A winter day, seven days before the end of the year.
Carols echoed through the streets. Given the recent atmosphere, the crowds of pedestrians were surprisingly large.
The proof of Divine Power had sparked the rise of all sorts of religions, but old traditions and cultures still kept their pulse alive.
Amid the surging tide of pedestrians, three bizarre individuals stood as if in a standoff, occupying a pocket of space that everyone else instinctively gave a wide berth.
The long-haired man spoke.
“Well, so... Ah, wait.”
He paused right before calling out to the Divine Power user.
“What was your name again?”
Pressed for time, Asiph-1 felt extremely anxious. As a result, he had overlooked a minor detail: not a single employee at Jenkinson Tower had mentioned this user's name, even in their minds.
“Everyone just calls me Fourth.”
The wariness in his tone thickened.
If this man were one of Jenkinson's people, he wouldn't be asking for a name.
“Weren't you sent by the chairman?”
“Fourth is not a name.”
Instead of answering the question, Asiph-1 simply said what he wanted to say.
It was a conversation where both sides spoke right past each other.
“A familial title cannot replace a name.”
Just as Asiph-1 was not a name.
‘Come to think of it, I forgot to ask Mother to give me a name.’
Even the dragon had received a name from Dell. She had apparently taken the trouble to find a word rooted in the ancient scriptures from her time serving a god.
Zetamiel.
Asiph-1 thought that if he were to get a name, he wanted something derived from the concept of free will. There was a minor issue, of course. Translating ‘freedom’ into the language of the primordial race would result in sharing a name with someone else. Furthermore, it was a name the Creator would hardly appreciate, and the word's meaning might eventually warp into the gatekeeper of hell.
‘This isn't the time for this.’
He pulled his fleeting thoughts back on track.
“Well, does it matter? I'll just call you Fourth for now. Hurry up and come with me.”
“Why should I? I'm busy. I'm having an important conversation with my friend here.”
He glanced over. A goblin stood there with a bewildered expression.
It was someone Asiph-1 knew well. He never expected to run into him here of all places.
“I don't know what you're thinking, but you'd better not try anything funny with Dong-cheol. You were just trying to do something to him with your Divine Power, weren't you? It doesn't seem like you harmed him, but...”
Fourth and the goblin reacted simultaneously.
“Oh, your name is Dong-cheol?”
“You... know... me?”
Dong-cheol's mind grew even more tangled.
He felt like he recognized the man too, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't place the memory.
“If you mess with that goblin, an alert will go straight to the most terrifying person... no, the most terrifying god in the world. Even an incredible ability user like you could get ground to dust in an instant.”
“That's ridiculous. The most terrifying god in the world is the one I serve, so why would he grind my body to dust?”
“I expected as much, but getting through to you is impossible. Religious fanatics, I swear.”
It was a remark made completely blind to the fact that he himself was the head of a religious group.
“Anyway, I can't go. I have a lot of things to do with my friend here! Now that he's the second member of our order, we need to throw a celebration party, create all sorts of religious rituals, and write scriptures together!”
“No... hold... on. I never... said... I was joining...”
“What the... Come to think of it, you have that much Divine Power and you still don't have any followers under you? Oh ho. This is going to be far more useful than I thought. Anyway, don't go bothering him and bringing down some senseless disaster upon yourself. Just come quietly. I'd be in trouble too if you ended up as a mangled corpse.”
“You're the one who needs to stop interfering! I know my own follower best. We're a community of fate bound together by a religious mission!”
“But... wait, you... didn't even know... my name until... a second ago...”
Just then.
“Oh my god, His Holiness the Pope?!”
To ordinary pedestrians, the robed man appearing in the middle of a busy street was nothing more than a flashy obstacle to steer clear of.
But there was no way the order's members wouldn't recognize those robes.
Inevitably, one of the priests had spotted him.
The news spread rapidly, and the bishops immediately dropped what they were doing and rushed out of their tents.
The problem was that, in their panic, they began chanting sacred verses in the Repatam Tribe's native tongue instead of the common language, even going so far as to bleed from their foreheads.
They sprinted frantically to welcome the Pope and pay their respects. Raising both arms high to the sky, they screamed at the top of their lungs.
“Oh! The Son of God has descended here! Our great leader!”
To Fourth, who couldn't understand a single word, their bellowing didn't sound like praises for God and the Pope. Instead, it sounded more like, ‘Catch that half-dragon right now and offer him as a sacrifice to our god!’
Though it was an extreme leap of imagination, one thing was clear: the black-haired man was definitely associated with that religion.
Did he call his underlings because I wouldn't follow him quietly?
Fourth made his decision.
“Hey, you.”
Asiph-1 wore a troubled expression.
Vwooom!
Golden light began to coalesce around Fourth's arms.
‘I've never done it like this before, but...!’
He aimed straight at Asiph-1's face.
‘I finally managed to convert my first follower; I have to take him and escape safely! I'll only lose out if I start a holy war here.’
If it were a one-on-one fight, that would be one thing, but the enemy had too many numbers, and they were in the middle of a busy city.
Causing a scene might also offend the dragon, the only “person” Fourth was genuinely afraid of.
After all, Seoul was her territory.
‘I can't afford to fail! I only have one shot!’
Just as he took aim—not to unleash his usual powers of healing and recovery, but to manifest a massive tumor right inside his opponent's skull.
—!
“Good grief.”
Asiph-1 clicked his tongue.
Fwoooosh!
“Huh... huh?!”
Suddenly, it dawned on Fourth.
Just as he had concealed his Divine Power from the bishops...
The man in front of him had also been hiding his true strength all along.
The first thing to strike Fourth was an unbearable shaking.
Why was the ground acting up all of a sudden? No, it wasn't just the ground. The entire space around him was violently churning and spinning.
It was a wave of vertigo unlike anything he had ever felt in his short life of just over half a year.
An agonizing headache followed. His stomach churned with nausea, threatening to empty itself at any second.
Thud!
Fourth couldn't grasp what was happening. Dropping to one knee, he struggled desperately to keep his balance.
But the world kept spinning, and the face of the man looking down at him repeatedly blurred into a smear before pulling back into focus.
‘No... way!’
He fought to hold on to his fading consciousness.
In the end, all the strength drained from his body.
Darkness slammed into his face, engulfing him completely.
“Urgh... gurk!”
Smack!
Crack!
The moment his face crashed into the pavement, his sunglasses shattered.
“H-hey, is he okay?!”
The goblin tried to support him, but Asiph-1 held him back.
“He's fine. He just passed out for a bit.”
“...Passed out?”
“Given his abilities, I figured a quick brainwashing would be difficult, so I cast the Curse of Subarachnoid Hemorrhage. He held out incredibly well. An ordinary human might have died, but an ability user of his caliber will slowly recover if left alone.”
He gestured to the approaching bishops and ordered.
“Hey, let's haul this guy somewhere quiet.”
“...?!”
Oops, his usual way of speaking had slipped out again.
Just as he tried to put on a stern expression and use language befitting his station...
Flash!
Asiph-1's expression froze.
“...Huh?”
A golden flash of light sparked over Fourth's collapsed body.
Immediately after.
“Ugh... uuugh! Ow, my head.”
Even though Asiph-1 had deliberately used enough power to knock him out for at least an hour, his opponent was already coming to his senses and pushing himself up.
To think he instinctively unleashed that level of power while unconscious.
Asiph-1 felt a mix of surprise and delight.
“Wow! You're the real deal, aren't you?”
Concluding that he had definitely found the right guy.
He prepared to cast another curse.
“Ah... w-wait a minute!”
Fourth and the Pope's gazes fell on the goblin simultaneously.
“I... think I know... now. Who... you are!”
The goblin's ability to see an entity's “true essence” had activated even against Asiph-1.
However, the result was incredibly confusing. Dong-cheol had never seen anyone like this before.
While most entities were visualized as a single form, tens of thousands of shapes kept flickering into existence and fading away behind the long-haired man.
Silhouettes of humans, elves, goblins, dwarves, trolls, and orcs, along with all sorts of bizarre aliens Dong-cheol had never seen, gathered and bloomed like flower petals.
There were even many inanimate objects. Starting from swords to guns and spaceships, along with tools that couldn't be considered weapons—writing instruments, unknown machine parts, a humming, vibrating stick with a hard-to-guess purpose, Communicators similar to cell phones, and more. Countless shapes.
All of them seemed like fragments of something else.
As Dong-cheol continued to observe, the individual fragments converged to form a massive shape. Like pieces of a completed puzzle, what appeared was a black circle vertically connected to a black rod. At first, Dong-cheol mistook it for a keyhole.
But upon closer inspection of the silhouette, it was an object consisting of a round iron plate with a long handle attached.
A cooking utensil Dong-cheol knew very well.
Only then did the goblin realize why the man's tone felt so familiar, despite the unfamiliar voice.
He cried out.
“Frying... Pan?!”
“You figured it out faster than I expected. Do you still struggle with spicy food these days?”
This time, Fourth wore a stupefied expression. The surrounding priests shared the same expression.
Even though it defied all of his common sense, Dong-cheol was certain.
That man was the Frying Pan.
The Magic tool that had cooked the most soul-stirring meals he had ever tasted in his life.
But... how did it become a person?
“Ah, damn it. I don't care if you're a Frying Pan or a mixing bowl! If you're going to persecute my followers, I won't just stand by and—!”
“Wait!”
The goblin stopped him.
Fourth's eyebrows twitched, clearly not expecting this turn of events either.
“Why?”
“For now... just do... what that Frying... no, what that person... says.”
“...?!”
The goblin thought to himself.
The Frying Pan originally belonged to Minjun. When Minjun disappeared, it had vanished along with him.
Now that Minjun had returned, the fact that the pan had appeared as a person meant he was likely still on Minjun's side.
The goblin asked a question.
“Is this... something that... the Master needs?”
Knowing full well that the ‘Master’ he was referring to was the ‘store owner,’ namely Minjun, Asiph-1 didn't hesitate.
He nodded.
“Yes, it is something my father needs.”
“...Father?”
His mouth fell wide open, his jaw nearly hitting the floor.
Minjun... was the Frying Pan's father?
Asiph-1 scratched the back of his head.
“There was a bit of a dramatic relationship reset between the two of us not too long ago.”
The goblin felt dizzy, but he decided that if it was something Minjun wanted, he had to comply.
Minjun was the kindest person he knew, and also his savior.
Even after learning that he was actually an alien, his faith remained unshaken.
If Minjun hadn't introduced him to Lakefield, Dong-cheol would still be living on the streets. Worse, he and his friends might have been caught by that evil dragon and met a gruesome end.
“You can... trust... that person.”
As the goblin tried to persuade Fourth, he felt terribly frustrated by his own lack of eloquence.
He figured there was no way the other party would be convinced by just a few words.
But to explain the long story behind it, Earth's language was just too difficult for him to pronounce...
“Oh, really? All right then.”
“...?!”
“...?!”
Fourth immediately extinguished the light gathered in his hands.
Then he spoke in an absurdly cheerful tone.
“So, where are we going? What are we doing there? If it takes too long, they'll notice I ran away. Can you contact Jenkinson Tower for me? This is a bit of a headache.”
“Just... like that...?”
The goblin couldn't believe he had actually managed to persuade him.
Fourth shrugged at the goblin staring blankly at him.
“I told you. We're a community of fate, right? If you trust him, then he must be trustworthy.”
No, wait... you just met the both of us today.
Fourth added one more thing to the dazed goblin.
“And like I said earlier, I've never seen anyone with such a pure soul. A person like that wouldn't lie.”
*
“So...”
About an hour later.
The goblin, Fourth, and Asiph-1 were aboard the Mothership in the airspace above the Pacific Ocean.
As for Fourth's whereabouts, the matter was resolved when the Pope contacted Blair directly.
Knowing full well that he was Minjun's right-hand man and the head of the order, the elf didn't dare express any complaints. With Jenkinson yet to return from the Balaur Council, there was nothing else she could do.
After securing a promise that the order would take care of the friend the goblin was waiting for, Asiph-1 brought Dong-cheol to the Mothership as well. Fourth had stubbornly insisted that the goblin come with him.
Listening to Asiph-1's explanation, Fourth asked curiously.
Having thrown away his broken sunglasses, he had also taken off his stifling mask and hat.
“You want me to release my Divine Power to the maximum? The last time I did that was like two months ago.”
Asiph-1 nodded.
The reason he couldn't currently read or manipulate Fourth's mind directly was because the Divine Power was instinctively protecting him.
Therefore, if he outputted his Divine Power to its maximum limit, an opening would naturally form. Asiph-1 planned to use that gap to analyze his mind.
Then he might catch a hint as to what made the boy such a powerful ability user.
‘Please, I hope it's a mental factor. That would make it easier to cultivate.’
Muttering that it was a simpler request than he had thought, Fourth stretched to loosen up.
He looked around.
“Is there anyone who needs healing? It feels like a waste to just unleash it into thin air.”
Asiph-1 shook his head. By now, even all the dragons had fully recovered.
“If you feel it's a waste, instead of just scattering it indiscriminately, try spreading it thinly across the planet's surface. There won't be any dramatic results, but it will bring a tiny bit of relief to everyone on Earth.”
“Hmm... I've never tried doing it like that. Well, I'll give it a shot.”
It was an incredibly demanding request—telling him to blanket the Earth with Divine Power as much as he could—but Fourth maintained a calm expression.
Saying he had a mountain of work waiting for him, he seemed eager to finish this quickly and head back.
He immediately closed his eyes and concentrated.
A moment later.
—!
Ruuuumble!
An intense flash of light erupted from his body.
As if slipping into a trance, Fourth completely ignored all external stimuli, focusing solely on spewing out light.
Just like back in the city, Dong-cheol couldn't look at it directly with his bare eyes, squeezing them shut and turning his head away.
Meanwhile, Asiph-1...
‘Wow... This kid. What is this?’
Divine Power repelled Magic.
Even though the energy wasn't being aimed directly at him, and was merely being spread thinly in all directions...
The Magic within Asiph-1's body showed signs of resisting. The aura was just that intense.
He couldn't just stand there marveling at it. He immediately infiltrated Fourth's mind to analyze it. Unlike before, he pierced through the wall that was starting to crack, aiming to peer into the surface consciousness beneath it... and even deeper, into the underlying subconscious.
“...!”
Asiph-1 observed both the layers of reality and consciousness simultaneously.
He swam against the current where memories, consciousness, ego, and instincts mixed together, analyzing them. He had already analyzed the minds of priests over a hundred times. He observed closely to see what made this exceptional ability user different from them.
After staring into those depths for a long while, a sound escaped Asiph-1's lips.
“...What the hell is this?!”
Barely a few minutes had passed when that bewildered groan slipped out.
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