The Strongest Woman on Earth (2)
In the heart of downtown Seoul, Han Yuri, Kim Yerin, and I stood on a building rooftop and looked down.
It was a dizzying height—one you would never walk away from intact if you fell. The wind howled like a thing possessed, and even in the middle of summer the place felt cold. Kim Yerin was clomping along the railing like none of it bothered her in the slightest.
"Sehyun. She's around here, right?"
"Yes. Definitely."
"Well, your word's always right."
I triggered the skill.
Fancy Meeting You Here—It Must Be Fate
According to it, she had just bought a drink at a café seventy-five meters away and was walking in this direction.
But did we really need to be on top of this building? I was genuinely curious.
"Why here, of all places?"
"Because it's safe."
"Safe from what...?"
"From Baek Hanyoung. This is the perfect spot to hide. Anyway, how many meters now?"
"...She's right on top of us."
Ambushing Baek Hanyoung from a rooftop like this. In the middle of downtown, no less. What if people died? I was still a law-abiding citizen at heart, and I didn't want anyone getting caught in the crossfire.
"Yuri?"
"Attack now."
Han Yuri, who had been staring downward the entire time, gave the signal. Kim Yerin pulled out several puppets.
At a glance they looked like the mannequins you would see in any department store. But they were supposedly harder than titanium alloy, and loaded with all kinds of weapons that ignored the laws of physics.
"Fire!"
The puppets rose into the air and unleashed every weapon they had at Baek Hanyoung. Everything from ordinary missiles and machine guns to completely unrealistic things like laser beams came pouring down.
BOOOOM! A deafening roar, and smoke billowed upward. The whole area had to be wrecked. And the people walking the streets...?
"Just as I thought. She evacuated them first."
I had known Baek Hanyoung would be fine after taking a hit like that. Regular people, though... they were fine! Of course, I never would have known if Han Yuri, with her excellent eyesight, hadn't told me.
She had probably used that lightning-fast, razor-precise strength control of hers to move every civilian who might have gotten caught in the blast to a safe place, then come back. There was a reason they called her the strongest A-class hero.
"Might as well dump everything on her before she counterattacks."
Kim Yerin didn't flinch at all. She summoned even more puppets.
Their mouths yawned wide, and the laser batteries mounted inside hammered the smoke where Baek Hanyoung had to be, over and over.
KUUUUNG! Smoke spread in every direction. The rumble of several buildings collapsing reached us. Baek Hanyoung was probably racing around down there, focused entirely on rescue work. And Kim Yerin was using that window to pour on the attacks without restraint.
"There shouldn't be anyone left in the area now..."
"She'll be coming up to hit us soon."
Right on cue, a massive chunk of building debris punched through the smoke and came flying at us. I made the mistake of looking down and nearly had my skull caved in.
Someone bellowed in a beautiful, honeyed voice, and debris weighing several tons rocketed upward like meteors. Most of it missed. The unlucky puppets that got hit shattered into pieces.
"What a meatheaded bitch..."
"P-Professor! She's coming up!"
"I know!"
I looked down the side of the building and witnessed something I could not believe.
Baek Hanyoung, blood streaming down her head, was scaling the wall at high speed with a face that said she was absolutely furious.
Is that even physically possible?
Were all Superhumans just like that? My whole body was shaking. And I was supposed to conquer something like that...!
You must!
Fuck! If you're not going to help, then don't say anything!
"Eat this before you get here!"
Every weapon mounted on the puppets fired missiles at Baek Hanyoung as she climbed. Fat lot of good it did. She kept coming like someone had thrown pebbles at a concrete wall, without so much as a flinch.
"How dare you... How dare you pull this shit! You ready to die?!"
"What a complete meatheaded bitch..."
Baek Hanyoung reached the rooftop. It felt like coming face-to-face with a wild beast in the middle of the forest, completely unarmed. She had wounds all over her body, but if she decided to, she could kill the three of us in an instant.
"...Kim Yerin?"
"Took you long enough to recognize me."
"What are you doing in a place like this... Did you—did you do this?"
Disbelief and shock colored her voice. Sure, she had sold out a friend's personal information because of the paparazzi, but she clearly could not believe a classmate would try to kill her.
"So you joined a terrorist group after all? How much gambling debt did you rack up?"
"..."
"It's not too late. Surrender. I don't want to kill a classmate with my own hands."
Just as I had expected, Baek Hanyoung did not think she could lose.
"You always were like this. Acting like you're the most righteous person in the world. Always preaching."
"I was preaching? This is advice. And it's about to become a warning. Your call."
Honestly, I was scared shitless. A woman who could reshape the terrain with a single punch was threatening us. Pretty much nobody on earth wouldn't be scared.
But Kim Yerin, an A-class herself, didn't back down. She looked Baek Hanyoung dead in the eye and smirked. Then she yanked me in close.
"Stay right there. You so much as twitch and this kid dies."
"...What?"
"This isn't a proposal. It's a threat."
Ah. So that was the play. From Baek Hanyoung's perspective, I was just a regular civilian. A woman overflowing with justice would naturally try to save me.
"Sorry. Mind if I rough you up a little?"
"Huh...?"
"It's for the plan. The plan."
One of Kim Yerin's puppets morphed its hand into a blade. It scored a line across the floor, then pressed the edge to my throat.
"Don't move."
"You...!"
"What do you think happens if I push in? It'll split just like that floor, won't it? Human muscle and bone are a lot more fragile than you'd think."
The floor the blade had cut through was sliced open like tofu. If it so much as grazed me...!
"You don't want this cute little hostage dying to a molecular cutter either, do you?"
"...W-what do you want me to do."
"Put your hands up. And don't resist. Simple, right? Even that dolphin brain of yours should be able to follow."
"Fine. Let the kid go."
It worked! Professors really are professors. I couldn't believe this actually worked. I was buzzing with excitement—though that might also have been because the blade was hovering a hair's breadth from my throat.
"Now that you've stopped resisting..."
"Yuri!"
"Yes, Professor."
CRACK! Han Yuri appeared from behind and smashed Baek Hanyoung across the back of the head with everything she had. Even an A-class Superhuman couldn't tank a proper hit from a physical powerhouse.
"Ugh!"
"She didn't even pass out? Impressive. Seriously impressive. Yuri, keep stomping."
"Yes."
CRUNCH! CRUNCH! I had heard that stomping is the most effective technique when someone is already on the ground. A move that's dangerous even when a regular person uses it—and she was driving it into the back of Baek Hanyoung's skull over and over with the monstrous strength of a B-class Superhuman.
Baek Hanyoung's body went limp. A typical A-class would have died from that attack just now. But Baek Hanyoung's steel body held up just fine.
She's not even human...!
It was overwhelming strength. If we had fought her head-on, it wouldn't have even qualified as a fight.
"Alright. Sehyun? Time to take her home and turn her into a cocksleeve."
"Y-yes!"
"Our Hanyoung's at least going to get her strength back, huh? All thanks to picking the right classmate, she finally gets that cock she's been dying for."
Kim Yerin muttered like a complete villainess, grinding her heel into the back of the fallen Baek Hanyoung's head. And honestly, she wasn't far off.
"Nngh..."
In a damp basement, Baek Hanyoung sat up through a wave of intense pain.
Her last memory... she couldn't quite recall. She remembered facing off against Kim Yerin. But right after that, everything had gone dark, and then it just... cut off.
"Where is this..."
"Oh, you're awake?"
Kim Yerin approached the newly conscious Baek Hanyoung, dressed in something extremely revealing and seductive.
"...Kim Yerin!"
"Ah, don't move. It's dangerous."
"What...?"
"Not for you. For him."
That was when Baek Hanyoung realized she was locked inside a steel cage.
And with a man... the same person who had been taken hostage just a little while ago.
"You'd bend this cage like taffy and walk right out, I know. Then we'd all be dead. So I took out a little insurance."
"Insurance..."
"The guy next to you is that insurance. The second you use even a little bit of force, the bomb around his neck goes off automatically. You don't want that either, do you?"
"Kh..."
"Smart girl. Our justice-obsessed Hanyoung would never sacrifice an innocent civilian, would she?"
And so began the corruption of a hero overflowing with justice.