S-Class Villain Eternox (1)
"What?! You're heading out on another patrol at this hour...? Good heavens, when do you even sleep...?"
"Hahaha! The more I put my body through, the safer the citizens' nights become. Well then—I'll be off."
The goshiwon manager—the only person in the entire building who knew my true identity—watched me leave with a look of pure, awestruck admiration, even as I stepped out wearing a mask and sunglasses.
...And so, swallowing back tears, I had no choice but to turn away from the convenience store and change course.
Gahhh...! Now I actually have to go on patrol...! All I wanted was to sneak a late-night snack and collapse straight into bed...!!
On top of that, a patrol meant being outside for at least an hour. My sleep schedule—already ten minutes shorter than usual today—was about to take a serious hit.
...I could have just made up some ordinary errand and left it at that. But the hero act had become so second nature that I'd gone and blurted out the wrong thing.
Haaah.... Fine. What's done is done. Before the System starts nagging me again, I might as well get this patrol over with cleanly....
Besides—I finally had something to hold onto. A reliable lifeline that would let me quit this miserable hero life within a few years.
...There was a world of difference between drifting on a deserted island, staring at the horizon for a rescue ship that might never come, and serving out a military enlistment with a fixed discharge date already marked on the calendar.
The mere possibility that I could finally walk away from this wretched hero existence had completely changed how I faced my unfair life.
If something like this had happened last week, I wouldn't have accepted the mistake so readily. I would have spent a long while raging at—or sinking into depression over—my wretched fate... and only dragged myself out on patrol once the System started gently squeezing my heart.
...Heh heh heh! After all this suffering, once I finally hang up the hero cape for good—I'm picking a job with a five-day workweek max and absolutely zero overtime...!
Meanwhile, at that very moment—
In the deepest special isolation cell of Incheon Central Prison, where the most vicious S-class villain in the entire nation had been locked away for the past ten years.
Even thirteen floors underground, the lights blazed as bright as midday around the clock. Inside that vast solitary cell, a single villain lay bound from head to toe. Dozens of cameras tracked every twitch of that dangerous inmate, and a dedicated monitoring room—always staffed by at least two guards—kept constant watch.
There, a rookie guard freshly assigned to the post and a veteran who had spent a full decade watching this particular villain sat before the massive monitors, talking as they observed the man who, even today, was repeating the same bone-chilling ritual for the dozenth time: biting off his own tongue.
S-class villain Eternox.
"Ugh, that is seriously disgusting. Doesn't that bother you at all, senior...? That psycho's been chewing on his own tongue all day...!"
"Just leave him. If we put a gag on him, he starts scattering chunks of his own flesh all over the floor, and then it's even more of a pain. You'd have to go in there once an hour just to clean it up."
"What...? How does a guy tied up like that even tear off his own flesh...?"
"Beats me. The doctors say he uses his ability to grow cancer cells in his body on purpose—lets the flesh on his face rot away. He feels the pain same as anyone else, but the bastard's just that far gone."
...The veteran guard's face twisted as old memories surfaced—of hauling out buckets full of those rotting scraps of flesh. He glanced at the rookie gagging beside him, then returned his eyes to the monitor.
S-class villain Eternox.
That madman was already past seventy. Even forty-odd years ago, when abilities first began awakening across the world, he had already been the most infamous serial killer in the country—a man who had brutally murdered fourteen complete strangers and gone so far as to eat them. He had been serving a life sentence in the now-demolished Incheon Western Prison.
...And then that deranged murderer, who had once terrorized the entire nation, awakened no fewer than four abilities while still behind bars. He smashed his way out of the prison, poured into the city streets, and slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians in a single rampage.
...Honestly, why did a lunatic like him get four abilities when most people would kill for just one? The gods really are heartless.
As far as anyone had confirmed, Eternox's abilities were Growth, Regeneration, Herculean Strength, and Flight—four in total.
Even ordinary multi-ability users who possessed two powers at once were extremely rare. People with three or more numbered fewer than a hundred worldwide. So for a country of barely fifty million to produce a multi-ability user with four powers—one of fewer than five such individuals on the entire planet—was nothing short of astonishing.
...And none of those four were mediocre, half-useful gifts. Any single one of them would have been more than enough to aim for a professional hero career. So why on earth had heaven dumped that absurd talent on the worst piece of human garbage imaginable?
Because of that, in the thirty years before Smile finally captured the monster hiding in a rural village in South Gyeongsang Province ten years ago, the number of civilians murdered by that madman—who committed the unforgivable sin of cannibalism without a shred of hesitation—had climbed into the tens of thousands. And roughly thirty heroes, each talented and powerful in their own right, had been quite literally devoured by the beast.
...After Smile arrested him and handed him over to the courts, the death sentence had been handed down almost immediately—no drawn-out trial necessary. But thanks to the absurdly powerful Regeneration among his four abilities, nothing could kill him. Inject him with a toxin strong enough to drop a blue whale in seconds, put a bullet straight through his brain, flood his entire body with high-voltage current—none of it worked. So they had been forced to keep him alive all this time.
...That psycho. If he was going to survive, he could at least sit still. Why does he keep mutilating himself for no reason? After all the innocent blood on his hands, is he really that bitter about getting caught?
It had already been ten years since the man was locked in that cell, and yet every single day, when the guards went in to clean up the tongue fragments and blood he left on the floor... those bloodshot eyes would burn, and he would cry out Smile's name with a desperate, feverish longing.
That ghostly obsession still made the young rookie's stomach turn. Even the veteran—hardened enough by now that he could sip coffee while staring at the red scraps of tongue on the floor—sometimes felt a chill crawl up his spine.
"Anyway. Now that you've been assigned here, you'll be a lot happier once you get used to that freak's habits. ...Which is why you're going to go in there, scoop all those tongue pieces into a bucket, and clean them up."
"Uuuugh.... Just looking at it makes me want to throw up. Do I really have to clean that...?"
"What, you think a ten-year veteran like me is gonna do it? You need to get used to it fast. ...Still, I've been putting in requests. Maybe next year they'll install new flooring or give us a cleaning robot."
With that faintly hopeful reassurance—that the rookie wouldn't have to scrape up the disgusting mess forever—the veteran tried to comfort him.
"Uuugh, fine.... But that restraint suit is actually secure, right...? What if he suddenly jumps me...!"
...Realizing this particular rookie was especially skittish, the veteran took a sip of his coffee and waved the worry away.
"Come on. For a grown man, you're awfully jumpy. He's been locked in there for ten years—doesn't that tell you something? That suit was made by Director Choi Na-yul, who's with the Ability Management Department now. You've got nothing to worry about."
"Huh...? Director Choi Na-yul—the famous genius scientist who opened her own research institute at nineteen?"
"That's the one. If you wanted to cut through that thing, you'd need an industrial cutter the size of a house and about three hours of hard work."
Slurp—
"...And how exactly is a guy with all four limbs bound supposed to cut through it and escape? So quit the nonsense and get in there and clean."
"Ugh, yes sir. Haaah.... If I'd known this was what being a prison guard was like, I should've listened to Mom and looked for something else...."
...However.
The rookie guard—already showing faint signs of being a complete washout, the kind who would say something like that right in front of his senior—stepped into the cell.
Twitch. Twitch.
"Uh...? Senior. This villain guy... I don't think he's breathing...? Is he already dead...?"
"...What? What kind of garbage are you spouting now? Do you have any idea how hard we worked trying to execute that bastard? A guy who won't die even after ten years of starvation doesn't just drop dead out of nowhere, you idiot."
Twitch. Twitch.
...The moment the rookie opened the cell door and stepped inside to clean up the grotesque tongue fragments—
"Ugh, but he really does look dead...."
Twitch. Twitch!
"...Wait. Shit! What the hell is that?! ...Hey!! Forget the cleaning—get out of there right now!"
"What? Why all of a sudd—Gyaaaaah!! S-save me, sen—"
"Th-this is bullshit...! What the hell is th—Ghhhk!!"
Crunch. Crrrunch—!!
"Kk-kk-kk, kkhuhuhuh! Kyaaahahahahah...!!"
...Inside that unbreakable restraint suit, the filthy body of Eternox—who had spent every day for years biting off his tongue and carving away his own flesh dozens, hundreds of times—finally met a complete death for the first time—
"...Ahhh! Ahhh, ahhh—!! After tens of thousands of deaths... I have at last seized perfect Regeneration and Immortality."
A tiny scrap of tongue that had fallen to the floor began to grow like a plant—
...and in an instant, it formed his new body.
"Ahhh...! SmileSmileSmileSmileSmileSmiiile...!! I will kill you without fail! I will wipe that disgusting smile off that irritating face of yours! Hahahaha—!!!"