LRAB Chapter 206: Greed
Chapter 206: Greed
Blake stood outside the hospital, his arms crossed and his eyes distant.
It was nearing evening.
Amanda had gone to the washroom to freshen up. He could tell the girl was doing her best not to panic, but she was barely holding herself together.
"Sir, please get some rest." A voice came from his left.
Blake let out a quiet sigh. "I’ve been sitting for most of the day, Lara."
He turned toward his secretary before asking, "How is she?"
Lara nodded. "Doing better. The toxins have been removed, and she should be back on her feet within a day or two."
Blake exhaled slowly. "She’s a true monster to survive after facing someone from the League. Not to mention, the officers reported that Spark came into play during their clash."
"Genesis Fields? A clash between two Special Grades should have caused far more destruction." Lara’s voice carried both confusion and concern.
"You’d be right, but not when both warriors have complete control over their Fields." A wry smile tugged at Blake’s lips. "And I must admit, in that regard, I think Veronica has surpassed me."
Lara looked ahead. "We can’t say that for certain, sir."
Blake simply shook his head at his secretary’s reluctance to accept a simple fact.
Then his phone began to vibrate.
Pulling it from his pocket, he saw Corella’s name on the screen.
With another sigh, he turned to Lara. "If Amanda comes back, make sure she eats something first, alright?"
Lara nodded. "Understood, sir."
Blake removed his glasses and stepped aside.
Explaining everything to the woman was going to take a while.
....
Inside the room, the doctors were still assessing Kyle’s condition.
Standing beside one of them, a nurse checked the monitor and said, "Doctor, his body appears to be functioning normally, doesn’t it?"
"Indeed. His damaged muscles and tissues are repairing themselves at an astonishing rate as well."
The doctor would have understood such a recovery if the magical lantern were still being used.
But it wasn’t.
These changes were occurring entirely on their own.
The doctor hummed thoughtfully before nodding. "Well, the best we can do for now is let him rest and recover."
With that, the two of them left the room, quietly closing the door behind them. Their footsteps gradually faded down the corridor until silence reclaimed the space.
Kyle was left alone.
Or at least, his body was.
His consciousness was somewhere else entirely.
Far beyond the hospital room.
Far beyond the city.
Far beyond the world itself.
At that moment, he wasn’t even aware of his own physical form. The steady rise and fall of his chest, the machines monitoring his condition, the people worrying over his recovery, all of it had become distant and irrelevant.
His mind had drifted into a place so vast and incomprehensible that even the concept of distance seemed meaningless.
He floated through an endless expanse that defied description. There was no sky above him, no ground beneath him, no stars scattered across a familiar night.
Instead, there existed only a boundless sea of existence stretching in every direction. Layers upon layers of reality unfolded before his eyes, overlapping and intertwining like countless rivers flowing through one another.
Entire galaxies drifted past him. Cosmic clouds expanded and collapsed. New stars ignited within the darkness while ancient ones met their end in bursts of unimaginable brilliance.
The strange part was that Kyle wasn’t merely observing them.
He was observing everything.
The moment a star was born from a collapsing nebula.
The moment its first planets began to form.
The rise of primitive life upon those worlds.
The growth of civilizations.
Their triumphs.
Their failures.
Their extinction.
Millions of years unfolded before him in the span of a heartbeat. Entire histories passed through his vision like fleeting memories.
He watched species emerge from oceans, conquer continents, build kingdoms, discover magic, wage wars, reach heights of prosperity, and eventually vanish beneath the weight of time.
Some civilizations ascended toward greatness. Others drowned in their own greed and arrogance. Yet all of them followed their paths without ever realizing they were being watched.
Kyle saw it all.
And understood almost none of it.
His eyes remained open, absorbing an impossible amount of information every second, yet his mind struggled to process even a fraction of what passed before him.
It felt as though he were standing beneath a waterfall, attempting to memorize every droplet as it crashed down upon him. The sheer scale of existence was overwhelming. Every moment brought countless new sights, countless new revelations, countless new mysteries.
Under normal circumstances, his rational mind would have been screaming questions.
Why could he see all of this?
What exactly was this place?
Why did the birth of stars feel as ordinary to him as watching rain fall from the sky?
Why did entire civilizations appear before him only to disappear moments later?
And perhaps most disturbing of all, why did he possess the strange certainty that he was never meant to interfere?
The sensation lingered at the edge of his consciousness like an unwelcome truth.
He felt less like a traveler and more like an observer.
An administrator.
A silent watcher seated before an infinite archive.
No matter what horrors he witnessed, no matter what tragedies unfolded before his eyes, some instinct told him that his role was not to act. His role was not to save worlds or destroy them. His role was not to judge.
Only to watch.
The realization felt deeply frustrating.
Again and again, he witnessed moments that made him want to intervene. He saw civilizations standing at the brink of self-destruction. He saw wars that could have been prevented with a single warning. He saw monsters rising from forgotten depths. He saw heroes dying meaningless deaths.
Yet no matter how strongly he wished to act, he couldn’t.
It was as though an invisible law governed this place.
A law older than time itself... Or something he imposed on himself
Then, amidst the endless flood of information, a single thought surfaced within his hazy consciousness.
’Hungry...’
The feeling emerged suddenly and with such overwhelming force that everything else faded into the background.
The stars.
The civilizations.
The cosmic wonders.
None of them mattered.
Only the hunger.
It was impossible to describe.
This wasn’t the hunger of an empty stomach. This was something deeper and primal. A hollow emptiness that seemed to stretch endlessly within him. It felt as though an entire universe had been carved out of his soul and left vacant.
Kyle stared at the countless stars surrounding him. Their lights shimmered beautifully within the cosmic sea, each one carrying possibilities beyond imagination. Some would become homes to great civilizations. Others would remain untouched wildernesses. Every star represented a future waiting to unfold.
For some reason, he knew he couldn’t consume those.
He didn’t know why.
He simply knew.
Yet as his gaze drifted farther across the endless expanse, he noticed that not every star shone with the same light.
Some had become darker.
Not physically darker but conceptually.
Their very existence felt wrong.
They pulsed with an unsettling presence that stained the surrounding reality. Looking at them was like staring into a festering wound hidden beneath flawless skin. Through some instinctive understanding, Kyle could sense the worlds connected to those stars.
Worlds drowned in cruelty.
Worlds that celebrated suffering.
The hunger immediately responded to their presence.
A dangerous thought surfaced within his mind.
Should he just consume them?
The temptation was horrifyingly strong.
After all, those worlds would only spread destruction.
They would bring misery to countless others.
Wouldn’t devouring them prevent future suffering?
Wouldn’t it be the logical choice?
Yet another part of him recoiled.
No.
That line of thinking felt wrong.
The moment he began justifying the hunger, he would already be losing to it.
Devouring was wrong.
Greed was wrong.
He shouldn’t allow himself to be controlled by instinct.
He needed to think rationally.
He needed a distraction.
Anything to take his mind off the gnawing emptiness.
’I need a distraction...’
The thought passed through his consciousness.
Then, without fully realizing what he was doing, he reached toward a nearby star.
Not one of the corrupted worlds.
A newborn star.
A fresh existence that had only recently ignited within the cosmic ocean.
It was small compared to the ancient giants surrounding it. Its light carried an innocent brilliance, untouched by history, untouched by fate. Countless futures rested within it. It could have become the center of a thriving civilization. It could have remained a lonely beacon shining in the void.
It could have become anything.
And then Kyle consumed it.
The star disappeared.
Swallowed whole.
A chill ran through his consciousness.
Fragments of possibilities flooded his mind. He caught fleeting glimpses of futures that would never exist. Faces that would never be born. Stories that would never be written. Entire civilizations vanished before they even had the chance to take their first breath.
’This... is nauseating.’
Kyle frowned.
The feeling wasn’t satisfying.
The hunger weakened slightly, but no pleasure accompanied it.
Instead, he felt sick.
Disgusted and ashamed.
The newborn star dissolved within him, becoming part of something larger and far more incomprehensible.
Kyle stared into the infinite ocean of stars surrounding him, his expression darkening as the hunger continued to lurk within the depths of his consciousness.
It hadn’t disappeared.
It was merely waiting.
But fortunately,
[Ding! You have leveled up!]
His consciousness began to fade.
However, Kyle knew he would never forget this memory...this sensation of being a monster.
A devourer.
°°°°°°°°
A/N:- I was so confused, uncomfortable writing this Chapter that I couldn’t write another.
Had to edited and change many things (╯︵╰,)