Villain Unknown's First Job (1)
Meanwhile, at the central library of Theia Academy.
With exams only a week away, the cadets gathered there looked thoroughly busy.
"Lee Junwoo isn't coming today?"
"Yeah. Said he's got something he needs to take care of."
At Lim Jaeho's words, Jeong Siu felt a twinge of disappointment.
Damn. I thought this was my chance to get closer to Unknown!
Over the past while, the Middle Class cadets had formed parties and run joint training sessions several times. Lim Jaeho and Jeong Siu in particular had ended up in the same party as Lee Junwoo, and through those sessions the three of them had built a decent rapport. Along the way, both of them had received no small amount of help from him.
Objectively speaking, the two of them outclassed him in raw physical ability. But when it came to tactical theory, Junwoo was overwhelmingly superior.
"We can't keep asking him for study sessions every time. Might be better to save everything up and hit him with it all at once during the last party training."
Jeong Siu nodded at that. Even playing the same party composition, Junwoo's field of vision was on a different level. The roles he'd assigned for the midterms, the granular detail with which he locked down class-specific playstyles — it was enough to impress even Lim Jaeho, who'd been a top student back at the high academy.
Unknown really is something else.
On that front, he and Lim Jaeho saw eye to eye. Among the Middle Class, the standout named cadet was without question Lim Jaeho. The guy's father was a former member of Valhalla's Apostles, and Jaeho himself served as class president of Free Major Class 1-1. Even so, he seemed to rate Lee Junwoo quite highly.
Don't tell me that guy wants to become Junwoo's subordinate too.
By underworld logic, Lim Jaeho was a rival. Jeong Siu's ultimate goal was to become Unknown's right hand. A capable cadet like Jaeho joining Unknown's ranks would, under normal circumstances, make him the number-one person to watch out for.
But I'm not that small a man.
Jeong Siu was already thinking further ahead. His real objective was for Unknown to conquer all of Seoul. He knew full well how vicious and skilled Unknown was — but Seoul was crawling with awakened factions. Naturally, Unknown would need to build a force of his own.
So Lim Jaeho could actually make a solid ally for Unknown.
Jeong Siu already considered himself Unknown's strategist. The only metric that mattered was whether something helped Lee Junwoo or not. Petty ambition for personal recognition didn't even register.
Besides, Lim Jaeho has a pretty good reputation in the beastkin community.
The two of them stood side by side in the library smoking room, cigarettes lit. Lim Jaeho smoked a harsh old-fashioned red-pack tobacco; Jeong Siu, as usual, puffed on a fruit-flavored e-cigarette. Exhaling a stream of vapor, Jeong Siu continued.
"I heard the beastkin cadets have a social gathering coming up?"
"Yeah. That elf CEO — Oripiel — supposedly founded a beastkin scholarship foundation and invited the beastkin cadets."
He'd heard about it from Yun Hyeona, president of the Crime Research Club.
Beastkin worth inviting at Theia… that'd be Lim Jaeho here, Song Sia, and maybe Aegis's new member Jeong Ungyeong.
Even with rumors floating around, social gatherings among famous cadets weren't a bad thing. Plenty of post-graduation career paths got decided through those connections. Jeong Siu himself could have slotted into gatherings of underworld heirs if he'd wanted to — the problem was that those kinds of play-pretend meetups no longer satisfied him.
When someone like Unknown is in the same department, same class… hanging around with those small fry…
Still, a beastkin cadet gathering had a different flavor. Oripiel the elf was a well-known tycoon — but there were always rumors that he maintained dark connections with villains.
Maybe this Oripiel guy has ties to Crimson Teeth.
Jeong Siu didn't have much personal connection to beastkin, but chasing famous villains was his hobby. Any intel circulating through the underworld or the villain scene always caught his interest.
"Come to think of it, your father's an underworld boss too, right? Mine mentioned that clashes between Valhalla's Apostles and underworld outfits have been picking up lately."
"My father? His organization's small-time enough that Valhalla's Apostles won't bother with it. He's a stubborn old man, but he's good at walking the tightrope."
In that moment, an organization flickered through Jeong Siu's mind.
Wait. I heard Mad Knife has been reeling pretty hard lately.
Mad Knife was a mid-tier underworld outfit roughly the same size as his father's. Multiple blunders had left its standing in the underworld looking shaky.
Well, probably get swallowed by a subordinate organization soon enough.
Or, given the right pretext, Valhalla's Apostles might just clean them out themselves. That was why his father's organization had been cracking down hard on its own subordinates lately — and fretting over which side to line up with.
That's why he told me to stop by the office today. Annoying, but skipping it would be worse.
Jeong Siu exchanged a brief goodbye with Lim Jaeho and left Theia.
Jeong Siu boarded the subway. His destination was Jongno, where his father's office was located — a dense cluster of legally registered underworld organization offices.
He was watching a compilation of trending clips on YouTube. The algorithm kept feeding him clips of Yunori, the member who handled the cute factor for Underdolls.
Yunori… she's got that otaku vibe, but she's still cute.
Absorbed in the clips, he paused the video for a moment to check which station he was at — and spotted someone he never expected to see in that car.
Choi Hana?
It was Choi Hana, Lee Junwoo's new girlfriend. No one else would know her true identity, but Jeong Siu was aware that she was Naharing, the currently surging VTuber. Of course, the VTuber he actually cared about was Yunori from the same crew — but still. Hana's looks drew more than a few glances from the other passengers. Everyone averted their eyes soon enough, though. No one wanted to get tangled up with a Theia cadet.
A short while later, Choi Hana unexpectedly got off at a Jongno station.
What's Choi Hana doing in Jongno?
It wasn't particularly suspicious. Not every district in Jongno was underworld territory. But she happened to be heading the same direction he was — toward the street packed with underworld offices. Acting on a vague curiosity, he watched her step into a café. And the moment he saw the man sitting beyond the glass window, Jeong Siu froze on the spot.
"Lee Junwoo…?"
Against all expectation, Junwoo was there. Jeong Siu's mind kicked into overdrive. He opened his phone and pulled up the underworld district map he'd saved in advance.
A Blood Jaguar building?
True to its shabby exterior, the building belonged to a no-name small-time outfit. The organization's vice-boss, a man named Hwang Yonggyun, rang a faint bell — but the underworld was never so flimsy that a single named member could make an organization famous.
Then he checked the hierarchy chart, and a chill ran down his spine.
Their parent organization is Mad Knife…?
The second he confirmed the name, Jeong Siu knew.
"F… finally…"
Unknown had finally decided to begin his operations.
Is he going to swallow Blood Jaguar… and then take Mad Knife too?
Easy to say. Nowhere near as simple as soloing a Horror Hole. With overwhelming force he could force them under his heel, sure — but the underworld was a tangled mess of countless organizations. And right now, with Crimson Teeth and Valhalla's Apostles both involved, the whole scene was pure chaos. If a famous villain or hero who'd just started operating in the underworld became a target, the whole thing could fall apart before it even began.
Even for Unknown… raw power alone…
Mad Knife already had plenty of skilled people. Jeong Siu might have dismissed mid-tier outfits as nothing special, but an organization of that scale still fielded a significant number of B+-rank awakeners. The boss, in particular, would be close to A-rank. Junwoo was still concealing his identity — realistically, a single academy cadet couldn't pull this off alone.
I've been watching Junwoo since high academy, and I never once saw him make contact with the underworld.
But Jeong Siu shook his head. On the other hand — if it was Lee Junwoo, maybe it was possible. Whatever was going on inside that head of his was beyond what an ordinary awakener like Jeong Siu could even begin to measure.
I want to watch. I want to see what happens when Unknown moves in person.
Jeong Siu slipped into a hiding spot not far from the café. And a few hours later, he watched a line of black sedans pull up in front of it all at once.
Hwang Yonggyun, vice-boss of Blood Jaguar, was staring intently at a monitor screen.
"So this is the kind of thing that's popular these days."
On the screen, characters that looked like they'd stepped out of a cartoon were moving and talking. As someone who only ever watched the most old-fashioned YouTube channels, he was having a hard time wrapping his head around these streamers called VTubers.
"Naharing? So this cartoon character is the boss, then."
But it wasn't just the boss — Jaguar's members were all pouring themselves into this project. Plenty of organizations already had their hands in the entertainment industry, so aiming for the currently booming internet broadcast scene was actually a rather innovative idea.
Hwang Yonggyun was an old-fashioned man, but his affection for the organization ran deep. Wanting to support the boss and the members currently live-streaming, he was hunting around online to figure out how to make a donation — something he'd never done before.
"You can leave a message too? Fascinating."
He almost typed "Blood Jaguar fighting!" by reflex, then hurriedly hunt-and-pecked it into "Underdolls fighting!" instead.
"Hoo… getting old makes even this kind of thing hard."
He put three hundred thousand won of his own money toward each member. Truth be told, Underdolls had been bringing in more money than any venture Jaguar had ever run. Spending that much of his own cash didn't feel like a waste at all. Every last one of them was a member he was proud of.
Still… I can't quite get used to this VTuber business.
He turned his chair away from the screen for a moment. Today wasn't a day for open conflict. Over the past few days, he and several combat members had absorbed a number of Mad Knife's subordinate outfits. A response from Mad Knife would be coming soon enough. Blood Jaguar couldn't match Mad Knife in scale — but they'd moved fast and taken half of those subordinates already.
A full-scale war won't be far off.
But not today, at least. He'd already planted informants inside Mad Knife. Anything suspicious would be reported immediately. He was a little worried about the boss being in this building, but the floor used for broadcasting was a secure facility. It would be fine.
Right. The boss doesn't need to get her hands dirty. Killing people is my job…
Choi Hana was the previous boss's daughter, and to Hwang Yonggyun she was as good as his own. Someone that precious.
In that moment, a young man surfaced in his thoughts.
Lee Junwoo…
A male cadet from Theia who'd grown remarkably close to the boss lately. Ever since the incident at the Pure White Festival, Hwang found himself thinking about the boy more often than he meant to.
Come to think of it, Noeul said the boss was pulling an all-nighter studying with that Junwoo kid tonight…
It seemed the boss had feelings for him. A woman who'd never shown the slightest interest in romance — and yet this Lee Junwoo apparently meant something different to her. Hwang thought they made a good match. At the same time, the young man gave off the sense that he was hiding something behind that ordinary exterior.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid.
Hwang Yonggyun leaned back against his chair, intending to rest for a moment.
"Hm?"
That was when it happened. In the empty vice-boss's office, he suddenly felt a presence.
"Just my imagination…? Hm?"
He turned his head — and froze solid where he sat.
A man wearing a bloodstained mask was looking straight at him.
"Wh-who…"
But a name flashed through his mind almost immediately. The mysterious villain whose trademark was that blood-red mask.
Unknown.
The unidentified figure quietly raised an index finger to his lips. Then he moved his hand and pointed past the window. A chill ran down Hwang Yonggyun's spine. Multiple black sedans were parked below the building. This was unmistakably a raid.
Hwang Yonggyun hurriedly turned back to face the masked man.