The Foreigner on the Periphery

The dragons' festival continued.

As time passed, the resolution of the footage transmitted from the distant star improved, and the chaotic surge of wavelengths unleashed by the explosion began to subside.

Only after a long time had passed since detecting the planetary collapse did the artificial intelligence announce its conclusion.

“There are no signs of a Space Mothership near the coordinates of the stellar explosion.”

Members of the Dragon Race raised their glasses to cheer once more. The enemy had undoubtedly been destroyed in the blast. Still, erring on the side of caution, they dispatched probe ships to the site before returning to their respective Lairs.

The night of jubilant celebration was drawing to a close. They wanted nothing more than to notify the Committee of their success and collect their payment, but they couldn't reach out first. This transaction was treated as an absolute secret.

Rahgangquia, the earth dragon serving as Dragon Lord and master of the Mining Guild in this dimension, pondered the situation.

‘There is no need for the dragons in other dimensions to know about this.’

In truth, dragons across the dimensions shared an unspoken consensus.

Letting the fugitive clash with the Committee and whittle down each other's strength ultimately served the broader interests of the Dragon Race.

‘That might be beneficial for our race as a whole.’

But Rahgangquia could not sacrifice his personal profit for that greater good.

‘Why should I take a loss for their sake?’

He was a dragon who meticulously calculated profit and loss, holding firm convictions on such matters. Thus, he hadn't hesitated when the Committee presented their proposal.

An immediate payout he could grasp in his claws was far more important than a collective benefit that was hard to quantify.

‘Fools, every last one of them. Even if they weaken the Committee by pitting it against Asif-666, do the dragons truly believe they can overthrow it?’

Contrary to Minjun's assumption, Rahgangquia was an Ancient Dragon who had lived through the war.

If he closed his eyes, the horrors of that era still flashed vividly in his mind. He could still see the terrifying, inexplicable weapon systems that had left the dragons in absolute despair.

Following their crushing defeat by the Ancient Race, most dragons tried to cope with their shattered pride by looking away and trying to forget, but Rahgangquia took a different approach to the trauma.

‘The technological gap was already overwhelming during the war. Now, after all this time, the gap has only widened. At this point, the Ancient Race might as well be considered a natural disaster. We cannot win.’

Rather than foolishly resisting, cooperating and taking a cut of the profits was the best path forward.

‘There is no shame in this. I am simply being honest about my desires.’

Yet despite his rationalizations, it was far from an honorable act by the standards of the Dragon Race. It remained a transaction best kept hidden from his kin in other dimensions.

The Committee was equally cautious, meaning the dragon could not freely contact Endelion's envoy on a whim.

He had to wait for them to reach out first.

‘They are strangely late. They should be just as anxious by now.’

Brushing aside his doubts, he considered his next move.

‘They won't hand over the full 4 million Talents anyway.’

Having brokered similar deals with the Ancient Race before, Rahgangquia knew their patterns intimately. The Committee would nitpick over every little detail to dock their pay, and if they dragged out the negotiations, the dragons would eventually be the ones to cave.

Rahgangquia reaffirmed his convictions.

There was no reason to step up to represent everyone's interests only to plunge the negotiations into a deadlock.

‘As long as I secure a fat enough cut for myself, that's all that matters.’

Rahgangquia planned to propose a backroom deal to the Committee.

He would allow them to slash the 4 million Talent total, provided they slipped him a generous kickback through unofficial channels. The overall pie for the dragons would shrink, but Rahgangquia's personal payout would swell.

A convincing performance would be required, of course. The Committee would have to lowball them with an absurd figure right out of the gate, allowing Rahgangquia to boast that he had salvaged a respectable sum through masterful negotiation.

In the aftermath of the war, the universe was teeming with young dragons. Even in this dimension, the vast majority belonged to a generation that had never seen a battlefield. Manipulating them would be child's play for an Ancient Dragon like Rahgangquia.

‘How much should I ask for? If I emphasize that this will save the Committee a great deal of time and hassle...’

Just as he was immersed in these calculations, a sensation brushed against his awareness.

‘...Hmm?’

An alien energy seeped in.

‘What is this!?’

His Lair was a fortress protected by the most formidable barrier on the planet.

Consequently, the Ancient Dragon didn't even entertain the possibility of an intruder.

It was likely a glitch in the barrier itself. Such anomalies occasionally occurred when the planet's natural flow of Magic fluctuated, or when routine maintenance was overdue.

‘How annoying. I just wanted to relax today.’

Still, it gnawed at his nerves; he couldn't just ignore it.

But just as the earth dragon prepared to haul his massive frame up—

A piercing mental wave bored into his brain.

=“Obey.”=

Instantly, Rahgangquia's five senses grew unbearably dull.

At the same time, his pupils glazed over with a hazy light.

‘Wait, what was I about to do?’

He remembered wanting to do something bothersome but necessary.

Even though the echo of the memory lingered—since he had literally just thought of it—he couldn't track down where the thought had slipped away to.

Soon, the dragon abandoned even that effort.

=“Obey.”=

Rahgangquia felt his body grow even heavier. Yet, in stark contrast to his sluggish flesh, his mind grew lighter. Nothing could anchor his consciousness now.

More important than anything else was that voice.

=“Obey.”=

The moment the third command resonated in his mind.

The dragon decided to stop all thought. He just had to follow it. The voice had told him to obey.

He would obey.

The moment he surrendered, he paradoxically felt an infinite sense of mental freedom. No concerns or worries could chain his consciousness anymore. Anxiety vanished entirely. Through absolute submission, the dragon was free from logical burdens and emotional turbulence.

It was a peaceful, blissful state, entirely devoid of the dizziness of existence.

“It is done.”

The speaker was a man whose long hair spilled past his waist.

Space rippled, and he pulled himself out from the shadows of the Lair.

Swoosh!

Then, another man stepped out through the rippling fabric of the air.

Only when the second man appeared did the dragon vividly sense a complex knot of tangled Magic. It was clearly his power that had allowed them to infiltrate without breaking the barrier.

The second man exchanged a glance with the one who now controlled the dragon.

“You know what comes next, right?”

The man who had enslaved the dragon bowed his head in deference.

“Yes.”

A few questions followed. Rahgangquia knew the answers intimately, and the earth dragon obediently replied.

“The fifty-seven dragons residing in this dimension are all members of the Mining Guild. Because there was a major ‘event’ yesterday, all of them are currently gathered on this planet. Their names and exact locations are...”

After the confession, the long-haired man issued another command.

Rahgangquia immediately relayed an order to the manager of the planet's warp Terminal. It was a completely random instruction in the dead of night, but a screen showed the dwarf on duty bolting awake in the breakroom and sprinting frantically toward the control room.

He had every reason to be desperate. If he made a mistake or delayed in executing the great dragon's command, he too would be demoted to goblin status. The dwarf ran to protect his own wrists, as well as those of his wife and parents.

Once the preparations were complete, the man issued his final order.

“Now, Polymorph.”

It seemed his master intended to take him somewhere.

A dragon's colossal true form would not only attract too much attention but also pose severe logistical constraints. The Ancient Dragon understood this perfectly and enveloped his massive frame in a cocoon of light.

The man controlling him had commanded, “Polymorph into the smallest form possible for easy storage,” but had specified not to turn into an insect. The stated reason was that an insect would be too difficult to manage later, but the brainwashed dragon interpreted this as a profound kindness. The greater the physical shift caused by a Polymorph, the more exponentially Magic consumption skyrocketed.

‘What a merciful master.’

Touched by the man's supposed warmth, Rahgangquia selected the smallest and most familiar intelligent species he knew.

Flash!

As the light burst forth, the giant dragon vanished.

In its place stood a stunted creature barely reaching the long-haired man's waist.

The long-haired man flashed a strange smile at the sight.

“...Hmm, why that form of all things?”

Rahgangquia immediately worried that he had somehow displeased his master.

However, the smile seemed born of amusement rather than dissatisfaction.

“Ah, well. I suppose it makes sense, considering you see this race every day.”

He scratched his cheek and turned to the second man.

“We'll have to be careful not to get him mixed up with the others.”

He smirked.

“A goblin, of all things.”

The dragon felt absolutely zero shame at having Polymorphed into a slave species. He didn't even regret not picking a human or an elf instead.

To an Ancient Dragon, there was hardly any difference between an elf, a human, a dwarf, or a goblin anyway.

Furthermore, he had no way of knowing that the command ship where he was about to be stored was already crowded with hundreds of goblin refugees.

“...”

The short-haired man looked completely disinterested. He spoke in a dry tone.

“Let's keep moving. If we want to capture the remaining fifty-six by the end of the day, we don't have time to waste.”

After that, even as the two men scoured every corner of the planet, the world's tranquility remained completely undisturbed.

Thanks to scouring Rahgangquia's memories, Minjun confirmed the Dragon Race's guilt. Just as he had suspected, they were firmly in league with the Committee.

Yet, despite confirming their betrayal, Minjun had no intention of making a grand spectacle out of their punishment.

‘They assumed I wouldn't dare strike them without hard evidence.’

Minjun decided to weaponize that exact same logic against the dragons in other dimensions.

‘Which is exactly why I won't leave a single shred of evidence behind.’

The dragons, who were lounging in their Lairs dreaming of their 4 million Talent payday, were kidnapped one by one. Not a single trace of struggle or combat was left behind. When the dragons in other dimensions eventually learned of this unprecedented mass disappearance, they would be absolutely paralyzed with shock.

They would certainly have a prime suspect. Word was bound to slip that Asif-666's fleet had been sighted nearby right before the dragons vanished.

They would see the connection, but they would lack the definitive proof needed to justify going to war to avenge their kin.

More importantly, they would be terrified that provoking him would cause them to evaporate overnight, just like the dragons on this planet.

‘It will keep them second-guessing.’

And while they hesitated, Minjun's fleet would plunge straight into the heart of the dimension.

“Alright, next.”

The two men swept across the planet without hesitation, ruthlessly continuing their harvest.

However, as the guild members were quietly snatched up one by one without warning—

—not every dragon on the planet was blissfully unaware and defenseless.

   *

“Damn it, I knew I had a bad feeling about this!”

Under the cover of night, a lone dragon was frantically slipping out of his Lair.

It was the same dragon who had anxiously checked the fleet's status with the artificial intelligence to the very end, long after the other guild members had started celebrating.

Riddled with paranoia, he had forgone sleep today to maintain his watch. It was pure coincidence that he noticed the anomaly.

“I suddenly can't reach any of the guild members!”

The moment he realized this, his survival instincts began screaming like a blaring siren.

“Damn it! Damn it all!”

There was no time to prepare a warp jump to another dimension.

He quickly Polymorphed, strapped himself into his personal spacecraft, and initiated an emergency launch.

“3... 2... 1... Liftoff!”

The G-force—something he would have barely noticed in his true dragon form—crushed down heavily on his frail Polymorphed body. The scenery outside the cockpit blurred. A moment later, the ship's AI chimed to announce that they had achieved stable orbit. He pulled up the Magic feeds. Behind him, the blue planet he called home was rapidly shrinking into the distance.

Alone in the cockpit, he let out a shuddering sigh.

“Thank the stars. At least I got out.”

There was another reason he had chosen a physical evacuation over an immediate dimensional warp.

He simply didn't believe Asif-666 was responsible for this attack. The surveillance feeds had shown absolutely zero traces of a Space Mothership. Even if a couple of his vessels had miraculously survived the supernova, they would be far too busy making emergency repairs to even dream of waging war on an entire planet of dragons.

No, he had a very different suspect in mind.

“The Committee... they're tying up loose ends! They're massacring us to keep us quiet!”

Were they really that desperate to save 4 million Talents?

Whatever the reason, the Ancient Race were the only ones capable of pulling off an assassination of this scale.

And if the Committee had truly turned its blades on the Mining Guild, they would not have permitted a warp jump at a time like this.

The dragon resolved to escape from the planet entirely. He would retreat to a nearby mining planet, alert the dragons in other dimensions, and beg for help.

But just as he reaffirmed his plan and checked his navigational charts—

“...Huh?”

Even faster than his ship's radar, his draconic senses caught a spatial distortion.

“That's impossible.”

A split second later.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

The ship's AI began screaming in a frenzied panic.

And right in the middle of his escape trajectory, the dragon saw an impossibly massive silhouette that shouldn't be there.

“How... how is that here?”

Like a moon slowly waxing in the void, a blindingly white hull materialized out of the absolute darkness. As the shimmering, grayish-white perimeter of the Distortion Field brushed past the dark space, the colossal silhouette of a Space Mothership revealed itself.

What the dragon didn't realize was that an entire fleet of these ships had arrayed themselves in a massive spiral formation from a great distance, completely blockading the planet's escape routes. The behemoth currently filling his viewport was merely a single vessel among them.

The only reason his ship's sensors—and the planet's entire planetary defense grid—had completely missed them was because of their Distortion Fields.

But for a ship to voluntarily drop its camouflage now meant only one thing: it needed to fire something from outside that barrier.

A terrifying chill washed over the dragon's entire body.

‘They didn't burn! They used the chaotic aftermath of the supernova to cover their tracks, veiled the Motherships in Distortion Fields, and flew straight here at maximum speed!’

The Space Motherships were a marvel of the Ancient Race. The fleeing dragon was currently experiencing firsthand that their technological gap had grown even wider than the guild master had theorized. It was a profoundly terrifying and sickening realization.

Even worse was the identity of the monster commanding the fleet...

Bzzzzzt!

A massive cannon breached the sleek hull of the Space Mothership, locking dead onto the tiny spacecraft trying to slip away. A violent, pale light boiled at the end of the barrel. The ship's AI began shrieking a final warning as the local gravity distorted.

The moment the halo of energy compacted to its absolute limit—

FWOOOSH!

A terrifying, straight beam of pure energy carved through the void, rushing relentlessly toward the dragon's tiny ship.

   *

“Shoot down any stragglers making a run for it. It's a bit of a waste, but letting even one escape will just give us a massive headache later.”

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