NOVEL NEXT Chapter210 - First conversation
Isaac didn't miss it.
"No need to look," he said lightly. "We already took what your father left. But nobody can decode it—except Liorael himself."
Axel felt a weight drop in his chest.
"Next question," he said quietly.
Isaac leaned back, watching him closely. Isaac was being too patient. This is what true danger looks like. And if someone like Isaac—someone embedded so deep in Krythos' infrastructure—was loyal to the Holy Light Organization…
Then how many others were already in place?
"How did I get into the Whisper Syndicate?" Axel asked, voice low. "Was that you?"
Isaac looked mildly surprised, then smiled again. "No. That wasn't our doing. If Vince hadn't brought you in this year, I'm afraid we might've forgotten Master Liorael had a son at all."
Axel's eyes narrowed. "Then why alter our records?"
"To protect the bloodline," Isaac said without hesitation. "You're Liorael's legacy. We buried your identities so you could survive. Lucky for us, your father had two personas. It gave us just enough room to work with."
"You've asked two questions," Isaac said gently. "Now it's my turn."
He set the empty cup down and looked directly into Axel's eyes.
"Tell me, Axel… what do you really think the Holy Light Organization is?"
Axel felt like someone had peeled back his skin and laid his thoughts bare on the table.
Axel realized how naive he'd been. Standing before someone like Isaac, someone whose power and status dwarfed his own, lying was pointless—possibly fatal.
"Infecting all of humanity? That's fucking insane," Axel said flatly. "If that's what you people are really about, what do you expect me to say?"
Isaac chuckled softly, not offended in the slightest. "You strike me as someone extremely cautious. I imagine you've already worked out that coming here personally was a risk."
His voice was calm, but his eyes were sharp as razors.
"So why answer me so directly?" he asked.
"Because bullshitting you would be a waste of both our time," Axel replied, keeping his voice steady. "If you were going to kill me for thinking differently, I'd already be dead."
Isaac nodded approvingly, taking a long sip of water. "Smart. And if I'm not mistaken… if I'd killed you, she would've reported me immediately, wouldn't she?"
Axel didn't deny it. Just gave a quiet nod.
"You're really nothing like your father," Isaac said, setting the glass down. "That's good."
Then his tone shifted, darkening.
"Yes, there's a faction within the Holy Light Organization full of lunatics who believe humanity needs to be infected—to be reborn through suffering, or some other fucked-up idea."
"But Lord Liorael… your father… and I—along with others—we've always had a different goal."
Isaac leaned forward. His eyes burned with conviction. "We want to cure the infected."
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Axel's breath caught. And if that's what his father had been fighting for all along…
Isaac reached into his coat and slid a thick folder across the table. "This is a copy of your father's research manuscript. You probably won't understand the technical details, but the key terms should make things clear."
Axel flipped through the pages.
It was unmistakably Ronan's handwriting—his father's. Equations, annotations, chemical diagrams… and within the technical haze, a few words jumped out:
"Restorative agent."
"Infection reversal."
"Target: Stage 1 exposure."
His hands trembled slightly as he read.
All this time, his father hadn't been working on some doomsday weapon. He was trying to save people.
"I want to believe this," Axel said quietly. "But if that's true, then why didn't he partner with Deep Sea Pharmaceuticals? They have the resources. The labs. The infrastructure."
As soon as he said it, Axel shifted his posture, his Force quietly gathering.
Isaac noticed, but didn't react. He calmly closed the file and smiled faintly.
"You give them too much credit," he said. "Before the infected crisis, Deep Sea was nothing but a back-alley operation kept afloat by political ties. Most of their so-called miracle drugs came from the military's tech division, not in-house research."
Axel didn't respond. He wanted to hear the rest.
"Your father did try to work with them. But the samples he sent were either intercepted or redirected to people who had no interest in curing the infected."
Isaac's voice dropped, growing colder. "And shortly after that… your father vanished."
"You mean he was—?"
"Hunted," Isaac confirmed grimly. "The moment he made a breakthrough, he became a threat to the wrong people. People who profit from fear, from control. And those people don't wear Holy Light robes."
The information spiraled through Axel's brain like a cyclone. It explained so much—but it raised just as many questions.
Isaac leaned back and gave a small, tired sigh. "I won't deny the Organization has blood on its hands. There are people who joined it for all the wrong reasons. People who've done terrible things in our name. I'd put a bullet in most of them myself."
He paused, then looked Axel in the eye again.
"But there are also people like your father. People who believed in a cure."
Axel sat in silence for a while, piecing together the revelations, one by one. Then, at last, he asked: "You didn't come here just to talk. What do you want from me?"
"I think you already know." He pulled out his phone and showed Axel a photo. Just a fruit.
Oval, red, glistening with a faint shimmer like morning dew.
"The Heavenly Spirit Fruit," Isaac said. "Your father's research says it's the key to the cure. A reagent that stabilizes the mutation process at its earliest stage. If administered within hours of exposure, it can reverse infection entirely."
Axel's chest tightened.
"This thing only grows in the Abyss," Isaac said, his tone lowering.
"The Abyss?" Axel repeated, unfamiliar with the name.
"That's not surprising. Even most people in the Whisper Syndicate have never been there," Isaac explained slowly, as though recounting a ghost story. "It was created during the first mutant beast tide—when the world was on fire and entire fell."
He paused, letting the weight of history settle in the room.
"Bridgeport, in the west, saw the worst of it. That's where one of Krythos' five-star generals, Micah, made his final stand. He fought three Level 9 mutant beasts alone. Turned the goddamn desert into a crater. And though he killed them all… he died just outside the city's edge."
Axel listened, brow furrowed.
"At the time, the world was too busy burning to bury heroes. No one claimed the bodies. A few months later, something changed. A closed world formed naturally at the site—a massive sinkhole, surrounded by twisted force fields and saturated with lingering power. The land absorbed their remains, their energy, their souls."
"They called it the Abyss."
Isaac leaned forward, his voice dropping lower.
"Today, the raw force veins in the Abyss are so rich, anyone who trains there absorbs five times more energy than they would anywhere else."
"Then why me?" Axel asked. "Why not someone stronger?"
"Because the residual souls of those four titans are still fighting in there—reliving their last battle over and over. In addition to native life, anyone with a high-level life signal? The Abyss chews them up and spits them out."
He exhaled slowly.
"There's a weakening period once every three years. It lasts just over two weeks. During that window, only awakeners below Level 5 can enter."
Isaac shook his head.
"We've sent Level 2 awakeners in before. Most didn't come back. The mutant beasts inside have physical strength on par with Level 5 threats. Sending anyone weaker is basically suicide."
"When your father—Liorael—returned from the Abyss, he had two prototype healing potions. One he entrusted to someone he believed in." Isaac's voice turned bitter. "And you already know how *that* ended."
Axel's heart beat faster.
"The other?" Isaac said softly. "Vanished with him."
"If we still had that sample, you'd already know I was telling the truth."
Axel stood still, but his thoughts were racing.