# Chapter 118
Knock knock-
Droplets of water from Levi’s wet hair fell to the floor one by one. Perhaps there had been no servant to help him dry off, as he seemed to have walked all the way here in his wet state, wearing only a robe.
Ion’s face brightened when he saw Levi.
“Levi!”
The joy of seeing him after several days was momentary.
Ion couldn’t help but pause when he saw Levi’s eyes.
In Levi’s pitch-black eyes, like Raziel’s, lay a terrible darkness as if he had endured alone for hundreds of years.
Ion, who had been just staring at Levi due to the atmosphere that made it difficult to approach, shot a glare at Raziel with sharply upturned eyes.
“What did you do to Levi?”
“I merely returned the second black fragment to him.”
Raziel stretched out his black hand toward Levi as if beckoning him to come.
Ion blocked Levi, who was obediently moving toward Raziel, with his own body. Because of this, Levi was barely visible to Raziel, obscured by Ion’s back.
“Levi, are you okay?”
Just as Ion, with a worried expression, was about to caress the chilled face before him, Levi finally looked at him.
“Move.”
With an emotionless voice, Levi’s hand emerged from the long sleeve of the robe where it had been hidden. The moment Ion recognized what was in that hand, he felt a sharp pain in his side.
“Ugh…!”
Levi’s dagger, which had pierced through a small seam in the seemingly impenetrable armor, was pulled out in one swift motion. His side throbbed even more, and hot blood flowed out steadily.
The blood that trickled down along his side and out of the white armor created a long trail all the way to his leg. The red blood that ran down his foot seemed to blend naturally with the red carpet on the floor, as if they had originally been one.
With a thud, Ion dropped to one knee. Whether from the pain or from the shock that Levi had attacked him, Ion silently swallowed his groans while firmly pressing his wounded side with his hand.
Levi looked at the sharp dagger covered in Ion’s blood before advancing toward Raziel with indifferent eyes. Like the red blood that had dripped from Ion’s wound, now droplets of blood from Levi’s dagger were being absorbed into the red carpet.
Passing by Ion, Levi approached Raziel with unwavering steps.
Raziel gazed at the approaching Levi with satisfied eyes.
As expected, it seemed that Levi had realized the “hatred for humans” due to the memories in the second fragment.
He had thought so.
The memories contained in the second fragment were the most terrible years of suffering for Levi, like the center of a hell filled with nothing but devastation.
Levi soon stopped within reach of Raziel’s hand.
Raziel’s hand stroked Levi’s wet hair. Yet his gaze remained fixed on Ion’s back, who was still kneeling on the red carpet, bleeding.
“I’m different from them. I neither break promises nor betray.”
Raziel slid his black hand from stroking Levi’s hair down to hook his fingers on the collar near his neck. The white collarbone that was fully exposed as the collar was pulled down stirred “a certain desire” in Raziel.
Raziel’s index finger pressed the center of the collarbone where the core would be.
“Now that you’ve recovered the memories of hundreds of years, you must know it well.”
Raziel’s eyes, whose emotions had been unreadable, now filled with rage mixed with madness.
“All humans must die.”
Raziel, who uniquely possessed all of Levi’s memories, recalled a time from the distant past, before the black bead and the golden bead had even been created.
Before the continent was divided into many countries.
The gray dragon, who was the last of the dragon race, helped many humans in the form of a great sage and even taught them magic and alchemy. It was purely out of goodwill toward humans, but what came in return was their jealousy, envy, and betrayal. Later, while fearing the power of the gray dragon, they even dared to try to kill him in order to monopolize the magic they had acquired.
Considerably shocked by this, the gray dragon shut himself away in a deep forest to avoid humans.
Before long, he discovered that humans had begun to wage wars and form factions to establish nations based on the magic he had imparted with good intentions. Believing himself to be the root cause of everything, the gray dragon gave up his life with tears of regret. Along with him, the magic that had spread throughout the continent began to disappear one by one.
Even then, he was betrayed by humans, and Levi, the remnant of the gray dragon, experienced the same thing.
The second fragment that Levi had recovered.
What it contained was countless sufferings spanning hundreds of years, continuing over a long period of time.
It was still a time when many humans blindly believed in magic.
Levi, who possessed the power of death that could only be explained as magic, was their last lifeline.
Humans thought they might be able to recover the lost magic by using Levi. They subjected him to all kinds of inhumane experiments to analyze his existence and uncover the principles of the magic he used. They dragged Levi around like an animal depending on the situation, thoroughly exploiting him and then repeatedly discarding him like a rag.
This went on for hundreds of years.
If he escaped from one place after being exhausted and worn out, he would suffer the same fate elsewhere, and it was the same if he fled to yet another place.
Tormented by endless pain for hundreds of years, Levi spent mentally devastating days to the point where he could barely speak properly.
Even amid this, Levi tried not to kill humans. Those who mentally pressured and degraded him always brought prisoners and told him to kill them in front of many people. Only then would magic manifest, they said, so for the sake of research, he was forced to kill tens or hundreds of humans every day.
When he inevitably took human lives due to physical and mental pressure, he was met with a barrage of gazes filled with both awe and contempt. Levi feared those gazes more than anything else in the world.
That wasn’t all.
To make Levi an obedient test subject, they placed “trainers” beside him. For Levi, the kind trainers were the only support in his painful life, so he trusted them again and again, but what came back was cold betrayal and mockery.
Around the time when too many years had passed to count.
The small country where Levi had been captured was thoroughly destroyed and swallowed by the Caron nation, which had been reborn as an empire. For Levi, whose very existence was like hell, this was when he deliberately charged at the Emperor of the Caron Empire and met his death at the emperor’s hands.
He wouldn’t have known that the Emperor of the Caron Empire would carefully preserve the fragment of himself that died in such a manner.
Those experiences of Levi were vividly remembered not only by Raziel but also by Theodore.
Nevertheless, the reason Theodore couldn’t hate humans was probably due to the influence of Emperor Theodore, who was called a wise ruler. Since everything from his appearance to his personality and character was shaped after Emperor Theodore, he had no choice but to follow him in the same way, loving the imperial citizens.
Furthermore, the existence of the deposed Princess Claudia, who had awakened the emotion of “love” in him, also contributed to making Theodore turn away from past memories.
‘But I’m different.’
Raziel felt gratitude for the first time toward the human who had awakened him. Because he hated humans just like Raziel did, he was able to not turn away from Levi’s memories.
The “real Raziel” was a human who had never been given any opportunities due to being a minor royal, always subject to ridicule. His parents repeatedly said “become a unique emperor” while inflicting various abuses on their son, who couldn’t even rank high enough to challenge for the throne.
The real Raziel, who desired to become emperor as his parents had brainwashed him to, wanted to eliminate all those who had tormented him once he sat on the imperial throne.
The root cause.
For the real Raziel, it could have been limited to the royal family or certain humans who despised him, but Raziel, who had been a black fragment, added the anger brought by past memories and identified many more causes.
Raziel considered all humans on the continent to be the root cause.
After all, it was all the countries existing on this continent that had used and betrayed Levi for hundreds of years.
Compassion and affection for Levi appeared on Raziel’s face as he looked at him.
“I will take revenge for you. That’s what this war is for.”
He deliberately stirred up all countries to create a situation where the entire continent had no choice but to go to war. As a result, many more humans would die, and even if they survived, the aftermath of the war could not be ignored.
Raziel wanted to create an even longer war by standing at the forefront of this battlefield.
“Now you and I must exchange what each of us wants.”
Raziel’s fingertip firmly pressed Levi’s collarbone. His black eyes showed a stronger obsession than ever before.
“Give me your core.”
Raziel’s voice echoed excitedly throughout the hall.
“I will become the ‘Death’ that holds eternal life, and you, as you wished, shall become ‘human.'”
