Phantom, Don't Worry About the Aftermath—Do as You Please
Negus.
A villain alliance with its headquarters in China. Name the dangerous villain organizations of East Asia, and this one would sit comfortably inside the top five.
Selling drugs in China, selling people, killing people, running prostitution, and still living long enough to found an alliance—say how hard that is, and just how unhinged these people had to be, and you would talk yourself hoarse.
China is a non-hero state. It does not legally recognize heroes, and if anyone goes around proclaiming himself one, his body has a way of becoming a mystery.
So what happens when villains show up blasting superpowers?
In China, commit a crime with a superpower and you can be executed on the spot. Among the public security forces, separate units of officers who wield superpowers themselves have been organized, so disposing of villains is no particular problem. And yet Negus had made its name in that very China and operated in the open without a shred of shame.
Whether the country could not catch them or simply would not, no one could say. The nerve it took to become famous, at least, deserved a nod.
Not that playing the villain in Korea was easy either.
Just as a war on crime had broken out in the real world, a Crime War had broken out here as well. The state set its mind on beating down every last villain and enacted laws governing superpowers. So Korea, like China, was a non-hero state. If you wanted to do a hero's work while using superpowers, you became a police officer or a soldier. Barring some special license that permitted their use, superpowers were illegal.
It was not as severe as China. Even so, Korea was a hard place for a villain to live.
If you wanted easy, that was Japan.
Japan was a hero state, and between manga, light novels, and anime, people felt little resistance to the idea. Let someone use a superpower and everyone cheered. But Japan was Japan. Look beneath the surface and it was rotten to a formidable degree. Superpowers had come fully into the open in the early twentieth century, and if you recalled the atrocities Japan committed in that era... well.
"Well. We're still a long way from going that far."
China, or Japan? If I wanted the world for a stage, I was nowhere near ready. This was still the Part One point in the story. That business would be Part Two.
"Which means the problem now is how to handle these people..."
I looked out at the harbor in the distance. It belonged to Unjinhoe. They had thrown up walls so the place could not be seen from outside and posted guards at the entrance. The security was strict enough that anyone passing by might mistake it for a military base.
"Would you look at that. How hard did they squeeze Korea to put up a base out here?"
Was this that famous spirit of the continent? The thought that harbors just like this also existed in Busan and on Jeju was enough to leave a man speechless.
"A comic turned real. Unbelievable."
I sent Dan Miryu a text.
I checked the time. Five minutes until midnight.
I switched the phone off.
Right now, in Busan, Dan Miryu would be looking at much the same view. Unlike me, he had gone with Mi Soryeong, but the Busan branch was larger than Incheon, so two of them was the right call.
A few days ago he and I had talked for a long time—what to do about Unjinhoe, what to do about Negus. We turned the plans over and over, and this was where we had landed.
"Is this even a plan...?"
A handful of people, trying to drive out the largest villain organization in Korea. Did that even qualify as sense? Unjinhoe was no neighborhood gang. But Dan Miryu had told me to trust him, and to trust the Dan Clan. That, he said, would be enough.
"Then what was the point of everything the protagonist went through?"
And the Dan Clan, for that matter... Well. If it was easy and fast, that was fine.
"Time to take out the trash."
Unjinhoe or Negus, I was clearing out both. Stick on whatever epithets you liked; at the end of the day these were only Part One villains. More dangerous than Sword? Hard to say. Sword had at least been useful as a combat-power gauge. These people were not even that.
An organization's strength could be as great as it pleased. This was still a hero comic—a place where one person's power casually crushed the power of a group. If the individual was weak, it did not matter how big the organization grew.
"How far can I push this?"
Moonlight from the sky lit the ground, but darkness is a phantom thief's friend by right. I melted into the dark.
The harbor was packed with people. A ship had come in and was setting its stacked cargo down on land, and the men waiting there hauled the freight at a brisk clip.
"Damn it. Of all times for a run, dawn."
"You think I like it? Bad enough they sent us to a pissant little country like Korea."
"You there!"
Bang! Bang!
Two holes opened near the men who had just been grumbling. The pair who had been rattling on in Chinese flinched and shook.
"Move it if you don't want to die!"
"Eek!"
"I-I'm sorry!"
The two scrambled to shift the cargo. Everyone else at work moved even sharper than before.
"Boss. Even so, a gun is..."
"Shut up. I'm in a bad mood."
Wirungxiang, the man who had fired, glared at his aide.
"Fuck. Why is Korea suddenly a mess?"
The order from above had given him a headache. Out of nowhere, the higher-ups were sending an executive to Korea. He ran the Incheon branch, and he did not like headquarters stepping in with its own hands. He lagged behind the Busan branch, but Incheon was still a fine seat to live off, and this meant that seat now hung like a candle in the wind.
Wirungxiang fretted over what to do with the money and goods he had quietly skimmed.
Get caught, and I die. No question.
He would not even be allowed a death. They would grind him into fish paste.
He ground the cigar between his teeth.
"Uh, boss?"
"What?!"
He had disliked the aide glancing this way for some time. The man was not a child. What was he so nervous about?
"It's just... there seem to be fewer of them than before."
"Why would there be fewer? You screwing with me?! Want me to pull those eyes out?!"
So that was the worry. That little thing.
Wirungxiang cracked him on the head.
"Guh—!"
"If you've got time to stare at that, finish the work early. I'm going in."
"Y-yes, sir."
He moved to hit the man again, then stopped. Getting the work done was the aide's only use. Wirungxiang went into the office set up at the harbor.
The aide raised a middle finger at his back.
"Drop dead, you fucking bitch."
"You may sleep for a little while."
"...What?"
The thought went no further. All at once his vision spun.
"Kh... uh."
"Thank you for your hard work, nameless gentleman from China. Sleep a moment."
The last thing the aide saw was a Smiling Mask.
I laid the nameless Chinese man gently on the ground.
"Why is this so easy?"
From the infiltration to the inner reaches, it had barely taken any time. Because I was a phantom thief, was that it? I called up the face of the man who looked to be in charge here.
"At this rate I could grab the boss inside and shut them down one by one..."
Tick. Tick.
I flicked my fingers and turned it over. But did I have to do it that way?
"That's no fun..."
I called myself a phantom thief. What was the use if I did not act like one? A phantom thief does not hide. He only ever shows himself.
"The place is walled in on every side anyway. Getting out won't be easy."
A phantom thief must always be spectacular. Creeping through the damp dark? That is not a phantom thief. That is a common burglar.
Dan Miryu's words drifted through then.
After that, there was no holding back.
"Shall I make a spectacular mess of it?"
I stopped the finger I had kept flicking. The instant it stopped, the lights flooding the whole harbor died.
"What? What's going on!"
"A blackout? Somebody shine a light!"
Confused movement. A commotion. Sweet.
I threw myself into that field of chaos.
Thud!
The lights flared back on, swung wildly, and came to rest upon the highest warehouse in the place.
"Ladies and gentlemen!"
Every face turned to me, blank.
"Members of Unjinhoe! Flustered by this sudden turn of events, are we?"
With exaggerated gestures I moved from one roof to the next. The light followed, pouring over me bright.
"As well you should be. After all, I have made my entrance!"
"Who the hell is that bastard? Kill him, now!"
The man I had taken for the one in charge threw a window open and shouted.
Rat-tat-tat!
At the order, bullets stormed toward me.
"Oh my! What a rough welcome this is!"
I laughed and leapt for the sky. A fiercer rain of bullets came up at me where I hung in the air. I spun through them and, rather than fall, stood planted against the heavens.
"You really ought to give a man the chance to introduce himself, don't you think?"
"He's alone, you bastards! Quit standing there and shoot!"
"Now then. First, let us all set down those noisy little tools."
I flicked my fingers.
Every gun that had been aimed at me turned into a flower.
"What?!"
"What the hell is this guy!"
I walked across the air. In truth I was crossing a bridge of thread joined to thread, but that was not what their eyes would see.
"Quiet at last, are we? A pleasure, members of Unjinhoe."
I took my place in the middle of the moonlight. Moonlight made the finest spotlight of all.
"I am a phantom thief. Phantom."
I offered the dumbstruck crowd an extravagant bow.
"Pleased to make your acquaintance."