D.I.O

Chapter 229

“Love… love humans, son… love humans. We are small and weak and make mistakes… but you must not forget that you are also human. Don’t become jaded.”

“What? What bullshit is this crazy bitch talking about?”

As Genichi nodded exasperatedly, the man behind Hye-ran raised his sledgehammer again. Seyoung ground his teeth.

“If you do anything to harm my mother… I swear….”

Seyoung’s eyes flashed with chilling killing intent, his clenched fists filled with blood.

“I will kill you and anyone related to you.”

Intense killing intent emanated from Seyoung. Even though he couldn’t use mana, the other men in the car couldn’t help but shake in fear.

However, Kenichi had lived a fierce life of his own and felt relatively safe due to the distance between him and Seyoung. Thus, he casually nodded with a firm expression instead of being frightened by Seyoung’s spirit. Seyoung groaned.

“No. Don’t do it.”

“Break her hand.”

“Don’t!”

Crack!

The sledgehammer swung down and smashed Hye-ran’s hand. With the terrible sound of crushed bones, Hye-ran’s body trembled as if struck by lightning.

“You! You son of a bitch! I will kill you! You… your family… the organization that protects you! I will destroy your country!”

“Hahaha! Could you really do that, Arthur Pendragon, the white knight of justice? Anyway, we are ready to die at any time for the sake of the Great Japanese Empire. Now, as for this bitch….”

After saying this, Genichi’s expression hardened as he looked at Hye-ran. However, the seasoned yakuza soon calmed down and looked at the screen again.

‘Damn it! How did this happen? It was only one shot!’ Genichi thought.

While gritting his teeth, Genichi went back to eating the food on the table and tried to regain his composure. He was mulling over what he should say next. Meanwhile, Seyoung looked at Hye-ran blankly as if any thought in his mind had utterly vanished.

Sometimes, his excellent intuition made him realize things he didn’t want to know.

“Oops, she seems to have lost consciousness,” Genichi commented.

Though he was watching through a television screen, Seyoung could tell the truth.

“Okay, then, let’s resume our conversation. Tell me how to connect with the Noblesse.”

Genichi spoke with a calm attitude, like nothing was wrong. It was a natural mannerism that he learned from living a precarious criminal life.

However, Seyoung knew.

The string that bound him to this world…

The reason he loved the world…

Had now been disconnected.

“Mother, mother, how….”

Seyoung’s eyes grew vacant. The ground that firmly supported him had collapsed.

“Why do you look as if the whole world is collapsing? If you don’t open your mouth immediately and tell me what I want to know, this lady’s other hand will-”

“How am I supposed to love this disgusting human being?”

Boom!

Seyoung’s eyes lit up. Genichi shouted, startled by the unnatural phenomenon.

“Finish him!”

Bam! Bam!

A handgun pre-installed in the car opened fire. From the moment Seyoung entered the vehicle, this gun had been pointed directly at him.

Though considerable care was taken when installing the hidden weapon, Seyoung was always aware of its existence.

Seyoung had been paying constant attention to the handgun to evade any bullets fired. However, at this moment, he didn’t have to dodge. Instead, the bullet ricocheted off of him.

“W-what? But… he hasn’t manifested!”

At Genichi’s screams, Seyoung closed his eyes. His sensory sphere was widening at a terrifying pace, and numerous theories he had not realized or understood previously were violently entering his head in their complete comprehensive form.

Arthur knew he was changing. All the spiritual energy in the world was pouring towards him. The path of the great sword, something he struggled to even glimpse at until now, had instantly opened for him.

However-

‘Ah, this is wrong.’

It was impossible to transcend after going crazy with anger. The transcendent realm was only achievable by realizing the principles of the world with a free spirit devoid of emotion. Even if madness and rage reached a peak and forcefully opened the door, in the end, there would only be destruction, not an epiphany and transcendence.

However, Seyoung was an Irregular, one of the few mutant geniuses in the entire universe. Even if he couldn’t transcend, he ‘understood’ the ability of the upper level, and he was able to adapt to it the moment he opened the door. However, after entering this evil path, his spirit would become permanently twisted and suffer severe, irreversible damage.

‘Yet, even so….’

Seyoung opened his eyes as light poured out from them.

“Body of Light.”

Whoosh!

Seyoung’s entire body turned into light. He knew his destination. By simply standing still, he could sense every being within a 50-kilometer radius.

“Damn it! What’s happening?! I was planning on using this bitch for so many things… How did she croak after one blow? And why has the video feed been cut off?”

“I-I don’t know, sir. All of a sudden, it became bright, and then it went black… huh?”

The man holding the sledgehammer flinched at Genichi’s enraged appearance and retrieved a handgun from his belt. Seyoung abruptly appeared in a flash of light, frightening the man, but before he could pull the trigger, a beam of light burst out and passed through him.

Flash!

The beam pierced the man’s neck. Due to the high-temperature energy held within the light, the wound’s surface was singed and burned, so the henchman’s blood didn’t splatter.

“W-what, how are you…? How did you get here? The distance between where you were to here….”

Seyoung murmured after seeing Genichi’s confused, stuttering appearance.

“Light travels around the Earth seven and a half times in one second.”

Physical distance meant nothing to Arthur. Now that it was possible to turn his entire body into photons, he could fly and appear anywhere on Earth instantly.

“What the hell does that mean-”

Genichi questioned the incomprehensible situation, but before he could continue, Seyoung cut his throat. After that, Seyoung didn’t even look at Genichi’s corpse and went straight to Hye-ran, who was lying on the ground.

“Mother.”

Seyoung hugged Hye-ran’s body. Her heart had already stopped beating.

The moment the sledgehammer crushed her hand, she was in so much pain that she had a heart attack. She had been cured of leukemia, and, considering that she had regained her health to some extent, this form of death seemed infuriatingly cruel.

“Mother.”

Tears of blood flowed from Arthur’s eyes. With his mother’s corpse in his arms, Arthur turned around.

His face, which used to always be adorned with a gentle smile, was deadly cold.

“I will seek revenge on the world that hurt you….”

And that day, Japan faced the most formidable and worst enemy imaginable.

*** Reunion & Conspiracy ***

Eunhye woke up about two days after the mission’s completion.josei

“Do you feel alright?”

“Huh? Ah, I’m okay… but my head…?”

After waking in her bed, Eunhye was startled to find that her hair had grown long enough to reach her waist.

This was weird because she always kept her hair short to avoid discomfort when moving around.

“How long have I been sleeping?”

“In real life, it’s been about 42 hours. Do you remember anything?”

“I don’t remember anything in particular….”

Eunhye tried to recall, but she couldn’t remember a single thing. All she could recall was how her combined space-collapsing spells caused the dimension to collapse suddenly, sucking her into a void. Then, she regained consciousness to find the Grand Masters of DIO’s Holy Lands staring back at her. They asked her some questions and conducted some basic research before sending her back to her reality with the mission reward.

“Anyway, I’m glad. I thought something terrible had happened to you.”

Yongno spoke calmly, but the truth was that he didn’t get a wink of sleep as he waited by Eunhye’s bedside the entire time. Over the past few days, he had even halted his research; he hadn’t taken a break from his research ever since he started.

“What about the reward?”

Yongno quickly figured out what Eunhye’s question meant after she got up from bed. He answered,

“Ninety thousand gem points. And you?”

Yongno’s reward was enormous. Other users would have rolled their eyes and foamed at the mouth if they heard such an astronomical number.

He had created a gap in Regrants’ posture after smashing his massive flying shuttle, Vimana, against him. Other than Eunhye, none of the other users had achieved this feat.

Compared to Yongno’s reward, though, Eunhye’s reward was even more overwhelming.