LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 05 - Heart of Eclipse
Chapter 05 – Heart of Eclipse
The chairman of the Daedong Faction stretched both hands forward. The space between his hands, clenched like claws, distorted. A powerful force field extended in all directions, making the air tremble.
Pens and notepads scattered across the desk flew into the air. Soon, the heavy desk shook violently as the drawers opened and slammed shut on their own.
“I’ll crush your heart!”
He roared and clenched his hand tightly.
A wild wind wrapped around Leonhart’s body. The force concentrated near his chest, then exploded, tearing his clothes into pieces that scattered in all directions.
A gash, as if clawed open, appeared on Leonhart’s chest, spilling a stream of blood.
“You’re nothing but an inferior breed. Be grateful for my mercy. At least you didn’t feel the final pain…”
*Thud!*
The words were cut off as the chairman of the Daedong Faction’s body lifted off the ground, slammed into the ceiling, and then crashed back down onto the floor.
In his place stood Leonhart, one leg raised as if he had just finished a perfect soccer free kick.
Leaving his foe foaming at the mouth and crumpled on the ground, Leonhart lightly jumped off the desk and stood in front of Bastille.
“Not even third-rate.”
“He seems like an Awakened.”
“You mean he’s not a Returner?”
“Could he have survived in Revenheim with just that level of power?”
After exchanging a few words of cryptic conversation, they both paused for a moment of thought. Then, Leonhart changed the mood, speaking as if suddenly remembering something.
“Oh right! The spoils, the spoils!”
With playful steps, he approached the so-called chairman and rummaged through his clothes. With a face full of anticipation, he opened the wallet wide but found nothing he wanted.
“Damn, all cards.”
With a disappointed look, Leonhart grabbed the enemy by the collar and pulled him upright. He slapped his face hard enough to produce a loud *smack*, and along with bloody spit, three or four teeth dribbled out of his mouth.
“Ugh…”
“So, shall we have a ‘conversation’ now? What are you?”
At first, the ‘conversation’ didn’t go smoothly.
The man kept muttering nonsense about superior breeds and inferior breeds, deliberately getting on Leonhart’s nerves.
Leonhart responded by dangling the man out of the shattered window.
“Aaah! Please, spare me!”
“Can we have a proper conversation now?”
“Yes, yes! I can! I speak Korean very well!”
“Right, right, a Korean should speak Korean.”
Leonhart tossed him carelessly back in front of the window and asked.
“What’s your name?”
“Choo Sang-wook.”
“What was your name in Revenheim?”
“Huh?”
When Choo Sang-wook showed a bewildered expression, Leonhart shrugged at Bastille.
It seemed as they had suspected—he wasn’t from Revenheim.
“What was that just now? It looked like you were using some kind of superpower.”
“Yes! That was a psychic grab!”
“…Forget the name. What can you do?”
“I can distort and destroy space. Anything within the range of my imagined psychic hand can be destroyed. It’s a terrifying superpower that can crush the heart of any foolish inferior breed in an instant.”
Leonhart gave him a light chop on the head.
“I told you to speak in Korean.”
“S-Sorry!”
At that moment, Bastille approached Choo Sang-wook and placed his hand on his head.
Choo Sang-wook had no idea what Bastille was about to do. He was confused, thinking Bastille was just petting him, but then an overwhelming wave of nausea hit him, sending shivers through his entire body.
It felt like a thousand centipedes and ten thousand maggots were crawling through his veins.
Unable to endure those few short seconds, Choo Sang-wook collapsed and vomited on the floor.
“Blaargh!”
“Disgusting!”
Leonhart swiftly dodged the mess.
Bastille slowly withdrew his hand from the man’s head.
“He has no magical element nodes. It seems he hasn’t trained systematically.”
“Really? Then why is he in such a state?”
“It must be his first time. Experiencing someone else’s magic rampaging inside his body.”
“And that magic just happens to be a necromancer’s, right?”
Leonhart gave Choo Sang-wook a brief glance of pity for about three seconds before continuing.
“When did you start using that power? Yesterday, maybe? Did you take over the Daedong Faction in just one day?”
“I’ve had the power for a year… I only took control of the Daedong Faction yesterday.”
“No wonder things are still a mess around here. Were you the one who ordered them to target our establishment?”
“That wasn’t me. I belong to the main headquarters, so I don’t manage the individual operations of the action squads… I was just preparing to respond after Lee Heesu mentioned you two.”
Thanks to the ‘conversation,’ they were able to get a decent grasp of the situation.
It was roughly as they had expected.
However, one thing bothered Leonhart—the mention of “a year.”
It meant that the magical elements had begun to spread across Earth much earlier than they had thought.
Leonhart turned to Bastille and asked.
“Did something happen a year ago? Something unrelated to us going to Revenheim?”
“…This guy may have Awakened a year ago, but the spread of the magical elements could have started even earlier.”
“Ah, right. As I thought, the lack of information is the biggest problem. In that sense, we should turn these goblins into informants.”
Leonhart looked down at Choo Sang-wook and spoke.
“Summon all the leaders to the conference room. Kill anyone who refuses. I’ll allow it.”
At Leonhart’s smiling yet murderous command, Choo Sang-wook shrank back even further.
—
Leonhart was now sitting at the chairman’s desk, gazing out the window.
A strong wind blew through the broken window, a remnant of the battle that had just taken place.
Bastille also stood by the window, looking off into the distance. In a slow voice, he began to speak.
“The world is full of evil, and it always occupies the most expensive lands.”
“Well, it’s hard to survive unless you’re ruthless. Here, and there, it’s all filled with conflict.”
Leonhart continued with a chuckle.
“That’s why we’re here. After living in Revenheim, I’m certain now. Democracy isn’t worth shit. If a philosopher doesn’t rule, humanity is doomed. Monarchy is quicker, and democracy is just slower, but either way, they’ll keep making lazy choices, picking between the worst and the lesser evil, until they inevitably collapse.”
“Lazy choices…”
“Give kids a blank sheet and tell them to write their own schedule. What do you think they’ll fill it with? Nothing but ‘free time’ and ‘playtime.’ They won’t invest in self-discipline or prepare for the future.”
Listening to Leonhart’s story, Bastille couldn’t help but think back to that place.
The southern wall of Revenheim.
The guards were lax. However, the lenient lord never imposed more than a warning on the negligent guards.
― “We are different from the Demons! We are human because we are compassionate!”
Bastille had said.
“Excessive tolerance ultimately leads to moral decay, and any system that claims to be fair for all only serves to help evil.”
“As expected, you think the same way, Bastille. Even now, at this very moment, I keep thinking. Surely, this Earth is facing the same fate as Revenheim.”
“Are you saying the Demons are going to attack?”
“The term ‘Demons’ is just a name that humans came up with. I fought them my whole life, but even now, I don’t know what they really are. These monsters, strange enough to defy the label of ‘creature,’ crossed into the world through the gap of the Eclipse and turned humanity into prey. The same thing will happen on Earth. The sun will darken, the surface will boil, and from the cracks, humanity’s natural enemies will emerge. Whether it happens today, a month from now, or a few years later, I don’t know.”
“You seem quite certain.”
“Yeah. That’s why I believe we returned.”
Leonhart stroked the broken window.
Leonhart had returned from Revenheim. He had no idea what had happened to the body left behind there. He couldn’t remember what he had done at the very last moment.
Whether he had died or survived.
Bastille had said he was no different.
They didn’t know how they had returned, but there had to be a reason. They wouldn’t have come back without purpose.
Leonhart continued.
“If we stick to human laws and cling to the moral codes built on peace, we’ll lose again.”
“So, you’re aware that what you’re doing now is considered a crime.”
“The law is the culmination of envy built by ordinary people.”
“That’s why the Northern Wall survived, huh?”
“How was the South? I heard most of it was destroyed.”
Bastille gave a bitter smile.
“Most of it? No… It was completely annihilated.”
“You were the only one who survived?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m truly alive, even now.”
“Spirit Binding. I heard it’s one of the Necromancer’s skills.”
Bastille slowly nodded.
“Just as they consumed humans, I consumed them. That’s all there is to it.”
Leonhart patted Bastille’s shoulder with a grim expression.
“I, no, we all know. If you hadn’t held the southern wall, the rest of the walls—East, West, and North—would’ve fallen too. Truly, the owner of Einshaten, Bastille, is a philosopher-king worthy of respect.”
“A philosopher-king… If I were truly wise, I wouldn’t have let it fall. Perhaps I’m just one of the many foolish, lazy ones.”
Leonhart smiled. That smile, more than any words, refuted Bastille’s self-criticism.
Then it happened.
A man burst into the meeting room with a loud crash.
“The—The chairman! No, the former chairman has asked for both of you to come. To the basement!”
The man, who appeared to be one of the Daedong Faction’s thugs, had claw marks on his body, as if a bear had attacked him.
Even seeing this, Leonhart remained unfazed. Instead, his lips curled into a grin that stretched all the way to his ears.
It had finally begun. With a gleam in his eyes that seemed to say those very words, he flew toward the basement.
—
“Argh! Please, spare me!”
Hell.
Bastille felt a strange sense of nostalgia as he took in the scene, one that could be described with just two letters.
More than ten thugs groaned as they leaned against the walls, missing parts of their bodies. Some were in the process of being devoured by black monsters.
Choo Sang-wook, the psychic who had once taken control of the Daedong Faction, was using telekinesis to try to destroy the insides of the creatures.
But his telekinesis wasn’t working well on the monsters.
At best, he could only twist and break a limb, and that was the extent of his power.
Still, it was only thanks to this that the thugs had suffered a little less damage. If not for him, the basement would have been completely wiped out, and the destruction would have spread to the surface.
“Damn it! What the hell are these things?!”
Veins bulged in Choo Sang-wook’s arms, and black bruises spread as his blood vessels burst.
He was pushing his telekinetic power to its limits. At that moment, a black shadow flashed past him.
By the time Choo Sang-wook realized that the shadow was Bastille, Leonhart had already stepped forward to support him.
“Youngster, you did well.”
“Ah!”
“Leave the rest to us now.”
“What on earth are those things?!”
Those strange black monsters, standing awkwardly as if they were neither human nor beast, ripped people apart with the four tentacles rising from their backs. Leonhart gave them a name.
“Evils of Eclipse. People just call them ‘Demons’ for short.”
“Evils of Eclipse…”
“So, they’ve begun to invade Earth too.”
The monster let out a horrible scream.
The creature, unfazed by knives or steel pipes from the thugs, was now crumpling like aluminum foil.
Choo Sang-wook, whose telekinesis could snap a human’s arm in an instant, had barely been able to bend one of the monster’s limbs. Yet Bastille crushed the entire creature into a fist-sized lump in an instant.
“As expected of Einshaten’s master. You crushed two Werewolves without even getting up from your seat.”
Bastille grabbed the second monster’s head. At the same time, he absorbed all its muscles, blood, veins, and organs.
Bastille let out a short sigh.
The hunger and thirst that had tormented him all day were slightly eased. He wasn’t sure how many more lives he would need to devour to regain his former strength, but one thing was certain—he was a bit stronger today than he had been yesterday.