weapon, he swung the Orichalcum Frying Pan in a massive horizontal arc.

With all his might.

The silver pan scored a direct hit against a Kavite's skull.

Smash!

The enemy was easily a creature over two meters long, but the moment it met the Frying Pan, its volume was dramatically compressed.

Crunch!

Armor and all, the Kavite crumpled and caved in on itself.

Vwoom!

Asiph-1 flicked the resonating pan through the air to shake it off. A flattened wad of scrap metal—pancaked like a compact car run over by a dump truck—clattered against the ground.

The remains of the creature that had been wearing it—the organic matter itself—were completely gone. The sheer force of the impact had evaporated it inside the armor.

"M-Monster!"

The fierce fighting spirit on the remaining Kavites' faces gave way to overwhelming despair and terror.

In the path the Holy Father walked, quartered chunks of meat writhed; in the path the Holy Son took, flesh and blood were utterly erased, leaving only crumpled scrap metal in his wake.

"Demons... They're demons!"

As they began retreating one by one, their entire formation collapsed in an instant.

Like an unstoppable avalanche, the two intruders pushed onward toward Yongreung's control room, annihilating everything in their path.

*

"Why didn't the alarms sound while they were approaching?!"

A whirlwind of frantic thoughts spun through the Grand Committeeman's head.

The tremor just now was the unmistakable signal that the production line's barrier had fallen.

It was the most massive and primal defensive shield anywhere within Yongreung.

The structure had been layered so densely that the intruders had ultimately abandoned stealth and chosen outright destruction rather than waste time trying to bypass it.

Thanks to that, the Grand Committeeman was finally aware of the intruders. Yet, the entirely inexplicable circumstances only left him thoroughly bewildered.

"You must evacuate, Grand Committeeman. This way!"

The guards grabbed him and attempted to Teleport.

However.

"...?!"

Everyone froze like statues of ice.

"I-It's impossible. All the spatial coordinates have been twisted...!"

Ominous clues clicked into place one after another.

Intruders who could slip past the orbiting fleet, infiltrate the planet, and shatter every ground-level checkpoint.

An ability capable of distorting space entirely to prevent any Teleportation.

The only being capable of all this was...

"Asif-666!"

The moment the Grand Committeeman murmured that name, the facility manager twitched convulsively.

"Gods! He's here? How could he possibly... Are you certain?!"

Crash! Boom!

The crashing echoed closer and closer. It was absolute proof that the intruders knew exactly where to go.

A look of absolute resolve settled over the Grand Committeeman's face. He turned and snapped an order to Yongreung's manager.

The manager recoiled in horror and tried to refuse, but the Grand Committeeman merely snarled.

"There's no time!"

The Grand Committeeman assigned half of the escort troops to the manager. The group slipped away through a door leading in the opposite direction of the intruders—a corridor connecting straight to the deepest bowels of Yongreung.

Once they vanished, the Grand Committeeman desperately attempted to Teleport with his remaining guards. He refused to give up on escaping until the very last second, but his efforts were entirely futile.

A moment later, a terrifying blast turned his lingering anxiety into utter despair.

Smash!

The heavy doors blew inward amid the explosion. It was the very entrance the Grand Committeeman had used daily for his recent visits to Yongreung. The remaining Kavite guards stood their ground, their backs to the gate the manager had just fled through.

Finally, the two intruders revealed themselves. The Grand Committeeman's eyes instantly locked onto one of them.

"...!"

Had it been eight hundred years since they last stood face to face? It truly felt like the first time since the day he had branded the man with the prisoner number Asif-666.

Despite his youthful physical vessel, his ancient, decrepit mind vividly recalled the past.

"It has been a while."

It was the Kavite who spoke first.

Neither of the men standing before him was a stranger.

He refused to show any fear in front of Asif-666 and Asiph-1.

Clinging to his dignity and honor, feigning composure, the Kavite opened his mouth to continue.

Slash!

The Grand Committeeman felt his vision flip upside down.

The agonizing sensation of his entire body being torn and gouged apart arrived a fraction of a second later.

The Kavite shrieked for a long time, not even realizing the horrific screams belonged to him.

Had the intruder wanted to, he could have ended the Kavite's life instantly, but he chose not to. As a result, the Grand Committeeman thrashed on the ground, overwhelmed by a level of agony he hadn't known could exist. Drowning in his own pooling blood, he howled like a beast.

Past the blinding pain, the horrifying reality of his physical state finally set in. He realized that his writhing body was lighter than it should be, and its center of gravity rested bizarrely high above his waist.

That was because only half of his original body remained.

While he crawled across the floor in agony, the slaughter of his escorts played out above him. It was the longest fight the two intruders had engaged in since they arrived.

Yet, the outcome was no different.

Crunch!

When the final guard was reduced to a mangled hunk of meat, the Grand Committeeman finally managed to stifle his shrieks. It was a testament to his superhuman willpower. Asiph-1 glanced at the Kavite, slightly surprised. A brief exchange passed between father and son: "Shall I brainwash him? It will take a while..." "No. You head in that direction instead."

Following the terse command, Asiph-1 darted off in the direction the facility manager had fled. A flicker of profound despair crossed the Grand Committeeman's eyes before vanishing. Minjun didn't miss that split-second shift.

Splash. Splash.

Minjun stepped slowly across the floor, his boots splashing in the pools of purple fluid the Kavites had shed. Standing over the bisected Grand Committeeman, Minjun murmured an incantation. Bubbling, rice-sized blisters immediately swelled across the back of his hand.

A moment later.

Pop! Pop!

The blisters burst open. Beneath the torn skin, tiny, fluid-drenched insects writhed against his raw flesh.

Minjun calmly shook his hand. The insects rained down, burrowing into the Kavite's gaping wounds. A few of them squirmed right in front of the Grand Committeeman's face. Recognizing their grotesque shapes, the Kavite instantly recalled a specific brand of Dark Magic.

He forced a mocking sneer, desperate to provoke him.

"Happy Bugs...? Do you really think such low-grade witchcraft will work on me?"

Even Asiph-1's brainwashing couldn't break him immediately; did this human truly believe those parasites would do the trick? Using a rush of manufactured euphoria to subjugate someone into slavery would never work on a mind like his.

When Minjun ignored the taunt, focusing entirely on his inexplicable task, the Grand Committeeman's anxiety began to spike.

He had to buy time.

Even just a few seconds longer.

"I don't understand you."

Severed in half, he wheezed through a throat clogged with his own blood.

From his slanted vantage point, he couldn't see Minjun's face. The man's purple-soaked boots and knees were all that filled his vision.

Desperately stalling for time, the Kavite spat another question.

"Why don't you do it like you did back then? You could just extract my soul directly, couldn't you?"

Then, as if realizing something, he let out a garbled sneer.

"...I see. You don't have enough Talents left."

That meant the miracle-like attacks he had unleashed in the past were no longer an option for the impending war.

Minjun maintained his icy silence. The Kavite frantically kept talking.

"If you're capable of infiltrating alone, why didn't you target the Mining Machines first?"

Still, Minjun didn't reply.

"Now that they've seen what you're capable of, the mining sites will quadruple their security. Even if you manage to bypass the Space Motherships and reach the ground again, you'll be facing an army that makes this place look like a joke. So why waste your time here...?"

Just then, the Grand Committeeman felt the bugs moving strangely inside his remaining flesh.

His control over his own physical vessel vanished. He couldn't voluntarily twitch a single muscle.

The parasites had completely hijacked his nervous system.

"Am I not even worth the effort of brainwashing?"

The human had no intention of invading his mind. And worse, he clearly had no intention of letting him die, either.

Twitch!

His ruined, half-severed body abruptly lurched. It dragged itself upright like a grotesque marionette on strings. He wanted to look down to see what horrors the bugs were working on his stump, but he had lost even the ability to move his eyeballs. The only muscles he still commanded were his vocal cords.

By some horrifying, unnatural mechanism, his bloody torso propped itself up, raising his head to eye level. Against his will, his body stood at attention.

Only then could the Kavite look directly into Minjun's face again.

Then, he registered the expression etched into the intruder's features.

"...Ah!"

Minjun stared silently down at the trembling Kavite, his demeanor just as impassive as before.

"You..!"

In that single glance, the Grand Committeeman finally understood.

The man from the primordial race wanted far more than mere victory in this war. Reclaiming what was his and restoring his territory was not the ultimate goal.

The returned Transcendent didn't want justice or punishment. He wanted absolute vengeance. A brutal, methodical payback where the agony of his enemies was the end goal in itself.

"...!"

Minjun fully intended to reign as the god of all races.

Yet, despite this, Minjun still perceived himself entirely as a human. He could be nothing else.

He was a human playing at being a god.

And like a human, Minjun believed this: vengeance was a primal instinct. Vengeance was the fence that kept the wolves away. An eye for an eye was the universal law of humanity, and every human was born with the capacity for ruthless retribution.

"What are you going to do?"

Overwhelmed by a searing terror, the Kavite's sanity snapped.

"What the hell are you going to do to our race?! What is your plan?!"

Minjun's expression remained completely unchanged.

But despite the vast difference in their species, the Kavite could read his emotional state with horrifying clarity.

Beneath the swirling layers of joy, contempt, satisfaction, excitement, pain, and boredom... the Kavite found one overwhelming undercurrent.

A fierce, violent hatred.

He was staring into the face of a man who was fully prepared to revel in unleashing that hatred. The Transcendent was savoring the anticipation of the slaughter to come. It was the sadistic ecstasy of a predator looking down at mouth-watering prey, carefully calculating how to butcher and carve it to extract the absolute maximum amount of flavor.

Paradoxically, seeing that look completely validated the Grand Committeeman's past actions. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that betraying Minjun all those years ago had been the right choice.

Minjun would never know the frantic, terrified discussions those ancient, earthworm-like beasts had shared when they first found him waking from his slumber.

"We didn't have a choice."

Flashing back to those ancient memories, the Kavite shrieked in spiteful desperation.

"Because the most dangerous thing in this universe isn't a human imitating a god... it's a god pretending to be human! Just like you!"

Despite Minjun's firm belief in his own humanity, the Kavite saw him only as a merciless god cloaked in human skin.

And faced with an entity that possessed divine power but operated with the petty, vindictive mindset of a mortal, the Kavite knew nothing but absolute terror.

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