Dragons were the supreme species.
Whether this was true or not was beside the point — the dragons believed it.
And so, it was only natural that the dragons would grow resentful of the current situation, in which they showed deference to
Just as Gyurie once had.
At the same time, the dragons had not come to this planet out of charity. They had their own purpose for being here.
They could not allow humanity — whose actions ran counter to that purpose — to run unchecked.
Even if it meant opposing Sariel.
"So, you're going to be the one to hold me back?"
"That's how it'll have to be."
Sariel met the other's gaze head-on, while Gyurie averted his eyes with an uncomfortable air.
They were in the orphanage's reception room.
Gyurie visited the orphanage frequently, and under normal circumstances he would have been ushered straight through without needing the reception room.
But Sariel, sensing the uneasy atmosphere, had guided Gyurie here.
Even someone less perceptive than Sariel would have noticed something was off with Gyurie at a glance.
His behavior was suspicious enough that even the钝 Sariel could tell something had happened.
And so, half-interrogating him, she drew out the dragons' movements from Gyurie.
"So what do you plan to do about it?"
"I'm going to stop them, of course. That is my mission."
Sariel answered without hesitation in response to Gyurie's question.
As usual.
"But is that really your mission?"
Yet when Gyurie followed up with this question, Sariel could not give an immediate answer.
"Surely you understand what it is the humans are doing right now. If protecting the primordial organisms is your mission, then should you not be stopping the very humans who are trying to destroy the planet along with them?"
Gyurie raised his face and spoke as though he had steeled himself.
"Of course, I don't think we should go so far as to exterminate humanity entirely. But you need to make some kind of show of force. If that truly is your mission."
Gyurie's gaze — probing, testing.
Sariel did not look away from it.
But neither did she open her mouth.
Sariel herself understood that her actions were not optimal.
But until now, she had never harbored any doubts about it.
Sariel was a stray angel.
An existence without will of its own, a mere device that faithfully followed its mission.
To be more precise, an existence that could not judge matters on its own judgment, one that merely believed itself to be fulfilling its mission.
A device, like any device, ploddingly executing only the pre-programmed parameters.
Even if those pre-programmed parameters were riddled with bugs.
The device itself harbored no doubts about this.
Sariel was no different. She understood that her actions were not the best course, yet she had never questioned them.
But now, pressed by Gyurie's words, Sariel thought.
Is this really all right?
For Sariel, this was the first doubt she had ever held.
Until now, Sariel had always been thinking, always been experimenting.
How could she fulfill her mission more efficiently?
But from an outside perspective, that line of thinking was nothing short of a deviation from her original mission.
Sariel's original mission was simple: to protect the living beings on this planet from the hands of the gods.
To keep the gods from interfering. Nothing more, nothing less.
And yet, Sariel had taken the initiative to interfere with humanity herself.
She — a goddess.
That was tantamount to voluntarily abandoning her own mission.
And yet, Sariel had never once doubted that she was carrying out her mission correctly.
Into this, Gyurie's question was hurled.
Sariel, who had always thought but never questioned, now for the first time felt doubt about her own actions.
"Sariel. Isn't it time you stopped binding yourself to this mission? You have every right to live as you please. Forget about the mission — live however you want."
Gyurie's words were incomprehensible to Sariel.
She could understand the meaning of each word, but the concept of "living as one pleases" was foreign to her.
For Sariel, living meant fulfilling her mission. She had never felt any preference or aversion in that.
No — it wasn't that she felt no preference or aversion. She simply had never recognized it.
She wasn't without those feelings.
But she did not understand the fact that she was feeling them.
And so, those feelings of preference and aversion had gone on being ignored.
"I don't really understand."
"No, I suppose you wouldn't."
Gyurie had not expected mere words to thaw Sariel's petrified heart.
But from Sariel's attitude, it seemed to have produced a better result than he had anticipated.
"But what I do will not change."
The miscalculation, if there was one, lay in the fact that what Sariel desired from the bottom of her heart happened to align with stopping the dragons.
Gyurie's words — live as you please — had indeed resonated with Sariel.
And precisely because they resonated, they swept away the small seed of doubt that had just begun to sprout.
Because Sariel's deepest wish was to protect the people.
That very wish blew away the doubt of whether this was truly the best way to fulfill her mission.
"Wait!"
"Gyurie. I've taken the liberty of thinking of you as my friend. And so I must ask you not to force me to kill you with my own hands."
Gyurie was stunned by those words.
Stunned that she called him a friend — and that she had shown him, plainly, the resolve to kill him if he still tried to stand in her way.
And leaving Gyurie frozen in place, unable to move, Sariel departed the reception room.
"While I'm away, please look after the children at the orphanage."
As she left, she made that selfish request.
Gyurie watched the closing door in silence.
His expression was one of utter helplessness.
As a dragon, as Sariel's friend, as a man drawn to Sariel's heart — Gyurie could not bring himself to choose any course of action.
If he acted as a dragon, then staking his life to hold Sariel back was the correct answer.
Though the gap in power between them was overwhelming, he could at least buy time if that was all he needed to do.
He could, for instance, take the children hostage.
But having stood by silently and watched Sariel walk out, that option was already off the table.
Then should he side with Sariel?
That would mean betraying the dragons.
For Gyurie, who had lived his entire life with pride in being a dragon, that was a choice he could not make.
In the end, Gyurie could only do nothing — a half-hearted, painfully lukewarm, passive act of choosing not to choose.
Around the world, massive dragon assaults erupted simultaneously.
They should have dealt a crippling blow to humanity in an instant.
But Sariel joined the fight with lightning speed.
And above all, humanity mounted a desperate resistance, aided by the arsenal of weapons designed by
The dragons attacked humanity while fleeing from Sariel, and humanity endured until she could arrive.
This was the shape the war had taken.