The Soul-Harvesting Puppeteer - Chapter 48

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

Chapter 48
Lee Kang-hyun was, by nature, a meticulous man.
He did not rely solely on the HR Department’s report; instead, he dispatched a member of the Secretary’s Office—answerable directly to the chairman—to the 1st Corps for cross-verification.
The secretary’s office staff had searched Han-eol’s quarters, still remaining at the 1st Corps, and collected several strands of hair.
Lee Kang-hyun sent those strands along with his own hair to Shinseong Comprehensive Hospital to verify blood kinship once more.
The results had now arrived on his office desk.
‘So that creature is truly of my blood. Hmm.’
Lee Kang-hyun studied Han-eol anew from the beginning.
Chapter 2
‘Still, the composure is commendable. It’s rare to find someone who doesn’t shrink in my presence.’
Most Ability Users, not to mention the third and fourth generation owners of the Shinseong Group, withered before Lee Kang-hyun’s gaze.
Their eyes, fixed upon him, harbored a fear they could not conceal.
Among Lee Kang-hyun’s descendants, only Strategic Command Director Lee Myung-woo, Pioneer Commander Lee Seong-woo, and Lee Byeol-ha of Artemis could meet him head-on with such composure.
“Why are you standing there like a block? Come here and sit.”
Lee Kang-hyun gestured with his chin toward the bookshelf behind his desk.
This was evidence that Lee Kang-hyun did not view Han-eol unfavorably.
Had Han-eol shown any sign of intimidation?
Then Lee Kang-hyun would have dismissed him immediately after the greeting.
“Yes, Chairman.”
Han-eol approached and took the chair across from the long desk.
As he did, Han-eol had already prepared his defenses.
Within his mental landscape, the iridescent hand had descended from higher dimensions and now pierced through the roof of this hanok building, hovering just inside.
Upon its palm, three eyes bulged prominently, scanning their surroundings with deliberate sweeps.
Among these, the eye resembling that of a reptile belonged to Akin.
The other two belonged to Samok-palmi Girit.
These three eyes scanned the hanok building in an instant, capturing every spirit lurking within.
‘Three behind the walls, one each; two beyond the door; three more on the ceiling arranged like the character 品; eight guards surrounding the exterior.’
Han-eol had identified sixteen spirits in a single moment.
Adding Chairman Lee Kang-hyun made seventeen.
‘If necessary, I shred all sixteen spirits and take Chairman Lee Kang-hyun as a hostage.’
Han-eol had already mapped his escape route from the moment he first entered Subyeok-won.
The old Han-eol would have found it impossible to seize someone as formidable as Lee Kang-hyun hostage.
But now Han-eol’s body had been geometrically strengthened through the Great Law of Spirit Tribe.
‘Seize the chairman’s throat, hoist him aloft, burst through the building wall, sprint southward. Then I dive into the Han River.’
Then a variable emerged.
Behind the very seat where Lee Kang-hyun sat, beyond the wall where a glowing fragment of sun hung as sculpture, a new presence entered.
Akin’s eye detected the spirit immediately.
‘What?’
Han-eol flinched.
The spirit behind the wall was a form he had never encountered.
Remarkably, this suspicious figure had constructed a Soul Tower adorned with lotus flowers, much like Yeon So-dam, with a spirit perched atop it.
However, the Soul Tower was not contained within a solid fortress—no Soul Vessel. Instead, a crescent-moon-shaped Soul Vessel appeared, with the Soul Tower and spirit standing independently, separated beside it.
Witnessing this unique form of spirit, Han-eol felt both unease and fascination simultaneously.
‘Who in the world is this?’
Han-eol’s eyes brightened with intensity.
When observing the spirits of Lee Kang-hyun and the other guards, he had felt only indifference. Now, curiosity stirred within him.
Yet Han-eol was not alone in perceiving the spirit. While Han-eol scrutinized the figure beyond the wall through Akin’s eyes, the other presence sensed his gaze.
More precisely, they detected the Dragon Tribe’s distinctive transcendent sight—that characteristic vertical slit.
“Aaaah!”
A piercing scream tore out from behind the wall.
The soundproofing was thorough enough that ordinary ears would hear nothing, yet Lee Kang-hyun, Han-eol, and all the guards present heard it all the same.
“Wait there.”
Lee Kang-hyun shot up, stopping Han-eol from rising after him.
“I’ll be back in a moment.”
Lee Kang-hyun, visibly flustered, opened a side door to his office and stepped out.
Han-eol’s expression hardened completely.
‘Could it be?’
Han-eol’s heart sank.
Lee Kang-hyun was a hostage—his insurance, his guarantee of safety.
But if he lost that hostage while the Shinseong Group unleashed its full assault?
‘Can I break through an escape route with my abilities?’
Han-eol still had no confidence in his own defensive capabilities.
On top of that, he hadn’t grasped the full extent of Shinseong Group’s forces.
‘What if they’re just leaving me here and about to pump in some vicious poison gas or nerve agent?’
Truth be told, Han-eol was every bit as suspicious by nature as Lee Kang-hyun.
Now that he thought about it, the paper sitting on Lee Kang-hyun’s desk had looked suspicious too. From what Han-eol glimpsed in passing, it appeared to be a blood relationship test result.
‘Damn. Have I been exposed as a fake?’
As anxiety gripped him, the muscles in Han-eol’s calves swelled with terrifying power.
And then came the next instant.
Boom!
Han-eol exploded forward in a perfectly straight line.
He demonstrated exactly how violent running in a straight line could be.
In Highland’s five continents, there were scarcely any beings capable of withstanding the Dragon Tribe’s explosive charge.
The moment a Dragon Tribe member hurtled forward at a speed nearly approaching lightning, the air around him would be consumed in ultra-high-temperature flames from friction. Then when the Dragon Tribe member slammed his bare body into an opponent, that opponent would literally explode from every pore—a gruesome death.
No weapon humanity had ever developed could compare to the Dragon Tribe Melee Assault.
It was even more devastating than firing a hydrogen bomb from a railgun.
Energy was proportional to mass, but proportional to the square of velocity—that was the law of physics. Without even invoking Newtonian mechanics or Einstein’s theories, anyone with sense knew that velocity was far more terrifying than mass.
Before the Great Upheaval, America and Russia pursued railgun research to increase missile velocity precisely for this reason.
But the speed of a Dragon Tribe Melee Assault bore no comparison to any railgun.
A Dragon Tribe member flying forward at nearly the speed of light to strike?
If that blow were allowed to land, the entire Earth would shatter.
Even thousands or tens of thousands of middling Ability Users in Midland could not withstand a Dragon Tribe Melee Assault.
This was reality.
Chapter 3
Of course, Han-eol’s physical abilities fell short of the Dragon Tribe. Thanks to the supreme-grade Dragon Tribe scales he had grafted onto his body, his physique was harder than any Dragon Tribe member’s, but his muscles couldn’t produce the explosive force unique to the Dragon Tribe.
Yet Han-eol had come remarkably close to the Dragon Tribe’s level.
The legion of Spirit Tribe crafted from Blood Stones had been designed precisely to counter that destructive Dragon Tribe Melee Assault.
Now, each individual muscle fiber in Han-eol’s body was coated in Blood Stone.
Not ordinary Blood Stone either, but a special variety into which the Twelve Zodiac Constellations of the Spirit Tribe had infused an inconceivable quantity of Magical Spirits.
As a result, the instantaneous explosive force his muscles could generate fell short of a mature Dragon Tribe member, but it was enough to roughly match his opponent’s reaction speed.
The moment Han-eol sensed danger and resolved to escape, his calf muscles activated of their own accord.
First, the enormous log desk blocking his path shattered into splinters.
Next, the prized sun sculpture that Lee Kang-hyun treasured burst through along with a thick section of wall.
When Han-eol crashed through the wall into the rear section of the chairman’s office, two people were there.
One was a bodyguard with a wireless earpiece in his ear.
And cradled limply in that bodyguard’s arms was a young woman who caught Han-eol’s attention.
‘Is it her?’
The young woman before him seemed to be the one Han-eol had glimpsed moments earlier—the one bearing the crescent-moon-shaped Soul Vessel.
“Who the hell are you?”
The bodyguard shouted at Han-eol. He was momentarily dazed by the ear-splitting blast before hastily moving to defend himself.
Even so, he shielded the young woman behind his back.
‘So she’s an important person.’
Han-eol’s eyes gleamed.
In the next instant, before the bodyguard could even react, Han-eol appeared right in front of him.
Truth was, Han-eol had no desire to escalate things. He simply thought he needed to shove the bodyguard aside and seize the young woman as a hostage.
But Han-eol’s terrifying speed was the problem.
His hand shot out like lightning, shoving into the bodyguard’s chest.
Splash!
In that instant, with a sound like tearing wet paper, Han-eol’s hand tore through the man’s chest and ribs and heart in succession, erupting from his back.
But it didn’t end there.
The bodyguard’s blood, struck by enormous force, exploded outward from his back and painted the entire wall in a sea of red.
Just then the hidden chamber’s door burst open and Chairman Lee Kang-hyun rushed in.
“So-dam, are you all right?”
Lee Kang-hyun came running at full speed, his worry fixed on the young woman—Yeon So-dam, the shrine maiden of Shinseong Group.
Yet the bodyguard who should have been protecting the shrine maiden lay dead, his chest crushed beyond imagination.
And the figure before them—Han-eol, claiming to be Lee Myung-woo’s bloodline—had one hand plunged into the bodyguard’s chest cavity and his other hand wrapped around Yeon So-dam’s throat.
“What in the world—!”
Only then did the gaping hole in the office wall register in Lee Kang-hyun’s vision.
The next moment, Han-eol discarded the bodyguard’s corpse and lunged forward, seizing Lee Kang-hyun’s throat with an iron grip.
‘Both hands can’t be tied up.’
Having made this judgment, Han-eol abandoned Yeon So-dam and instead seized Lee Kang-hyun as a hostage.
In that instant, Lee Kang-hyun’s neck vertebrae cracked sickeningly.
Though Han-eol had controlled his speed and strength as much as possible, the velocity was still far too terrifying for Lee Kang-hyun—a mere Midland Ability User—to endure.
He nearly died on the spot.
But the moment his neck vertebrae fractured, a needle shot from the Magic Ring he wore injected an S-rank healing potion directly into his finger.
The potion revived his cervical spine and nerves.
“Gack. Kh—ugh.”
Lee Kang-hyun gasped in agony.
Han-eol froze.
“Damn it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grip so hard.”
Han-eol offered Lee Kang-hyun a one-sided apology, then immediately charged forward head-on.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three walls of the traditional house ruptured in succession.
The walls, torn in human-shaped holes, shuddered as the entire structure seemed on the verge of collapse.
“The chairman is in danger.”
“Save the chairman.”
Shinseong Group’s security detail cursed under their breath.
Whee-whee-whee, shriek—
Emergency whistles blared from all directions.
By then, Han-eol was already vaulting over the fence of Subyeok-won, his grip still locked around Lee Kang-hyun’s neck as he cut diagonally across the garden toward the south.
Before the security detail could even assemble, Han-eol had pierced through Hannam-dong and reached Riverside North Road.
In a single bound, he then leaped across all ten lanes of traffic and plunged into the Han River with a splash.
“Huh.”
Lee Myung-woo, who had been waiting in another building at Subyeok-won, rushed out too late and watched his son—or whatever he was—plunge into the Han River with his father, leaving him gasping.
Chapter 4
The Dragon Tribe were invincible on land, but equally at home in water.
Han-eol dove down the Han River in what seemed like a blink and emerged at a secret platform between Yeouido and Mapo.
“Phew-phew-phew, urgh. Cough.”
Lee Kang-hyun, dragged along with his neck still seized, spat river water from his nose and mouth.
During the brief time being dragged here, Lee Kang-hyun had twice attempted a counterattack to escape Han-eol’s grip.
As it happened, Lee Kang-hyun was an Ability User who had awakened water-type magical powers. The moment he exerted his will, a powerful vortex erupted within the Han River and engulfed Han-eol.
Of course, Han-eol simply ignored such a trivial whirlwind and plowed straight through it.
Determining it was hopeless, Lee Kang-hyun condensed a fierce high-pressure jet of water in his hand strike and brought it down at Han-eol’s shoulder.
But a murky aura shimmered across Han-eol’s shoulder, unleashing a counterforce beyond imagination that left Lee Kang-hyun’s hand battered and numb.
‘A monster,’ he thought.
After that, Lee Kang-hyun ceased his resistance.
Han-eol arrived at the Blue Mist without loosening his grip on Lee Kang-hyun’s neck as the man came along without further struggle.
‘Damn it. Everything’s ruined. I wanted to seize the right moment to gradually break free from Shinseong Group and become a free visionary bound to no one, but now I’ve made myself an enemy of the entire group. Can I really survive without the group’s support?’
Han-eol wore a look of despair as he stood before the mist leading toward Highland.
Yet there was nothing to be done.
The milk had already been spilled. The cup had shattered to pieces.
‘I won’t be able to return to Midland for quite a long time. Perhaps I should just live alongside the Spirit Tribe from now on?’
Han-eol turned to look at Lee Kang-hyun, his expression troubled.
Thud.
Han-eol released Lee Kang-hyun’s neck.
There was no longer any need for a hostage.
And it made no sense to kill Chairman Lee Kang-hyun here anyway.
Han-eol was not a bloodthirsty murderer.
The Puppeteer Who Harvests Souls
Author |
Juno
Publisher |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Editorial Director |
Editorial Department
Published by |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. – Dream Books
Address |
7th Floor, Gwangseong Building, 28 Bongeunsaro 114-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
UCI |
G720:N+A063-20260703071
Blog |
blog.naver.com/dreambookss
Twitter (X) |
@dreambookss
Submissions |
[email protected]
(주) Samyang C&C – The contents of this book may not be used in any form or by any means without the written permission of Dream Books.

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