LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 01 - Are You A Returnee Too?
Chapter 01 – Are You a Returnee Too?
The man, dressed in the iconic white coat of a doctor, was leaning against the wall of the operating room, drinking straight from a bottle.
“Why don’t you take it easy?”
At the provocational words thrown by a large man in a suit, the doctor gave a bitter smile.
“Because it’s not something you can do while sober.”
“You still have a conscience left? You’ve extracted over a thousand kidneys here.”
“It’s not conscience.”
The doctor finished the remaining liquor in one gulp and put down the bottle.
“It’s fear.”
The stainless-steel operating table resembled a butcher’s block more than a surgical one.
Looking at the young man lying naked on the table, waiting to be dismantled like a cheap fish, the doctor clasped his hands together as if in prayer.
He tore through the flesh, and blood flowed endlessly.
The one assisting with the surgery was a bulky man who looked like a thug. He certainly didn’t seem like someone who’d have a nursing license, but he seemed to have memorized at least the names of the surgical tools.
With skilled hands, the doctor cut through the skin and removed the organs.
“Fresh, right? Heart, kidneys, lungs, liver, eyes—take them all out.”
Unlike the doctor, who was tense, the thug was endlessly chattering on the side.
“If we compare it to premium beef, it’s grade 1++. Been unconscious for a year. Young, no diseases, and the hospital managed him in top condition—he’s a first-class product.”
As he listened, countless questions swirled in the doctor’s mind.
The fact that he’d been in the hospital for a year meant someone had been paying the bills. That meant this young patient wasn’t a nobody. For some reason, he had ended up here, despite not being a nameless individual.
There must have been some unbelievably shady deal going on behind the scenes.
But the doctor remained silent.
Carefully, he severed the arteries and veins connected to the patient’s heart with a sharp scalpel.
“Fifty million won, coming right up.”
This was a job that was hard to endure without a drink.
—
Before long, the dismantling was complete.
The doctor wiped the blood from his hands. The organs were neatly packaged and stored in the icebox next to him. Eyes, heart, liver, kidneys… The doctor, unable to bear the sight of the torn-apart corpse, took another swig of alcohol.
The thug spoke to him.
“Just stuff the remaining body parts into a bag. The boys will come and clean up soon.”
“Alright.”
“Seriously though, your skills are top-notch.”
The thug stood next to the corpse, mimicking the doctor’s surgery. Stretching his fingers like a scalpel, he dragged them down the dead man’s chest.
“Ever thought about being a hitman? You could probably make way more than doing this.”
The thug glanced at the silent doctor before reaching out to the corpse again. But the moment he did, he felt something strange and jerked his hand away in shock.
“What the…?”
“What is it?”
The doctor approached.
“No, it’s nothing. Must be my imagination.”
The thug brought his hand back to the corpse. The moment his hand touched the cold, pale skin, an odd warmth and a faint pulse emanated from it.
The thug’s eyes widened. He scanned the dismantled abdomen of the corpse and the blood-stained operating table.
The vacant eyes were weeping blood, and in the place where the heart had been, there was only a bottomless darkness.
‘It couldn’t be alive… No way…’
But the unmistakable sensation of life transmitting through his fingertips sent a chill down his spine.
He had always thought he could laugh even if someone stabbed him in the gut, but now, his face was frozen in terror.
“Hey, Doc.”
“What is it?”
“This bastard… He’s dead, right?”
The doctor forced a bitter smile. Out of habit, he placed his hand on the carotid artery. His reply was soulless.
“Of course.”
But right after, he recoiled in shock, pulling his hand away. The pulse he had felt was too strong to deny.
“Ssshhh.”
A rasping breath filled their ears. Blood bubbles formed in the bronchi, where the lungs had once been connected.
In that moment, both the doctor and the thug froze as if their bodies had turned to ice, completely incapable of moving.
It felt as though the thick air had filled their throats, and only by flailing could they manage to breathe.
Both the doctor and the thug’s eyes, locked in terror, began to focus on one spot. The hand on the operating table.
The hand was grotesquely withered, almost mummified. After all, the man had been lying in a hospital bed for a year, and his skin clung to his bones like thin parchment.
The shriveled hand, pale with a faint blue hue, was undeniably a corpse’s.
But that hand moved.
With a creaking sound like an old door, the fingers twitched.
Like a lion rising from death to reclaim life, the hand groped across the stainless steel operating table. Scratching the surface with its nails, the entire arm slowly lifted.
That blue hand gripped the thug’s arm.
“Argh!”
The thug screamed and violently tried to shake it off. His muscles, long dormant beneath layers of pig-like fat, tensed with all their strength.
He flailed his arm violently, with enough force to shake off even the grip of a gorilla.
But it was as if the corpse’s hand was cursed. No matter how hard he tried, the grip didn’t loosen from his arm.
Crash.
The corpse fell to the floor with a thud, but even then, the thug’s arm remained tightly grasped in its deathly grip.
“What the hell is this! Get it off! I said get it off!”
The thug’s discomfort had surpassed all tolerable limits, leaving him no choice but to scream like a child. However, the doctor was in no state to help. It was as if he had passed out with his eyes wide open.
As the thug struggled to remove the corpse’s arm, he stumbled and tripped over the icebox where the organs had been stored.
“Argh!”
He fell, tangled up with the corpse. The arm that had grabbed him wasn’t merely stiff from rigor mortis; it was something else entirely.
The corpse clearly had a will of its own. Its other arm lifted and groped forward, eventually resting over the thug’s heart.
Then, from a throat no longer connected to its lungs, came a voice that didn’t belong to this world.
“The world… is full of evil, and it is peaceful.”
The corpse’s hand began to emit a faint, dark light. Instead of illuminating its surroundings, the black glow seemed to devour the colors around it, plunging everything deeper into darkness.
“Ggk… gghk…”
A sound more grotesque than any human scream escaped the thug’s throat as his skin began to shrivel. His muscles, blood vessels, organs, and even his blood—all the elements that made up his body—were being sucked into the corpse’s hand, as though they were being peeled away.
The pain was beyond anything of this world. But what tormented the thug more than the agony of his flesh being torn apart was that his mind remained shockingly clear throughout the entire ordeal.
Even up until the moment the corpse’s hand finally released him, the thug was fully conscious of every single ounce of the unbearable pain. And then, in an instant, he crumbled into ash, collapsing onto the floor.
—
The body that had returned from death was no longer just a corpse.
The skin that had been sharply cut by the scalpel had mended without leaving a single scar. The heart beat steadily, and all the organs were back in their rightful places.
Even the muscles that had wasted away from a year-long hospital stay had been partially restored.
The doctor, watching the reanimated body stand, ground his teeth together. When his eyes met the corpse’s dark, empty gaze, his terror reached its peak.
“Wh-who…”
The man, now fully revived, slowly approached the doctor. He raised his hand and placed it on the doctor’s shoulder. With an expressionless face, the man spoke.
“Where is this?”
“Th-th-this…”
“You speak Korean. That must mean I’ve returned.”
The man glanced around. He noticed his own naked body, the operating table, the surgical tools, and the icebox filled with harvested organs.
There was no need to ask what had happened.
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with air. As he did, an odd feeling washed over him.
“But why… why is there magwonso* here?”
*TL/N: We do not yet know the meaning of this word. Will update in later chapters once we find out.
“Please, spare me! I had no choice! They threatened me, I couldn’t resist…”
The man’s black eyes locked onto the doctor.
“Threatened? That was a choice too. Don’t make a fuss about cause and effect—it’s only pathetic.”
The doctor’s body began to wither. As if his life force had been snatched away, his body rapidly dried up, convulsing in extreme agony before eventually stopping altogether. His desiccated corpse crumbled into dust.
Having absorbed the doctor’s life energy as well, the man casually brushed his hands off. A tendril of black smoke drifted from his fingertips, wrapping around his body to form a cloak.
Covered in a dark cloak, he walked toward the door.
Just before opening it, he turned and gave a slight nod toward the two corpses.
“The master of Einshaten, Bastille. You’d probably want to hear the name of the one who now owns your souls.”
—
Bastille van Einshaten.
After leaving the room, Bastille leaned briefly against the wall as his body swayed.
What a pathetic body.
Dragons, ogres, giants, and magical beasts—the life forces of those beings had once been condensed to form his “true body.” This was nothing like that.
Most of the life energy he’d absorbed from the thug and the doctor had been used to reconstruct his stolen organs.
As a wave of dizziness passed, Bastille steadied himself against the wall and continued walking. Before he reached the end of the hallway, however, he encountered someone.
“Who the hell are you?”
The man had a rough, thuggish appearance, his arms covered in tattooed scribbles.
“Who the hell are you, you bastard!”
On the second curse, the thug grabbed Bastille by the collar and shook him.
“This guy’s covered in blood. Where’s Jung-su? Don’t tell me this bastard—”
Bastille raised his hand to touch his own face. His face was sticky with the blood that had flowed down when his eyes were gouged out.
The thug swung his fist into Bastille’s side.
A loud thud echoed down the hallway. The impact was enough to bend Bastille’s body. It didn’t seem like the thug planned to stop there, as he landed blow after blow to Bastille’s ribs with his brutish fists.
Bastille’s weakened body eventually lost its balance. A rib snapped, puncturing his lung, and he coughed up blood.
The thug slammed Bastille against the wall, shouting at him.
“What happened to my boss?”
Thinking that Bastille must have been completely terrified by now, the thug became even more aggressive. However, it was the thug who ended up stepping back in shock.
Bastille’s trembling lips curled into a crescent smile. With his unusually large hand, he grabbed the thug’s arm.
“You… you bastard…”
“Death… is surprisingly light.”
With breath reeking of blood, the thug’s body suddenly slumped. His life drained away rapidly, and the muscular thug began to shrivel like a mummy.
Still gripping the thug’s collar, Bastille crushed the thug’s dried-out hand as easily as a cracker, continuing his march like a grim reaper.
Once, a companion had said to him:
― You’ve got a body that burns through fuel fast.
Though his body had just begun to recover, he was already feeling an overwhelming hunger. This body, which neither needed to eat nor drink, craved one thing—the energy of life itself.
When hunger reaches its peak, it transforms into thirst.
By the time Bastille reached the stairs leading outside the building, he was fully consumed by an unquenchable thirst.
It felt like he could devour anyone—or anything—that crossed his path.
He wandered in search of something alive.
At the entrance of the building, he encountered three men. They had the unmistakable look of thugs who wore their aggression like a badge of honor.
The moment they saw him, they began cursing, and one of them immediately threw a kick.
It was natural for these thugs to react aggressively.
This building was their “organ factory.” A blood-soaked stranger wandering around their most secretive location was bound to raise alarm.