I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 14

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 14. Gaslighting

Cheonan-gwi.

The creature bearing the name of a ghost with a thousand faces possessed one peculiar curse.

That curse, simply put, was straightforward to explain.

The moment one of its eight hands made contact with a person, that person’s face would vanish.

Yet despite its simplicity, the curse’s effect was notoriously vicious.

Once the nose and mouth disappeared, breathing became impossible.

“Ugh, uuugh!”

At that very moment, a novice knight among their ranks had touched one of Cheonan-gwi’s hands, and his face was gone.

Without a mouth, he could not speak—only the vibrations of his vocal cords escaped in a few strangled gasps before he clawed at his own blank face and collapsed.

There was no way to survive unless a Curse Healer appeared at once.

“Press the attack!”

Yet unlike the novice, Belokine and the other knights were sounding the trumpet of victory.

For a 3-Star World Erosion master, Cheonan-gwi was formidable enough, but it was not the match of Belokine and his knights.

“Shriieeeeeek!”

One of Cheonan-gwi’s arms was engulfed entirely in flame from Belokine’s Ignis.

In the undying inferno, Cheonan-gwi thrashed about wildly, its limbs flailing in a frenzy as if the heat had driven all reason from it.

The strength in Cheonan-gwi’s limbs was enough to crumple a human body as easily as paper.

Even mid-tier Expert-rank knights could not withstand a direct blow, so they too had to roll desperately across the ground to evade.

Boom!

But Belokine was different.

He blocked Cheonan-gwi’s hand head-on, and in the same motion, he swatted it away.

In the opening created by Cheonan-gwi’s stumble, Belokine’s blade sang out once more.

Whoosh!

“Do not fall back! I will create the opening for you!”

Before such overwhelming martial prowess, the knights’ morale surged anew.

And in their hearts, Balheim was carved deeper still.

The thought filled their minds entirely—that even the World Erosion, humanity’s most primal terror, could be held at bay if Balheim stood with them.

“Follow Belokine!”

The knights, sensing victory, surged forward with triumphant roars toward the Cheonan-gwi.

Watching them, Belokine felt a surge of pride rise within him again.

Of course. It was him.

This was Belokine of Balheim!

Just as a proud smile bloomed across his face, his thoughts drifted unexpectedly to Krasch.

The man was nowhere among the knights.

Had he fallen to the creature? Died at its hands?

He had been thinking the mission would be all the more valuable for it when he spotted Krasch in the distance—and felt a twinge of disappointment.

But it didn’t matter.

As long as Krasch trembled with fear, sensing the gap between their strength and the terror of the World Erosion, the mission would be a success.

Yet the Krasch before Belokine’s eyes was not trembling with fear.

He was simply gazing at something, unmoving.

And that gaze was not directed at himself.

What was it?

What in the world was he looking at?

The questions flickered across Belokine’s mind in an instant.

Splurt.

Suddenly, a sound came—something dripping from the Cheonan-gwi’s face.

Hearing it, Belokine swiftly turned his head, and what his eyes beheld froze his entire body.

Black blood was pouring simultaneously from every opening in the creature’s face.

Realizing the grave condition, Belokine immediately tried to put distance between them.

Crackle!

Black sparks coursed through the creature’s entire body.

Faced with a phenomenon he had never witnessed before, Belokine’s eyes widened in alarm.

But he raised his blade without hesitation.

He knew he had to strike the Cheonan-gwi down at once.

“Kill the Cheonan-gwi! Now!”

Bellowing the command, Belokine drove his sword down toward the creature.

Cleave!

But his blade could not cut through the creature’s darkened form.

It had been infused with Aura, yet it hadn’t cut through.

The moment Belokine’s eyes widened, Cheonan-gwi’s body began to swell, rippling with grotesque colors.

As Belokine watched the creature balloon suddenly before him, bewilderment seized him.

That was when he realized the knights who should have been following his lead had not delivered a single follow-up strike.

“What are you doing?!”

He was about to roar at them—surely the Balheim knights hadn’t been frightened by the sight of Cheonan-gwi—when he turned his head back.

Every face behind him had gone blank.

Staring at them standing motionless, their faces hollowed of all expression, Belokine’s eyes slowly widened.

“Ugh?!”

Only then did he realize that half his vision had vanished.

His fingers flew to his eye socket, but found only bare skin where his eye should have been.

The moment he understood he had fallen under a Curse, a shadow black as pitch descended over his head.

As Belokine’s remaining eye lifted, he found Cheonan-gwi looming above him—swollen to a size incomparably larger than before—its arms folded neatly across its body, staring down at him with an unwavering gaze.

Crack!

Thunder roared across the sky.

And the pale white face that thrust forward among them split cleanly down the middle with a wet tearing sound.

Through the gaping fissure, white teeth and an elongated tongue emerged.

“SCREEEEEEEEEEEECH!”

The roar that erupted sent tremors through the Swampland.

And following that cry, rain began to pour from the sky in torrents.

Belokine understood.

Despair born of the World Erosion had descended upon him.

“No, no—ahhh!”

Belokine pushed off the ground and bolted forward.

The rain swelling the bog gradually swallowed his legs to mid-thigh, but there was no time to care about that now.

Death.

Death!

The thought consumed him entirely.

With one eye gone and his balance wavering constantly, Belokine simply ran.

The journey here had seemed so brief, yet no matter how far he ran, the Swampland stretched endlessly before him.

The falling rain kept obscuring his vision.

The sodden swamp dragged at his legs.

Thump, thump, thump, thump!

And behind him, the slow, inexorable footfalls of Cheonan-gwi crept closer, tightening like a noose around his mind.

Inside the World Erosion, Belokine felt himself shrinking—becoming nothing.

Then the thoughts came, unbidden, surging up from the depths of his chest.

He was Belokine, born into Balheim—the mightiest house in the Staron Kingdom.

So what was this? What had he become?

His knights, lost in an instant. And now he fled like a madman from the master of the World Erosion, trembling, breaking.

A member of Balheim. Him.

But Balheim was supreme.

Surely Balheim was supreme.

Then shouldn’t he be supreme as well?

This couldn’t go on. It couldn’t.

In that moment, her face blazed across his mind—Charlotte.

His half-sister. The radiant star of Staron, blessed with talents that burned like starlight.

What would she do in his place?

Would she flee as he was fleeing?

Would she draw her sword and stand against that creature, strike it down?

The thoughts kept rising, each one sharper than the last.

Fear gnawed at him.

If he returned like this, what scorn would the house heap upon him?

And the gap between him and Charlotte—no matter how hard he ran, he could never close it. It would only grow wider.

His place in Balheim would erode away, forgotten as the fool who couldn’t keep pace with a younger sister three years his junior.

He would fail the promise his mother—long dead—had made him swear as a boy: to grow strong.

That chain consumed him. It drove him mad.

Then shadow fell upon him again.

The swamp had risen to his waist. His steps had slowed. And in that moment of delay, Cheonan-gwi had caught him.

He jerked his sword up in desperation.

Above him, the creature’s arm—vast beyond measure—rose against the sky.

“Ah.”

It was the moment a brief sound escaped Belokine’s lips.

Crash!

The descending arm of Cheonan-gwi shattered the Swampland, and water erupted skyward in a towering column.

In its wake, the Swampland trembled violently, waves churning across its surface.

Belokine’s form was nowhere to be seen beneath.

Only the falling rain pooled into the space where someone had silently passed.

* * *

It was much later when Belokine’s eyes opened again.

His body felt impossibly heavy.

His condition was in ruins.

His ribs ached as if piercing his lungs, and his core temperature had dropped so dangerously low his mind threatened to slip away.

On top of that, his clothes, saturated with swamp water, clung like lead.

Wearing such heavy garments against the cold had been a mistake.

‘I’m alive.’

Somehow his body had moved just enough to barely evade Cheonan-gwi’s strike.

Though he hadn’t managed to dodge completely—caught in the waves spawned by that terrible blow, he’d lost consciousness.

A moment later, he became aware that someone had slung his arm across their shoulder and was moving through the Swampland.

As his vision slowly cleared, he looked around and realized the shoulder was remarkably small.

Almost childlike.

And it wasn’t long before he knew whose shoulder it was.

“K-Krasch?”

The moment he spoke that name, the boy’s head turned toward him.

It was Krasch.

The boy’s hair was soaked and disheveled from the downpour that drenched them both, and his face wore an expression of relief.

Belokine, whose mind had been consumed with thoughts of Cheonan-gwi and Charlotte, only now remembered that Krasch had been with them.

“Are you awake, sir?”
“How did you—weren’t you supposed to be alive?”
“Yes, I was keeping watch from a distance since it was dangerous, just as you said.”

That was right.

Evidently, thanks to that, he’d escaped exposure to the Curse that had afflicted the knights.

Yet something deep within Belokine rebelled against the situation.

The fact that Krasch was supporting him as they walked gnawed at him relentlessly, eating away at something vital inside.

His pride had been shattered utterly in that flight just moments ago.

And now, to accept help from Krasch—a man he’d always assumed would remain beneath him—felt like the final trampling of whatever self-respect remained.

“Enough. I’ll walk myself.”

Belokine pulled his arm from Krasch’s shoulder and drew in a labored breath.

Something inside had come loose in the impact moments before; his breathing remained ragged and uneven.

His Aura, too, was far from stable.

But he wasn’t so crippled that he couldn’t move.

And even if he were, he’d sooner crawl than accept Krasch’s aid.

“Sir, your condition isn’t sound. Please, don’t push yourself.”
“I said enough!”

Belokine’s voice cracked like a whip at Krasch as he moved to steady him again.

How dare you—you of all people—presume to help me? He shoved Krasch away with the force of that unspoken rage.

Krasch withdrew his hands without protest, as though he’d expected nothing less.

Belokine watched him step back and forced his breathing to steady.

‘That’s right. Know your place.’

You have nothing to offer in this crisis—let that powerlessness settle deep in your bones.

Belokine had just begun to turn and move forward when the sound came.

Boom!

A footfall thundered across the entire Swampland.

The moment he heard it, Belokine’s body tensed reflexively.

Because that footfall belonged to none other than Cheonan-gwi.

“K-Krasch, how far have we gotten away from it?”

Belokine’s voice came tight with urgency as he sought to understand their position.

But Krasch too scanned the surroundings with a grave expression.

“I’m not certain. We’ve walked far, yet I see no sign of the boundary. It’s possible the World Erosion has sealed itself off.”

At Krasch’s words, the color drained from Belokine’s face.

If that were true, then there was only one way out: they would have to kill Cheonan-gwi to escape.

Thump!

Then, once more, the distant footfalls of Cheonan-gwi echoed through the darkness.

“Damn it. Damn it all.”
“Sir.”

It was then, as Belokine’s anxiety deepened, that Krasch called out to him.

“I have a method, sir.”
“A method?”

The fact that Krasch possessed any method at all made Belokine lift his head.

Though it grated against him, the instinct to survive won out—he forced himself to listen.

“You’ve heard, haven’t you, that I fought to a stalemate with Anyx?”

Of course he had heard. He remembered it still.

Belokine’s doubts lingered, but the rumor of that draw was solid enough.

“The reason I could manage it was that I learned a Secret Technique from Charlotte.”

At those words, Belokine’s body stiffened.

He recognized at once whom Krasch meant by “Charlotte”—and it struck him like a blow.

“…Charlotte taught you?”

Krasch nodded again.

Charlotte as a mentor? The thought felt foreign to him.

Yet they shared the same blood, born of the same womb.

Perhaps, without knowing it, he held Krasch in a place apart from others.

And if his stalemate with Anyx came from Charlotte’s Secret Technique, it began to make sense—dark sense, but sense all the same.

He had felt her genius keenly enough to know she was capable of anything.

“Can this Secret Technique bring that thing down?”
“I cannot promise success, but it seems worth attempting rather than simply collapsing from exhaustion.”

Belokine’s lips tightened.

Whatever the Secret Technique was, Krasch had seen Cheonan-gwi with his own eyes.

That he would speak of it as “worth attempting” told Belokine it must be formidable indeed.

“…You speak this way to me because you need something from me, don’t you?”
“Your Ignis can kindle flame from anything, can it not?”
“Yes, and?”
“I would ask that you kindle that flame within my Aura.”

Then Belokine understood Krasch’s intention at last.

He meant to fuse Belokine’s fire with the Secret Technique, and strike down Cheonan-gwi with the combined force.

“I understand you don’t trust me.”

Watching Belokine hesitate, Krasch spoke again.

“But you do trust Charlotte’s skill, don’t you?”

The words that followed were enough to put an end to Belokine’s wavering.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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