The Soul-Harvesting Puppeteer - Chapter 65

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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 65
Chapter 2
While Lee Sung-woo was pressing the 1st Division Commander, Han Eol received a summons from Lee Myung-woo.
“You called for me?”
“Yes. Have a seat over there.”
Lee Myung-woo gestured for Han Eol to sit as he entered the study.
Once Han Eol took a seat, Lee Myung-woo settled into the chair across from him.
“I received a report from the Red Team. Apparently, after dinner with Rihanna yesterday, you had a minor scuffle with some Ability Users from the 1st Division?”
“It wasn’t quite a scuffle. The Red Team stepped in and sorted things out before the situation escalated.”
“Ha. That’s what I keep the Red Team around for. Anyway, I’m thinking of creating a position for you on the Red Team. How would you feel about joining?”
Han Eol pointed at himself with his finger at the proposal.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“Oh. Um. Uh, well, if I join the Red Team, what kind of work would I be doing? Does that mean I won’t be able to explore the Highland?”
Han Eol’s concern was valid. The Shinseong Group’s Red Team operated primarily throughout Seoul, far removed from Highland exploration.
Lee Myung-woo was certain that Han Eol was an Ability User capable of reversing the magical energy flow of Demon Beasts.
‘Which is exactly why this boy doesn’t belong on the Red Team. The Highland is where he fits.’
That had been Lee Myung-woo’s original assessment.
But yesterday’s incident had shifted his thinking slightly.
‘There are people within the Shinseong Group who’ve already become acquainted with Han Eol. His fellow interns. The Ability Users from the 1st Division, and so on.’
Lee Myung-woo despised the idea of those people whispering behind Han Eol’s back.
‘Han Eol is destined to stand at the apex of the Shinseong Group as its successor. And that successor must be flawless—not a single blemish.’
The fact that Han Eol was not the child of Lee Myung-woo and Ju Yeon-hee.
The fact that Han Eol had spent his childhood abandoned as an orphan in Old Earth.
The fact that most of the Shinseong Group owner’s family didn’t even know Han Eol existed.
These things were best kept behind a curtain.
‘For that to happen, Han Eol’s identity will need laundering.’
The most convenient way to accomplish identity laundering was through the Red Team.
After all, information about the direct line of the Shinseong Group owner was not public. Even the Shinseong Group’s employees barely knew whether Lee Myung-woo had children or not.
What if Han Eol had originally been assigned to the Red Team?
Then his previous masquerade as an intern before entering the 1st Division as a new hire could easily be justified.
He could simply claim he’d been on a classified mission at the time.
In other words, Lee Myung-woo intended to wrap Han Eol in the Red Team as a plausible covering—a wrapping that would conceal Han Eol’s imperfections, even though Han Eol himself didn’t consider them flaws.
Of course, Lee Myung-woo had no intention of keeping Han Eol on the Red Team for long.
‘But a brief stint of a few months doesn’t seem unreasonable.’
After organizing his thoughts, Lee Myung-woo carefully explained this to Han Eol.
In truth, such consideration was unlike Lee Myung-woo.
He was an unkind man to everyone except Chairman Lee Kang-hyun.
In any case, thanks to the man’s considerate explanation, Han Eol fully understood why Lee Myung-woo was recommending the Red Team to him.
He also learned about the Red Team’s primary missions.
‘The Red Team’s most important mission is to identify and root out spies from other cities infiltrating Seoul? Then, could those Ability Users I met back at the Gangnam Club—like Yang Bing—actually be spies from another city?’
Han Eol suddenly thought of Yang Bing.
‘Are there differences between Ability Users from other cities and those from Seoul? Yang Bing’s soul structure was definitely strikingly different from our Ability Users…….’
Curiosity sparked in Han Eol, and he fell silent in thought for a moment.
Then Lee Myung-woo threw out an additional proposal that was sure to entice him.
“Even if you’re assigned to the Red Team, I won’t place restrictions on you. In fact, you’ll have even more freedom to move about than you do now. If you wish, it’ll even be possible for you to take brief trips to the Highland in between.”
“Really? You mean it?”
Han Eol’s expression brightened immediately.
Lee Myung-woo thought to himself.
‘This boy truly does crave the Highland. Well, as a master of magical energy, of course he would.’
Lee Myung-woo’s misunderstanding of Han Eol only deepened.
Lee Myung-woo was a man of tremendous drive.
Thanks to that, Han Eol became a member of the Red Team in less than an hour.
To be more precise, Han Eol’s record was manipulated to show he had been a Red Team operative for the past two years.
The moment Han Eol joined the Red Team, he was issued three items.
―Item 1: An ID card with a red border indicating membership in the Red Team.
―Item 2: A Secret Phone with wiretapping and eavesdropping completely blocked, with constant access to the Red Team’s network.
―Item 3: Three Summoning Scrolls that could forcibly summon Red Team colleagues in emergencies.
In addition, the Secret Phone was equipped with a digital card linked to the Red Team’s operational funds account.
‘Money already overflows in the spending account that she set up for me, and now with the Red Team’s operational funds on top of that? Wow. How much is all this?’
Han Eol clicked his tongue.
Of course, money on this scale wouldn’t sway him.
The sum now sitting in his account was nothing—mere dust—compared to the inheritance he’d received from the Highland 5 Continents.
Even if Han Eol were to inherit the entire Shinseong Group outright, it would pale beside the wealth of the Noble Clans in the 5 Continents.
‘Still, it’s better than nothing.’
Han Eol had stowed his Red Team identification card, secret phone, and three Summoning Scrolls in the twelfth slot of the Black Belt that Rihanna had made for him.
‘The Red Team won’t assign me work right away. Maybe I’ll take a trip to the Highland in the meantime.’
Han Eol began planning how to spend the unexpected gap in his schedule.
Chapter 3
November 10th.
Han Eol left his residence with the intention of making a quick trip to the Highland 5 Continents.
But that plan fell through immediately.
One of the Red Team operatives in crisis had urgently torn a Summoning Scroll to call in reinforcements.
By some inscrutable summoning logic, Han Eol had been enlisted in the call.
The moment the Summoning Scroll was torn from afar, a circular magical summoning circle etched with intricate characters materialized on the underground parking garage floor of Lee Myung-woo’s Residence.
A brilliant beam of light erupted from the summoning circle.
In truth, unlike other Red Team operatives, Han Eol could resist the summoning.
Much as when he’d descended through the blue mist beneath the Han River to enter the Highland, a current seized him—but it was not so forceful that he couldn’t break free if he chose to resist.
Yet Han Eol didn’t struggle against it. Instead, he yielded to the pull.
‘I’m part of the Red Team now. So I should answer when my teammates call.’
This was his reasoning.
Flash!
Han Eol materialized in a vast sewer tunnel several meters in diameter.
‘Where am I?’
Han Eol narrowed his eyes into slits.
At the same time, he summoned the full-colored hand from his Mental Image, preparing for whatever might come.
But immediately after, light erupted twice in succession.
As Han Eol raised his right hand to shield his retinas from the brilliance, two Red Team operatives burst forth from within it.
One was a young woman with hair dyed a garish yellow, wielding Beauty Scissors and a Hair Clipper in both hands.
The other cut the figure of someone abruptly summoned mid-shift from a sushi restaurant—one hand holding sashimi, the other gripping a fillet of salmon.
In any case, these two operatives quickly scanned their surroundings, then spotted a young man gasping for breath, sprawled in the sewage.
“Kya-aah, Yohan!”
The Yellow-haired Woman cried out and splashed quickly into the filth to help the young man up.
“Yohan. Who in god’s name did this to you?”
“Ugh…”
The young man named Yohan was bleeding profusely from his chest and abdomen, and the way his eyes were half-lidded suggested his condition was grave.
Moreover, he held two empty Potion bottles and a torn Summoning Scroll in his hands.
‘What? He’s drunk two Potions and the wounds still won’t close?’
Han Eol’s already narrowed eyes drew tighter.
The Yellow-haired Woman cradled Yohan’s nape in her hand and poured another Potion down his throat.
Yohan swallowed half of it; the rest dribbled down his chin.
Meanwhile, the Sashimi Chef positioned himself in front of the young man Yohan, sashimi in hand, to shield him.
The Yellow-haired Woman shot Han Eol a look of annoyance.
“Hey. What are you gawking at? Get over here and stand watch too.”
“Y-yes, understood.”
Han Eol didn’t venture into the sewage itself, but took position at the water’s edge, watching their surroundings.
“What is this—who are you? How many generations in are you?”
The Yellow-haired Woman had just barked this at Han Eol.
Crack!
A bolt of lightning, jagged as a zigzag, came streaking through the darkness and struck the Red Team members.
And the first target it hit was Han Eol.
Boom!
Sparks scattered in front of Han Eol with a thunderous crack.
An Energy Barrier, automatically deployed upon the enemy attack, intercepted it instead. A palm-shaped navy fish and a yellow fish swimming across the barrier’s surface burst apart, neutralizing the lightning’s force.
The most numerous inhabitants of this Energy Barrier were blood-red fish—creatures the same eerie crimson as Han Eol’s Soul Sea.
The blood-red fish were a new species that had emerged after the Great Magic of the Twelve Zodiac Constellations of Noble Clans.
The second-most abundant species was transparent fish.
These were fish Han Eol had acquired by absorbing the Magical Energy of the Gilit Tribe.
But the blood-red and transparent fish didn’t even need to intervene.
A single navy fish and a single yellow fish—the rare species—were more than sufficient to neutralize the lightning’s force.
‘Not much to worry about, then.’
Han Eol let out some of the tension he’d been holding.
In the meantime, the bumps sprouting across his rainbow-hued palms—the eyes of Akin and the Gilit Tribe, though not true eyes but rather the ‘white’ aspect of their souls—sliced through the darkness of the sewers beyond with the precision of a blade, scanning methodically to locate the attackers.
The information the eyes captured flowed directly into Han Eol’s mind.
‘Three of them.’
The total number of figures crouching in the darkness was three.
Two of them were unremarkable.
One carried a Mental Image of a dagger in their soul, while the other possessed merely a single flickering strand of lightning.
‘That lightning Mental Image is almost certainly what attacked me just now.’
But unlike these two, the third one possessed an uncommon soul.
Mixed among their group was a special Ability User who had constructed a square Soul Core within their Soul Sea, using that core to shield their own spirit.
However, the opponent had only built the Soul Core itself, lacking the special sculptures like those of Asura (Han Eol) or Naga (Yang Bing) affixed to the outer wall of the core.
Moreover, there was no Soul Tower—a tower enshrining the soul—within the opponent’s core.
Chapter 4
‘What’s this? Inferior even to the Demon Beasts of Highland. But humans with constructed Soul Cores are uncommon enough that it’s worth taking a closer look.’
As Han Eol reached his assessment, an exclamation burst from his own side.
“What is that barrier?”
“Lightning Magic is being blocked that easily?”
The Yellow-haired Woman and the Sashimi Chef turned toward Han Eol with wide, startled eyes.
At the same moment, sounds of rapid speech drifted back from beyond the sewers.
‘Chinese.’
Han Eol’s ears pricked up.
Come to think of it, Yang Bing was Chinese too.
Han Eol resolved to subdue them.
The instant Han Eol kicked off the ground and burst forward was nearly simultaneous with a surge of Magical Energy far exceeding human capacity pouring forth from beyond the sewers.
‘As I thought—they’re channeling Magical Energy.’
In that moment, a desolate chill swept across Han Eol’s eyes.
And already he was rushing at his enemies with a violent speed that transcended human perception.
Han Eol’s velocity was such that the Magical Energy his opponents were releasing scattered before it could even properly condense.
Han Eol struck first at the thigh of the attacker who had constructed the Soul Core.
The Puppet Artist Who Harvests Souls
Author |
Zhuonon
Publisher |
(주) Samyang C&C
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Editorial Department
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G720:N+A063-20260703071
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No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of (주) Samyang C&C – Dream Books.

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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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