The Foreigner on the Periphery

"Earth?"

"Why there, of all places?"

Minjun found it hard to understand.

Dell shared the information she had painstakingly pieced together from the database.

"Cain, back when you were a prisoner, you were incredibly important to the Committee."

Minjun shot back in a dry tone.

"A very important asset, more accurately."

He hadn't forgotten that those who killed prisoners were charged with property damage rather than murder.

"The Committee expected that if they dispatched you to a frontier dimension, you would resonate with the fragments of Asiph-1 and attract each other."

The pope had things he wanted to demand of his mother, but given the atmosphere, he was holding back for now.

"The king thought it would be a disaster if you died before completing that mission perfectly. It was certain you wouldn't die of old age, but she couldn't guarantee you'd regenerate if you were disintegrated at the molecular level, for instance. So, she left behind a contingency plan without the other executives knowing."

Minjun felt like he knew what the Tentacle King had been thinking.

"That Shelter was the Magic Tool that held onto my lifeline when I was near death."

"Right. If you suffered an injury you couldn't regenerate from, my mother was prepared to seal your body in the Shelter immediately and transport it straight to Committee Headquarters. For such swift action, the Shelter had to be placed on the planet you resided on in advance."

The protocol was simple. If Asif-666 became incapacitated, the other prisoners on Earth would receive a sudden mission with a massive sum of Talents as the reward.

Blinded by the payout, they would have thrown themselves into the emergency transport operation without a second thought.

Minjun muttered inwardly.

'And I left without knowing that, leaving it right there on Earth.'

His decision was swift. This wasn't a situation where he could send someone else to retrieve it.

He spoke to those gathered.

"I'll make a quick trip to Earth."

As the conversation seemed to wrap up, Dell asked,

"So, are you going to cross-examine the king with this information?"

Minjun shook his head. Yumtus explained with a stiff expression.

"Actually... that's impossible right now."

It didn't mean he was breaking his promise.

"The 'interrogation' was halted after the Holy Mother stepped away."

He showed them why the boiling metal torture had stopped. A magical projection floated in the air.

"...Mother?!"

He had consistently referred to her as the king until now, but his form of address slipped in a moment of panic.

The Tentacle King in the projection looked different from the last time they saw her.

"What happened?"

The king didn't blink. Her pupils were dull and unfocused. Dell felt a chill run down her spine.

Asiph-1 chimed in carefully.

"If we put in the effort, we could look into her mind, but it has practically become meaningless."

If an ordinary person's mind was like a well-organized bookshelf, the king's current mental state was a mountain of randomly scattered pages from shredded books.

"No way! Why?!"

"...This is all we barely managed to find out. It seems the king has fallen into a madness-inducing agony, torn between the suspicion that her own blunders caused the ruin of her people and the denial that such a thing could be possible."

She was captivated by the screams and wails of her dying subjects, trapped in endless auditory hallucinations.

Separate from physical pain, this was gnawing away at the king's mind.

The guilt of destroying the Endelion race through her own mistakes.

It was a heavy, destructive thought that someone who had ruled a species simply couldn't bear.

The result.

"It seems the king has let go of herself."

The king had lost control of her physical body and sunk deep into her own mind.

Asiph-1 had learned that even an Endelion could go mad.

Dell stared at the projection in despair.

Even now, the king was emitting random mental waves that couldn't be translated into language. It was hard to guess from those lethargic eyes, but the telepathy was intense enough to make one hesitant to approach her. If one were to compare it, it was akin to a horrific, screeching scream.

The king was suffering from delusions and hallucinations that terrible.

An endless nightmare.

Asiph-1 explained that this was a more violent reaction than when Minjun had tortured her.

"Mother... you."

A self-inflicted nightmare.

Even though Minjun had promised not to inflict any more pain, she had thrown her own mind into a horrifying hell.

Dell's efforts to ease her pain had gone up in smoke.

She murmured hollowly.

'In the end, is this the conclusion your karma brought upon you?'

Yumtus spoke.

"It's a state we cannot cure even with our Divine Power. Because it is a problem of the mind, after all..."

Swallowing her misery, Dell asked Minjun.

"Then there won't be any more interrogations, right?"

Minjun nodded.

Whatever happened to her mental anguish, the Tentacle King would no longer be tortured with boiling metal.

Dell couldn't be sure if she should feel relieved by that fact.

*

Strange rumors began to circulate on Earth.

The prisoners were the first to notice the anomaly.

Many had been summoned to the dimensional center to stop Minjun's fleet, but there were prisoners excluded from that selection. They caught on to the Committee's silence.

Messages suddenly stopped transmitting into their heads. Reminders to pay the living tax, account balance notifications, sudden missions—nothing was coming through.

That fact reached the dragons as well. A short while later, they heard unbelievable news from their kin in other dimensions.

"In the war... Asif-666's side won?!"

None of the dragons on Earth had predicted his victory.

Except for exactly one.

Or, depending on how you count, maybe two.

"Good lord, Rod. Did you hear?"

"It's confusing, so just use my name. You're the Rod of Earth now, Jenkinson."

"Your real name is too long. Anyway, that's not what's important right now..."

"Did I hear? Of course I heard. Have you forgotten we share senses?"

Somewhere in Seoul.

The Red Dragon anxiously reviewed the news he had just obtained.

The voice in his head, another personality separate from his own, remained calm, calling it expected news, but Jenkinson simply couldn't do the same.

"Minjun, the fleet he led actually won!"

"That's what I heard too."

Jenkinson felt a surge of frustration.

"How can you be so calm?!"

"I'm more puzzled by why you're so surprised. The opponent was a primordial race. They were the pioneers of civilization, transcending even the Ancient Race. It seems my hypothesis was correct. Minjun definitely let himself get caught on purpose. What was his reason? I think that's the part we should be worrying about."

Jenkinson pondered the meaning behind those words as he looked out the window.

The season had shifted into winter. The Baliens hired for high-rise window cleaning had long since returned to Southeast Asia. Therefore, there were no winged people obstructing his view. He looked down at the city submerged in cold, clear air.

The end of the year was approaching. The day of the prophecy.

"I need to probe Choi Panseok and Choi Seona once more."

That father and daughter were still staying in the Lair. All due to the dragon's strong urging.

It was a situation that could be misunderstood as imprisonment, but the five-term assemblyman considered the Ancient Dragon's hospitality an honor and didn't refuse. At least, on the surface.

And his daughter consistently replied that the prophecy remained unchanged whenever Jenkinson asked.

"That orc is getting more suspicious by the day. He seems to be hiding something. Even though he's my benefactor."

"I agree with you on that part."

"At the very least... we need to know when exactly Minjun is returning to Earth."

"What difference would it make knowing beforehand?"

According to the prophecy, he would absolutely be on Earth on the last day of 2020.

However, it was uncertain whether the master of the world would descend upon this planet exactly on December 31st, or if he would arrive earlier to prepare something.

"Haa."

A deep sigh. The more he thought about it, the more absurd it felt.

The master of the world? Minjun?

Though no official stance had been announced yet, it was certain that the power structure of the entire dimensional system was being reorganized because of him.

When Jenkinson wore a dazed expression once again, the previous Rod gently redirected his attention.

"Pay more attention to the security of those connected to Minjun as well. You mustn't let go of your tension until the very end."

According to the prophecy, Minjun didn't want Jenkinson's ego to disappear.

As Rod had mentioned, Jenkinson might be the most important dragon in the universe.

If so, what about the others who had formed connections with the primordial race?

After some thought, Jenkinson concluded that he might currently be protecting the most important orc, the most important elf, the most important goblin, and the most important humans in the universe.

"It's even more dangerous because nothing can be predicted. Speaking of which... what are they doing right now? It would be good to call them in for a moment."

*

Jenkinson's Lair.

The doors to the swimming pool opened, and an old elf stepped inside.

The fishy scent of salt hung in the air. It was a saltwater pool kept at the perfect temperature. Someone was swimming back and forth inside without rest.

But her stroke was different from ordinary swimming. She swam laps across the fifty-meter lane entirely submerged, never lifting her head above the water, moving at a speed no normal human could mimic.

"Hmm."

She was so absorbed in it that she didn't seem to notice he had come in.

Unable to wait any longer, the elf, Lakefield, made his presence known.

Vwoom!

The air vibrated, and an opaque figure resembling an elf woman formed.

The spirit smiled cheerfully and approached the edge of the water.

"Kyahahaha!"

She burst into loud laughter.

Only then did the person underwater begin to slow down.

Splash!

Foam sprayed into the air.

Piercing the surface, a skipjack tuna's head vigorously shot straight up. Its scales caught the pool lights, scattering gleams like jewels.

Due to an anatomy that prevented her from turning her head, she stared at the visitor solely with the left side of her face.

Looking into that deep navy-blue eye with its distinct fish-like sheen, Lakefield spoke.

"Miss Catherine, could we talk for a moment?"

Cathy, transformed with the upper half of a tuna and the lower half of a human in a swimsuit, waved something. The appendage, halfway between a fin and an arm, formed simple sign language. Roughly understanding it as 'wait a moment,' Lakefield nodded. She briefly disappeared into the locker room.

A moment later, he faced Cathy, who had returned completely to her human form.

"You've been working hard."

"Swimming clears my head of idle thoughts. It also makes me feel disconnected from the outside world. What's going on?"

Lakefield's expression shifted.

"I received a call from Chief Secretary Blair. The chairman wants to see all of us."

Only then did Cathy realize why Lakefield had come in person.

She hadn't been able to check her phone while she was in the water.

"So suddenly?"

Cathy's pupils trembled.

"Don't tell me...?"

"Yes. I believe it's about Minjun."

Cathy's face nearly crumbled before she barely managed to rein it in.

She still found it hard to believe that he had vanished so futilely, leaving no trace behind even now.

"Could he... have been caught?"

They didn't know the full details.

They had only heard that he was being chased by a pan-universal organization called the Committee.

Looking at Cathy gritting her teeth, Lakefield shook his head, saying nothing was certain yet.

Instead of leaving immediately, she stared into space as if lost in thought for a moment.

Was she bracing herself to withstand whatever tragic news she might hear? Thinking that, the elf gave her some time.

Suddenly, Cathy spoke.

"When you saw him last... how did he look? Minjun, I mean."

When Todd had raided Minjun's office and the vicinity had been blanketed in suspicious shadows.

The last person to see the agent had been Lakefield.

The elf pondered his answer.

"...He looked no different than usual. He had the expression of someone who knew exactly what he needed to do and didn't doubt it for a second. The same face of the man who complains every day about not wanting to work... but focuses harder than anyone else once he actually starts."

At that time, he had heard the Ancient Race call Minjun 'Asif-666'.

He didn't mention that part to Cathy.

"Don't jump to conclusions yet. Let's go together and hear what he has to say."

"...If only I had known that would be the last time, too."

"What?"

Cathy already wore an expression that anticipated tragedy.

She had met Minjun in Hong Kong in the past and handed over the stone stained with dragon's blood. That was the last day she had seen her superior face-to-face.

No, would he soon be her former superior?

'If I had known that would be the last time... I would have said something meaningful instead of such useless chatter.'

Cathy recalled their final conversation.

"Minjun! Try this. Since you wouldn't let me use the Frying Pan, I made it myself."

"...Again? Why? No, you must have some reason for doing this."

"Trust me this time. People are bound to improve, after all."

"Sigh. Fine. Give it here. ...Ugh!"

"Edible, right? How does it taste? Your expression is a bit strange."

"...It tastes like chewing on an Omega-3 capsule."

"Does that mean it's good or bad?"

"The fact that you have to ask means there's already something wrong with you."

Lost in her memories, her face darkened.

'If I had known... I should have spoken honestly to him then.'

If he really had been caught by the Committee, his life could be in danger.

If the story of the man named Ye Minjun could truly end here.

She couldn't shake the thought that she should have at least left a short but weighty mark on it.

'But I might never see him again.'

In the end, had she just been an extra passing through Minjun's life?

If only she could see him one more time. So much would change.

Lakefield, who had been watching her reactions, spoke up.

"Come now, let's go. The chairman has waited long enough."

Lost in thought, Cathy replied a beat too late.

"I'd like that too. Let's head out."

The elf asked back, uncomprehending.

"You'd like the chairman to wait longer?"

"No, you just said it. That we'd meet again soon. I meant I hope that happens. With Minjun, I mean."

"What are you talking about? I didn't say that."

"Huh? But I'm sure..."

Confused, Cathy looked around.

It was still just the two of them, her and the elf.

"That's strange, I definitely heard..."

Her heavy anxiety must have made her hear things.

Thinking so, Cathy followed after the elf.

*

After calling those connected to Minjun.

Jenkinson continued his conversation with the personality inside his head.

"I'm worried about the movements of the dragons from other worlds."

At the news of the Committee's annihilation, the Dragon Race across the dimensions had begun to move swiftly.

"To have lost to the Committee in the past, yet entertain the idea of fighting the one who defeated that very Committee... it's a bit rich coming from me, but it's incredibly dragon-like."

"They're targeting the possibility that his forces are exhausted right after a massive battle. They must all be busy with espionage activities targeting Dimension #00-001 right now."

"We need to suppress the dragons on Earth as much as possible. We must stop them from committing sins against the new master of the world."

"I am trying my best, aren't I? I'm swaying public opinion toward observing the situation rather than acting rashly."

Thanks to Jenkinson being chosen as Rod earlier than planned, his words carried weight.

Of course, whether this position would hold any meaning once Minjun began to rule the universe according to the prophecy was highly questionable.

"Speaking of which..."

Just as Jenkinson was about to seek another piece of advice from Rod.

"...!"

His voice cut off.

The Ancient Dragon's senses had caught something.

'...This easily? I didn't notice until now!'

Security had been breached!

The airflow had already shifted completely. An uninvited guest had intruded into his office.

In the brief moment it took to turn his head, he imagined every possibility and formed a spell to counter the opponent.

'Who? Remnants of the Committee? A dragon? But there's no reason for that right now...!'

The moment his head finally turned all the way around.

"...!"

Jenkinson froze for a completely different reason than before.

Someone was there.

The man who had suddenly revealed himself was providing a partial answer to the very problem Jenkinson had been agonizing over with Rod.

His mere presence was the answer.

Piercing the freezing silence.

The other person spoke first.

"Did you pick up a weird habit while I was away? What are you babbling about all by yourself? You look like you're going senile."

For a moment, Jenkinson also thought he saw a blinding brilliance surrounding the man's body.

But the light vanished quickly. It was the result of Rod's ego temporarily affecting his senses.

In the previous Rod's memories, that man was always radiating a bright light. That had momentarily mingled with his physical senses.

Feeling as though his jaw was about to fall off, Jenkinson barely managed to speak.

"...You?"

"Hey, Jenkinson. It's been a while."

His returned friend offered a greeting.

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