Under Hero

While Charlotte spent her days meeting with Batori and the other heroes under her care, preparing everything they needed and throwing herself into her work as their counselor, Batori was out there as always, trudging diligently along, working herself to the bone to climb the hero rankings.

A-Class hero Baek Eun-hwa, meanwhile, was tearing through a frantic schedule of activities that had nothing whatsoever to do with actual hero work—Association visits, commercial shoots at the studio, appearances at event after event.

And the Team Leader of the Hero Association's Welfare Bureau was simply working. An ordinary day, like any other.

Beep...

"......"

While those sunlit days unfolded above, a black snake moved silently through the world below.

Places ordinary people would never set foot. Dank, dark, silent, filthy. The commission that had come to the Under Hero who haunted such places was this: the annihilation of an organization that manufactured and distributed "unconventional medicine."

Not the kind of thing you could pick up at a regular pharmacy or hospital. These people intended to flood the open market with dangerous drugs, and to stop them, Black Viper—Saran—began making her way slowly through the sewers.

She moved through a space where no one was ever supposed to walk, a place of darkness broken only by the faintest scatter of lights, and she made not a single sound. The vast passages of the underground waterways stretched out around her. She checked them one by one, calling back the intelligence she had been given.

Most of it was nothing special. If anything, it was no different from the countless commissions Saran had carried out over years of this work, and she explored the interior with the ease of long familiarity.

She placed each foot with exquisite care—softly, smoothly, so that not even the wet slap of water would give her away—and yet her direction never wavered.

"Urgh..."

The moment she closed to within a few meters of her target's back, her dagger punched into his throat. One down, in an instant. She caught the body before it could fall and make a sound, then eased it gently to the floor.

"One."

With that count, Saran's commission began in earnest. She had buried every sound. Her movements carried caution, certainty, and a razor's edge, and there was no reason at all to stop.

A choked gasp. A wet gurgle. A breath cut short. One by one, slowly, matching the intelligence she had been given, Saran cleaned them up—and there was nothing in what she did that anyone would ordinarily call the work of a hero.

It was cruel. It was brutal. She was killing people, one after another. Criminals, villains, call them what you like—the fact remained. Anyone watching her through ordinary eyes would have found her terrifying. That was simply the truth of it.

"Kh...hh..."

"Thirteen."

But Saran did not particularly care. Killing criminals so vicious that ordinary law could barely touch them—killing them with a thoroughness that bordered on the frightening—was the commission she had been given. It was her job. She was only doing what needed to be done.

"Fourteen."

She was only carrying out the commission.

The powerful sensory gifts unique to her snake blood, including the ability to read even temperature, were useful beyond anything one might imagine, and her power granted her advantages in speed, deception, and raw strength. With that alone, killing people in an instant was not difficult.

"......"

More and more blood was mixing along the blade of Saran's dagger. There was no reason to dwell on it. When she considered the countless atrocities this company called Seongsang had committed, the fact that the Association had put in an order at all meant this was nowhere near an ordinary case.

"Ghh...!"

This was still a world with ordinary police, and with police special forces. It was a world where Korean names, Eastern names, and Western names mixed freely, where cultures bled into one another—but garden-variety thugs were something those police could handle.

Which meant that the arrival of an Under Hero like Saran was, by definition, anything but ordinary. The line between the police and the heroes was perfectly clear. Threats dangerous to large numbers of people. Villain organizations made up ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the Awakened.

"Seventeen."

So the fact that she brought nothing but a clerical attitude to the killing was only natural. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠She had been doing this work for years already, and she knew more than well enough that every last one of these people was garbage.

To Saran, what she was doing now felt ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ordinary—nothing more than a service to the world. It was a job, so of course it did. Anyone might harbor doubts when they first started working for a company, but visit the same place for days on end and even this kind of thing starts to feel like simple, repetitive labor.

"Twenty-five."

She kept repeating it. Thuck. Thuck.

Once she had finished off every member of the organization—some forty people in all—she arrived at the cultivation rooms and drug labs they had built into the sewers. With everyone already dead, it was not going to be particularly difficult.

"Point A, Point B... Point D."

After that, as if it were the most familiar thing in the world, she left specialized charges at each of the facilities, struck a match, and set a small flame to the powder. The facilities began to burn at once.

Problematic as the place was—criminal as it was—the fact that it sat beneath the sewer system meant she could not bring it down entirely. As a first measure, burning the facilities was the only option she had.

The fire caught with a hungry roar. Precisely five minutes. Once the specialized charges ignited, the facilities the crime syndicate had cultivated were thoroughly ruined, and in the process the surrounding ceiling and floor took no meaningful damage at all.

"Hmh..."

And just like that, the commission was over. She had killed a number called forty in the space of a breath, and she had finished by burning them along with their facilities.

An ordinary person would have had a much larger reaction, no matter which direction it went. But Saran had already been worn so thin there was nothing left to wear away. Rather than any great feeling, all she had was the thought that the commission was finished, and that she could go home.

"...It's done."

She slid the dagger back into its holster, refastened her various tools along her belt, and slowly drew the phone from her pocket. She still had to wait until the Association's Cleanup Bureau arrived, and the only things around her were a handful of corpses, bloodstains, the smell of iron, and the stink of smoke. So she took out her phone, the way anyone would.

"......"

The phone she had taken out held a familiar name—lately, the only person she exchanged messages with at all—and a string of notes from her.

It was not just today. Commissions had suddenly piled up on Saran in recent weeks. Even if she had not wanted the work, there were too many requests landing in her inbox to refuse them all. The result was this: she had been forced to spend a full two weeks on commissions and nothing else. That she had had to kill a great many villains and criminals in the process was only to be expected.

In a world where villains existed—criminals who surpassed anything ordinary—and where heroes existed to stop them, the truly rotten ones had a way of exceeding every prediction. The Seongsang Corporation that Saran had cleaned up today was a perfect example. In the course of selling their various drugs they had amassed a record packed with countless assaults on civilians, murders, and every other kind of vicious crime. Trying to put every last one of them in prison would have strained the system past its limits.

Which was why the method the Association had come up with was Under Heroes like Saran.

"...Hm."

And so Saran was already worn down as far as a person could be worn down. Years of life as an Under Hero. The countless vicious criminals she had met in that life. The way something in her had been shaved away, little by little, every time she turned them into corpses. It was only natural. By now she was used to the sensation of killing people—or at least used to the Association telling her to wipe out a criminal organization.

But...

"...Dinner."

Lately, those worn-away feelings had begun to stir ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠again. Just a little. A very, very little. And of course the cause was her counselor, Charlotte.

Saran had always done this work. She had always spent her time in places like this. To someone like her, Charlotte could only ever be a strange person. Bright. Clear, like an open sky. She carried an image Saran had no familiarity with at all.

"...This should be fun."

So of course she found herself thinking even that.

In a sewer where not a single sound reached her, Saran sat in a chair the criminals had left behind, the zipper of her costume eased down just enough to take a little of the pressure off her chest, and went on exchanging messages with Charlotte.

"We're with the Association. Are you the hero who completed the commission?"

"They're all dead. I burned the drugs too. Just clean it up."

"Yes. Thank you for your work."

Saran did not leave the sewers until several dozen Cleanup Bureau staff had arrived.