The Soul-Harvesting Puppeteer - 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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Episode 14
Third Highland Expedition
Chapter 1
In any case, Han Eol had succeeded in Guided Transmission for the first time.
Yet rather than celebrate, Han Eol found himself lost in serious contemplation.
‘I failed twice before, but now I’ve succeeded. What caused the difference? Pure coincidence?’
Han Eol wracked his brain.
But no matter how hard he thought, answers eluded him in the moment.
‘I’ll puzzle over that later. First things first—I need to handle what’s urgent.’
Han Eol drove the Transmitter into the ground just before the shimmering blue mist.
This way, when he returned to the departure point later, he could make his way back to Midland Seoul with ease.
Han Eol switched on the Receiver, confirmed that communication with the Transmitter was stable, then set off in the direction the compass needle indicated.
Even with successful Guided Transmission, the landing location varied each time. Naturally, where Han Eol arrived now differed from where he’d landed before.
Last time, he’d encountered the Demonic Beast riding the Flying Platform only after hours of movement.
But this time, he reached the spot where he’d buried the Flying Platform in just ten minutes.
‘What? I was transmitted this close to the last battlefield? That’s dangerous.’
Fear seized Han Eol, and he dropped flat to the ground.
‘If this happens to be the creature’s hunting grounds, I could take long-range fire at any moment. The companions of the beast I defeated last time could be prowling nearby.’
Han Eol lay motionless and concealed for a long while.
Fortunately, no attack came.
‘Phew. Looks like I’m safe.’
After a long moment, Han Eol let out a relieved breath, then crawled on his belly to the target location. There, he carefully drew a shovel from his pack and dug up the ground to retrieve the Flying Platform. He also recovered the Demon Spirit Stone he’d buried alongside it.
Last time, Han Eol had been ambushed by a Demonic Beast and suffered severe wounds. As a result, his vest had been damaged and his Recovery Potions depleted.
So even after defeating the creature, he’d had no choice but to retreat to Midland Seoul.
But now Han Eol had restocked and prepared himself anew.
‘So this time, I’ll push one step further than before.’
Han Eol mustered his resolve.
Han Eol was a cautious man who treasured his own life above all else. He had no desire for reckless challenges.
Yet playing it safe alone wouldn’t make him safer. Now that he’d been assigned to the Shinseong Group Pioneer Expedition Corps, he was fated to venture into Highland repeatedly for some time. And there was no guarantee that Guided Transmission would succeed every time.
‘The odds of failure might actually be higher.’
If that was true, then Han Eol had to grow stronger by any means necessary.
That was the only way for him to survive in this dangerous Highland—and it was why he’d forced himself to be brave today.
Han Eol was good at self-assessment.
‘Defense, vitality, various resistances—those stats don’t seem like they’ll climb easily. Attack power, needless to say, is hopeless.’
Over the past two weeks, Han Eol had trained with everything he had.
Not because training was enjoyable, but because his life depended on it.
Yet while his physically-gifted peers grew steadily through their training routines, Han Eol remained almost entirely stagnant.
‘My growth curve is probably worse than the physical types—worse even than the mages.’
At this rate, his chances of surviving three years were bleak.
‘Can I even stay alive until three years from now, when I shed the Rookie label and request a transfer to desk duty?’
The answer was grim.
If Han Eol succeeded in Guided Transmission every time and remained protected at the relatively safe Base Camp, things might be different. But dropped into dangerous territory alone as he was, his odds of losing his life soon were ninety percent or higher. At least, that was Han Eol’s assessment.
‘So what’s my path to survival?’
Han Eol pinned his hopes on the Relics of Highland.
The A-Rank Vest and Recovery Potions that currently kept him alive—
Where did they come from?
Of course, the Shinseong Group subsidiaries had manufactured the defensive items and potions.
But the materials were sourced from Highland, and the manufacturing methods themselves had been derived from Relics obtained there.
And that was far from all.
For S-Rank weapons and armor—the kind distributed only to the Shinseong Group owner’s family—most were not human-made at all, but rather Relics fortunately discovered in Highland.
Even the most legendary craftsmen in each of Midland’s cities rarely succeeded in crafting S-Rank items.
Beyond S-Rank, Extraordinary-grade items were rarer still, and humanity had yet to manufacture anything Ex-Rank directly.
Every Ex-Rank weapon and armor renowned worldwide was a Relic from Highland.
‘That’s what I need to find.’
Han Eol didn’t dare hope for Ex-Rank armor. This time, he simply wanted to obtain one more piece of S-Rank, or failing that, another A-Rank defensive item.
As it happened, Han Eol had already excavated a Relic.
The Flying Platform the Demonic Beast had ridden.
‘The situation was too urgent before for me to examine it properly.’
Han Eol intended to unearth the Flying Platform he’d buried last time and inspect it thoroughly.
The platform was roughly forty centimeters in diameter, embedded with eight Mana Stones, and far lighter than Han Eol had expected.
‘Light as puffed rice, practically weightless. But how on earth do I operate this thing?’
Han Eol pressed at the disc from every angle, flipping it over to examine its underside.
That was when it happened.
The sky darkened abruptly.
A sickening aura of pressure swept across from beyond the horizon—tens of thousands of kilometers distant—and descended upon him in the blink of an eye.
‘Huh?’
Without thinking, Han Eol curled himself around the disc, his body instinctively drawing inward.
Chapter 2
In that same instant, a piercing sound erupted from the sky far above his head.
“λοοβ, οββη οββη, ζζ.”
The Demonic Beast that had nearly killed him on his previous encounter had spoken in a language disturbingly similar to this.
‘I’m done for.’
Han Eol’s face drained of all color in an instant.
In the next breath, his body was seized by an irresistible force and yanked upward—a hundred meters into the air.
Dark, roiling clouds now filled the sky.
This barren Wasteland had been cloudless moments before. Han Eol couldn’t fathom how the once-brilliant sky had transformed so swiftly into this oppressive darkness.
Within those murky clouds, yellow lightning crackled and writhed. And piercing through it came a sleek, leaf-shaped vessel descending through the tempest.
The vessel’s material resembled the disc Han Eol clutched so desperately.
But unlike the small disc—barely forty centimeters across—this airship that had emerged from the clouds stretched nearly thirty meters in length and ten meters in width.
It resembled the gleaming yacht of some wealthy elite cutting across the Han River.
No, its flat profile made it more like a board than a yacht.
From the front of this flattened vessel, an elongated appendage suddenly extended.
“Aah!”
Han Eol’s body, already hurtling skyward, accelerated further as his collar was seized by a long, pallid hand.
Then an incomprehensible tongue scraped against his ears.
“λοοβ, οββη οββη, ζζ.”
Even as his mind reeled, Han Eol forced his eyes open to glimpse the thing upon the vessel.
The creature gripping his throat possessed a head shaped like an inverted triangle.
Its two arms were grotesquely elongated.
It stood a full head taller than him.
Most striking were the eight long tails writhing side to side like cobra heads zeroing in on prey.
This bizarre, bipedal Demonic Beast stood rigid atop the vessel, radiating a chilling light from three eyes—each containing two pupils spinning independently.
‘Damn it.’
Han Eol’s heart sank at the sight.
The Demonic Beast he’d killed in this Wasteland before bore a striking resemblance to this creature.
An inverted-triangle head.
Disproportionately long arms.
But that earlier beast had been dwarfish in stature.
This one, the one now choking him, towered above him.
The previous beast had one tail; this one possessed eight.
The previous beast had two eyes; this one had a third eye nestled between them.
The meaning was unmistakable.
‘That beast that attacked me before must have been a juvenile. And this one… this is its mother, or something even higher up the chain.’
“ββββ!”
As if to confirm his fear, the beast holding his throat caught sight of the Demon Spirit Stone in his grip and shrieked, its jaws gaping wide. The light in its eyes intensified tenfold.
Han Eol slipped his hand—the one holding the stone—behind his back.
Too little, too late.
The Demon Spirit Stone he held was nothing but plunder—torn from the juvenile beast’s chest with his Vibration Blade after splitting it open.
‘I’m finished.’
His mind threatened to unravel.
The beast, consumed by rage at the loss of its offspring, clearly had no intention of killing him quickly.
If the creature had simply raised its eight tails and unleashed a barrage of long-range attacks from this height, Han Eol would have been dead before he could even drink a Recovery Potion.
From the writhing tails before him came an eerie, whining sound—a keening, almost mechanical shriek.
At the end of each hollow tail protruded a spike, and these spinning protrusions were grotesquely thick.
If the spike that had once pierced his back was pencil-thin, these eight spikes were as thick as four of his fingers pressed together.
‘If those things bore into my body, it wouldn’t just be holes. They’d tear me to shreds.’
Dangling helplessly from this height already made his vision swim. But facing eight ghastly spikes aimed at his head and torso, Han Eol’s world grew even darker.
And yet he wasn’t entirely without hope.
If the beast had blown his head clean off the moment it appeared, that would be one thing. But by pulling him close, it had made a critical mistake.
Even as terror threatened to overwhelm him, Han Eol steadied his mind and focused on the creature’s soul.
In that instant, Han Eol’s perspective shifted.
The Demonic Beast’s soul transformed into a geometric form within a two-dimensional plane.
Chapter 3
What Han Eol saw from above took the following shape.
‘Wow.’
Han Eol was first struck by the shape’s intricacy.
The two layers of hexagonal fortification walls surrounding the soul were one thing.
The eight tails and fangs—those he could account for.
But beyond this terrifying appearance, something about the Demonic Beast’s soul was fundamentally different.
First, the creature’s soul bristled with thorn-like protrusions.
More striking still, unlike other souls, two of this beast’s tails were directly connected to the soul itself.
Not the Shinseong Group’s personnel director, not the unit commander, not the Seorlang Tribe, not even the young Demonic Beast from before—Han Eol had never witnessed any living being whose soul was directly connected to either its fortification walls or its weapons of offense, whether horns or tails.
‘Could it be… the soul won’t extract?’
Han Eol’s chest tightened with dread.
Soul Extraction was the only means of attack he possessed right now.
‘But what if it doesn’t work?’
He would have no recourse.
‘Please come out.’
Han Eol thrust his will forth with convulsive force.
The Puppeteer Who Harvests Souls
Author |
Juno
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Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
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Editorial Department
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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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