The Foreigner on the Periphery

Minjun's fleet departed the planet where they had docked. Cutting across space, they advanced toward coordinates no ordinary fleet would target.

They eventually arrived at a place people called the 'end of the world'—the boundary defining the edge of the observable universe.

Most people were unaware that, long ago, the entire universe had been physically connected, completely devoid of dimensional barriers.

Now, however, a line existed to divide and isolate the worlds.

From the bridge of the command ship, Minjun stared out at that fence.

On the massive main screen, the barrier resembled a pitch-black curtain; beyond that line, not a single star or nebula could be observed. Yet they all knew that past that darkness lay another universe much like their own.

Specifically, Dimension #00-001.

The methods to bypass that wall were strictly limited. Before the Committee's founding, Ancient Dragons had used extraordinarily precise, composite magic combining spatial folding, teleportation, and piercing spells. After the war, the Ancient Race layered an artificial wall of their own over the natural dimensional barrier, establishing a system that only allowed Jump Ships equipped with designated codes to cross over.

Today, however, Minjun planned to use an entirely different method.

"Every ship is fully prepared."

"And the Mana Crystals?"

"We have plenty. The moment you give the order, all battleships can maneuver at maximum output."

Minjun closed his eyes. He sank deep into his own consciousness, enveloped by the sensation of plummeting into a distant abyss.

A moment later, he was looking at 'Hell.'

=Kiyaaah! Aaaaaagh!=

The shrieks of specters welcomed him.

Minjun observed a dual current resembling a black-and-white yin-yang symbol. At one end of the massive torrent, specters were tearing into and devouring a black shadow; at the other end, the shadow was gnawing right back at the specters.

The shadow, Adkiel, failed to even notice Minjun's return. Ordinarily, she would have conjured black waves and spikes to attack him, fully aware of how pointless the attempt was.

It was a good sign.

'She's too caught up in the cycle of eating and being eaten to notice.'

Even so, she was not yet Minjun's loyal servant. Not enough time had passed to break her into a gatekeeper of Hell who obeyed only her god's commands. Even with the mental flow of time accelerated within this space, it still wasn't enough.

Thus, rather than focusing on the shadow monster, Minjun turned his attention to her partners in this mutual slaughter. The elapsed time hadn't been enough to subjugate Adkiel, but it was plenty to induce a change in the specters trapped in that cycle of mutual predation.

'Some of them have already ripened nicely.'

With the mindset of a farmer waiting for his crops to mature, the master of Hell observed their faces. Among the predominantly grayish-white souls, a few sinners stood out with distinctly darkened hues. These were the specters who had deeply assimilated with Adkiel.

They were the entities who—despite being dead, or perhaps exactly because of it—had clung desperately to Minjun's orders.

They had torn and devoured with everything they had—not just the strength of their bodies, but the power of their very souls.

Just like a Talent, Adkiel was an existence resting on the boundary between a spiritual body and a physical one. Those specters had absorbed that same property.

The god sent out a mental wave to the ghosts who, exhausted and broken by an eternally repeating Hell, had nothing left but madness. They were miserable wretches who had given up on salvation, drowned in despair, and only vented their fury upon one another.

The specters heard the same declaration that the prisoners had already received.

=I will grant you a chance.=

*

While Minjun's eyes were closed, the Pope and the bishops waited, watching him in suspense.

And finally, the moment the god opened his eyes.

=Kiyaaaagh!=

It was a desperate shriek, sounding as if souls were being ripped apart.

The bishops, waiting with bated breath, felt their blood run cold.

Immediately after that.

Whoosh!

Something resembling black lava erupted from behind the god's back. For a moment, Asiph-1 mistook it for the shadow monster.

However, upon closer inspection, it was different.

'...Specters?!'

The specters, having evolved to resemble the shadow monster during their imprisonment in Hell, swarmed the surroundings with fierce shrieks. A few bishops unwittingly stumbled backward. The sight was simply too horrific.

Summoned into a space where Adkiel was absent, the specters showed the same behavior as before they went to Hell. They tore at each other's throats, smashed heads, and ripped open bellies to yank out entrails.

Swish!

Minjun silently extended a hand. The Pope, momentarily distracted by the specters, reacted a beat late. Bowing his head in respect, Asiph-1 offered the handle of the object he had been holding. His usual playfulness was absent; the priests were watching.

It was the object in which Asiph-1's fragment had once been sealed. Back then, it had been a cast-iron Frying Pan made from black ore, but it was now transformed to suit its owner's intentions.

The Dagger the order used when performing Baptism on its priests. Gripping the sacred artifact, Minjun moved his lips.

Soon, a soft light flowed from the handle concealed beneath his palm. The bizarre patterns engraved there were a sort of password—a Key to open a door that only chosen souls could enter.

The moment Minjun completed his incantation.

=Kiyaaaaagh!=

The thrashing of the specters, most of whom were from the Ancient Race, grew even more frantic. The ghosts twisted and shivered, their spiritual bodies contorting like anatomical specimens accidentally dropped from a height. There seemed to be no limit to the pain a mental body could endure. To those who looked as if they couldn't possibly suffer any more agony, something even more horrific seemed to be happening.

Asiph-1 soon realized the reason behind their escalating seizures.

"Ah!"

At the root of the spiritual bodies that made up the ghosts—their very souls.

Sizzle!

A distinct shape was being clearly branded into them.

Seeing this, Asiph-1 found it bizarre, but—

"Oh, heavens!"

"The god... Our benevolent god!"

The bishops' reactions were different. They immediately dropped to their knees. It was a disciplined, unified movement without a moment's hesitation. Praise flowed from their bowed lips. The prayers and hymns chanted by the priests were steeped in pure awe.

Asiph-1 marveled at how they accepted the bizarre phenomenon before their eyes without a shred of doubt. Even without any mental manipulation, the bishops had already completed their theological analysis and understanding in a way that worshipped Minjun. The speed of it was enough to make Asiph-1 click his tongue.

Yumtus cried out in a trembling voice.

"The god!"

Those ghosts were the ones who had rejected the god's touch of their own free will.

They had already faced his sacred sentencing and were being punished in Hell.

Their sentence was expected to be infinite, yet—

"The god has saved them!"

It seemed a portion of them had been forgiven.

There was only one reason Yumtus believed this.

Sizzle!

Originally, the souls of the bishops pierced by the order's sacred artifact were branded with the same divine pattern as the Sword's handle.

Yet right now, that identical pattern was being engraved into the souls of those specters!

=Kiyaaaaagh!=

Light flashed along the sharply gouged grooves in their spirits. It was a sight like thousands of suns, formed from complex curves and straight lines, rising all at once.

Why had those ghosts received the mark originally permitted only to devout clergy?

Yumtus found the answer on his own. A few of the ghosts who had fallen to Hell had truly repented.

How merciful our god was!

'Hmm.'

In contrast, Asiph-1's reaction was indifferent. Paradoxically, the most irreligious person among the order's members was their Pope. While he shared in worshipping Minjun and offering him loyalty, his reasons for serving him were slightly different.

Looking at the specters, he muttered inwardly.

'In a way, it's no different from a brand stamped on a slave.'

Contrary to the Pope's thoughts, the priests seemed to perceive it as an extremely sacred and merciful act.

When the branding of the specters finally concluded.

Vwooom!

A rift formed above their heads and a black door opened. It was a passage connected to the artificial dimension where Minjun's kin slept.

Asiph-1 recalled the structural map of the dimensional system Minjun had once talked about.

If each splintered universe—that is, each dimension—were a bead among countless millions, then the linear dimension the order called 'Elahu-Praga' was the thread-like structure stringing all those beads together.

He asked the god.

"Would the interior be normalized by now?"

Asiph-1 also knew what had happened in there immediately after the Committee halted mining.

The massive amount of Talent the mining base had been sucking up remained inside the tunnel-like dimension, eventually filling its veins completely. With not a shred of empty space left, the only soul capable of enduring in there was Ha Eun-seong, suspected to be Minjun's fragment.

But was it still like that now?

"Enough time has passed."

During that time, Minjun had been moving the fleet and waiting.

He had waited for the specters to mix with Adkiel.

And he had waited for the interior of Elahu-Praga to calm down.

"The veins filling with Talent was a rebound effect of stopping the mining. Until then, the 'heart' had been producing blood at a fast enough rate to compensate for the amount lost to the outside. But now, the bleeding has stopped. For quite a while, in fact. Therefore, the pulse, blood pressure, and blood flow volume should have dropped to a stable level."

Asiph-1 felt it awkward that Minjun used medical terminology so naturally to describe the dimension. But he did not bother asking about it.

The point of the god's words was that the Talent water levels, which had recently filled Elahu-Praga all the way to its lower reaches, would have lowered again to their usual state.

Enough that one wouldn't necessarily need to be a special soul like Ha Eun-seong to roam inside.

The interior of that passage connected to all dimensions.

=Now, go.=

The specters, mixed with grayish-white and black, advanced toward the rift in the void.

And the door accepted the souls bearing the mark of promise into heaven.

"...!"

And then.

Immediately after they entered Elahu-Praga.

"What?!"

Minjun's expression slightly hardened.

It was because he had seen an unexpected sight through the minds of the linked specters.

*

=Kiyaaaaagh!=

In the vein where the most beautiful stream of light in the universe had once flowed.

The screaming specters flowed as a raging torrent.

Ghosts surged through the rift in the vein wall. They poured in like water bursting from a cracked dam, and like muddy water rushing down a flooded mountainside.

In the past, when Ha Eun-seong had entered following the acting Pope, the Talent water level had filled about half of this tunnel.

But now.

=Kiyaaa... Kiyaaaaagh!=

The ghosts did not need to be careful not to touch the Talent flowing below, as Ha Eun-seong had.

Because the vein was completely empty.

'What is going on?!'

The bridge of the command ship. Mentally linked with the specters, Minjun furrowed his brow.

The location where the rift opened this time was indeed on the downstream side close to the mining base, rather than the upstream where the priests usually stole Talent.

Even so, it was hard to understand this phenomenon where no Talent could be seen at all.

What on earth was happening upstream... and beyond that, at the source?

The god pushed the question aside for now and controlled the specter legion. The rift remained open, and through that gap, Minjun's mental waves reached the specters.

With terrifying momentum, the specters advanced even further down from the lower reaches.

=Kiyaaaaagh!=

Finally reaching the end of the vein, the ghosts saw a blocking wall in front of them.

The vent connecting Elahu-Praga and the mining base.

After suffering Asiph-1's terrorism in the past, the Committee had reinforced the barrier there. A physical barrier to prevent material intrusion, and an anti-magic barrier to block mental bodies. Plus, a third barrier to control Talent, which possessed the properties of both objects and spiritual bodies simultaneously. It was a hybrid of three types of walls.

However, out of those barriers, the weakest one was the last.

The wall blocking Talent had to be in a form that could easily be opened and closed depending on the situation. Otherwise, it would be unable to achieve its original purpose of mining it and letting it flow out.

The specter legion aimed for that gap.

=Kyaaaaah!=

The ghosts, who were only affected by the third wall.

Mixed with an entity very similar to Talent, they relentlessly targeted and attacked the final barrier.

Stopping their attacks on each other, they attempted to pierce the wall with all their might. They scratched it, bit it, and threw their bodies against it. Dark-gray nails broke, and then fingers shattered. Foreheads burst after ceaseless headbutting. Still, they kept striking it with their flattened foreheads. Eventually, peeling away a ghost that had been compressed into a layer of black tar, the next specter rushed in.

=Krrrgh...!=

Having attacked in a simple, ignorant, and miserable manner, they soon focused on another possibility.

Following the method the god had slipped into their minds.

Whoosh!

They wove and glued their spiritual bodies together. Then, creating a vortex, they began to spin.

A moment later, a drill in the shape of a black tornado appeared on the wall connecting to the mining base.

Ruuuumble!

The tornado created by the specters gnawed and pierced the door with formidable rotational force and friction. Instead of shiny sparks, shattered Shadow Fragments splattered in all directions. At first, the barrier seemed to hold up well. But as time passed, its surface was seen to fray and crack.

The moment the god, confirming this from afar, smiled faintly.

Craaaash!

Along with a chilling sound of destruction, the barrier shattered to pieces.

*

After the complete suspension of the Talent mining operation, only essential maintenance personnel were left among the mining base's operators, and the evacuated staff were replaced by security forces. It was a measure prepared for a situation where Asiph-1 or Asif-666 might invade via a dimensional jump.

One of those few remaining operators was staring at the display with a horrified expression.

"Th-this... this is crazy!"

The mining base was a giant artificial planet.

Deep underground, acting as the core of a normal star, lay a door that was said to have existed since before the base was built. The entrance and exit connecting Dimension #00-001 to the thread-like world.

Meanwhile, the coordinates there corresponded to the exact center of the dimensional system. The very center point even within Dimension #00-001, which was called the center of the universe.

After the war, the Committee took control of this Zero Point and made truly diverse discoveries, constructing various facilities based around that center point.

The mining base was an extremely important location, and it was only natural that numerous battleships had gathered around it. Because it would be the enemy's final target.

Moreover, the Committee had not ignored the possibility of the enemy appearing inside the mining base. They had already suffered severely on Endelion's planet and at Yongreung. Therefore, armed ability users were constantly coming and going, standing guard throughout the interior of the base.

However.

The operator was reminded that there was exactly one place on this planet that even they could not patrol.

"Zero Point! The Zero Point is...!"

The center of the dimensional system. The mysterious abyss lurking beyond that door.

From there.

=Kiyaaaaagh!=

Crazed specters capable of interfering with both objects and souls poured out.

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