Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 123: SAVAGE FENTY

In the depth of his dreamworld, he stood on the grey stone pathway stretching toward the gigantic door.

The two Y-shapes – one straight and the other turned upside down – at its center blazed and pulsed with the rhythm of Leon’s heartbeat.

On each side, the sentinels looming before the door turned their stone faces downward, almost as if watching his every twitch.

Crack.

Leon froze, the senses of his dream-self flaring. His head whipped to the right, then to the left.

The arms of the sentinels, which hung at their sides, now drew back, like a fish escaping into a cave.

"Did it move?" he asked, but his voice became engulfed by the heavy dust that spun in a sudden drift beneath the sentinels.

Leon brushed it off, forcing his gaze forward as he approached the door. The memory of his last visit pressed hard against his skull – the ground collapsing beneath him and the endless fall into the spear-filled ground.

’Hope it won’t in that manner,’ he thought, then sighed heavily, stretching the palm of his right arm toward the door.

Then, a blinding light erupted from the Y-shaped sigil. Leon threw his arms upward, covering his face as the intensity of the light’s glow burned his uncovered forehead.

When the density decreased, the calm feeling returned. He felt every part of him mending into each other in a strange calmness as he lowered his arms.

"Not again, please." He clasped his arms together, closed his eyes, then cracked them open after a few seconds.

Tilting his gaze upward, Leon saw colorful dust – red, gold, pearl, jade, and obsidian – streaming from the empty eyes of the sentinel on the right like tears.

The first tear of dust slammed hard on the ground and bounced back upward. It hovered in the air about five feet high.

The dust swirled together as the last drop of it joined the heap and began mixing. They spun faster, blending like paint on a palette.

With every turn, a book-like shape formed, but not complete. Then, on the sixth swirl, a book hovered before Leon, one that was larger than any volume he’d ever seen. Not even comparable to the thousands of the largest books recorded in the Guinee’s books of record.

It bounced down gas as its pages flipped open by themselves at high speed.

The cover was black, angular sigils shifting across the leather, and rearranging themselves every time Leon’s eyes tried to trace them.

"What is that?" He tried to speak, but his voice dried up. Deep in his skull, the voice resounded.

Leon stretched his arms forward, his fingers hovering six inches away from the cover.

The black cover waved and shivered as if alive, and then moved upward, touching Leon’s fingers. A cold pulse ran through his skin, followed by images he tried not to remember. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

The D-rank goat-beasts collapsing under his dagger. The glass skitter crushed against the vault’s wall, the fair nurse at WinJi Central Hospital, and Lieutenant Prince’s blood-bubbling face.

Evaporated air gushed out from the pages as the fragile paper pressed hard against his fingers like it remembered him in another life.

The deeper and longer his fingers remained on the book, the more it hummed through his bones.

His muscles screamed at him to release the book, and when he finally did, he felt at peace. But his soul longed heavily to grab the book again.

"SAVAGE FENTY," at the mention of the inscription written boldly on the cover, the book broke from its suspense and slammed hard on the ground.

WHUMP.

The impact shuddered through the ground Leon stood on, causing his balance to waver.

"Leave it and walk away. You don’t need to know what’s inside." A chorus of voices echoed from around him.

Trying to move a step back, his knees buckled then bent under a willpower that wasn’t his own.

Just as he grabbed the book and pulled it from the ground, the sentinels moved, followed by stone-crackling sounds.

From the right and left sides of the gate, both sentinels turned, lifted their arms, and pointed them toward the Y-shape in the door.

Leon clutched the book hard against his chest, swallowing hard. In a blink, the dream landscape began to dissipate one after another, after the door twitched open slightly.

Leon’s eyes snapped open, panting heavily as he remained seated in the same seat in the moving craft.

Seat beads pressed against his face, his neck, his chest. And in his clumsy hands, he held a book that had the same similarities as the one he had seen in his dream.

The Ritz-Carlton

SAVAGE FENTY

"...What book is that?" Liu Yan’s voice cut through Leon’s shock-engulfed mind. She kept her gaze locked on the book, her cheeks reddening. She tucked her helmet under one arm, the other lying at her side.

Leon’s mouth opened and closed as his thumb traced the edge of the cover. "Uhm..."

"That book..." Bao Xiong cracked his eyes swiftly, his face turning pale. "...that’s the Paloalto."

Wu Ze, who sat beside him, cracked her eyes open, shifting a confused gaze at Bao Xiong. "What are you talking about?"

Bao Xiong brushed her question off, his hands twitching at his side the moment he remembered the news about the locked book.

"That’s the mind book from the Qing Clan’s library. Where only a few people tasked to protect the universe enter."

’I can become a B-rank, A-rank, or even an S-rank just by having that.’ The thought reeled in his mind as his fingers curled, leaning forward, ready to snatch the book from Leon.

Leon tightened his grip on the book, drew his hand back, and stretched it toward Liu Yan’s direction.

Liu Yan held the book and marveled at its weight as it weighed her arms down.

Wu Ze grabbed Bao Xiong’s arms. "What’s wrong with you?"

Bao Xiong shook her off without looking and shifted his gaze back to Leon. "Give me that, else..."

"Else what?!" Wu Ze forcefully pulled Bao Xiong’s arms again toward her and placed them between her thighs.

Bao Xiong turned a furious expression toward Wu Ze.

"Do you have any idea what that is? What it means to possess something like that?" His voice dropped low. "Only the wealthiest families – the ones of old bloodlines – carry this kind of book."