LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 04 - Are You a Returnee Too? (4)
Chapter 04 – Are You a Returnee Too? (4)
At that moment, Leonhart approached Bastille and said:
“Come to think of it, if we try to take things step by step, it’s going to take a lot of time and effort. It’s not like the Demon King is invading, and there’s no adventurer’s guild handing out quests either.”
Bastille quickly grasped the core of what Leonhart was joking about.
“Are you thinking of capturing the Goblin King?”
“If we catch him and threaten him, wouldn’t we be able to bring the whole horde under our control? After all, these creatures do nothing but pillage farmers and kill people. If we rehabilitate them, it could be beneficial for the country and make things easier for us. It’s a win-win situation, right?”
It wasn’t entirely wrong.
The goblins of Revenheim were nothing more or less than thugs and scoundrels.
Lee Heesu, with his face scrunched in anger, shouted.
“You bastards, pushing your luck!”
Leonhart grabbed both of his temples with one hand.
“Should I take your remaining eye as well? Or would you rather sit quietly and listen? I’m a Crusader. I may be merciful to humans, but I’m endlessly cruel to villains like goblins.”
Lee Heesu’s mouth clamped shut. He seemed to sense the madness in Leonhart.
“Now then, care to answer? Where does the Goblin King live?”
Just as Leonhart was about to press him further, two officers who had been waiting by the patrol car approached the scene of the fight.
The older of the two officers glared disapprovingly at Leonhart and Bastille.
“Tsk tsk, quite a show you’ve put on. Assault with a deadly weapon, grievous bodily harm… if you get locked up, you’ll be in there for a long time.”
Leonhart turned his gaze to the police.
A serene smile spread across his face. It was a perfectly natural smile, free of any pretense.
“What kind of monster is this now?”
“Monster? Insulting a police officer on duty can be a crime too, you know.”
“These days, there’s a handy thing called CCTV. It’ll be easy enough to judge whether you were performing your duty, or if you were siding with the gangsters and neglecting your duty to protect decent citizens.”
The officer cleared his throat twice.
“That’s…”
“Shall I start by posting it on social media? There’s even a camera pointed right at your patrol car over there.”
“That wouldn’t count as evidence.”
“Evidence? What evidence?”
“That we’re in cahoots with the people here, or anything like that…”
“I don’t care about that. In the court of public opinion, strict evidence doesn’t mean a thing. All I need to do is spread and spread, turn you into collaborators with gangsters. Right, Officer Kim Gyeongdon?”
At Leonhart’s words, the officer flinched and covered his name tag.
“Are you supposed to cover your name tag while on duty? Officer Kim Gyeongdon. At the very least, you’ll probably get reassigned to some remote post, along with that young officer behind you.”
Faced with Leonhart’s brazen threat, the officer’s tone immediately softened.
“There seems to be some misunderstanding.”
“If you were going to stand by and watch, you should’ve stuck with that plan to the end. I won’t question it any further.”
The older officer hesitated for a moment before returning to the patrol car.
Bastille glanced at Leonhart with a bitter smile.
“That was a familiar trick.”
Leonhart shrugged his shoulders.
“If I let myself get eaten up by a mere watchman, nothing but a noble’s pawn, the name ‘Golden Lion of the Northern Wall’ would be a joke.”
“Is that so.”
“I heard the situation was different at the southern wall.”
With a sigh, Bastille spoke.
“The wall fell. What does status or rank matter in the face of death?”
Rotten nobles, cowardly commoners, incompetent mages, knights without courage.
The southern wall, fragmented like sand, wasn’t even able to form a fistful of resistance and became food for the monsters.
If Bastille hadn’t erected Einshaten’s Tower…
Revenheim would have shrunk much more.
—
Leonhart dragged Lee Heesu to the back room of a convenience store, tied him to a chair, and said:
“Do you happen to be good at torture? You’re a necromancer, right? I figured you’d know plenty of vicious curses.”
Bastille chuckled bitterly and asked in return.
“Isn’t torture more of an Inquisitor’s specialty?”
“You got me there. Well, if I break a joint or two, eventually he’ll start talking.”
Leonhart said this as he gripped Lee Heesu’s index finger.
Tied tightly to the chair, Lee Heesu glared at Leonhart, still trying to maintain his dignity.
“Do you even know how big the Daedong Faction is before picking a fight?”
“Why don’t you tell me? From the bottom ranks to the upper leadership.”
“You crazy bastards. You lowlifes dare…”
Crack.
“Arrrrgh!”
Lee Heesu’s second knuckle snapped.
Yet Leonhart still didn’t let go of the finger.
“Where does the Goblin King live?”
“You filthy…! Arrrgh!”
Only after breaking one more knuckle did Leonhart release his hand.
“You’re a pretty tough goblin. Must be a Hobgoblin at least, huh? Well then, let’s move on to the next finger.”
“W-wait!”
“Hm?”
“I’ll tell you everything!”
“So soon? After just two knuckles? There are still plenty more. Why not try holding out a bit longer?”
But despair had already settled into Lee Heesu’s eyes. It seemed he had finally broken under Leonhart’s madness.
“Alright, talk.”
From then on, Lee Heesu mostly answered Leonhart’s questions truthfully.
It seemed the Daedong Faction was an organization that controlled a significant number of businesses, ranging from construction to bars, mostly in the northwestern part of Seoul.
“So, this building is your main headquarters, is it?”
Leonhart displayed a roadmap on his phone.
“That’s right.”
“Hmm….”
“You look surprised. Of course, you should be. This isn’t an organization a mere convenience store manager can deal with. You seem to know how to fight a bit, but…”
Leonhart smacked Lee Heesu on the head and got up from his seat.
“Make sure everything’s cleaned up by the time I get back. Fix the windows like they were before. And don’t get any funny ideas. A goblin should know its place and listen to its human master.”
Lee Heesu cursed Leonhart internally but didn’t bother speaking aloud to invite more punishment.
All he wanted was to get out of Leonhart’s sight as soon as possible and contact headquarters.
Fortunately for him, Leonhart and Bastille left him behind and headed straight for the Daedong Faction’s headquarters.
—
“As expected, the subway is the fastest way around the city. I kept insisting that Revenheim build underground tunnels for transporting supplies, but no one listened to me.”
Leonhart spoke up as they stood in front of the Daedong Building.
Bastille, on the other hand, silently assessed their surroundings.
It was a 15-story building, its façade covered in glass, with the Chinese characters for “Daedong (大同)” displayed like a sign at the top.
In front of the first floor was a large open area, and a private road for high-profile vehicles led directly to the main entrance.
For an organization operating in the shadows, the building’s exterior resembled that of a major corporation.
“I expected there’d be about a thousand people guarding the entrance, but it’s quieter than I thought,” Leonhart commented.
Bastille replied in a calm voice, “The preparations are likely inside.”
“Is that so? Well, goblins do tend to hole up in their dens, don’t they?”
“Goblins, huh… Are you calling them that to ease your guilt about attacking humans?”
Bastille asked, and Leonhart laughed.
“No. They really are goblins. Humans wouldn’t plunder other humans, right?”
Hearing his answer, Bastille couldn’t help but think of Revenheim.
Perhaps the reason the people of the southern wall fell so easily was because the warriors of the southern wall were too soft.
They even gave their attackers human rights, crying out for the peace of humanity until the very end. Maybe their complacency had led the people of the southern region to extinction.
Of course, the demons of the southern region were also stronger than those from other areas…
Leonhart gave Bastille’s shoulder a light pat.
“Why are you taking this so seriously? Even if they’re not goblins, they’re just bandits, right? The kind you’d definitely find on a wanted poster at the adventurer’s guild. What’s there to feel guilty about?”
Bastille slowly nodded.
“I understand that killing them won’t interfere with what we plan to do.”
“Well, that’s quite an extreme way to put it, but if that’s your judgment, I’ll respect it. After all, we’re comrades.”
Leonhart grinned and took a bold step forward.
“Come on!”
He flung open the main doors. The lobby was empty, except for two thugs who stepped forward and greeted them with a slight bow.
“Mr. Jang Gwanseok? And you must be Mr. Seo Hochan, right?”
“Leonhart, and Bastille. Those are the names we prefer.”
“Understood. Please follow us. The chairman is expecting you.”
Following the thug’s lead, Leonhart and Bastille quietly stepped into the elevator.
Whether what awaited them upstairs was a trap involving violence or a peace-seeking negotiator didn’t matter.
They were confident their experience and strength were overwhelming.
—
The elevator stopped at the top floor, the 15th floor.
They were greeted by a space reserved for the chairman’s secretary. Beyond the hallway lay the office where the chairman was waiting.
At that moment, Bastille felt something strange.
Standing still, he glanced around.
There were still only the two thugs, Leonhart, and himself, but he sensed another presence, like a mirage.
A moment later, Leonhart seemed to notice what Bastille had detected.
“Magic?”
Leonhart asked shortly, and Bastille nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Things just got interesting. Must be a returner, huh?”
Bastille didn’t answer, but he silently agreed. The idea of a mage who wasn’t a returner existing on Earth was still hard to accept.
“This way.”
The thugs moved ahead of them. At the end of their path, they encountered a man in his early twenties.
He was currently sitting in the chairman’s seat, his back turned toward the door, lounging in a plush chair with his legs crossed as if he owned the world.
The room, however, was in shambles.
Bloodstains were splattered all over. The walls and furniture were covered with slash marks from sharp weapons.
The scene before them made one thing clear.
The man sitting in the chairman’s seat had used force to completely subjugate the organization.
The thugs who had escorted Leonhart and Bastille were visibly terrified, as if they had witnessed some supernatural event or ghost, their bodies frozen in fear.
“If you invite guests, shouldn’t you at least turn to face them?”
The man in the chairman’s seat slowly turned around. He glanced at Leonhart and Bastille in turn and then spoke at last.
“Isn’t power such an odd thing? The moment you acquire power beyond a certain point, all morality becomes meaningless. Even the police bow their heads to mere thugs—”
Thud!
The man’s dramatic speech was cut off when Leonhart’s foot slammed into his face. The blow hit him squarely, sending the new chairman of the Daedong Faction flying from his chair and crashing into the reinforced glass window behind him. The window cracked and shattered, letting air rush into the room.
The man groaned in pain as he lay on the floor.
Standing on the desk, Leonhart grinned and said:
“Sorry. I have a rule about not talking with Goblin Kings. If they start going on about having a daughter back home or a sick mother, it makes it harder to kill them.”
At that moment, the thugs who had been escorting them screamed and ran out of the room.
“Ahhh! He’s going berserk again!”
“Spare me!”
The new chairman of the Daedong Faction slowly pushed himself up, using the chair for support. An ominous aura began to emanate from his body.
“You worthless inferior species! Kneel before me! Before my infinite power!”