The Foreigner on the Periphery

"Perfect!"

The order's command ship.

Standing on the bridge, Asiph-1 let out a cheer.

"Everything is going exactly as planned!"

The Committee had surely figured out the fatal weakness in his fleet's operations by now.

Even with multiple Space Motherships capable of covering a massive area in their grasp, the fleet could form only a single type of formation.

Therefore, rather than deploying them in fleet battles that required ever-changing formations, the Creator had put the warships to a different use.

In an aerial strike against a fixed target, unlike other warships—namely, a planet.

"Your Holiness, cruising speed is holding at 95% the speed of light!"

This velocity, which utterly defied the Committee's common sense, was naturally the Creator's handiwork. It was a feat made possible by the vast, profound knowledge of the primordial race.

However, Asiph-1 guessed that achieving this level of modification with limited materials hadn't been easy, even for Minjun.

'Metaphorically speaking, it's like trying to build a "perfect" spaceship using only steam-era equipment and materials.'

The Creator had modified the entire fleet's engines to push past their limits, but the end result was far from flawless.

'He told me we could only use them like this exactly once.'

The enemy wouldn't know it, but the coordinates where the fleeing order's fleet changed course had been chosen after rigorous calculations and simulations.

At this rate, the fleet would fly all the way to the Committee's Headquarters Planet at 0.95 times the speed of light. In the process, the engines would essentially burn through their entire lifespans.

This was exactly why the Creator had modified the engines instead of weapons like the Photon Cannons. The ships' Photon Cannons were already at the pinnacle of modern technology. Rather than tweaking them to a level where they would be discarded after a single shot, he had chosen to tamper with the engines to shift the battlefield to a more advantageous location.

As a result, once these warships arrived at the center of the star system, they might still manage interplanetary flight, but they would never be capable of long-distance interstellar voyages again.

'Not that it matters to us.'

Once the war ended and all the primordial race awoke, a world where such warships were no longer needed would arrive anyway.

The end of the long hardships and tribulations the Creator had endured was finally drawing near.

Pushing aside the worries that had filled his mind before the battle, Asiph-1 beamed.

"Father, I am coming!"

   *

Turning back time slightly to the moment before the Tax Collection Command and the order's fleet clashed.

Minjun, having moved independently of the fleet, was deep in thought.

The Distortion Field blocking the enemy's Teleport was still scrambling the surrounding coordinates, but it wasn't a tight enough net to stop Minjun from moving alone. Just as he had freely passed in and out of Yongreung, he successfully infiltrated once again.

Even though the phantoms had already wiped the place clean—only to be wiped out themselves later—and no enemies were in immediate sight, his expression remained dark.

He cast a grim look toward the door leading to Elahu-Praga.

'This is not good.'

Ha Eun-seong, acting as a blood clot, was completely blocking the tubular dimension.

'I initially expected the blood flow to decrease and the pulse to stabilize, but...'

It was the natural phenomenon that should have followed once the Committee's drain on the Talent stopped.

However, what was the actual result?

To Minjun, the current situation was a nightmare—as if internal bleeding and blood coagulation were happening simultaneously.

'It's certain that Ha Eun-seong absorbed a massive amount of Talent for a while.'

Therefore, the heart must have repeatedly pumped excessively to compensate for the lost volume.

Making matters worse, the blood vessel had clogged in the process.

The pulse and blood pressure on the undried opposite side must have skyrocketed to their peak by now. With the path blocked and the pumping only growing fiercer, it was a natural consequence.

'The more time passes, the more strain the heart will inevitably endure.'

The "heart" Minjun referred to was the furthest upstream reach of Elahu-Praga—a place also known as the "source."

The people sleeping within its inner walls.

They were the king's most precious existences.

'I have to unblock the vessel before they are put under any more pressure.'

Minjun made his decision.

He immediately closed his eyes and focused his mind.

Vwooom!

After retrieving the massive amount of Talent the priests had gathered in the Cathedral of Resurrection, Minjun had thus far used it three times.

Once to gather Asiph-1's soul fragments scattered across dimensions and bind them to a new body.

Once to forcibly separate the souls of the Ancient Race that had invaded the order's headquarters from their bodies.

And finally, once to transfer his ex-wife's soul, which had been residing in a tentacle body, into a doll.

After that, a portion of the Talent remained, but he had intentionally refrained from using it. If he had wanted to, the fight in Yongreung would have ended much faster and more simply. He could have just ripped the Kavite's soul straight out of its body.

But Minjun hadn't done that.

He began to use the Talent he had so carefully saved right here and now.

Whiiing! Vwoooom!

Light boiled within Minjun's soul. It transmitted a resonance toward the open door.

The spiritual body holding out inside seemed to recognize that call. And the Talent it was blocking also began to resonate.

A brief moment passed.

"...!"

Minjun's closed eyes snapped open.

If he had continued, he would have completely pulled Ha Eun-seong out of the blood vessel and coaxed the Talent to flow normally through the blocked passage again. Consequently, he could have erased the pressure applied to the heart.

Nevertheless, there was a reason he abruptly halted his work.

"These insolent fools!"

The god's face twisted like a demon's.

Whip! He turned his head roughly and glared in a single direction.

A portion of the massive gravitational field surrounding the artificial planet was being distorted.

It was an operation to forge a path to let someone from the outside in, all without moving the mining base. Even at the level of the Endelion, it was a highly difficult spell.

The spatial Distortion Field was still active, meaning even allies couldn't be sent here via Teleport. Thus, they had pierced through the atmosphere and flown across space to get here.

The god confirmed the identities of those soldiers.

"Ridiculous."

His face cooled to ice. A sharp fury pooled in his eyes. Despite the windless interior, every strand of his hair parted and undulated in the air. The atmosphere drew taut, as if on the verge of bursting.

Rumbllle!

At the heart of the base, fragments of the Ancient Race's corpses were scattered everywhere.

From the passage leading into this chamber, golems resembling miniature Endelions flew in one after another.

They were combat robots manufactured at a length of barely ten meters so they could maneuver indoors.

Even now, the aftereffects of the soul-shattering attack fired by the Execution Tower lingered here. Therefore, sending soulless golems to the scene first was the logical procedure.

— Screeech! Skrrk!

— Target identified.

Recognizing that their opponent was Asif-666, the golems instantly unleashed a barrage of attacks.

Looking completely unamused, the god opened his hand.

Crackle!

Every time Minjun waved his hand, golems blew away like scraps of paper.

The cyclone he conjured enveloped the mechanical devices. He waved his hand a few more times like a conductor leading an orchestra. Following the direction of his fingers, the golems, weighing tens of tons apiece, tumbled and crushed into one another. Just like fallen leaves swept up in a gale.

Even though they were metallic tentacles, they bent and snapped fluidly. An invisible hand stretched the golems' extremities to their absolute limits. Bzzzt! Sparks flew, exposing the circuits and frameworks within their joints.

Explosions followed.

Boom! Baboom!

Even after he cleared them out, golems continued to swarm through the passage like a colony of ants.

— Screech! Skrrrk!

Wherever Minjun directed his gaze, a powerful magnetic field formed, dragging the golems toward one another. Just as dust clumps together into large balls, the tentacle robots slammed into each other in a shower of sparks.

Crunch! The elongated tentacles tangled as they flattened and crushed, turning into crumpled wads of scrap metal.

But even then, the bronze tidal wave didn't stop. Like a torrent of water pouring through a gutter pipe, golems cascaded endlessly from the breached ceiling. It was hard to distinguish individual units. From afar, the sight resembled a tsunami.

Their objective was blatantly obvious. They intended to tie down and hinder the god's movements, even if only for a moment.

And in the face of such blatant interference, the god...

"...!"

He felt the fiercest fury he had experienced since his summit with the Tentacle King.

He glared down at the surging horde of golems.

Minjun realized it was getting too difficult to suppress the fire burning within him—and simultaneously concluded there was no need to hold back anymore.

'I see.'

The god had a reason to be enraged, and he had a target to pour it out on.

All that remained was the means and method to express this fury.

The god was able to decide that easily as well.

'I'll leave the door open for a bit.'

Those soulless heaps of machinery couldn't enter Elahu-Praga anyway.

Flash!

The god vanished from the spot.

And in the next moment.

'...!'

He had transported himself outside the mining base.

The pitch-black void of space.

Minjun gazed at the asteroid he had occupied just a moment ago. His eyes clearly traced the gravitational field that ordinary creatures couldn't see—the narrow path the Endelion had carved with their spell. The golems were currently infiltrating through it.

Seen from the outside, the sight was spectacular. There were no obstacles between the Endelion's planet and the mining base. Launching from the ground of the tentacle planet, the golem army formed an almost vertical column as they marched upward.

The scene evoked the act of building a tower toward the heavens—toward the god residing there.

In fact, since the Execution Tower was located near their launch point, from the ground it almost looked like twin towers with a massive disparity in height.

The god thought as he looked down at the spectacle.

'Is this hunk of scrap metal really that precious to you?'

A desperate attempt to protect the mining base.

He was simultaneously looking at the artificial planet right in front of him and the tentacles' star beyond it.

The god, the mining base, and the Endelion's mother planet. If one were to connect these three coordinates in order, they formed a nearly straight line.

'If it's that precious.'

The god thought as he reached out his hand.

'I shall give it to you.'

   *

The Endelion's mother planet.

Somewhere inside the royal palace.

— Beep! Beeeeep!

"What?!"

One tentacle gaped at the screen in horror. He was currently in charge of overseeing the operation to launch the golems from the mother planet to the mining base.

"What is it?"

The king directed a sharp gaze at him. Her stern yet desperate expression made it clear she absolutely did not want to hear any more bad news.

However, her hopes were betrayed once again.

The subordinate spoke with a trembling voice.

"The golem army's flight trajectory calculated by the AI... keeps throwing errors. Consequently, the vector values are also fluctuating in real time..."

As the coordinates of the golems' destination outside the atmosphere kept changing, the golems' travel speed and the amount of magic power supplied naturally began to drop.

"Ah!"

The subordinate soon realized the terrifying implications of what he had just said. In response to his churning emotions, the bumps all over his body instantly shrank.

   *

Right as the Tentacle King's furious roar echoed through the royal chamber.

"Huh?!"

The control room of the Outer Space Surveillance Unit, which managed the attack satellites.

The soldiers there were diligently monitoring the exosphere today as well.

As if unable to comprehend it, the assistant in the two-person team rechecked and verified the AI's calculation results several times.

"Why is it doing this?"

The head operator asked in an edgy tone.

"Why? What's going on now?"

Because the mother planet had moved along an uncharacteristic path, his nerves were completely on edge.

Currently, the distance between their star and the mining base was entirely too close. They were at a standoff, positioned right at the threshold where their gravitational pulls wouldn't affect each other.

Hence, those managing the satellites had to pay extremely close attention as well.

But then.

"Huh? This can't be right. Huh?!"

The assistant frantically worked his tentacles. The vine-like strands flailing wildly in the air hinted at his panicked state.

The head operator was about to snap at him, but instead focused his single eye on the screen the assistant was looking at.

At that exact moment.

"...?!"

What the head operator blankly muttered happened just a second before another wave of alarms blared across the entire mother planet.

"What the... 'That'... Why is that coming toward us?"

The radar displayed information that an object had begun to approach their mother planet.

A three-thousand-kilometer-diameter sphere that was supposed to be fixed in one spot and never move.

The mining base had entered their star's gravitational orbit and was closing in with terrifying speed.

   *

The freezing void of space.

Floating in the darkness, Minjun watched as the artificial planet barreled toward the tentacle star.

Beside him was the door leading to Elahu-Praga. Unlike how it had been surrounded by all sorts of machinery before, it now took the shape of a hole torn in thin air.

Leaving only that door—which strictly speaking couldn't be considered matter—at its original coordinates, the artificial planet detached from it and glided away.

What Minjun had done was simple. The base already possessed the planetary-scale spell cast by the Endelion—a spell that generated an immense gravitational field on the star's surface. It was a structure designed to receive a terrifying supply of magic power through its internal power source without Minjun having to exert himself.

Metaphorically speaking, Minjun had simply "hacked" that spell and twisted it just a bit.

Normally, it would have taken much longer, or he might have failed altogether. However, the Endelion had coincidentally modified the spell themselves, exposing its structure. Thanks to that, they had created an environment that was easy to interfere with.

As a result, the force that had been anchoring the metal star was now working in a completely different direction.

Packed with an acceleration that could never occur in a natural state.

---!

Immediate reactions emerged from the tentacle star as the base approached.

The attack satellites protecting the tentacle planet began to unleash a synchronized barrage of red lasers at the mining base. The dozens of Space Motherships anchored in the surrounding orbit also intervened.

However, the surface armor, designed to withstand colossal gravitational fields, was no pushover. The Endelion forces on the ground belatedly tried to intervene in the mass-granting magic, but they quickly realized the initiative had already been seized by someone else.

There was no need to ponder whose doing this was.

As time passed, ordinary citizens were also able to observe the anomaly with their naked eyes. This was after the artificial planet's size had ballooned to be larger than any star normally visible from the ground.

What made them even more terrified was the speed at which that shape swelled in the sky.

Red and blue flashes continuously erupted and scattered across the sky like fireworks. Nevertheless, the mining base steadily accelerated its approach. Its trajectory was knocked slightly askew in the process, but it displayed the terrifying maneuverability to twist its body right back on course like a beast hunting its prey.

The process of the tattered base scraping against the tentacle star's atmosphere didn't last long. Its acceleration was simply that tremendous. To the eyes of the Endelions on the ground, the spectacle looked like a volcano hanging in the sky, pouring a river of light and heat upside down toward the earth.

Before that blinding afterimage could even fade, the mining base collided head-on with their planet.

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