LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 14 - Humans Are– (6)
Chapter 14 – Humans Are– (6)
The guards were startled the moment they heard his voice.
Without realizing it, they backed away, pressing their shoulders against the wall.
No one had seen how he managed to escape from the prison.
Bastille approached the werewolf and placed his hand over death itself. The last remaining thread of life in the werewolf’s body was sucked into Bastille, and the creature’s body shriveled like a mummy.
Even though it would have vanished within an hour if left alone, Bastille did not remove his hand until the body had fully crumbled into dust. Finally, all that remained on the floor was the ragged prisoner’s uniform.
One of the guards pointed his club at Bastille.
“What do you think you’re doing? Get back to your cell! Now!”
Bastille looked at him.
“Even if society pardons you with its laws, unless you think for yourself, you are nothing but a tool for the crimes society commits.”
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
“What I’m saying is the simplest truth. The same things all mothers whisper to their children… Don’t hit. Don’t harm. Don’t steal. Don’t kill.”
“You crazy bastard…!”
“If you can’t understand that… then you have no right to live.”
Bastille reached out his hand toward him.
The panicked guard swung his club. It struck Bastille’s head with a dull thud.
But it felt as though he had hit a sandbag, not something living—a sensation like striking a bundled-up mass of flesh.
“Aaaargh!”
The guard collapsed, feeling more pain than he had ever experienced in his life. His life had already left his body, and his body, now dried up, quickly turned into a pile of ash.
The remaining two guards widened the distance between themselves and pointed their clubs forward.
One of them, with a wound on his neck, was on the verge of losing his mind from the stress of the situation.
Mumbling to himself, he suddenly screamed.
“Captain! The collar around that bastard’s neck! Blow it up! He’s dangerous!”
“But we haven’t been ordered to—”
“I don’t want to die!”
“Neither do I. Hey, you go and trip him up! Grab his legs!”
“Are you crazy? You do it! You’re the one who’s always showing off those jiu-jitsu moves on us!”
As they exchanged a few more words, they suddenly froze, stepping back in shock. They had only just realized that Bastille had approached them silently.
“Ahhh! Captain! Please!”
The older guard cleared his throat and spoke to Bastille.
“Stop! If you make any more dangerous moves, I have the authority to activate the collar around your neck on the spot. You know the rules. That collar—”
Bastille raised his hand to touch the collar.
At that moment, the guards witnessed something unbelievable. The collar, which was said to be made from a material impossible to cut, a marvel of special scientific technology, corroded and disintegrated in an instant.
“This power… How? This place is supposed to be a space where abilities can’t be used!”
Bastille slowly walked toward the guard. Cornered against the wall, the guard swung his club in desperation, but it was a futile effort. Bastille’s hand pressed down on their shoulders, and their lives were completely drained, leaving nothing behind.
After absorbing two more lives, Bastille slowly walked in the direction the guards had come from.
In the hallway, which stretched for about 20 meters, various lifeforms were contained in cells divided like cages in a zoo.
Some had intelligence, while others were closer to inanimate objects, like trembling rocks.
Interestingly, there was no magical energy in this place. It was as if it had been filtered out somehow.
Because of that, the creatures with supernatural abilities were huddled powerlessly in the corners of their cells.
The door at the end of the hallway was firmly locked. Of course, it was no obstacle for Bastille’s lion’s hand.
When his hand touched the door, a warning blared from the ceiling speakers.
[Return to your cell immediately. This is your final warning. If you leave this area without permission, the ksa is authorized to shoot you on sight. This is a legitimate action under international law…]
Bastille briefly glanced at the CCTV camera but did not stop walking.
Upon exiting the hallway, there was yet another corridor.
It was a massive, complex space, like a maze of interconnected hallways and cells.
Bastille paused at the third intersection he encountered.
Just then, pursuers dressed as guards simultaneously attacked him from both the front and the rear.
There were five of them in total.
They used poles with snares attached to bind Bastille’s limbs and slam him into the ground, pinning him down.
“You bastard! Go back to where you came from!”
One of the guards yelled as he pressed down on Bastille. But no one in that room could have imagined that those words would be his last.
In an instant, the guard turned to ash and collapsed, while the snares that had restrained Bastille crumbled into dust.
“M-m-monster…!”
One by one, Bastille devoured the remaining guards. The last one standing collapsed onto the floor, trembling in fear.
Bastille stood before him.
“A monster, huh… What’s that?”
“You! You’re the monster that turns people into ash!”
“And you? Locking lives away in narrow cells and wiping them out like toys—what should we call you?”
“Shut up!”
The guard screamed, but just beyond the wall his back was pressed against, a rabbit humanoid stood, blinking its large eyes.
The guard screamed again.
“That’s not a lifeform! It’s a monster! A devil’s toy that was never made by God!”
“Humans weren’t made by God either. You’re just mutated monkeys.”
“You blasphemer!”
“If you believe in God, you must accept that everything in this world is His creation. Your argument is contradictory.”
“Shut your mouth!”
Bastille looked down at the old guard, who was yelling from below, and after a moment, he turned away.
He had no intention of slaughtering someone who couldn’t even fight back.
Leaving the guard behind, Bastille walked toward the end of the corridor.
Finally, he reached the place he had been searching for—a staircase.
The square stairwell stretched up and down around a central hollow space. He was currently at least ten floors below ground, and the depth below him was so great that it was difficult to see the bottom.
From that spot, Bastille looked both up and down once before starting his descent without hesitation.
“The important things are always found in the deepest places.”
Bastille descended the stairs, heading deeper underground.
Several times along the way, guards tried to stop him. But only death, turned to ash, increased in number. Eventually, even the guards stopped showing up.
The same scenery repeated itself over and over. After about ten sets of stairs, he would round a corner, and after four such turns, there was always a door leading to a hallway.
Other than the Roman numerals indicating the floor, there was no writing on the doors. To know what lay behind each door, one would have to enter and see for themselves.
Dim stairwell lights and doors leading to corridors passed by Bastille’s side in alternation. After repeating this pattern dozens of times, he finally reached the very bottom of the staircase.
The letter “L” was written on the door—Roman numeral for fifty.
Like all the previous doors, a control panel equipped with a number pad and a biometric scanner was attached to the wall beside it.
Bastille reached out toward the door. As his fingertips touched it, a misty black light spread from his hand.
Part of the door turned to ash. The ash spread like frost, consuming the entire door, which rusted and crumbled in an instant. Where the door once stood, a cavernous entrance appeared, and ash fell like dust from the opening.
Bastille stepped into the cave’s depths. There, for the first time, stood someone capable of stopping him.
“The idiots in the control room. I gave them a heads-up not to interfere with you, but they went ahead and got the guards killed anyway.”
In the middle of the corridor stood a young man in his early twenties, wearing glasses and aiming a bow at Bastille.
He had features typical of someone from Korea or Japan and wore a plain suit without a tie.
The man spoke again.
“Luchita, the Fiery Archer. I’m from the Western Wall.”
“I am Bastille, master of Einshaten.”
“I know. I know well, actually. Anyone who doesn’t know who you are in Revenheim would have to be either a fool or a hermit.”
Bastille quietly observed him.
The bow the man was holding was clearly not an ordinary weapon, even at a glance.
Luchita, as he called himself, spoke again.
“Of course, in Revenheim, no one would have dared to stand in your way. But this is Korea.”
“Is it different?”
“Of course. In fact, here, I think you’ll find your powers are significantly limited. We’ve purified the magical energy.”
Luchita briefly released the tension in his bowstring and showed Bastille a necklace.
A small red gem, no bigger than a fingernail, hung from the necklace. Bastille recognized it immediately.
“A Dragon Heart.”
“As expected, you recognized it right away. Talking to someone from Revenheim always makes things easier.”
“A replica, no doubt.”
“Bingo. But isn’t it amazing? We’ve only been back for five days. How do you think we managed to create a 5-carat Dragon Heart already?”
Bastille ignored his words and stepped forward.
At that moment, Luchita’s hand moved. No—more accurately, Bastille didn’t even see it move.
The arrow that had been nocked in the bowstring was suddenly embedded in the floor of the corridor, quivering as though it had teleported.
“If it weren’t for this replica Dragon Heart, I wouldn’t be able to use any magic either, just like you, Lord of Einshaten. I’m not going to be harsh on you, so how about you make a decision? Join the KSA—no, join Key’s Keeper.”
“Key’s Keeper? The Guardian of the Key?”
“It’s a bit of a wordplay, yes.”
“Wordplay?”
“I can’t tell you more than that as an outsider. But we’re working with Judah. It seems you’ve already met him.”
Luchita smiled and adjusted his glasses.
“Judah said this about you. ‘Even here, Bastille is still Bastille.’”
“That’s high praise.”
“Is it praise? Or maybe mockery? Which one could it be? In Revenheim, you were a figure of awe, but you were also known as the fool who failed. The warriors with divine missions failed to protect the Southern Wall, after all.”
“…I see.”
Luchita continued.
“Eight returnees have already joined forces. If you and another person trapped on another floor—Leonhart—join, that’ll make ten of us. If we pool our strength, we could carve out a better future. Different from the utter failure of Revenheim.”
Bastille took another step forward.
“Tsk, that’s not going to work.”
Before he even pulled the trigger, Luchita summoned a magical arrow and nocked it in the string.
With a tearing sound in the air, an arrow embedded itself just in front of Bastille’s foot.
“The third arrow won’t be a warning.”
Bastille’s lips twisted slightly. He stepped forward again.
Luchita nocked another arrow.
“Do you really think a necromancer without magic can beat me, an arch-hunter? I don’t think so. I was pretty well-known as a hunter on the Western Wall, you know.”
“Never heard of you.”
Bastille advanced again, and Luchita let out a short sigh.
“Negotiations have failed. I’m going to have to lock you back up in your cell. Don’t blame me if it hurts.”
ksaWhapapap!ksa
Arrows danced in the air. In an instant, three arrows carved out arcs, attacking Bastille from impossible angles.
One aimed for his thigh, the other two for his torso.
The arrows embedded themselves in Bastille’s body almost too easily. Even Luchita was so surprised by the result that he let out a chuckle.