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Where Fingertips Touch 112

# Chapter 112

Raziel glanced down at the teacup he had emptied without savoring it and stood up from his seat.

“As you’ve probably already realized, you need all the fragments that broke off to become a ‘human’.”

His voice was emotionless, as if he had nothing to do with it, despite being one of those fragments himself.

Raziel, who had moved around the table and was supporting Levi’s black hand as if escorting him, looked at the magnificent imperial palace.

“Now it’s time to meet Theodore.”

Levi, who stood up silently, did not take his eyes off Raziel rather than the imperial palace.

Raziel, recalling the second fragment, Theodore, had not yet noticed the numerous emotions hidden behind Levi’s eyes.

The place Levi arrived at, following Raziel, was in front of a long, long staircase leading to the underground of the imperial palace. After dismissing the knights and servants who were guarding them, Raziel descended the stairs alone with Levi.

At the end of the staircase, an underground passage with numerous maze-like paths spread out. There were scattered torches, but they weren’t enough to see what was at the far end.

Raziel seemed very familiar with the underground passage, taking steps without any sign of being lost.

Levi, who had been silently following behind Raziel, asked about the second fragment.

“What kind of person was Theodore?”

Theodore Bier Caron.

The former Emperor of the Caron Empire, and Levi’s second fragment.

Raziel possessed all of Levi’s own memories, but he couldn’t know the moment-by-moment life of the detached fragment that had become a separate personality. That was natural, since they hadn’t shared a body.

Nevertheless, the reason Levi asked him about Theodore, the second fragment, was because it was Raziel who had pushed out the former Emperor of Caron Empire through a coup and taken his place.

A faint sigh escaped from Raziel as he continued walking.

“A person, huh…”

Raziel, who had been mulling over the word “person” that Levi had uttered several times, seemed strangely pleased.

“I didn’t expect you to call ‘us’ that way.”

Ignorant humans might not know, but it was both amusing and pleasing that Levi, the original body, referred to Theodore, who was nothing more than a fragment that had broken off from him, as a “person.” It made him feel as if he too had become a “person.”

‘But what I want isn’t something like that.’

However, coldness quickly flowed from Raziel.

“That fellow was merely a shadow.”

“A shadow?”

All Levi knew about Theodore was that he was the former Emperor of the Caron Empire, that he was a fragment of himself whom Claudia had loved, and that he was Ion’s biological father.

Because of this, the story about Theodore flowing from Raziel’s lips was entirely new and interesting to Levi.

Theodore, Levi’s second fragment, woke up in a cold stone chamber beneath the Caron Empire’s imperial palace.

In the middle of the stone chamber was something like a hard, cold rectangular bath, just big enough for one adult man to fit in. It was filled with black water brought from the Black Forest, and Theodore was born as another entity after regenerating separately from Levi inside the water.

His appearance was quite different from Levi’s.

It couldn’t be otherwise.

This was because the very person who had prepared the stone chamber in the underground of the imperial palace and filled it with black water to regenerate Theodore had added his own blood.

The black core creates a body based on the blood of the living being it comes in contact with. The reason Levi had taken the body of the human he had swallowed and had to obtain the same body every time he regenerated was the same.

When Theodore opened his eyes, he faced a black-haired man who looked exactly like himself.

His name was Theodore Bier Caron.

A frail emperor who, despite his young age, had to live a terminal life due to an incurable disease.

Emperor Theodore was only 18 years old at the time. It was unfortunate that he had contracted an incurable disease at such a young age, but his haggard appearance, pitiful enough to evoke sympathy, seemed to represent the suffering he had endured.

Emperor Theodore was a wise ruler who worried more about the future than the moment he was living in. Since he had no empress and therefore couldn’t leave an heir, it was expected that there would be indiscriminate struggles for the throne in the Caron Empire after his death.

For this reason, Emperor Theodore couldn’t die as he was, so he decided to use a fragment of the black bead that had been secretly kept in the underground of the imperial palace.

All he needed was the “Dragon’s Tear” in the Black Forest.

He filled a cold bath prepared underground with black water from the pond created by the dying ash dragon of myth, placed the fragment in it, and didn’t forget to add his own blood.

It took barely a week for the fragment to awaken.

Emperor Theodore smiled brightly as he faced the black eyes that confronted him with a face identical to his own.

“You will live in my place.”

From that day on, Theodore sat on the throne in place of the emperor who had awakened him.

The personality of a humanized fragment follows that of the person who awakens it.

Perhaps because of this, Theodore built a reputation as a wise ruler day by day with a character that could not be distinguished from the kind-hearted Emperor Theodore. Emperor Theodore, whose condition had worsened to the point where he could no longer leave his bedroom, was pleased with this and treated Theodore warmly like his own twin brother.

Then one day.

A secret envoy from the Delos Empire’s emperor, who was the most ambitious among all emperors and openly spoke of continental unification, came to visit. Somehow, he knew that Emperor Theodore was terminally ill.

“Our empire’s First Princess is a ‘Holy Woman’ who can cure any disease with a single gesture. No matter how severe the incurable disease, it will heal without a trace with just one warm touch from the Princess.”

It was Theodore, acting as the emperor’s shadow, who met the envoy, but he beamed as if he were the emperor himself. He wanted to ask them to do it without thinking twice, believing they could save Emperor Theodore, who had allowed him, a mere fragment of “death,” to live like a person and treated him like a brother.

But the envoy said something outrageous.

The truly outrageous demand that they hand over one-third of the Caron Empire’s territory.

The envoy, or rather, the emperor of the Delos Empire, knew the situation of the Caron Empire’s imperial family all too well. Even Emperor Theodore’s personality and character.

For Theodore, Emperor Theodore was indeed his top priority, so he wanted to accept the envoy’s proposal. But Emperor Theodore, who heard the envoy’s words from his sickbed, predictably raged and repeated that it was absolutely out of the question.

A few months after the displeased envoy returned to the Delos Empire.

The Delos Empire bared its angry teeth and declared war on the Caron Empire. They also didn’t forget to provoke the Caron Emperor with a message saying, “You have made an easy matter difficult.”

Thus, the two empires began a war, and in this war, Princess Claudia devised her own scheme and deliberately set foot in the Caron Empire’s imperial palace.

The fact that Princess Claudia could meet the emperor according to her plan was also due to Theodore’s stubbornness.

It was his first and last stubbornness to somehow save Emperor Theodore, who would die soon.

What Princess Claudia desired wasn’t territory, nor powerful authority or honor in the Caron Empire.

What she wanted was Theodore, himself.

A small black fragment deeply embedded in his collarbone.

It was a fragment more important than his heart, but the moment Theodore learned that this was what Claudia wanted, he smiled brightly.

He knelt before her, saying he would give it to her willingly if she would please save Emperor Theodore. He begged and pleaded, even holding a knife to his own collarbone.

Claudia fell into uncontrollable confusion from the moment she learned that the person she thought was the Caron Empire’s emperor was actually Levi’s black fragment, and the real emperor was dying in his sickbed.

Despite being told that her demands would be met, she couldn’t readily save Emperor Theodore.

As Claudia, who knew what curse the “Hand of Life” would bring, could have used her ability ignoring a person’s reincarnation, but it wasn’t as easy as she had thought. It was natural that she couldn’t reach out her hand when she imagined Emperor Theodore’s future, having to face the most horrible death due to the manifested curse.

Meanwhile.

Emperor Theodore met his death one early morning, as if falling asleep.

Raziel, who had told him up to that point, stopped walking and turned to look at Levi.

“You probably know what happened after that.”

“Yes.”

Claudia, who was in the Caron Empire, couldn’t forget Theodore’s appearance, gradually fell for him, and developed great affection. Later, she secretly returned to the Delos Empire while carrying Ion in her womb after hearing the news of Levi’s death.

“It must have been after Princess Claudia left the Caron Empire.”

Raziel’s gaze was directed somewhere far away. Yet, his finger was pointing at himself.

“That I killed the owner of this body.”

Unlike Theodore, Raziel was someone who had killed the human who had awakened him with his own hands and stolen his place.

Where Fingertips Touch

Where Fingertips Touch

Status: Completed Type: Released: 1 Free Chapter Everyday
Levi, the 'Hand of Death,' drains the life from everything he touches. While struggling to survive each day, he meets a young child with the opposite ability. "I like Levi. I like him so much. So if Levi dies, I'll definitely cry." During his time with the emotionally expressive Ion, Levi gradually begins to change. But in the end, he makes Ion cry... 15 years later. Levi awakens again, with no memory of Ion. Grand Duke Ion Verdit, the Emperor of Delos Empire's only nephew and his most reliable supporter. One day, an assassin from an enemy nation breaks into his bedroom. "Levi? Is it really Levi?" The one who has come to take his life is none other than Levi—the person he has missed so dearly.

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