Solo Leveling- Ragnarok-Chapter 282

The city was in a state of emergency. Screams echoed from every direction.

“Wh-what the hell?!”

“Have the debts driven them out of their minds?”

“What’s the matter with them?”

One day was all it had taken. The city of Paradise, which had been at peace just yesterday, had been turned upside down overnight.

First there was the chaos in the market that morning, and now the debtors, driven to madness, were banding together in a frantic charge toward the bank. Their weapons drawn and mana unleashed, they swarmed forward with murderous intent.

Of course, the credit chokers on their necks—the very ones that had enslaved them—were still there. Even now, the LED numbers ticked upward as interest accumulated by the second.

“Don’t they value their lives?”

“Who knows when those bombs will go off?”

The other citizens of the city were shocked, but they knew just as well as the debtors did that the credit chokers didn’t detonate randomly. They would only explode when debts remained unpaid for too long. As long as the interest was paid on time, even the bank, with all its power, couldn’t detonate the chokers at will.

These debtors knew this as well, which was likely why they were brave enough to attack at all. There was a reason that they hadn’t been able to do this before—they had been afraid.

“Don’t they fear the bankers and the fruits they have?”

In this land with its lack of healers, the bank with its surplus of Álfheimr fruit was literally invincible. With their vaults overflowing with the healing fruit, the bank’s employees could recover instantly when fatigued and heal when wounded. When defending the bank in situations like this, the bankers turned into essentially immortal beings.

Of course, there was a chance that continuing to fight against an immortal opponent would lead to a victory by sheer brute force or numbers—but at what cost? If anyone was hurt during the battle, it would be a problem later.

There was also a far bigger issue.

“What if the bank disappears? How will they repay their debts then?” someone remarked.

Indeed, just because the bank disappeared didn’t mean the debts did. In fact, with nowhere left to make payments, the debtors’ interest would keep growing. One by one, each person with a choker would die with a boom as their heads burst open.

“This is getting interesting...”

The citizens standing around began to smile, watching from afar as the rioters and bank employees began to fight. This was a city of villains. If they had been well-meaning citizens who cared about the lives of people in debt, they wouldn’t have been chased all the way to North Korea by the association in the first place.

“Hey! Try harder!”

“They’re pushing you back over there!”

“Fight like you mean it!”

Some of the onlookers even began to encourage the rampage—not that they really wanted the rioters to win.

Bang!

A choker went off.

“Ha! There goes one of them!”

“Idiot! You should have protected the choker, not your leg.”

Laughter rippled through the crowd as debtors began to die.

From the beginning, the debtors had a fatal weakness—the chokers. If forcibly removed, they exploded. If they took too much damage, they exploded. The bank employees knew this and aimed directly for the chokers at every opportunity. It was a sound strategy, since even badly outnumbered, they had a way to turn the tide.

However, the citizens soon noticed something odd about the scene.

“Huh?”

“The employees... Their wounds...”

The bank employees were sustaining more and more injuries as time passed, but none of them were pulling back to eat fruit.

“Wait a second...”

“Don’t tell me the rumors were true?”

The citizens’ expressions changed.

The debtors, long suffocated under their loans, had reacted instantly to the rumor, but the other citizens had not been as quick to catch on. There was nothing to verify those whispers, after all. There was no reason for citizens to suddenly become bank robbers just because they heard the bank’s warehouse was running low on fruit.

However, if the rumors were true...

Someone licked their lips. “Now this changes things.”

“Heh. No kidding.”

The spectators, who had been watching idly with their arms crossed, began to salivate.

“If the rumors are true... then maybe I’ll dip my toes in the water, so to speak.”

“Looks like they’re all starting to wear each other down...”

No one in this city hated money. Even if they weren’t debtors, they still wanted as much wealth as they could get their hands on. If the bank went out of business, it would actually be a good thing for ordinary citizens.

“If this city collapses, the executors will just build another one anyway.”

“We can just take the money and relocate. Sounds like a win to me.”

And so the ordinary citizens became rioters as well, jumping into the fray.

For the bank employees, who were barely holding the line against the debtors, this was disastrous news.

“H-have they all lost their minds?!”

“What the hell is the matter with them today?”

The employees gritted their teeth and mustered all their strength to push them back.

Thankfully, they had a last resort to use against the rebellion: the fruits they had already consumed, a power source waiting to be tapped. The moment they had witnessed the bank president murder the vice president, something had awakened inside them. No lessons were needed—they simply knew what to do.

Their hands shot forward, plunging into the chests of the fallen debtors and taking their hearts in a firm grip. The power within the fruit-eating debtors—condensed inside their hearts—was absorbed through the employees’ fingers like roots pulling nutrients from the soil.

One of the employees belched. “Damn, that was good. Didn’t think it’d actually work.”

“Tsk. This bastard only had five fruits in him.”

They could even tell how much fruit each corpse had consumed. The wounds on the employees’ bodies began to heal in proportion to the number of fruits eaten by each debtor. The excess energy surged through them, making them stronger than before.

They looked at their fingers, which had turned hard and grainy like the roots of real trees, and grinned. However it looked, the effects were incredible.

“Wh-what the hell is that?”

The rioters were frozen in shock by the employees’ change in appearance, but it was only for a moment until the situation sank in.

There was no one in this city who hadn’t devoured at least one fruit in their lifetime. They realized that since they had eaten fruit, they could do the same.

“Hey, I think I can do that too!”

“Me too...”

A glint flashed in the debtors’ eyes. All at once, they scattered, and each individual rushed toward a nearby corpse. They ripped open chests and grabbed the hearts within.

“Holy sh*t, it actually works!”

“This is incredible! It’s even more effective than eating fruit!”

The latecomers—those who had entered the battle and remained unscathed—felt an overwhelming high as they drained the stolen energy. Their bodies trembled, and the raw, concentrated power of the fruit flowed directly into their veins. In that moment, they realized a truth they were never meant to know.

“Hahaha! What the hell?!” one villain cried. “I was an idiot for ever paying for fruit—”

Splat!

“Urk!”

The man, who had been laughing victoriously, suddenly froze. His eyes bulged.

“You’re right...”

At some point, a woman had crept up behind him. Now her hand was buried deep in his back, fingers clutching his heart.

As she drank his stolen power, she leaned in and whispered like a devil, “We could’ve been doing this all along. Instead, we wasted our time working for money.”

“Y-you...”

The man never finished his sentence. His body withered to dust, desiccated and drained, his heart still trapped in her grip.

The bank employees gasped as they watched the scene play out. This was complete and utter chaos.

“When the president gets back, we are as good as dead...”

“An executor might show up today at this rate.”

“Maybe we should make a run for it now.”

The ones who managed to speak were still hesitant.

The more perceptive employees had already slipped back inside the bank and shoved as much money as they could into their bags before making their escape. Even if the city collapsed, the executors would build a new one. This currency would be just as valid there as it was here.

In the distance, someone was watching it all unfold in silence—Haseul the Harvester.

She didn’t care what happened to the city. She was concerned about a different matter of grave importance—strawberry cake. She had bought three slices this morning at the market, and now, she only had one left.

Her next move was crucial. Would she eat the strawberries stuck to the whipped cream first, or save them for last and eat them in one bite after she was done with the rest of the cake?

Haseul gulped. For a long time, she stared at her cake with deadly seriousness, wrestling with the decision.

Finally, she made up her mind. She would save the whole slice for later. It seemed wasteful to finish it today.

To distract herself from the temptation, she shifted her focus to her mission. Holding the slice of cake in one hand and her giant scythe in the other, she leaped onto a rooftop. Her movements were so fluid that no one noticed she was ever there.

Entering an empty alleyway, she pulled out a radio she had been hiding. It came alive with a burst of static, and she spoke calmly into it as she held it to her lips.

“Status report. This is Paradise Shadow. We have a situation. A riot has broken out in the city. The cause is a villain named Beru who arrived in the city just yesterday, and—”

“Pfft!”

She paused and cocked her head. Jinchul’s voice could be heard over the radio.

“Are you saying this ‘Beru’ is there now?”

Haseul listened intently. She wasn’t quite sure why, but it seemed there was a note of amusement in his voice.

She thought carefully about the reports she had made, then gave a dutiful response.

“Yes. Of course, the name isn’t that meaningful, since it’s likely just a random alias—”

“No. It’s meaningful. Very meaningful, especially to me. Thank you very much for sharing.”

This only confused her more. Jinchul seemed to find the name of a villain more valuable than the information about the riot.

What’s that about? I have no—

“So it was you.”

Haseul heard a voice from behind her, and a chill raced down her spine. Someone had snuck up on her, completely bypassing her awareness.

Her instincts moved before her mind, and she swung her weapon before she could fully process her shock. The scythe cut through the air in a wide, sweeping arc, tracing a semicircle. It was an attack powerful enough to cleave straight through a distant wall, but shockingly, there was no one there. It was as if she had attacked a ghost.

“Who’s there?” she demanded.

“A shadow. And shadows are everywhere.”

To Haseul’s surprise, the answer came from underfoot. She snapped her gaze downward. A shadow, its mouth split wide, grinned up at her from beneath her feet.

“Ugh!”

Her scythe lashed out without hesitation. Her Harvest Scythe, a weapon created using the Stones of the Outer Gods, tore through space itself to get to the creature. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

“Try a little harder, would you?”

Haseul’s breath caught. Her attack had been blocked effortlessly, like it was nothing.

An inky-black arm had emerged from the smiling shadow, casually catching her scythe with two of its fingers. Slowly, the shadow began to rise from the ground.

Haseul lost all will to fight.

What the hell is this magic beast?

She had never sensed such a deep, abyssal power before. The most shocking thing was that there was still no hint of a presence. She was looking right at it, but even now, she couldn’t really be sure of where it was—if it was “here” at all. There was a gap that was difficult for her to put into words.

“Question.”

The shadow was a black ant. It seemed to be a humanoid magic beast with wings, its body wreathed in dark mist.

Its glowing white eyes narrowed, and it lifted Haseul’s scythe lightly, taking it away from her between its fingers.

“Where did you get this weapon?”

The Harvest Scythe, a weapon that dwarfed Haseul, looked like a toy in this giant creature’s grasp.

Suddenly, a voice rang out in the distance.

“Did Beru come this way?”

“Kiek!”

The ant monster’s overwhelming power seemed to go up in smoke.

The suffocating pressure lifted, and Haseul gasped for air, her lungs free at last.

“Huh...?”

By the time she looked forward again, the towering beast had shrunk to the size of a fist, no longer nearly as frightening as it had been. It flew out of the alley with a shriek, crying, “Young Monarch! Did you start missing me already?”

The ant was almost as adorable as it was despicable as it dashed away, dragging the comparatively enormous scythe along the ground behind it.