The Foreigner on the Periphery

During the Second War, the Ancient Race’s primary bombing targets included religious facilities and the lairs of dragons who were about to lay eggs or had just done so.

The former didn't refer to facilities the dragons ran themselves, but to the chapels of the priests they kept as slaves. These were supply depots for the "walking cures" capable of instantly healing wounded dragons. Naturally, such places were targeted first.

The latter, however, were targeted less to wipe out the dragons' lineage and more to inflict profound psychological trauma. It was well known how fiercely those absolute egoists cherished their hatchlings. Brutally slaughtering a baby just before or after it hatched was the cruelest possible attack one could inflict upon the Dragon Race.

And now, Min-jun was looking at a secret tied to the latter target.

'Most of the bombed lairs were burned completely to ashes.'

The eggs and hatchlings were presumed incinerated without leaving a single scale behind. Naturally, their names were added to the lists of the dead.

But what if some of them had actually been abducted by the Ancient Race?

'So the Committee has been raising the hatchlings they captured back then like this.'

The dragon's thoughts flowed into him.

Judging by its age, the dragon seemed to be on the threshold of adulthood, yet its mental waves carried an unhealthy innocence. Min-jun guessed it had never met another dragon or gone through any proper socialization process.

Instead of answering, the god sought to confirm one thing.

'The sin of being born a dragon?'

The dragon firmly believed that its sin was something it had no choice in and could never change.

He could feel that the creature genuinely meant it.

=Yes... Dragons are hideous creatures. Before the Committee was established, the people of the dimensions groaned and suffered under their tyranny. Vile dictators. Their filthy blood flows through my body. Therefore, I must be punished.=

It was a horrifying level of brainwashing.

Min-jun carefully observed the tubes connected to Asif-500's body, particularly those pumping in a blue fluid.

The tool used to erase prisoner memories and implant suggestions was known to be the work of King Endelion. Asif-500 was that very tool.

In other words, the mastermind who reduced the dragon to this state was none other than the Tentacle King.

Naturally, dragons possessed invulnerability to all poisons. But the raw material for the solution currently being injected into Asif-500's body contained the blood of ISP awakeners. The origin of ISPs traced back to the primordial race. Only a substance created by the race that once kept dragons as livestock could disrupt a dragon's immune system.

=Yes, I am receiving the punishment I deserve. And this punishment must not stop.=

'Who taught you that?'

=Who? Everyone has been telling me that since I was inside my egg.=

Normally, the Dragon Race would be indoctrinated with how great their species was even before they hatched.

But in a hidden location, this dragon had been taught how atrocious its kind was.

Min-jun could now deduce the identities of the prisoners filling the gap between Asiph-1 and Asif-666.

'The abducted hatchlings who were judged to be useful must have received those numbers.'

Children forced to accept their conception, hatching, and very existence as an original sin.

In terms of the probability of awakening a Supernatural Ability, dragons were positioned at the exact opposite end of the spectrum from goblins. Because their bodies overflowed with boiling mana, every single one was born with at least one type of ability.

Therefore, they had the highest chance of birthing the ability users the Committee desired.

Ultimately selected as a suitable ability user, Asif-500 had lived this kind of life ever since.

What it was subjected to now was a gruesome atrocity no living creature could willingly accept.

Yet the dragon seemed to gladly accept its circumstances.

'It's been poisoned by drugs for so long that it has reached the point of self-brainwashing.'

He issued an order to the mental-type ability user who had implanted suggestions even into its own mind.

'Stop controlling the prisoners.'

=I can't. Erasing their memories and controlling them is part of my punishment. And I have to stay here and continue being punished. So I cannot fulfill your request.=

'There was absolutely no room for your own choice in the things you consider to be your sins.'

=That doesn't make the sins flowing in my blood disappear. I learned it while I was still inside my eggshell. Dragons are a truly terrible race. As one of them, I have a duty to repay those sins.=

For a moment, a few of the sentences Dell had pleaded earlier flickered in Min-jun's ears.

Pushing that thought aside, Min-jun projected another forceful mental wave.

To the sinner who had been forced to bear a sin.

'Then, what if I forgive you?'

=...What did you say?=

He could feel the mind of the dragon, which had stubbornly refused his demands until now, shaking violently.

Asif-500 muttered, as though this were a concept it had never once considered.

=You'll... forgive me?=

If the minds of the prisoners piloting the fighters were a calm lake, Asiph-1 could have stirred them up and created a torrent in any direction it wanted. But right now, the dragon had already churned up their minds and triggered a vortex.

First, he needed to return the currents in the depths of their minds to their original state.

To do that, Min-jun decided to share a possibility Asif-500 had never dared imagine—but a story it would never be able to shake from its mind once heard.

He spoke again, his tone a firm declaration.

'There is no sin you have willingly committed on your own. You merely shouldered it.'

Since the very early stages of its life, this dragon had been restricted from exercising any free will. Regardless of its own desires, it had erased the prisoners' memories and implanted suggestions.

Perhaps Min-jun saw fragments of his own past overlapping with it. Perhaps he identified with it, remembering how he had been forced to make a "certain choice" when his soul was hacked to pieces by Adkiel without his awareness.

'I forgive you.'

The god was telling the sinner that it no longer needed to be punished.

Furthermore, the god had no intention of forcing Asif-500 to prove its worth.

Slash!

With a decisive sweep of his hand, the tubes and mechanical arms attached to the dragon's body were severed. The defense system activated, attempting to eject the intruder from the space, but his quick movements neutralized it. The system then shifted to a self-destruct sequence for the entire ship, but Min-jun's intervention was faster.

The flow of fluid being injected into the dragon's body ceased. However, a significant amount still remained coursing through its veins. Min-jun did not go so far as to tamper with that.

Asif-500 muttered in confusion.

=You... forgive me? Why? How?=

Methods aside.

=What right do you have to do so?=

Min-jun transmitted a memory to the dragon to serve as his answer. Overwhelmed by its terrifying volume, the dragon temporarily closed off its mind.

And a moment later.

=Oh my god!=

If its very nature as a dragon was a sin, just as Asif-500 had been brainwashed into believing for so long—if being born with a predisposition to commit evil was wrong...

...then the only being who could absolve that sin was the one who had created that nature.

Min-jun unloaded a bundle of memories into the dragon's mind to make it understand that point, knowing that simply killing it wouldn't immediately break the suggestions placed on the prisoners.

The sinner, who had spent its entire life locked away in isolation, was deeply struck. Overwhelmed by the vivid memories, it cried out.

=You made dragons into their current form?=

The dragon's mind boiled with turmoil. Because the memories were so broad and profound, it took time to fully process them.

After a moment.

Barely managing to quell the storm in its thoughts.

The dragon asked, sounding as if it found it hard to believe, yet desperately wanting to.

=Are you really?=

Are you truly the master of dragons? The Lord of all the dragons in the world?

Min-jun declared proudly.

'Yes. I am "Him".'

The memories were far too vast and precise for it to harbor any doubts. It was a stimulus intense enough to blow away the soul of a dragon confined in darkness for nearly a thousand years.

That absolute innocence, born of never having gone through socialization—something that could never be considered desirable—shone brightly in that moment.

"...!"

Min-jun realized that the texture of the mental waves radiating from the dragon had changed.

It had forcefully reversed the mental waves that had been inciting the prisoners to remain in a state of frenzy.

'Good. Well done.'

=But...=

The dragon stated that this didn't resolve everything.

Min-jun knew that too. He gazed beyond the outer walls of the spacecraft, where his eyes couldn't physically reach. Some had stopped their movements under the dragon's guidance, but a significant number were still continuing their suicide attacks. The dragon explained the reason.

=The drugs injected into their bodies... are holding onto their excitement and rage, keeping it from disappearing. The weaker their bodies are, the more they are affected.=

In other words, the prisoners who still hadn't stopped killing themselves were suffering from acute drug intoxication.

'If that's the case, it's actually quite simple.'

=Yes?=

The best method to cleanly cure a drug addict was already well known across all dimensions.

'Come on, let's go.'

=Go where?=

Min-jun answered with action.

The next moment, Asif-500 sensed the twisting of mana, followed by a distinct change in what was touching its scales.

=Gasp?!=

It emitted a mental wave that was a mixture of passion, confusion, joy, and fear.

Its eyes were still blind, its ears still deaf. All it could sense was a handful of information relayed by the balance organs in its head and the nerves beneath its skin.

But even that was enough to be certain. It had been moved outside the space it had been trapped in all this time.

And that it was a place Asif-500 had never once experienced with its bare body.

=Where are we?=

Even though its breathing tube had been severed, Asif-500 felt no pain. It could feel the god standing on the back of its neck. A warm energy transmitted through the point of contact. That pulse had replaced the life-support systems, clinging to the dragon's lifeline.

Having Teleported outside the battleship alongside it, Min-jun looked out over the battlefield. The majority of the prisoners, still trapped in their rage, didn't even notice Min-jun suddenly appearing in the middle of outer space.

Even if their radars picked him up, they ignored him, focusing entirely on striking the order's Mothership. After all, the initial suggestion implanted in them had ordered them to target it.

Min-jun sent a mental wave toward his allied fleet.

'Can you hear me?'

Asiph-1's reply returned.

=Yes, I hear you.=

'I'll give you a set of coordinates. Do exactly as I instruct.'

Against the suicide attacks, the order was fighting back with the battleships' Photon Cannons.

The bishops operating the ships may have expended a considerable amount of focus, but they had yet to utilize their most powerful innate abilities.

To say nothing of the absolute majority of bishops who weren't directly involved in operating the naval guns or maneuvering the ships.

Min-jun knew that their Divine Power was currently brimming at near full capacity.

Ruling over them as their god—yet paradoxically unable to wield Divine Power himself—he issued a command to Asiph-1. That command was relayed to the bishops of each battleship in real time.

The sight that followed immediately after was...

Vwoooom—!

Flash!

Flash! Flash! Flash!

A procession of light beams streaking in a single direction like a meteor shower.

The bishops aboard the 158 space battleships unleashed their Divine Power all at once. It passed through calculated gaps and converged on a specific set of coordinates.

The golden brilliance intertwined and gathered, forming a clear regularity. Dazzling colors created a tidal wave.

Floating at a single point in the vacuum of space, Min-jun absorbed the overflowing light into his body all at once. He then resonated it with the life force already existing within him.

The god closed his eyes, concentrating his mind to the extreme. In that state, he continuously compressed the seething power, vibrating it into an even more intense form.

=Ah...!=

That process bestowed an unexpected gift upon Asif-500, who bore the god on the back of its neck. The hyper-concentrated Divine Power was a miracle in and of itself.

Spanning nearly a millennium of time, lenses swelled inside its empty eye sockets, pupils formed, and optic nerves reconnected. Bones sprouted, cartilage knitted together, and membranes billowed from the wing joints left as mere vestiges. The limbs severed immediately after it hatched now grew back, sturdy and long.

And for the first time since it was born, Asif-500 opened its eyes and gazed upon the world unfurling before it.

The golden pillars erupting from over a hundred and fifty battleships. Small spacecraft deploying with flames trailing from their tails. The hazy waves of starlight washing away the dark of night. Nebulas boiling in rapturous colors. The vast, immeasurable expanse of the cosmos.

Whether during the days it had lost its sight or now, the dragon couldn't tell what kind of expression it was making. The only certainty was that its facial muscles were contorting in a way they had never moved before.

The dragon's mental waves crumbled as emotions and meanings swirled into a mess. A few drops of liquid leaked from the corners of its scale-covered eyes, freezing instantly before drifting off into the far reaches of space.

It was at that exact moment Min-jun finished his preparations.

Flash!

The god amplified and unleashed the power he had absorbed so far—the faith of those who worshipped him.

It was an explosive surge, violent enough to blanket the vast battlefield in an instant.

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