Leviathan
Leviathan - The Epic of Vergilius the Red Gaze is a part webcomic, part web novel prequel to Limbus Company published and released by Project Moon on the company's official Postype. Leviathan began as a webcomic illustrated by web artist Monggeu on December 24th, 2021 and was later turned into a web novel for the final half of its serialization, concluding on October 28th, 2022.
The story centers around Vergilius before his recruitment into Limbus Company, following him and the young Fixer Garnet in their search for the missing Lapis.
Synopsis
On Christmas Eve, Vergilius, a Color Fixer known as the Red Gaze, plans to visit an orphanage and give gifts to the children who live there. When he arrives, he sees that the orphanage has been destroyed by a monstrous being who is killing the children. He begins to fight the strange creature, but their fight is soon interrupted by Iori, another Color Fixer whom Vergilius believed had died in the Library. Vergilius and Iori begin to fight, with her explaining that she had organized the attack on the orphanage as a part in her plan to find her missing son. Vergilius is unable to keep up with her in combat, and Iori decides to leave him and the remaining children alive.
Half a year later, Garnet, a young Fixer who had grown up in the orphanage and survived the attack on it, reunites with Vergilius. Garnet asks Vergilius to join him in meeting with his friend Lapis, who grew up alongside Garnet at the orphanage and had always admired Vergilius when she was a child. While Vergilius refuses the request and the two part ways, on the day of the scheduled meeting Garnet calls him in a panic, believing that something bad had happened to Lapis. Vergilius reluctantly agrees to help him find her, and the two Fixers investigate a gallery owned by the Ring in their search for her. While this goes poorly, when they return to Vergilius' Office they find that they have been sent a video filmed by Lapis, from which they learn that many children who had lived in the orphanage have been kidnapped by the Ring and are being used for experiments in creating a new Singularity.
This information leads to Vergilius' Office and Garnet launching an infiltration operation to steal the Singularity and rescue Lapis and the others. Vergilius and Garnet go to an auction ran by the Ring and participate in order to purchase the final item of the auction, which has the added bonus of allowing the buyer to explore the Ring's Corridor. From the Corridor, they will be able to reach the place where the experiments are taking place. The final item is a painting titled The Red Gaze, which was painted by the sole survivor of a Syndicate that had been wiped out by Vergilius many years ago, and whose leader was Lapis' father. Using this connection to the painting, Vergilius convinces the Ring Maestro Jumsoon to sell the painting to him instead of the highest bidder— Gubo of N Corp., who appeared to also be seeking access to the Ring's Corridor.
Once inside the Corridor, Vergilius kills the guide who had been tasked with ensuring they don't go anywhere off limits and begins to make his way to the laboratory with Garnet. Before they get far, a Docent of the Ring finds them and Vergilius decides to send Garnet ahead to the lab, while Vergilius stays behind to fight the Docent. Garnet fends off some members of the Ring, and soon finds the laboratory where the missing children are being kept and experimented on. While he attempts to free the children immediately, two of the Fixers of Vergilius's Office (who had infiltrated the corridor through other means) stop him, as his recklessness would ruin the data on the Singularity. Before the download of the data can be completed, Jumsoon arrives to the lab, and reveals to Garnet that the Ring had been involved on the attack against the orphanage in order to create perfect test subjects for their experiments. One of the two Office Fixers, Nanseul, reveals himself to have been a traitor, stabbing his Officemate and, at Jumsoon's order, pulling a lever that turns on the Singularity device.
The Singularity sends Garnet's consciousness through various Mirror Worlds, where he experiences some of the worst moments of these alternate Garnets' lives. These Mirror Worlds include several versions of Garnet mirroring characters from Library of Ruina, such as one where he and Lapis are Fixers of Streetlight Office, with Garnet taking the role of Lulu and Lapis the role of Mars and another world where he has the role of Roland and Lapis the role of Angelica. Another Mirror World has Garnet living as Maestro of the Ring, auctioning off gemstones that had once been his friends from the orphanage. Once he recovers from the disorientation and stops being forced to look into these other worlds, he is shown to still be connected to them (in a way that is similar to the Identities that the Mirror provides access to), and resonates with four different worlds at once. This process delights Jumsoon, who comments that Garnet has kept his sanity intact despite such a high refraction rate.
The researcher Aseah steps out from the shadows upon witnessing what had happened to Garnet, and begins to explain what the Singularity he and Jumsoon created does. By improving upon the technology of the Glass Window created by his former compatriot, Aseah was able to make a Singularity that could overlay multiple Mirror Worlds on a single person. By having a higher refraction rate, more worlds can be accessed at the same time, usually at the cost of the subject becoming insane from being overwhelmed during the process. The children of the orphanage were forced to experience such high refraction rates until they shattered like glass or, after the events of White Nights, turned into gem-like cocoon forms.
Garnet, horrified by Aseah and Jumsoon's apathy to the torture they have put the children through, launches an attack on the Maestro, determined to kill him. The two have an intense battle, with the various Mirror Worlds Garnet is channeling helping him keep up with Jumsoon's skills. However, before he can kill Jumsoon, the refraction ends, and Garnet is left as just himself, allowing Jumsoon to get the upper hand and cut off Garnet's legs. The cocoons of the other experiments hatch, but what emerges are not the children of the orphanage, but Peccatula. Garnet loses himself in the pain and despair, turning in on himself and becomes a cocoon himself, with Jumsoon lamenting the loss of such a good subject for their experiments.
Meanwhile, Vergilius has been making his way through the Corridor and eventually comes across Gubo, who had managed to make his way in even without managing to purchase the painting at the auction. Gubo reveals that he is here to retrieve Aseah, who was an employee of N Corp. that had been kidnapped by the Ring to help develop their new Singularity. While Gubo attempts to trick Vergilius at first, after being nearly killed he complies and offers Vergilius access to some of the materials created by the Singularity. The two continue and eventually reach the laboratory, where Vergilius immediately recognizes Garnet as the red cocoon which stands before him. Accepting that Garnet is lost, Vergilius begins to kill the Peccatula that fill the room. Jumsoon finds this reaction to be amusing, and soon orders Aseah to focus all of the Singularity's power on to him, which results in Jumsoon distorting.
Vergilius and the distorted Jumsoon begin an intense fight, with Jumsoon able to see into countless Mirror World versions of the fight in his distorted form and thus able to predict and evade Vergilius' onslaught of attacks. The powers of Jumsoon's Distortion force Vergilius to experience moments from other worlds, ones where Lapis stabs him in the back and Garnet dies in front of him, and Vergilius begins to give into despair. As he does, a voice begins to speak to him inside his mind. The voice converses with Vergilius for a while and ultimately encourages him to distort as well, but Vergilius cannot agree with her logic and the two agree to go their different ways. When he comes back to reality, Vergilius has manifested E.G.O and the fight between him and Jumsoon resumes. However, Jumsoon's ability to see into the Mirror Worlds was not able to predict this outcome, and he begins to lose the fight as well as his hold on his Distortion. Having had his point of view shattered, Jumsoon turns into an egg from which the Abnormality Schadenfreude emerges. By closing his eyes, Vergilius avoids being attacked by Schadenfreude and the Abnormality instead targets and kills Nanseul. Taking this chance, Vergilius strikes at Schadenfreude and suppresses the Abnormality.
At the end of the battle, Vergilius discovers a single test tube that had been remained closed this entire time: inside it, he finds Lapis. However, when hearing him call her name, she is confused and asserts that she is not Lapis, but Charon. Jumsoon's experiments had succeeded, and Lapis had been overwritten by the Identity of Charon. As Vergilius collects documents that he suspects will be useful in the future, Charon retrieves a broken piece of Garnet's gem which she shows to him. Suddenly, the doors to the laboratory explode and the building is infiltrated by a new group of people that Vergilius does not recognize. From the group, a woman steps forward and introduces herself as Faust of Limbus Company, who had apparently been seeking to recruit Vergilius to their company. Before he can even speak, Faust tells him that they can give Lapis and Garnet back to him. This offer intrigues him, and while he previously would have preferred handling things by himself, thanks to the events of the day Vergilius feels inspired to listen to what Faust has to say.
Development
Leviathan was initially planned to be fully created as a webcomic, but after eleven chapters were released, the series was changed to a web novel format instead. The series was the first webcomic Monggeu had illustrated for and, due to personal reasons as well as the tight deadline, they eventually withdrew from the project. With the artist's departure, Leviathan was changed to a web novel for its remaining chapters, featuring illustrations done by Project Moon's art team. Due to Limbus Company's upcoming release, the translation teams were unable to finish the translation of the final chapters of Leviathan, with seventeen of the twenty total chapters being translated to Japanese and only fifteen being translated to English. The translations are on a permanent hiatus, with no confirmation on if Leviathan will ever receive a full translation, although an English fan translation of the final five chapters does exist. [1]
As of July 26th, 2024, the webcomic portion of Leviathan has been taken down from Postype due to a copyright dispute between the webcomic's illustrator Monggeu and Project Moon.
Characters
| Characters | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Main Characters
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vergilius | Garnet | Lapis/Charon | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Vergilius's Office
| |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
| Denver | Lan Yen | Nanseul | Rikako |
The Ring
| |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
| Pablo | Pop | Asura | Jumsoon |
N Corp.
| |
|---|---|
|
|
| Gubo | Aseah |
Other
| |
|---|---|
|
|
| Iori | Tomerry |
Chapters
Chapters
| ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chapter Title | Korean Release Date | Japanese Release Date | English Release Date | |
| Book1 - Christmas Eve | December 24th, 2021 | December 24th, 2021 | December 24th, 2021 | |
| Book2 - Garnet and Lapis | January 7th, 2022 | January 10th, 2022 | January 10th, 2022 | |
| Book3 - The Gallery | February 4th, 2022 | February 4th, 2022 | February 4th, 2022 | |
| Book4 - A Docent | February 18th, 2022 | February 18th, 2022 | February 18th, 2022 | |
| Book5 - Video | March 5th, 2022 | March 5th, 2022 | March 5th, 2022 | |
| Book6 - Flow | March 18th, 2022 | March 18th, 2022 | March 18th, 2022 | |
| Book7 - Ingress | April 1st, 2022 | April 2nd, 2022 | April 4th, 2022 | |
| Book8 - Ecstacies | April 15th, 2022 | April 15th, 2022 | April 17th, 2022 | |
| Book9 - Eye-opening | April 29th, 2022 | April 29th, 2022 | April 29th, 2022 | |
| Book10 - Resection | May 20th, 2022 | May 23rd, 2022 | May 25th, 2022 | |
| Book11 - The Auction | June 3rd, 2022 | June 8th, 2022 | June 9th, 2022 | |
| Book12 - The Corridor / Shin (心) / Mang (望) | June 17th, 2022 | June 28th, 2022 | June 28th, 2022 | |
| Book13 - Rifts | July 1st, 2022 | July 25th, 2022 | July 13th, 2022 | |
| Book14 - Reflected Worlds | July 15th, 2022 | October 5th, 2022 | July 29th, 2022 | |
| Book15 - Focus | July 29th, 2022 | October 5th, 2022 | August 16th, 2022 | |
| Book16 - Family | August 19th, 2022 | October 5th, 2022 | Untranslated | |
| Book17 - Crying | September 2nd, 2022 | October 5th, 2022 | Untranslated | |
| Book18 - Questions and Answers | September 30th, 2022 | Untranslated | Untranslated | |
| Book19 - Gaze | October 14th, 2022 | Untranslated | Untranslated | |
| Final Book - Charon and Garnet | October 28th, 2022 | Untranslated | Untranslated | |
External Links
- Leviathan - ProjectMoon Comics (English)
- Leviathan - ProjectMoon Comics (한국어) - Korean Translation
- Leviathan - ProjectMoon Comics (日本語) - Japanese Translation
Wiki Navigation
