Interlude: Dark Hero (1)
031.
Yu Seolhyeon arrived home.
…I'm exhausted.
Her eyelids felt as heavy as rebar. Half-lidded, she kept nodding off, swaying on her feet like someone who hadn't slept in days.
A shower… right, I already showered when I stopped by the clan, didn't I…?
In that case, she could at least change clothes. With bleary eyes she shuffled over, yanked open the wardrobe, and grabbed whatever sleepwear her hand found first. It was a one-piece silk nightgown — something she remembered buying ages ago when she'd been trying to look more grown-up.
Ah… so sleepy.
Before long her waterlogged body refused to stay upright. She staggered, then toppled face-first onto the bed. Sinking into the soft mattress felt like pure paradise. She buried her face in the pillow and slowly closed her eyes.
As her lids drifted shut, the events of the day rose hazily through her mind.
Dungeon exploration. Boss monster subjugation. Rescuing people. Farming items. Arriving at the clan for a full examination and treatment. Writing the report…
Looking back, it really had been a lot.
Still… looks like we put out the worst of the fires…
She let out a deep sigh of relief. How badly had she panicked when she first heard the dungeon raid had failed? Not only had the clear failed — there had been missing persons. She hadn't been able to calm the anxiety clawing at her chest. And of course she couldn't. The hyenas who had been circling her weaknesses would have bared their fangs the moment they smelled blood.
It was rough… but at least we got through it in one piece.
All's well that ends well, right? Looking only at the results — the missing people rescued, the dungeon cleared, a haul of items secured — they had weathered a major crisis without disaster.
Come to think of it… I almost died again.
Not long ago at the Academy she had nearly been killed by a black-handed gibbon. This time, in the dungeon, she had nearly been murdered by a half-human snake woman. If Lee Jinhyuk hadn't been there, she might already be dead.
…
Her lips pressed into a thin line. The moment Lee Jinhyuk entered her thoughts, a flood of questions and doubts came trailing after him.
Lee Jinhyuk… Lee Jinhyuk. I still don't get him.
What kind of person was he? She turned it over and over, but no satisfying answer surfaced. Especially the way he had fought Kate — she still couldn't make sense of it. He had simply drawn his sword and split Kate's searing breath of fire clean in two. It had looked for all the world like a Supernatural Ability.
And yet…
I'm certain I was told his Supernatural Ability is future sight. Everything he's done so far doesn't look like a lie.
Did he possess multiple abilities? Or maybe the power to copy someone else's? Or he might have been hiding some relic.
Common sense said a mere trainee had almost zero chance of owning a relic. Even she — blood of the Gaonnuri Clan — didn't have one. Relics were vanishingly rare, and useful ones rarer still. Someone like Jinhyuk, with no powerful backing, shouldn't have one.
No… he can see the future. Maybe he found a relic somewhere after all?
What exactly was he hiding? A Supernatural Ability? Swordsmanship? A relic? The more she thought, the thicker the fog of questions became.
…Well. It doesn't really matter either way.
A small smile tugged at her lips. She might not know what he was concealing, but the results he had delivered weren't fake. However he had done it — crippling the gibbon, teaching them how to clear the dungeon, bringing down the boss monster — his performance had been extraordinary.
So what if he was hiding something? It didn't change the fact that he was useful.
Lee Jinhyuk. He really is worth keeping around.
Maybe even more than Lee Siwoo. Scouting priority number one had always been Siwoo, but judging purely by results so far, Jinhyuk was more valuable. Not only tactics — his combat ability was outstanding too. Put everything together and he inevitably rose to the top of the list.
Drifting, little by little, toward sleep, Seolhyeon thought:
I kind of want him.
She didn't want to let a talent like Jinhyuk slip away. She had always been greedy for gifted people — and she had always been the type who couldn't rest until she got what she wanted. For the first time in a long while, she felt that old hunger stir and coil inside her.
Night settled quietly over the city. In a pitch-black back alley far from the glittering downtown lights, a woman stood trembling with terror.
She had tried to run. It was useless. The man in front of her was a Supernatural Ability user — a villain.
"P-please… spare me… p-please!"
"Heh heh heh."
Dae Seokgang, a villain in his mid-thirties, wore a greasy smile as he closed the distance one step at a time.
"Who told you to wander places like this alone at night? That's how you run into bad men like me."
"Ugh… ah…"
After rotting in a cell, the taste of freedom had him itching to indulge an old hobby. While hunting for suitable prey he had lucked into this woman. Looks like hers? He was feeling pretty fortunate. From her side, of course, the luck ran the other way.
He was right in front of her now. A rough hand reached for her throat.
"If you want someone to blame, blame the society that let a guy like me back out—"
"Yeah. Why did they let a guy like you out?"
A young man's voice slid into Dae Seokgang's ear. He spun toward the source — and found a man staring straight at him. Hood pulled low, mask covering half his face. Not an ordinary civilian. The voice sounded young, late teens to early twenties, but the covered face made him look anything but harmless.
Another villain like himself? Or…
"Dae Seokgang. Age thirty-six. Illegal use of a Supernatural Ability, special theft, special robbery, traffic violations, robbery resulting in injury… seventeen priors. That right?"
The man regarded him quietly.
"Letting a seventeen-time offender with a Supernatural Ability walk free. Sure is a great country for criminals, isn't it? Did they honestly think prison was going to rehabilitate you?"
"Who the hell are you supposed to be?"
"Me? Beats me."
The man gave a casual shrug.
"A Union dropout?"
"Ha."
Dae Seokgang snorted. That was it? Just some Union washout?
"Heh… heh heh. What, playing hero after you flunked out?"
"Something like that."
The man nodded without protest. No official license — in a way, it really was just playing hero.
Dae Seokgang stared at him, half-incredulous, then raised a fist. And here he'd thought he'd been unlucky enough to run into a real hero. Just some wannabe.
"Getting cocky just because you spent a little time at Union…"
His right arm ballooned like an inflating bladder until it resembled a giant's forearm. Massive, crushing weight radiated from it as he sneered inwardly at the kid's arrogance.
A Union Academy dropout? Hilarious. Dae Seokgang himself was Union-bred. He'd been expelled before graduating, sure — but he'd once been a promising talent, and his ability and combat skill were nothing to laugh at. He hadn't been kicked out for lack of power. Assault and drinking had done that.
"…Keep mouthing off and one hit'll put you down for good, brat."
His Supernatural Ability was Hypertrophy — the power to enlarge and strengthen any part of his body at will. Simple. Brutally effective. Strong enough to crush a monster's skull.
"Hmm."
The man watching him looked utterly unimpressed. He casually lifted the scabbard hanging at his hip.
…An empty scabbard.
"What the fuck is this? You messing with me?"
"Ah. I've got my reasons."
A faint smile touched the man's mouth.
"A friend of mine stole the sword and ran off a while back. It was a relic."
Technically the blade itself wasn't the relic, though it was a fine sword in its own right — a matched set with this scabbard.
"She doesn't even know how to use it. No idea why she took it. Well — she thought it was a relic, so I guess the temptation makes sense."
"Relic my ass! Die!"
Dae Seokgang swung. The man tilted the scabbard and deflected the punch's path as naturally as breathing. Before Dae Seokgang could even react, the scabbard rose again and struck — temple, collarbone, jaw, Adam's apple — in one fluid chain.
"Wh— uh— uhh?"
Dae Seokgang crumpled. His head rang. The world spun. Bile surged up his throat. He tried to stand, but his legs shook uncontrollably beneath him.
"Dizzy? That's your brain and semicircular canals getting rattled."
"Y-you— you— uh?"
"Body seems pretty tough, though…"
Mana gathered in the scabbard. He drove it hard into Dae Seokgang's philtrum while the man was still defenseless.
"Ghk— ah— agh?!"
Two front teeth spun into the air. The nose bone felt shattered. Blood poured freely.
"Nothing special."
"W-w-wait—!"
"What now."
The man kept hitting him. Dae Seokgang, will to resist already gone, could only take it.
"You— fuck— h-heroes aren't— supposed to—!"
"I told you I'm not a hero. I dropped out. What kind of hero is that?"
Blood dripping, Dae Seokgang shouted; the man only shrugged and swung the scabbard again. Every blow laced with mana turned Dae Seokgang's body into more of a rag. The bastard was toying with him. He could have finished it anytime — he was deliberately using just enough force to keep him conscious. Dae Seokgang clenched his teeth.
This— this son of a bitch—!
He tried Hypertrophy, tried to fight back. It did nothing. Power that could pulverize rock and bend rebar was worthless if it never landed. All he could do was get beaten.
Fuck. He said he was a dropout. How is he this strong?
"Ah, right — you were Union too, weren't you?"
"Ugh… kh…"
"Brings back memories. Used to thrash seniors who strutted around just like this."
"Ugh— ghk— ghhh—!"
Insubordination this, that — the Academy had buzzed with talk back then. The man nodded to himself at the old recollection.
"S-sto-o-op! Please, stop…!"
He had no idea how many times he'd been hit. Half a dozen teeth gone; he could barely form words. Nose broken, cheekbone caved, every joint screaming. He was genuinely afraid he might die.
"I-I'll turn myself in! I'll surrender, so—!"
"What good is prison? You'll be back out in a few years anyway. Right?"
"Ugh…"
The man's face stayed flat.
"Human-rights crusaders are the problem. Why do they keep bleating about rights for scum like this?"
In Europe, human-rights groups regularly argued that sentences over ten years violated human dignity and pressured governments into parole. Governments, facing overcrowded prisons, often caved under the banner of "human rights" and cut villains loose. Korea wasn't much different — unless a crime was exceptionally monstrous, extreme sentences were rare.
After all… this was a country that still handed out reduced sentences for crimes committed while drunk.
"You got the diminished-capacity reduction too, didn't you?"
There had been a monster who, dead drunk, butchered and assaulted a child. The diminished-capacity claim stuck; he walked with something around ten years. What good was the Special Act on Crimes Involving Supernatural Abilities if "I wasn't in my right mind" still worked every time? Hundreds of thousands had signed petitions to abolish the drunkenness reduction. Nothing had come of it.
Not that Korean law was pure cotton candy. The truly dangerous ones who could never be released mostly sat on life sentences. Even so, ordinary people — the victims — couldn't accept it. Why forgive monsters like that?
"Maybe the law just hasn't caught up with the times. Honestly. If you're going to let them out, at least stick a chip in their brains. Ah — wait, that would be a human-rights violation too, wouldn't it?"
Monsters had appeared and humanity had awakened Supernatural Abilities a long time ago, and Korea was still like this. Hell, in the old days self-defense law had been so loose that beating a home invader with a laundry pole got you charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The thief had ended up brain-dead, sure — but when the other guy might be armed, what civilian is supposed to pull their punches?
To the man, the law was a joke.
"You don't need to bother turning yourself in anymore."
So he would handle it himself. The villains the law no longer frightened.
"Ugh…? Y-you— don't tell me…"
A memory flashed through Dae Seokgang's battered skull. For the past few years, a hero who wasn't a hero had been roaming the country, wiping out villains. A lunatic who didn't lock them up — who ruined them so thoroughly they could never live a normal life again. Not a hero tossing people in cells, but someone who punished villains with his own hands. Another kind of villain, really.
And the public had cheered. Villains who laughed off light sentences, infamous monsters the system wouldn't touch — he crippled them and left them to suffer for the rest of their lives. The people they had hurt couldn't help but root for him.
They had given him a name.
Vigilante.
"Y-you're… that Vigilante guy? You?"
"Ah. Not sure why they call me that, but… yeah, for now."
He had heard the rumors about how brutal the Vigilante's methods were. Dae Seokgang's whole body began to shake.
The Vigilante glanced toward the woman still frozen in place.
"You should probably head out. Things are about to get pretty ugly from here."
"Ah— y-yes! Th-thank you for— saving me!"
"Don't mention it."
Voice trembling, she stammered her thanks, scrambled up, and fled. The Vigilante watched her go, then turned back to Dae Seokgang—
And the scabbard gave a small, sharp tremor.
Huh?
What— is it sensing the stolen sword's location?
Sword and scabbard were a set. The scabbard could track the blade. Normally he should have found it long ago — but if it had been sealed inside somewhere unusual, like a dungeon, the link would have gone dark.
And here I thought that girl crawled into some dungeon and died. She's still alive? Or maybe she just sold the sword.
Either way, it didn't matter. Now that he could sense it again, he would go look for himself.
Still hard to pin an exact location… looks like all I'm getting is a rough direction.
Well. So what? If the direction was right, he would get there eventually.
The Vigilante smiled and went back to beating Dae Seokgang.
It wouldn't be long now before he reclaimed the sword — and the relic — he had lost.