The Foreigner on the Periphery

Beeeep!

Wreeeeee!

Sudden warning alarms blared throughout the virtual reality space where the Committee members were logged in.

A flood of specters burst from Zero Point, sweeping through the interior of the mining base in an instant. No one had expected the elite warriors guarding the facility to fall so quickly.

“Zero Point has been overrun!”

The Kavite were the race responsible for managing the mining base. Their newly elected representative’s voice cracked, trembling miserably.

The Endelion king felt a sudden urge to rush to the physical space where that worm was hiding and crush him with her tentacles.

But, as always, she could not act on that desire. She was unable to leave the planet of tentacles.

It was not solely due to her own obsessive fear. Now that her planet had been moved to the center of the system, taking a short trip to the Committee Headquarters for a brief meeting should have been feasible.

The reason for their furious uprising was simple. They suspected their king had realized the enemy was already on their doorstep and was attempting to abandon her people and flee alone, keeping the truth a secret from the commoners.

“You guaranteed you were thoroughly prepared! How was it breached?!”

As she roared, an emergency report generated by the artificial intelligence was transmitted in front of her.

Reviewing it, the Endelion glared with her single eye.

“Overrun... from the inside?!”

Once again, she realized just how vastly an information gap could influence a war.

The door at the center of the mining base. She had never imagined that anything other than the universal currency could pour out of a place used exclusively to extract Talent. The enemy had used the gate to their treasure trove as an invasion route.

Unfortunately, the tragic news did not end there. The report stated that the power source for the second dimensional barrier—another strategic weapon hidden within the base—had been destroyed far too quickly.

“Emergency! The barrier generator is...!”

At the words that followed, the Tentacle King felt her bodily fluids run cold.

“There is a hole in the dimensional barrier!”

“We are observing a continuous chain of massive Space Mothership signatures at the edge of our world!”

The sinner’s fleet had crossed into their world and begun its invasion.

“How...?!”

The Tentacle King could not understand it.

She knew the barrier created by the Committee, one of the two layers, had vanished. However, the wall that had existed since the beginning of time should have remained.

What magic had Asif-666 used to cross it?

No, that’s not it.

The king quickly rejected her own thought.

That wall hasn’t existed since the beginning.

According to the ancient knowledge passed down through the royal family, the wall had suddenly appeared one day, fracturing space piece by piece starting from the outskirts.

Her ancestors had never figured out why it happened so abruptly. Only the result remained in their records.

The Tentacle King was seized by an ominous premonition.

Could the dimensional barrier also be a creation touched by the primordial race?

Did this mean that once the artificial wall made by the Committee crumbled, leaving only the layer that was their creation all along, they could control its opening and closing at will?

The king felt waves of anger, despondency, hatred, and sheer stubbornness crashing alternately through her mind.

Just how much of this world was stained with the fingerprints of those monsters?

If even the things they considered the natural laws of the world were their creations...

Were they not truly beings worthy of being called gods?

Could it be that the even more fundamental laws governing the world... trivial rules like particles and waves, mass and gravity, physical objects and spiritual bodies... were all their handiwork?

The king soon denied that thought as well.

No. They are not gods. They are merely people with extremely dangerous power.

They were simply beings who had achieved their accomplishments faster and ventured further than anyone else. Bizarre intellects who, despite all that, remained trapped in a human mindset.

The king hurriedly anchored her thoughts back to reality.

First, I have to deal with those specters!

This was no time for shock and despair.

If she were going to give up over something like this, she would never have planned to kidnap and enslave a former racial god in the first place.

“We will handle the mining base. The rest of the races must focus on tracking and countering the enemy fleet!”

According to the AI’s report, the things swarming the mining base showed properties very similar to shadow monsters. That meant they possessed a certain degree of immunity to both physical and mental attacks.

The Endelion knew the best way to dispose of such monsters, and the most excellent tool for the job was right there in their tentacles.

However, taking that route would spark massive resistance and terror among her people...

It can’t be helped. We cannot abandon the mining base! Before it collapses entirely, we must salvage whatever functions we can!

Making her decision, the king briefly shifted her focus back toward her physical office.

Meanwhile, the remaining races had grasped the fleet’s movements.

“Massive warp gate formations have been observed at the edge of the world!”

The Space Motherships the enemy had hijacked were the latest models. This was a precursor to them utilizing their capabilities to prepare for an ultra-long-distance Teleport.

In the material world, it was impossible for an object to move faster than the speed of light. However, warships of that caliber could cross vast distances through folded spatial shortcuts—passages known as Hyperspace.

It would not take long for a fleet traveling through such a shortcut to reappear at its destination. Not when factoring in the Motherships’ performance.

“They won’t be able to open a warp gate directly inside our star system.”

The Committee had already taken measures to completely block massive fleet-class objects from teleporting directly into their inhabited star system. Having too much to lose, they did not want to turn their own front yard into a battlefield.

Thanks to that, the newly generated Teleport signatures were detected a mere 500,000 kilometers from an uninhabited planet located on the outermost edge of their star system.

   *

The army of the god completed its ultra-long-distance Teleport.

On the command ship situated at the center of the fleet, Asif-1 stood on the bridge where the god was absent.

A normal commander would have had all their nerves focused on the impending battle, but the son of the god was allocating a portion of his cognitive power to deep thought.

We’re finally here.

Dimension #00-001 was a penal ground for the Ancient Race.

Just before crossing over to this place, he had listened to the conversation between his creator and his mother. Del had not asked Minjun for leniency or forgiveness. To Asif-1, this was unexpected.

From what he knew, human nature dictated protecting those they were attached to, no matter how cruel a sinner the other party might be. Tentacles curled inward, just as the saying went.

But Del had not asked for clemency for her blood relatives or those close to her. Asif-1 was certain that if Del had asked, Minjun would have surely agreed.

So, why?

Is it because, despite being of the same race, Mother refused to empathize with them?

Asif-1 knew very well how intense empathy directed inside one’s own fence could be. It was strong enough to serve as the basis for collective revenge.

Literally. The blood shed by someone else within the group became a reason for him to seek revenge. Because he could feel their wounds and pain as if they were his own.

Del had refused to follow that instinct. Instead, she seemed to have made a rational judgment that she had to be fair to everyone.

Asif-1 came up with another thought that could be the reason.

Right. Unfair forgiveness can also be a form of violence against the victims. Justice that is lenient toward evil merely becomes the seed for more evil.

Asif-1 did not agree with the perspective that violence was evil and forgiveness was good.

Therefore, Asif-1 affirmed Del’s choice.

Then, the only thing left is Father’s punishment.

He thought he could reach that conclusion and easily pack it away.

“...”

Asif-1 felt an uncomfortable sensation, as if a piece of an unresolved dilemma had stuck to the inside of his Magic Metal skull.

He chased the tail of that faint displeasure for a moment.

And finally realized its true identity.

No. Is it perhaps not punishment, but revenge?

In Asif-1’s mind, punishment was public revenge. A resolute act that pursued a public cause and collective justice, showing no leniency toward evil.

If so, could his creator represent the justice of all? Was Minjun a flawless scale capable of distinguishing good and evil?

Yumtus would have firmly shouted yes. Because the god was absolute good. No logical basis was needed. It was a heavily theological interpretation.

But Asif-1, the most unfaithful Pope in the history of the order, could not truly empathize with theological theories. He was merely pretending, as doing so was helpful to Minjun.

The reason I am loyal to Father is that he is my creator.

By the same logic, Del should have offered absolute loyalty to her mother, the Tentacle King.

But she did not.

A bishop’s voice cut through Asif-1’s deepening thoughts.

No, to be exact, the Pope had already noticed the anomaly before the bishop even reported it.

“Enemy fleet approaching!”

   *

Todd, holding the position of Commander of the Tax Collection Command, glared at the radar.

The enemy ships led by Asif-666 totaled 157. The Space Motherships that originally sortied to the Elahu-Praga Church Headquarters numbered 167, but Minjun and Asif-1 had damaged 9 of them during the capture process. And 1 had been blown to pieces in the previous dimension due to a suicide attack by the prisoners.

Even though they had lost a few ships, it remained an undeniably threatening force.

And yet.

“Hmm.”

Staring at the enemy’s fleet formation, the commander smiled faintly.

“Just as expected.”

When establishing a formation, it was common sense for space warships to maintain a considerable distance from one another. If they got too close, the shields and gravitational fields generated by each warship could interfere with each other, and there was a risk of collision during sudden course changes. Additionally, the risk of friendly fire during combat increased significantly.

Despite this, the enemy formation picked up on the radar showed the warships positioned far too closely together.

“It seems those tentacles were right.”

It had only been a few months since the Elahu-Praga Church hijacked the Space Motherships. Furthermore, it was presumed they had shut off all the artificial intelligence due to concerns over self-destruct protocols. Because no matter how capable Asif-1 was, brainwashing soulless cyberbrains was impossible.

That meant those massive and intricate warships were being controlled entirely by manual labor.

Todd sneered at them.

“Those aren’t exactly simple warships that religious zealots can handle like veterans overnight. Especially for those three-eyed ones, who do nothing all day but memorize scripture and sob while they pray!”

It seemed Asif-1, having copied the memories of the captives, was compensating for the unskilled combat personnel’s inexperience and clumsiness.

Observing the movement patterns of Minjun’s fleet when the goblins’ planet exploded, the Endelion had proposed a hypothesis: Asif-1 was controlling the minds of the helmsmen on the other warships from the central command ship. That allowed over a hundred warships to move as if they were a single entity.

While the fleet’s flexible responses and mobility—something no outstanding commander could ever replicate—were advantages, there appeared to be a fatal drawback in return.

“They have no choice but to close the physical distance that much to maintain the mental connection.”

If the fleet could not spread out as much as desired, there would inevitably be a limit to the width of their barrage. Missiles might continue to fly relying on acceleration, but weapons like Photon Cannons had a set effective range.

Furthermore, the most fatal flaw of a dense formation was its vulnerability to encirclement.

Commander Todd issued the order.

“All fleets, assume Formation 3-5!”

The battlefield chosen by the Ancient Race was far enough away that the aftermath of the battle would not reach their settlements and economic hubs, yet close enough that they could return to the center of the star system in an emergency to counter any diversionary tactics by Asif-666.

The fleet of over two hundred ships, carrying Todd and the Kavite, established their formation. With both sides possessing warships of completely identical performance, their observation and firing ranges were exactly the same. Their cruising speeds were also identical. Factoring in the acceleration gained when the enemy moved from their Teleport point, the Committee advanced their fleet.

And the formation they took upon approaching the enemy was akin to a cylinder—wide at the front and narrowing toward the rear. Resembling a funnel laid on its side, this formation bunched the warships at the front, making it advantageous for concentrating firepower in the early stages. It also acted like a three-dimensionally unfolded V-formation, creating a firing line that prevented friendly fire.

In the wide-open space of the cosmos, tactics like merely blocking the left and right, or cutting straight through the enemy’s waist—as in naval battles on the sea—held little meaning. The enemy could utilize all 360 degrees to flank them.

Therefore, Todd opted to completely encircle the enemy, exploiting their weakness of being unable to spread their formation wide.

The commander smiled grimly.

“Now, come!”

   *

Just as the commander predicted, Asif-1 had mentally connected with the bishops on the other warships.

As the Pope watched the cylindrical constellation approaching beyond the massive screen, he also shared the priests’ fields of vision, observing the exact same scene from multiple angles.

He shouted.

=“All fleets, battle stations!”=

The gunnery officers and subordinate priests on each ship waited with bated breath. On the bridges where the AI had been deactivated, only the voices of the priests accurately tracking the enemy’s deployment speed and position in real time could be heard.

Finally, the moment the enemy reached firing range.

Asif-1 raised his arm and yelled.

=“Fire!”=

Even before the order was transmitted through the Communicator, the gunners across the fleet reacted almost at the speed of thought.

In that split second, tens of thousands of blazing spears pierced the dark expanse of space.

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