Jenkinson kept speaking to the other personality in his head as he flew, half-panicked. The remnant of the former Rod was the only one who grasped the full situation and shared his exact feelings.
But no matter how hard he tried, there was no answer. Feeling as if he were going mad, the Red Dragon finally approached his destination.
An invisible wall blocked his path in the middle of the ocean.
He did not even have time to be bewildered. The sight unfolding beyond the wall of Magic struck him with a shock like a brutal blow to the mind.
"Seven... Motherships in total?"
His mind rigid, he struggled to comprehend the situation.
The battleship fleet unleashed their Photon Cannons without mercy. Given the overwhelming gap in firepower, they had no need to form intricate formations or chart complex flight paths. They simply held their ground. Fired from those stationary positions, the beams of light struck the thousands of dragons trapped inside.
Jenkinson asked himself.
Could this really be called a war or a battle? Was it a fight?
Swoosh!
Zap! Zap! Zap!
Boom!
The distance was great, and the dragons looked like tiny flies fleeing from insecticide.
But Jenkinson missed nothing.
The dense barrage snapped wings, severed tails, and crushed eyes, ripping flesh apart and scattering it in horrifying displays.
Whether from mana depletion or panic, their flight paths were wildly erratic.
Roar!
The screams of his kin tore at his eardrums.
Those beyond the barrier were in an absolute panic. Jenkinson watched several dragons void their bowels over the ocean. Sadly, this was no rational tactic to lighten their weight. Terror had simply broken their minds.
Some dragons even began fighting each other in the chaos. Driven to the absolute brink, one tried to use another as a meat shield to dodge incoming photon rounds, only to get caught. Realizing the betrayal, the victim reflexively clamped its jaws around the other's neck. In retaliation, the bitten dragon gouged its claws into its attacker's eyes and breathed fire.
Tangled together, the two naturally became a target twice the size. Struck by a downpour of light, they plummeted to the sea intertwined like vines.
There was not a shred of dignity to be found in any of it.
Jenkinson asked himself once more.
Was this, then, a massacre?
'No.'
He could not even view it like that.
The Photon Cannons were far too thin. Jenkinson had never known their output could be controlled with such precision. It was enough to incapacitate them, but not enough to sever a dragon's tenacious hold on life.
'If that is the case, then this...'
Only then did a fitting word come to mind.
'It is a hunt.'
Dragons were being hunted.
Thousands of dragons fled, vomiting howls that could not be translated into words.
No matter how high they flew, they could not breach the barrier. Even when they deliberately dove beneath the surface, the Photon Cannons pierced straight through the seawater.
This was no punishment. In Jenkinson's eyes, those dragons were currently something far lesser than sinners.
"Ah, Rod."
A chill seemed to run beneath his scales.
"Why didn't Minjun reveal all seven ships from the very beginning?"
Instead of proudly displaying his full power, he had left them an opening to attack.
Was it to stop the otherworldly dragons from bringing more troops?
Jenkinson faced the premonition that it was the exact opposite.
"...Even if dozens of dimensions formed an alliance, gathering a force that size wouldn't be easy. If they had known in advance, they might have simply given up."
But Minjun had not wanted that.
Roar!
The barrier did not block visible light. Just as he could see inside, they could see outside.
Fleeing frantically, one green dragon took a counterintuitive approach and moved closer to the battleships instead. Pushed naturally toward the barrier, he spotted Jenkinson staring blankly from the outside.
The dragon's jaws parted, and he desperately reached out a hand.
"Help—!"
In Jenkinson's mind, that sight overlapped with Perseen's end.
Zap!
Splat!
Blood exploded from the green dragon's entire body.
His neck snapped back like a whip, hiding his final expression from Jenkinson's view.
Then came the fall.
Splash!
A pillar of water shot up as the dragon sank beneath the surface. A dark shadow approached from below. It was a measure perfectly faithful to the purpose of the hunt.
Frozen for a moment, Jenkinson...
"...Rod..."
...murmured.
"Rod, grant me the wisdom to distinguish right from wrong. I hated them. I wanted them to be punished. But... does that make this right?"
Hatred for the kin who had ruined everything through their greed.
Pity for them as they were miserably hunted down.
Two emotions clashed within him. He struggled to find his bearings.
The Red Dragon called out anxiously once more. He called upon the personality of the one who had been his trusted role model in life and an excellent mentor even after joining him as a voice in his head.
"Rod, grant me courage. Give me the strength to find what I can do instead of merely despairing in this situation. Right now, I need your help."
The former Rod maintained a strangely long silence.
Observing the landscape of his own mind, Jenkinson...
...soon realized a certain truth.
"Ah, could it be...?"
His doubt turned to certainty.
At the same time, Jenkinson felt a suffocating tightness around his throat and an exhaustion so deep his scales felt ready to fall out.
"...That was the last time."
The moment Jenkinson had poured out his fury in a passionate speech before Perseen.
For a brief moment then, Jenkinson had been unable to distinguish his own personality from that of the former Rod.
Their two voices had naturally synchronized into one. Jenkinson's screaming physical voice and the sentences the former Rod exploded with inside his head had matched perfectly, without a single letter out of place.
Then, Jenkinson had felt the other's emotions in their rawest form. The former Rod had clearly been just as angry, just as disappointed... and just as despairing as Jenkinson himself.
That had been the last time the other personality spoke.
"Ah, Rod."
Jenkinson felt an unfathomable sense of loss.
"You despaired so deeply that..."
The Ancient Dragon who had poured the long years of his life into his kin. The pioneer who had sought to save the dragons.
Because he intuited that the noble, lifelong wish he had tried to achieve even after death had failed, and because he was now certain there was no hope for the Dragon Race.
Ultimately, the personality of the former Rod...
"Did you decide there was no longer any need for you to exist?"
As if to prove it, the memories of the Gold Dragon, inaccessible until now, were softly swelling up from the very depths of Jenkinson's mind.
"Are you truly gone now?"
The extinction of a split personality.
Medically, it was a phenomenon defined as a cure.
But Jenkinson believed this conclusion needed a different name. Strictly speaking, it wasn't the correct definition, but the Red Dragon could not shake the word away.
Mental suicide.
"..."
But he had no time to focus on the welling sorrow.
Now he had to make every judgment and decision alone.
Moreover, Jenkinson was not a free individual. The fate of all the dragons on Earth rested on his shoulders. He was also the one granted the special privilege of having the future master of the world actually listen to his voice.
Jenkinson agonized over what he should do. The brain-scorching torment did not last long.
The Red Dragon fired a mental wave into the barrier. With all his might, he called out to his friend inside.
'Minjun!'
Just like the vanished personality, Minjun gave no response. Jenkinson found it hard to tell whether the message hadn't reached him or if he had heard it and ignored it.
But he couldn't give up. Once the hunt here ended, Minjun might just leave Earth altogether.
Jenkinson could not let that happen. He had come here to confirm an answer, and his choice would change depending on what that answer was.
He looked at his hands. The white scales Perseen had left behind were still embedded all over his palms.
His decision and action were swift. He clenched both fists, raised them high, and slammed them mercilessly into the intangible barrier.
Bang!
Crackle!
A massive spark flew. The barrier repelled Jenkinson. The sheer resistance tore his outer skin, and blood sprayed from the fissures, evaporating instantly from the heat.
Jenkinson smelled his own flesh cooking and his scales burning. Nausea surged in him once again, but he did not stop.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Crackle!
Through indescribable agony, he continuously pummeled the barrier with both fists.
He could already feel the bones shattering and fracturing in his fingers, wrists, and forearms. His dragon scales were peeled back and dangling, and his cooked flesh mashed far too easily. Seeing his crushed muscle fibers, Jenkinson suppressed his bile once more.
As the Red Dragon, left with nothing but sheer spite, furiously hammered against the barrier...
"Stop."
A voice rang out, and the dragon looked up.
Minjun was there.
*
Their gazes locked in the air.
Minjun clicked his tongue as he looked at Jenkinson's ruined hands. They were burnt pitch-black, crushed, and dangling uselessly.
The moment he sent a mental wave somewhere...
Flash!
A golden beam, distinct from the Photon Cannons, erupted from one of the battleships.
Minjun seemed to have lifted a portion of the barrier. The light enveloped Jenkinson's hands. The dragon witnessed a miracle as new flesh sprouted over his gruesomely burnt and torn hands, bones knit back together, and shed scales instantly regrew.
Meanwhile, even in that brief moment, the hunt beyond the barrier continued.
While Jenkinson's burns healed, the other dragons writhed, covered in scorch marks from the lasers. The sheer contrast made him dizzy.
Two entirely different worlds played out, separated by an invisible line.
Jenkinson spoke.
"...Those who were offered a wish, myself included, are people inside your fence."
"Obviously."
"And you decided to continue caring for us, even after becoming one of the primordial race."
Jenkinson had already abandoned the idea of saving the hunted dragons. Just as the personality in his mind had given up its existence, he too had naturally made his choice.
Trying his hardest not to look inside the barrier, Jenkinson recounted what he had witnessed today.
"I met a dragon named Perseen. He tried to subdue me, only for his entire body to be crushed into nothingness."
Minjun listened, wearing an expression that said he had expected him to bring this up.
"So I was afraid that the other dragons here were also being turned into ground meat. But that's not the case."
Then why had only Perseen met such an end?
"Even for committing the same sin, Perseen received a different punishment. Why? The answer I came up with is this: he became ground meat because he targeted me. Am I right?"
Minjun affirmed it. After all, it wasn't wrong.
Coming to Earth and confronting his five old acquaintances hadn't been purely for the sake of hearing their wishes.
The dragon remembered the elf's story. Back in his days as an agent of the Immigration Office, the potted plants Minjun regularly brought to the bookstore held hidden barriers meant to protect the tenant.
Minjun was trying to do something similar even after becoming part of the primordial race.
On the day the five each made their wish, Minjun had clearly triggered some kind of power without their knowledge. Not even Jenkinson knew the mechanics behind it. It was likely akin to an alarm that allowed Minjun to instantly grasp their situation and intervene.
The dragon looked beyond the barrier once more.
"Unlike with Perseen, you... are trying to capture them alive. Is it because you need dragon blood?"
Minjun replied in a tone no different from the past.
"I've been saying this since you were my employer, but my principles are simple. I focus on what I can do now, and what I have to do now."
"Which means you need a massive amount of dragon blood right away. So you lured them all the way to Earth."
An unreadable light flickered in Jenkinson's pupils.
"You said the primordial race would become the future blood of the universe, and dragons would become the nutrients that blood carries."
He recited his understanding.
"And you said that only the dragons who failed to prove their worth—the dragons who committed sins—would be consumed as nutrients. For the permanent survival of the universe."
Jenkinson only now realized that a cruel explanation had been omitted from that story.
"That means... for the universe not to perish, there must be a constant emergence of unworthy dragons. The supply of sinners must never stop. A portion of dragons must continuously commit sins. Only then can you gain the justification to reduce those dragons to livestock and harvest their blood. Am I wrong?"
Minjun neither denied nor affirmed it.
The dragon spoke in a hollow tone.
"Once today's incident becomes known, the Dragon Race all over the world will prepare for war. That's fortunate for you. The supply won't run dry."
"..."
Breaking through the silence, Jenkinson finally sought to confirm his answer.
He looked up at Minjun and asked.
"Do you have the power to permanently strip the evil from dragons?"
Minjun nodded.
"Do you have the will to permanently strip the evil from dragons?"
Minjun shook his head.
"Ah."
That was when Jenkinson made his final decision.
The dragon remembered what Minjun had said when he first made his wish. His friend had urged him to change his wish to something else. Now, he could perfectly understand why.
Because even if he saw the Cube's memories later, nothing would change anyway.
Minjun had already been certain of that.
"Minjun..."
Jenkinson slowly lowered his head, which had been raised toward his friend.
"If it is still possible... my wish..."
The moment his head bowed completely, the Red Dragon made a request of the master of the world.
"...I would like to change my wish."
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