The Foreigner on the Periphery

Yumtus and the other priests gathered to welcome the triumphant return of their god and the pope.

Flash!

Two men appeared inside the ship, luggage dangling from their backs.

"What the—?"

The priests were taken aback at the sight of the group standing quietly before them.

"More... goblins?"

"Did the avatar fetch the slaves himself this time?"

Only Yumtus knew the truth.

"There are forty-eight of them in total."

Out of the fifty-seven Dragons, forty-eight had been captured, eight had been intercepted by the Mothership while trying to flee in a spaceship, and one had vanished in a manner that contributed to a sudden spike in the planet's soil salinity.

The Dragons, now transformed into goblins, stared blankly without reacting.

The pope clapped his hands. Having run wild for the first time in a while, he forgot to keep up his solemn act.

"All right, the handover happens here."

At his signal, the Dragons became obedient to the bishops' commands. Following a brief explanation, the rest of the priests finally understood the true identity of these supposed goblins.

Yumtus spoke in a low voice.

"We'll have to be careful not to mix them up with the others."

"...You took the words right out of my mouth."

Minjun shot him a look, and the pope, realizing his slip, quickly fell back into his solemn expression and tone.

"Keep them in a separate area from the goblins who trespassed the other day."

The two groups held slightly different statuses: one as slaves, the other as livestock.

The only common thread was that neither side was considered human.

"Ah, um..."

A supply officer hesitated, his lips parting as if he had something to say. Unable to address the pope directly, he glanced at Yumtus instead. Catching the hint, Yumtus spoke up on the officer's behalf.

While the pope was undoubtedly the 'person' who represented the order, Yumtus had effectively been acting as its administrative head for quite some time.

Unwittingly, an atmosphere had formed where he monopolized the privilege of speaking directly to the holy father and son.

"Shall we prepare feed for the livestock as well?"

If they fed forty-eight Dragons with the provisions loaded onto this fleet, food for everyone else would run short.

If push came to shove, they might have to cull the number of Ancient Race prisoners.

"..."

The pope relayed the god's words to them.

"No, there is no need to prepare separate feed for them."

A faint smile played on Asiph-1's lips.

He looked over the members of the Dragon Race wearing goblin skins.

"By the time they outlive their usefulness anyway..."

The god assured himself.

"The war will already be over."

*

A moment later, Yumtus was in front of Dell's room.

"Holy Mother, I have something to tell you... Mmph!"

Splat!

Dell threw the door open before he could even finish his sentence. Consequently, Yumtus had no time to dodge the foreign object that plastered itself right onto his face.

Smack! Thwack!

A series of wet slaps rang out, echoing like a fierce game of ddakji. It was the sound of tentacled creatures—each the size of a human head—launching themselves one after another, stacking up as they clung to his face.

=Yumtus! It's Yumtus!=

=Where did you go? What were you doing? Why are you only here now?=

=Yumtus, did you feel it too? The ship shook like crazy earlier. I was so scared I thought I was going to die!=

=Not this time, but it shook even harder before. Grandma was super worried.=

=Hey, you idiot! She's not a grandma. She's a princess!=

=No, Yumtus called her the Holy Mother!=

It was a barrage of mental waves so loud they would have made his ears ring had they been transmitted as sound.

Yumtus managed to peel the squirming creatures off his face one by one. Even as he did, the young Endelions' chatter never ceased.

Only after the priest peeled off the very last one did he regain his vision and breath, finally catching sight of Dell.

Her expression was dark.

"...I'm a bit late, aren't I?"

Among the more than one hundred Endelion children, a few still hid behind Dell's back. They remained afraid of Yumtus.

The reason was simple.

They found him gross.

On the other hand, some completely ignored his arrival and continued whatever they were doing, while others happily threw themselves at him the moment they saw him. This last group clearly no longer found Yumtus repulsive.

Although they were in the minority, their aversion had faded as the frequency of their interactions increased. These children now had zero qualms about making physical contact with Yumtus.

Poke! Poke!

Even as Dell and the priest conversed, the little tentacles floated around Yumtus, extending their tips to boldly poke at the nape of his neck or the backs of his arms. It was as if they were begging him to play.

The priest frantically brushed away a tentacle strand creeping dangerously close to his eyebrow. Then, he grabbed a bundle of tentacles burrowing into the wide sleeves of his bishop's robe and tossed them aside. This second action proved to be a mistake. Giggling as if it were on an amusement park ride, the tossed Endelion promptly flew right back at him.

The priest felt profoundly conflicted.

'The Holy Mother will be displeased, so I must not treat them roughly.'

What was more, alongside the Holy Mother, the Endelions here were perhaps the only tentacled monsters their god recognized as human. Considering the children's origins and pasts, it was quite a strange twist of fate.

Aboard this ship were goblins still considered slaves because their god had yet to declare otherwise, Dragons who were once free but were now treated as livestock, and Endelions who had been created as tools but were acknowledged as humans here.

Their dignity was either guaranteed or stripped away purely based on the god's validation.

In the priest's mind, this was entirely natural.

The qualification to be human could not be granted by another human. Some naturally cherished the beasts within their own group more than the humans outside it. The same logic applied to matters of good and evil; one's own villains were often considered more precious than the righteous of another group.

Because of these inherent human limitations, a being beyond humanity had to step in.

Naturally, only a god could be the judge of such worth.

'Which means I have to respect these squirming things.'

The priest forcefully shifted his train of thought.

Even amid the chaotic environment, he made an effort to pivot to a serious and heavy topic.

"I believe some explanations are in order regarding everything that has happened so far."

Yumtus explained how the planet had exploded the moment they arrived, and how their god had ordered the kidnapping of the Dragons in retaliation.

Dell's face drained of color at the news.

"An entire... planet? If it had a Terminal, it couldn't have been uninhabited."

Dell couldn't hide her shock upon hearing that the vast majority of the fifteen thousand goblin slaves, along with the races working in management roles, had perished alongside the planet.

She muttered in a hollow voice.

"Good heavens, Mother!"

She shook her head for a moment before voicing her confusion.

"Why kidnap the Dragons, though? That seems too extreme for simple retaliation..."

Only then did the priest realize.

'Ah, she doesn't know!'

The Holy Mother still didn't know that Minjun consumed dragon blood.

Yumtus decided it wasn't his place to reveal that secret.

"I believe it would be best if you asked the god directly about that... Mmph!"

Yumtus panicked mid-sentence. A wayward tentacle strand had slipped right between his parted lips!

With an air of pious reverence—and a subtle infusion of Divine Power—the priest crumpled the tentacle into a ball and tossed it away. The child found this utterly delightful again, but failed to zoom back to Yumtus this time. The priest had deliberately set it spinning wildly around the room like a deflating balloon.

After applying similar countermeasures to the rest of the tentacles, he finally managed to distract his little interrupters completely.

Dell muttered.

"Even though they knew full well I was with this fleet..."

It meant her survival as a prisoner was no longer of any concern to them.

"The avatar predicted they would do everything in their power to protect you. But seeing the reality of the situation..."

Dell felt like a fool.

"They've already abandoned me."

Rationally speaking, it was nothing to be sad about. Dell had been the first to betray them.

Studying her pale face, Yumtus smoothly transitioned to the main topic.

"Ever since you provided the pope's vessel, our god hasn't demanded anything else from you."

Yumtus was speaking of his own volition, saying words Minjun had never ordered him to speak.

Acting entirely on his free will as a servant of his god.

"However, I believe it is necessary to make a request of you. The Endelions' attempt this time was extremely dangerous. Neither Todd nor the Kavite prisoners knew what kind of weapon destroyed that planet. It stands to reason that they possess other secret weapons unknown to the rest of the races."

He waved a hand, and a map of the dimensional systems appeared.

"There are several more transit hubs we must inevitably pass through. The Endelions might be waiting to spring a similar trap. I want to map out every possible scenario in advance. Including whether they have other lethal methods aside from outright planetary annihilation."

Dell let out a soft sigh.

"I don't know the exact reality of every dimension shown there. I wouldn't know if there's another planet they can blow up so easily, or what the local political interests might be..."

"That is perfectly fine. I've already interrogated the prisoners, reviewed this ship's data, and memorized the relevant details. You only need to fill in the blanks regarding the Endelions. If we combine our knowledge, we'll find our answers."

She had already come too far to turn back now.

She promised to reveal everything she knew and cooperate fully.

Nodding, she said,

"Understood. Let's put our heads together and see what we can figure out."

"Pardon? Right here?"

Yumtus blinked, his eyes wide with incomprehension.

Glancing at his forehead, Dell suddenly realized her choice of idiom had been a poor one.

"No, I didn't mean it like that..."

Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, Dell and the priest sat down to discuss their future strategy.

*

"The operation failed."

The Endelion king listened calmly to his subordinate's report.

He merely added a single thought.

"Just as we expected."

The Dragons of the Mining Guild had been entirely oblivious, but when the Endelions transported the artifact to that dimension, they had stealthily deployed a surveillance artifact right alongside it.

Without the Dragon Race noticing, those microscopic satellites scattered throughout the star system, faithfully observing everything that unfolded next.

Scanning the data, his subordinate explained,

"However, based on this attempt, we estimate the enemy consumed a significant quantity of Mana Crystals. Furthermore, their bizarre decision to kidnap the Dragons is quite noteworthy."

But above all, the greatest triumph of this operation was something else.

"We have secured crucial data that allows us to predict their fleet's future strategies, as well as gauge their operational capacity with those 158 ships."

For now, this was more than enough to be satisfied.

As the Endelion king reviewed the data, he pointed at a specific section.

"This is...?"

"It is an anomalous wavelength observed right before the planet exploded."

A phenomenon that the Dragons had completely missed.

"It surged for only a brief moment before vanishing entirely. We still haven't identified its nature."

"Could it be..."

The king's gaze grew profound.

"You mentioned that the planet's primary population consisted of goblins, correct?"

Consumed as mere slaves and contract miners across countless planets, there was only one thing about goblins that could ever catch the eye of the Ancient Race: the mutant whose DNA carried a staggering bounty of 580,000 Talents.

'The artifacts installed on our Space Mothership cannot produce a wavelength like that. And yet, it's entirely different from the readings we took from Asif-666 and Asiph-1 in the past. Could it possibly be...?'

Had it been emitted by the planet's residents right before they were annihilated along with their world?

The king recalled the old lyrics passed down through the generations of their race, transcending all dimensional boundaries.

'A Supernatural Ability User born on the brink of extinction.'

Whether that "extinction" referred to the annihilation of a single planet or the death of an entire dimensional system remained a mystery.

Just how drastically their population had to plummet to trigger this "brink" was equally unclear.

What if the planet's impending destruction had served as that exact trigger?

'Too late to verify it now.'

The Endelions possessed an intense interest in that mutant, but their methods of verification were limited. They couldn't exactly scour every dimensional system and slaughter all the goblins they could find.

Thus, they had opted to bypass the problem entirely. They arranged mass goblin immigrations to dimensions that still relied on primitive mining labor. Then, once the goblins had settled in, they would introduce new technologies like Mana Crystals or alchemy to those worlds.

Even if there were still resources left underground to mine other than fossil fuels or gold, the goblins' jobs would instantly vanish. Mass layoffs would leave the goblins homeless and terrified for their livelihoods. In turn, due to their unique physiology, they would cease reproducing entirely, leading to a massive population crash.

In short, the Endelions had been secretly running experiments across multiple dimensions, systematically triggering the social extinction of goblins.

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