The Foreigner on the Periphery

The Space Motherships descended toward the planet's surface one after another in a steady line.

Thanks to advance orders from the guild master, Rahgangquia, preparations at the departure Terminal were already complete. Minjun had no intention of lingering; he planned to cross over to the next dimension immediately.

"Phew. Thank you."

Asiph-1 smiled, his face brimming with vitality.

The strength he had exhausted during the emergency escape from the exploding star and the unplanned dragon hunt surged through his body once more.

The Creator had absorbed the blood of the captured dragons and converted it into life force for him.

They would remain transformed as goblins for now. When their turn came, they would be moved to the 'blood collection room,' release their Polymorph, and have their blood drawn. Recalling the scene he had just witnessed, Asiph-1 asked quietly.

"...Have you made a decision, by chance?"

Minjun had constructed a small pen inside the spaceship today.

"More or less."

Would he acknowledge the dragons as people?

Minjun answered.

"They will have to constantly prove their worth from now on."

Asiph-1 intuitively understood what that meant.

Did it mean those who failed to earn recognition would be culled as beasts?

Once the era where dragon blood was no longer needed, those categorized as such would face the fate of livestock that had lost their economic utility.

"Hmm..."

Asiph-1 swallowed the words rising in his throat.

'From the dragons' perspective, they would argue that they never gave you such authority, Father. They would say they don't need anyone to evaluate the consequences of their free will.'

Instead of voicing that thought, he changed the subject.

"The coordinates for the next stop are these, right? I'll go ahead and tidy things up..."

"Hold on a second. Before that."

There was something he needed Asiph-1 to verify.

Especially now, when he was brimming with power for once.

"Take a look at this."

"Huh?"

He held out an artifact in the shape of a metal Cube.

For a moment, Asiph-1 mistakenly thought it was Rod's keepsake—the very item sealing the Dragon Heart. Their exteriors were incredibly similar.

However, this was something the Creator had crafted separately.

"The concept was quite amusing, so I tried making something similar."

Stripping away unnecessary functions—like gaining physical existence the moment it was broken, or blurring the boundary between presence and absence—he had recreated only the specific ability he wanted.

"Are you saying the act of observing it from the outside affects the properties of its contents?"

"Yeah. Sealed inside is the soul of the goblin who invaded the command ship after he died. Was his name 'White Eyes'?"

Reading the memories of a continuously fragmenting soul was impossible, even with Asiph-1's power.

Troubled by that soul for reasons he couldn't explain, Minjun had taken a few measures.

"Right now, that soul is less of an independent entity and more of a phenomenon, constantly dividing and changing. But the moment it is observed within this, it will be temporarily locked into existence. Here, take a look inside."

Asiph-1 did as he was told.

"...Ah, I think it will work."

He barely managed to read a fragment of its memories.

   *

Right before the mining planet exploded.

Inside the goblin slave living quarters within the mineshaft.

Hssss! Hsss!

Ssst! Sssssst!

The desperate screams of the slaves echoed through the area.

Rumble!

The deafening roar of the earth twisting quickly drowned out their cries. Falling rocks rained down everywhere, and the water in the underground lake churned like stormy waves. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ground before abruptly splitting and tearing wide open.

Hsst! Hssss!

One stumbling figure lost his footing and slipped into a fissure. Swoosh! His hands clawed at the air as if grasping for straws.

"- S-save me!"

Grab!

He barely managed to grab the edge of the precipice with both hands, hanging on for dear life. A male who appeared to be family rushed forward, reaching out to grasp the dangling goblin's forearm.

However.

Rumble!

Another massive upheaval hit. The male trying to rescue him was shaken violently. Ultimately, his upper body tipped forward, and his legs flew up into the air. A hollow scream tore through the air.

"- No!"

Both of them plummeted into the fissure simultaneously.

"- Aaaaaah!"

The deafening, agonizing screams continued, until—

They stopped.

'Dear god!'

Desperately clutching his wife and son, White Eyes could not fathom the situation. The tremors only grew more violent as time passed. It felt as if an invisible giant had scooped them up in its palm and was shaking them like dice.

The slaves were violently tossed and tumbled in whatever direction the ground spasmed. The intense shaking continued, making them feel as if their brains would spill out through their noses and compelling them to vomit everything in their stomachs.

Craaack!

The more it shook, the narrower the world became. What used to be walls crumbled, and the former ceiling plummeted to bury the ground beneath their feet. Their 'home' shattered into tiny pieces, surging toward them in a tidal wave of debris.

The world White Eyes knew was collapsing.

At this rate, his family and every neighbor he knew would be swept away and obliterated together.

Crunch!

"- Aaaaaah!"

Another scream.

Beside a wailing woman lay a goblin who had taken a direct hit from a falling rock, his head burst open. Bone fragments and brain matter were splattered across the corpse's shoulders. Just beyond them, someone tumbled across the ground and plunged into the lake. He flailed for a brief moment before vanishing into the water, never to resurface. Yet another, seized by a panic attack, pressed too close to the wall. The fragments of collapsing rock swallowed him whole.

Even those with perfect vision would struggle to see anything in this environment, but White Eyes could see every single one of them.

People were dying, disappearing.

So pointlessly.

'We...'

The emotions and thoughts that had vaguely drifted through his mind in the past.

In that moment, they took on a sharp, defined shape.

'What on earth have we been holding on for all this time?'

Born as slaves, they lived as slaves.

He knew no other life but mining ore until he collapsed from exhaustion.

Even so, he had always been aware that something was wrong. If they died like this, their entire lives would amount to nothing but writhing in agony before fading away.

Did such a life hold any meaning at all?

Rumble!

The world shook madly. White Eyes could still clearly see the family in his arms. Even amidst the violent earthquake, his vision did not waver.

The face of his wife, murmuring a song that sounded like a desperate prayer, and of his son, screaming and crying.

Just minutes ago, White Eyes had felt sorrow looking at her left arm. And he had despaired imagining the slave's life his child would have to endure in the future.

A fleeting question crossed his mind. It was as if someone else were whispering in his ear.

'Maybe it's better to just die like this...?'

That voice laced with resignation.

'No!'

It was immediately rejected by an indignant inner scream.

'No! It cannot end like this.'

Even if it was a life expected to be filled with pain and frustration.

The possibilities they might one day grasp must not be stolen away.

Even if the hope of a better life was absurdly slim. Even if the odds were bitterly low.

'We have to live.'

He thought desperately.

'A safe place, we need to escape to a safe place.'

Did such a place even exist? If it did, how could they get there? His common sense could offer no answers.

He simply yearned for it.

Somewhere that was not here. A place where 'we' could be kept safe.

If only I had the power to find such a place.

—!

The moment he fiercely wished for it.

Flash!

White Eyes felt something intense, something he had never experienced before.

A sensation like his brain was burning.

'Ah...?'

The dam broke.

Something solid that had existed within him, a thick wall, was torn to shreds.

It was an extreme expansion of the senses. Explosive and wondrous. Overwhelming information poured into his brain like a high tide. The boundaries of his flesh vanished, and everything overflowed like a flood. His hypersensitive perception extended far beyond the five senses.

In that situation, White Eyes didn't even have the luxury to panic or freeze.

Spiraling out of control on the boundary between reason and emotion, he cried out.

'A safe place! The safest place!'

His cataract-covered eyes had lost their usefulness long ago, and his optic nerves barely functioned.

Yet, the scenery he was seeing shifted from here to somewhere else.

'Ah?!'

A sudden shift in scenery.

The goblin's body remained trapped in the thrashing underground, but his gaze was fixed upon a place resembling a pitch-black night sky.

'What is that?'

Strangely shaped boxes were flying by incredibly fast. Somehow, White Eyes intuitively knew that each one was large enough to swallow the entire mine.

Soon, one particular box among them caught his attention.

The one positioned at the very center of the fleet.

White Eyes just knew.

'There! We have to go there!'

The safest place in the universe was right there.

The moment he made that judgment.

Something hiding in White Eyes' blood asked him a question.

Are you really sure?

It was definitely the first time, yet it didn't feel like it.

The goblin felt as if he simultaneously understood and couldn't comprehend the meaning behind the question.

But his decision was swift. There was no reason to hesitate.

—!

With that, it felt as if whatever remained within the goblin finally shattered and washed away.

Intense beams of light flooded his dimming vision. Light from nowhere swept over the surroundings.

Amidst the dancing streams of light, the goblin saw his own life. It was a life riddled with pain. Every breathing moment was a struggle, yet there were fleeting joys that filled the gaps. Joys entirely thanks to those whom that very light had just swallowed.

My most precious...

Beyond the ridges of his thoughts and reminiscence, someone repeated the question.

Are you really sure?

He thought.

I have no regrets.

Right before his consciousness severed, the goblin felt the whirlwind of light finally engulf him as well. Unexpectedly, it didn't hurt. The waves were gentle and warm.

After that, he felt nothing at all.

   *

"..."

Asiph-1 remained stiff for a moment before speaking.

"...Hmm."

He slowly explained what he had just witnessed.

"It seems the one responsible for transporting those trespassers into the cargo hold was indeed that goblin named White Eyes."

It was hard to believe, but the goblin's memory plainly said so.

After hearing the explanation, Minjun fell silent with an unreadable expression before speaking again.

"I see."

Asiph-1 said.

"Do you think he was 'that'?"

Minjun shook off his thoughts.

"I think so."

Goblins were originally famous as a race in which Supernatural Ability Users were never born.

"And yet, for him to unleash such an incredible Supernatural Ability..."

A Demonic Goblin.

Everything Minjun knew about their existence was strictly limited to the information he had obtained through the Committee.

"Instead of Supernatural Ability Users being born steadily at a fixed ratio like other races, they might have evolved to awaken under special conditions at incredibly rare odds. It feels strange to call it a trade-off, but if they receive all the potential powers of all the Supernatural Ability Users their race could have ever produced, condensing that entire opportunity cost into a single, massive compensation... I suppose that balances the scales."

What he still couldn't understand was why there were no anomalies in his genes.

He began to suspect that the Committee might have been approaching it from the completely wrong angle from the start.

The goblin mutation gene they had been searching for might have actually had nothing to do with Demonic Goblins.

Asiph-1 furrowed his brow.

"Why did he have to meet such an end, of all things? For both his soul and body to collapse completely."

"It could be because he exerted an excessive amount of power, far beyond what the scales could balance. Whether every Demonic Goblin shares that fate, or if there's a set limit to their allowed power, remains uncertain."

Asiph-1 chewed over the goblins' lore he had seen in the memories.

"But it doesn't make sense. Even when weighing it against that song."

"Which part?"

"It said they are born when their kin are on the brink of extinction. Even if we assume the scope of that extinction is limited to a single planet rather than the entire dimensional plane, the timing is a bit..."

"What if the birth described in the lore isn't biological childbirth, but a rebirth through awakening?"

"It still feels slightly off. White Eyes appeared to have awakened his Supernatural Ability a long time ago. His eyes, remember?"

"Ah, right."

For a severe cataract patient to clearly distinguish objects was well into the territory of Supernatural Abilities.

But why had he awakened so early?

"Back then, he hadn't even perceived the coming extinction yet. But his Supernatural Ability still bloomed."

Minjun fell into thought for a moment.

"Maybe."

His voice sounded uncertain, even to himself.

"Maybe it was because that was the only way he could survive?"

"Pardon? What do you mean by that?"

"If White Eyes had lost his vision entirely due to cataracts, what would have happened? Forget his family getting hurt; he himself would have been culled."

Assuming White Eyes was the sole individual capable of awakening.

"If he had been discarded back then, the goblins would have been completely wiped out when the star exploded."

"Wait a minute. You don't mean?!"

"If White Eyes goes blind, he dies. But he has to live for the pack's bloodline to continue. The deductive conclusion from this is that White Eyes must 'be able to see things perfectly fine' to avoid the pack's extinction."

"Is what you're saying exactly what I think you're saying?"

"Yeah. The probability is low, but..."

Minjun voiced his hypothesis.

"What if the Demonic Goblin's power even warped cause and effect across time?"

If that were true.

"The horrific disintegration of White Eyes' soul and body might not have been the backlash of pinpointing the command ship's location, piercing the barrier, and migrating en masse. In truth, he might have suffered the backlash of twisting the chronological chain and causality itself."

A hypothesis suggesting that even that backlash manifested within the warped causality.

"Come on, could it really be to that extent? The interpretation of the song is probably just wrong. Maybe being enslaved was itself deemed a crisis of extinction. Furthermore, didn't you say there's no such thing as a fixed future? Even a prophetic Supernatural Ability User only reads the scenario with the highest probability of occurring."

Asiph-1 was generally prepared to agree with whatever the Creator said. Even if Minjun claimed he was actually fond of dragons, Asiph-1 would at least pretend to believe him.

But this particular hypothesis was just too hard to swallow.

Minjun looked away, murmuring.

"Well, nothing is certain as of yet."

   *

The conversation ended there, and Asiph-1 crossed over to prepare for their jump to the next dimension.

Left alone, Minjun briefly set aside his interest in the goblins.

He had one more thing to check.

'Let's see how far along things have progressed.'

Minjun closed his eyes and sank into the darkness of his own mind.

At the profound depths he sank to...

=...Kyaaaah!=

Adkiel was there.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!