The Foreigner on the Periphery

The dragon altered the flow of the mental waves at Minjun's command.

Some of the mind-controlled prisoners immediately halted their attacks. A new suggestion overriding the previous one was all it took. They had regained enough sanity to hesitate in their suicide run.

But not everyone regained their senses right away.

The man, Asif-26,188,280, was one of them.

"Guh!"

The crushing weight pressing down on the back of his neck remained. The blue drug was still pumping into his system, and he lacked a Supernatural Ability strong enough to instantly break free from the toxins.

His violently agitated mind burned, fueled by the chaotic rush of hormones in his brain.

The man was enraged by his own anger, hating the hatred that had consumed his heart.

"Attack! Wipe them all out!"

The man jerked the control stick and glared at his target. He could see the enemy ahead. Who they were no longer mattered. He was just about to press the fire button—seeking to burn away this hatred that had become an end in itself rather than a means—when...

"..."

A brilliant light swallowed his vision.

It was as if a star had exploded. An indescribably beautiful flash. The wave of light poured over him, swift and intense.

"...Ah!"

His voice cracked.

The man felt like he had just woken from a long, terrible nightmare. The strength drained from his fingers, and his head throbbed like it had been smashed with a hammer.

'Why am I doing this?'

Reeling from sensory motion sickness, he breathed in the scent of reality. His memories were fragmented. He remembered everything up to his decision at the control stick—up to the moment he swore to keep his head down and simply run.

Groping through his own mind, the man was surprised again. He had recovered far more memories than he had lost.

His sense of self currently hovered somewhere between a prisoner and a normal person. He had even recovered fragments of his life from before the Committee captured him.

'What on earth is this?'

Even as the man struggled to make sense of it all.

Flash!

The light continued to pour out. Dust that looked like crushed starlight formed a massive wave, blanketing everything. It didn't refract or reflect against obstacles; it simply passed right through them. Even now, the man watched the luminous powder pierce his very body. It was as if he were a ghost rather than a creature of flesh and blood.

'Where in the world is this light coming from?'

The man soon found the source.

Many other prisoners were doing the same, staring at a single point.

Staring at a shape that seemed carved from pure light.

'A dragon?!'

He couldn't make out the color of its scales or distinguish its exact features. The brilliant radiance obscured everything. Going solely by its outline, it looked like a dragon staring in their direction, massive wings spread wide on either side.

And someone was riding on the nape of its neck. At first, he mistook the figure for a horn, but upon closer inspection, it appeared humanoid.

The prisoners realized it instinctively.

'That light is what brought me back to normal!'

Those with sharper senses, or those who had weathered all kinds of hardships over their long careers as prisoners, figured out one more thing.

The true nature of that golden light.

'Divine Power!'

The miracle awakened by those who believed in a god.

That was why it was so hard to believe.

'How can one person possess such incredible power?'

Naturally, the Divine Power within that white-gold light wasn't radiating from the dragon, but from the entity riding it.

The thought that this being might be the most powerful wielder of Divine Power in the universe crossed their minds.

'Or.'

A small minority took it a step further:

'The very source itself—the entity that bestows Divine Power upon the priests!'

As the prisoners remained frozen for quite some time.

- Beep! Beep!

The artificial intelligence let out a warning alarm. Those piloting small spacecraft and those in the rear battleships all heard a similar message simultaneously.

This was the message Asif-26,188,280 received:

- Prolonged cessation of combat detected.

- Asif-26,188,280 is ordered to resume engagement immediately.

What?

Fight?

The man stared at the fleet ahead. Even at a glance, they were advanced models that vastly outperformed the allied ships, and to make matters worse, the enemy had them completely outnumbered.

Furthermore, there was the unknown entity radiating awe-inspiring waves right in the middle of the battlefield.

No matter how he looked at it, this was a battle they couldn't win.

"Are you crazy?! Attacking now is suicide!"

The AI continued to demand he fight, completely ignoring the prisoner's objections. The man refused.

He even tried to shut the AI down, but failed. Unlike the warriors of the Ancient Race, prisoners mobilized as war slaves lacked the necessary clearance.

Meanwhile, the AI began executing its programmed protocols. The prisoner had just refused its order for the third time.

- If combat is not resumed within ten seconds, the self-destruct sequence will initiate.

- 10, 9, 8...

The AI immediately began its countdown. The man's eyes went wide in horror.

"This is fucking insane!"

He snapped his head forward.

He looked at the target designated by the AI—the enemy's majestic armada. Charging in now would be throwing his life away.

"Sons of bitches!"

The Committee's intentions were obvious. They had programmed the ships this way to prevent the fighters and battleships from falling into enemy hands if the prisoners surrendered.

"You pieces of trash!"

The other prisoners must have been facing the exact same ultimatum, as they were all scrambling to escape by any means necessary. They had decided that surrendering to the enemy was the better option.

Depending on their abilities, they either cast Teleport or smashed through their cockpit canopies to abandon their crafts, fleeing as far away as possible.

Asif-26,188,280 chose the latter.

Bang! Bang!

Crack!

His aura-condensed hands blazed with a blue-white light. He relentlessly battered the cockpit's transparent canopy with both fists. All the while, the countdown ticked down mercilessly.

- ...6, 5, 4...

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Dammit! Those Committee bastards! I swear, I'll get my revenge...!"

Before he could even finish his sentence—

Crash!

The explosive decompression sucked everything out through the shattered canopy. The man didn't resist. He switched his combat suit to survival mode and threw himself into the black void. Rather than letting the vacuum simply drag him out, he kicked hard against the dashboard to build momentum.

In a flash, the artificial gravity vanished. His body accelerated into a rapid spin, tumbling forward through the vacuum in an endless somersault.

Right behind the man, who was barely putting distance between himself and his fighter jet...

---!

A blinding flash erupted, followed by a shockwave that slammed into him.

"Gaaaargh!"

A scream echoed inside his helmet.

If he had been a second slower, the blast would have torn him to shreds.

'Barely made it. Time to surrender!'

As his body spun out of control, the man checked the wrist of his suit. He squinted at the small display, enduring the sickening rush of blood to his head.

His combat suit was supposed to double as a spacesuit. According to the pre-mission briefing, it had enough built-in oxygen to keep him alive in outer space for over an hour...

"Huuugh!"

The man's face rapidly contorted.

"You... you motherfucking pieces of shit!"

Contrary to the figures displayed on his wrist, his lungs felt like they were shriveling up.

He realized the truth too late. There was no oxygen stored in the combat suit.

The Committee had lied to the prisoners.

If he belonged to a unique race like a dragon, he could survive for over an hour without oxygen. A troll would also last quite a while. Unfortunately, the man did not fall into those categories.

A frail human body.

He could hold out longer than an ordinary person without a Supernatural Ability, but his species still had its limits.

"Urk!"

Only a few minutes had passed, yet the man already felt his consciousness slipping. He couldn't even guess how far he had drifted into the pitch-black void.

'Am I going to die... like this?'

He couldn't tell if his vision was blackening because of the vast expanse of space, or because he was passing out.

'And I finally got a piece of my memories back, too.'

He had finally recovered the memories that proved who he truly was, not just some prisoner.

Only to die without seeing anyone from those memories. In a place none of them even knew about.

Would he just die and fade away like this?

It was agonizing, lonely, and profoundly sad.

A silent scream echoed in his mind.

The last name the man recalled was...

'Sirkiz!'

At the exact moment the tether between his soul and body began to fray.

'...?!'

Something caught the prisoner's eye. Because he was still in a continuous spin, the object ahead flashed rapidly across his vision, top to bottom, several times a second.

Even on the brink of death, he found it bizarre. Because it was a shape that had no business being out here.

It had to be a hallucination.

'Does everyone see things like this before they die?'

He muttered weakly in his mind.

'It's completely bizarre. Why, of all things...'

He had never wished to see something like this. Truly.

If he had made a list of the top hundred things he wanted to see one last time before dying, this shape wouldn't have even made the cut—yet it was steadily growing larger.

'Why, of all things...'

Enveloped by a profound sensation—like glimpsing the mysteries of the soul and death, or witnessing the cosmic secrets of all creation—the man finally lost consciousness.

=...!=

The very last thing he saw before his eyes slid shut was a one-eyed creature, waving dozens of tentacles as it approached.

   *

"What is the status of the rescue?"

Even as Asiph-1 prepared to report to his creator, he found the god's instructions highly unexpected.

"Nothing can be done for those who are already dead, but we have successfully recovered a significant number of the prisoners who managed to escape their ships."

Just before returning to the Mothership with a dragon, Minjun had performed an unexpected miracle.

The god had absorbed the Divine Power radiated by the bishops, amplifying it to blanket the entire battlefield in order to cure the prisoners' acute drug poisoning.

As intended, the prisoners ceased their voluntary suicide runs, but 'involuntary' self-destruction immediately followed.

Guessing it was the Committee's doing, Minjun had clicked his tongue, muttered, 'They really are filthy scum,' and instructed the order to rescue the survivors. They couldn't do anything for those killed instantly in the explosions, or those who suffocated shortly after escaping, but the survival rate was still surprisingly high.

Having already witnessed the overwhelming might of the order and the unidentified 'man of light', the prisoners entrusted themselves to their rescuers without resistance.

"As expected of people selected as prisoners for their 'usefulness,' they stubbornly clung to life even in an oxygen-deprived environment."

There was one more factor contributing to the high survival rate.

Asiph-1 added.

"Furthermore, the Endelions are playing a massive role in the rescue operation."

Anticipating that the bishops alone would be pressed for time, Minjun had ordered a few Endelions to be deployed as well. They were the only race capable of surviving in the vacuum of space completely unharmed; their ancient ancestors had moved so swiftly they could literally swim between the stars.

When he first heard that order, Asiph-1 doubted a single tentacle would volunteer, but...

The results were unexpected.

"They seem to view this as some kind of game; they're fired up and competing with one another."

Asiph-1 muttered to himself.

'Weren't they originally massive cowards?'

Surprisingly, aside from the three recognized as kings by Minjun, several more had stepped up and raised their tentacles.

'A cowardly temperament is certainly imprinted in their genes, but that borderline obsessive personality might largely be a product of their upbringing.'

As a result, the rescued prisoners began gathering inside the command ship.

Among them were those who had fainted and since woken, as well as those who had remained conscious the entire time—a testament to their exceptional abilities.

A gloomy, anxious atmosphere settled over them as they worried about their fate.

"How many have been rescued so far?"

"A little over a thousand."

Everyone else had either been blown up by the order during the battle, or caught in the AI's self-destruct sequence and reduced to space dust.

"Let's begin."

Minjun and Asiph-1 stood before the prisoners.

Gazes filled with fear and wariness fixed upon the two of them. Some recognized Minjun's face, and they gasped as they looked above his head.

Unlike the last time they saw him, the text 'Asif-666' was gone.

They realized that their former comrade was now truly free.

Minjun also recognized a few familiar souls, but he didn't show it. He had no intention of speaking in front of them today. Asiph-1 would handle all conversation with the sinners.

Looking at them, the god thought to himself:

'There must be a mix in there—vicious criminals who would make even the Committee flinch, and those who simply resisted the Committee.'

Until now, the standard for judging their sins had rested with the Committee.

But in the world that was about to unfold, things would be different.

The god's voice was conveyed through the mouth of Asiph-1.

"I will give you an opportunity."

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