The Foreigner on the Periphery

The nearly one thousand prisoners gathered in the command ship's auditorium could hardly believe what they had just heard.

Giving them a chance?

As they waited in tense silence for him to continue, the long-haired man abruptly introduced himself.

"I serve as the representative of the people in this order. The Committee calls me Asif-1."

The audience drew a sharp, collective breath.

Asif-1. The worst criminal in history. A legendary figure with an absurd bounty of seven million Talents placed on just a single fragment of his soul.

Due to the Committee's information control, the prisoners had been summoned without knowing he had become a complete entity. Most couldn't even begin to imagine the relationship between him and Asif-666.

The prisoners were unable to hide their shock at the sudden revelation.

Then, someone gathered their courage and asked:

"Isn't it obvious? The chance for you to take revenge on the Committee."

The moment those words left his lips, Flames flickered in the eyes of many of the prisoners. Their breathing grew ragged, and their faces twisted with vicious intent.

Having awakened their collective anger with a single statement, Asif-1 continued.

"Most of you probably don't remember exactly what happened today. I will explain it simply."

Asif-1 then demonstrated a magic that caused the faces of the hazy-minded prisoners to pale and flush red over and over again.

The prisoners recalled feeling a piercing pain in the backs of their necks right after boarding the fighters. The revelation that the Committee had paralyzed their reason and literally tried to use them as meat shields perfectly filled in their fragmented memories. They couldn't control the wild swing of their emotions between horror and rage.

"Among you are surely those who have been treated as slaves merely for the supposed crime of defying the Committee. I can guess how deep your grudges run. Under the command of the great one, our order intends to invade the Committee and deliver rightful punishment. I am giving you the chance to join this grand crusade."

Someone raised a hand and asked,

"What happens if we don't join?"

It was a question that would have deeply angered any other bishop, but Asif-1 remained perfectly calm.

"The order does not force anyone. Those who do not wish to fight do not have to join the holy war."

It was an unexpected answer.

"Just as forgiveness is entirely up to the victim, repaying a favor is entirely up to the one who received it. God did not grant you salvation in expectation of something in return."

If it were Yumtus, he would probably have interpreted that sentence as 'God's absolute love for humanity.'

Swallowing that thought, Asif-1 continued.

"God's grace is not a sacred contract demanding an equivalent return; it is based on unconditional mercy and goodwill. I leave it to your own free will whether or not to repay that grace."

It was unlikely, but if God's army lost, they would be forced right back into serving as the Committee's slaves.

They didn't have many options to begin with.

"However," Asif-1 added,

"To join God's army, you must pass through a single gate. You should all have somewhat recovered your memories from before you became prisoners. If so, what was the reason each of you was sentenced to penal labor?"

"Those who were wrongfully sentenced without committing a crime may assert their innocence. Those who truly committed a crime and were caught need only confess their sins to me and sincerely repent. Confessing the complete truth is the only gate you must pass."

A confession performed directly in front of the Pope.

The prisoners wore confused expressions, unable to grasp his intentions.

"I will give you one hour to make your decisions."

Minjun and Asif-1 left the auditorium, leaving the prisoners behind.

Once they were alone, God asked,

"How was it?"

Asif-1 frowned.

"Beyond my imagination. I understand how the Committee has been running the prisoner system all this time."

He had a different, hidden reason for gathering the prisoners in the auditorium.

Asif-1 didn't have the time to listen to confessions from over a thousand prisoners individually.

Just moments ago, when he had dropped the keyword 'sin,' the prisoners had collectively recalled related memories. Asif-1 had scraped those memories together and judged them.

"By normal standards, less than ten percent of them could be labeled as heinous criminals. The rest were all captured merely for the crime of rebelling against the Committee."

"As expected."

"Yes. Since regaining their memories, the former resistance fighters have been burning with even fiercer hatred and hostility toward the Committee. Even if we had released them outright, they would have acted against the Committee on their own."

Minjun clicked his tongue.

"And the measures for the remaining ten percent?"

"I will finish dealing with them today."

There was no need to leave behind any variables ahead of the war. They couldn't allow heinous criminals who had even startled the Committee to roam freely around the battleship.

Minjun nodded his approval. As he walked a little further with his creator, Asif-1 spoke up, as if something had suddenly come to mind.

"Ah, mixed in among them were a few who had connections with you, Father, during your time as a prisoner."

"Yes, I recognized them too."

"There was one among them who had an interesting thought."

Asif-1 spoke in a cautious tone.

"He was wondering why you saved them, Father."

He hadn't blindly accepted the religious explanation referring to Asif-666 as God.

"Well... it was this kind of doubt. He wondered why a man who had already gathered enough military power for an all-out war with the Committee, and who had ascended to a position where he called himself a god, would go out of his way to save them and give them a chance at revenge..."

Seeing no particular change in Minjun's expression, he finished his thought.

"'Is it because he, too, knows what it is to fall to the absolute bottom and suffer? Does a man who considers himself a god actually empathize with slaves?'"

Mentioning that he had remembered it because it seemed like a rather amusing thought, Asif-1 brought it up in passing.

After a brief silence, Minjun spoke, even though Asif-1 hadn't brought it up expecting an answer.

"Empathy alone isn't enough."

Moreover, Minjun believed that the empathy of someone with power didn't necessarily guarantee salvation.

Precisely because they know exactly how much pain the other party will feel, some people instead express a persistent malice through their actions. Just as a person who has suffered terrible torture can later become a crueler torturer than anyone else.

Or they might use the other person's miserable suffering simply as a reminder to ensure they never experience that pain themselves again.

Minjun hesitated before speaking again.

"Well... Beyond empathy. Perhaps I just pitied and sympathized with them."

   *

After the Pope left to deal with the ten percent of heinous criminals, Minjun headed to where the dragon was kept.

It wasn't the place where the dragons classified as livestock were stored.

Beep!

When the door opened, Minjun saw an unexpected sight.

"...Cain?"

Del turned her head toward the door. She was sitting on the floor with her knees drawn up, hugging them to her chest. Since it was a hastily prepared room, there was no furniture inside for races with 'small bodies.'

Minjun spoke to her without much thought, and once again, he surprised himself with his tone.

"What are you doing here?"

It was his tone from his prisoner days again.

He wasn't consciously changing it, but whenever he faced her, his mind seemed to regress to those days.

"I heard from Yumtus."

Del turned her head back toward the front of the room.

"I was so shocked... I couldn't just sit still. I came to try and talk to him."

In the spot she was looking at, a dragon lay sleeping, its massive body completely exposed.

Unlike when Minjun had first rescued him, Asif-500's body was perfectly regenerated.

"Grrr... Kruk!"

It writhed over and over as if trapped in a nightmare. Rather than letting its limbs and wings spread freely, they were bound within a compressive support frame.

For the first time in its nearly thousand-year life, Asif-500 had intact body parts, and it still hadn't figured out how to move them. It was also deeply anxious that they swished around much faster and stronger than expected.

As a desperate measure, the order had devised a restraint similar to a swaddling blanket used for newborns.

"Grrr!"

Even while asleep, Asif-500 was suffering. It was a withdrawal effect from stopping the self-targeted brainwashing and cutting off the blue fluid injected into its body. The agonizing memories it had pushed to the back of its mind all this time were now storming back.

Minjun approached the dragon. Then, he loosened his own mental defense walls. As if feeling his mental waves, the dragon ceased its pained groans even in its sleep. It seemed to instinctively feel a sense of security.

"...Kurr!"

After confirming that the dragon had stopped whimpering and fallen into a deep sleep, Minjun shifted his gaze.

"You said you wanted to listen to its story?"

"Yeah. It was still awake when I got here."

Del reportedly hadn't known of Asif-500's existence either. After hearing the identity of the rescued dragon from Yumtus, she had literally almost fainted, then run straight here.

The dragon, currently adapting to its recovered body, still couldn't use Polymorph. Del had been able to briefly converse with it, as it had just been assigned quarters suitable for its massive size within the command ship.

"The suffering this dragon experienced was also my mother's sin, right?"

Minjun affirmed it with silence.

Del then relayed what she had heard directly from the dragon.

"Asif-500 was deeply overjoyed that its limbs and wings had regenerated, yet it felt anxious."

But it wasn't anxious because it didn't know how to move.

"It said it was terrified someone might come and cut them off again. Because it knows perfectly well how painful that process is... that's why it's so scared."

Del lowered her head, looking utterly distressed. She couldn't meet Minjun's eyes, and it seemed she couldn't bear to keep looking at the dragon, either.

"You know what that means, right? They weren't just cut off once right after it hatched from its egg. A dragon's regenerative power is truly terrifying. Moreover, it went through a growth period."

Her voice trembled with a mixture of emotions.

"It said bones kept jutting out and muscles swelled, piercing through the skin of the severed stumps. Just that alone must have been maddeningly painful. But..."

Del continued with difficulty.

"They didn't just leave it alone. Golems with tentacles would regularly visit and cut off whatever had grown back..."

His ex-wife eventually shut her mouth. Minjun noticed her eyes were bloodshot.

After a brief moment of silence, Del spoke up again.

"There was absolutely no need to do that. And yet, my mother deliberately chose that method."

In what the king had done to Asif-500, one could sense a paranoid obsession with preventing even the slightest chance of escape, along with a compulsive malice that fed on the dragon's suffering.

Del spoke with an expression as though she had lost something vital.

"Cain. A few days ago, I asked you something. I asked if there was anyone among the Endelion who truly repented, could you forgive them."

"You did."

"Just as you started all this to protect your precious people, I have people who are incredibly precious to me, too. But..."

Del's face twisted miserably.

"If those precious people have committed acts that even by my standards can never be forgiven... what am I supposed to do?"

From the beginning, the sin of body renewal alone was an unforgivable act according to Del's values.

Del realized it had been hypocritical from the start to ask Minjun about the possibility of salvation despite knowing that.

"Moreover, barely two days after I asked that question, the Committee ordered the prisoners to launch a suicide attack. And even this dragon..."

Her words cut off mid-sentence and didn't resume for a while. Minjun waited silently.

In the meantime, Del recalled an old, long-held philosophy in her chaotic mind.

The rational judgment that everyone in the world has an equal right to pursue happiness, and that right must never be infringed upon. Yet against that stood the instinctive urge to grant greater happiness to the people precious to her than to anyone else.

Being human meant these contradictory thoughts and emotions coexisted. Furthermore, it was Del's ideal that one had to find the point where those two values meshed together—the conviction that no matter how agonizing reality might be, she couldn't give up the effort to reach that balance.

But in the end, it all might have been nothing more than a daydream.

"In the end, are the Endelion a race doomed to endlessly commit evil without a 'god' to distinguish right from wrong for them?"

Her gaze stopped on the being who was her ex-husband, and her former racial god.

Minjun then spoke in a dry voice.

"Can evil be cured?"

"...?!"

Del recognized that as a phrase the Queen Mother had once spoken out of habit.

Of course, the "evil" mentioned here meant anything that caused harm and pain to the Endelion. For the tentacles, the only standard for distinguishing good and evil was the rights, interests, and happiness of their own race.

"The king of the Endelion created the prisoner system to solve that very question."

He brought up the tentacles' past, when they had committed a greater evil for the supposed purpose of curing evil.

Minjun then questioned his ex-wife.

"If you want, I can force the sinners to repent. It's possible because we have Asif-1."

Del knew what method Minjun was talking about.

Brainwashing them to 'sincerely' reflect on everything they had done.

"As punishment for the sins the Endelion committed, we could just erase the evil nature they harbor. But would that have any meaning? What do you think? Del, if you want, I can manipulate the minds of anyone you designate so that they genuinely repent, seek forgiveness, and never repeat their evil actions again."

Del closed her eyes with an agonized expression. Then she repeated the question she had asked Minjun earlier.

—If they sincerely repent, could you forgive them?

Minjun spoke.

"I'll ask you one last time. Del, do you want such tolerance and forgiveness from me?"

Del opened her eyes.

Then, as if having finally reached a conclusion in her heart, she answered in a voice filled with firm resolve.

"No. I don't want it."

   *

An hour after their conversation ended, Minjun's fleet prepared to jump to Dimension #00-001.

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