S-Class Villain Eternox (4)
…Huh? What the hell? There's no one here but Ravi. The other heroes still haven't shown up?
Even from outside the massive prison walls the booming crashes kept rolling in, so I'd figured the backup heroes and the escapee were already deep in the thick of it. Turns out the only one who'd answered the emergency call and actually made it to the scene was Ravi.
…Well, fair enough. Heroes with high-speed flight or teleportation for long-range travel are ridiculously rare, so Ravi and I just got here too damn fast.
Besides, when it came down to pure combat, other heroes' support barely made a difference for me anyway. Whatever.
Aaaah, just wrap this up quick so I can go collapse into bed…. Exactly how much of my sleep am I getting robbed of today…?
Seriously, it was like a curse. The second my neighborhood patrol—swapped in for the convenience-store run—ended and I was finally about to crawl into bed, the phone started screaming the instant my head nearly touched the pillow. And of course it was the Minister of Ability Management on the emergency line. The thing blared like a disaster alert, so loud the goshiwon's paper-thin walls carried it straight into every room. I got an earful of midnight curses about "what the hell are you doing at this hour" before I even left.
…Except for the manager who checked my ID on move-in day and knew who I was, none of those people had the faintest idea I was a hero.
Haaah. Is this even real…? How can one person have this much rotten luck…?
Maybe it was the whole "blessing in disguise" thing in reverse. The second a real chance at retirement appeared, every miserable opposite started piling up nonstop…?
…At this rate Ravi might be right. Even I could drop from overwork any day now. Hero or not, a human still needs sleep and food to function and throw a punch. I'd gone fifteen years without managing either properly.
Honestly, anyone short of a system-conscripted pitiful victim like me—even the genuine idealists who saved people out of pure noble hearts—would be sick of this nonsense and ready to quit yesterday.
…Heh heh heh! But just a few more years of grinding and I really can walk away from this whole mess!
That's right…! The moment this goddamn hero life finally ends, I'll cash in the career for some cushy civil-service desk job where I park my ass all day and do nothing, or debut as an internet streamer and print money while half-asleep…!
Keh keh! Yeah, once that bastard system window vanishes, easy money methods will be everywhere for me!
…Aaaah, just imagining it made me so happy the accumulated fatigue felt like it was melting away.
Heh heh, perfect! So I'll just casually wipe out that pervert villain and clock out already!
While I was mulling over which retirement job would be sweetest, the pervert himself—naked as the day he was born, not even bothering to cover his junk despite the fact his clothes must have burned off in the fight—opened his mouth with absolute shameless confidence.
"Hahahaha—! Yes! At last you've come, Smile! Keh heh, I wasted a little time and now there's one annoying obstacle, but that's fine. Look at her wobbling. She's already spent almost everything."
His mouth split into a grotesque grin as he spoke to Ravi, who was glaring at him, tense and ready.
"Ah, and I'll share one amusing fact with you, girl. While I was playing with you just now… I never once used any ability except Regeneration."
"…What?! Don't talk garbage! There's no way you could overwhelm me in a reinforcement suit barehanded without Herculean Strength or Growth…!"
"Hahaha! Such a frog in a well. That was nothing but the pure power of a body tempered through tens of thousands of regenerations. Those two abilities had nothing to do with it."
Twitch. Twitch.
KWA-BOOM—!
"I-Impossible…! That speed and power really came out without any other abilities…?"
"Keh heh heh. I already told you. Dealing with you was nothing but light play…."
…Then he swelled that grotesque naked body even larger, turning into a muscle mass at least twice the size of Strong—the biggest villain I'd seen recently—and scattered every last one of Ravi's flames with nothing but the wind pressure of a single fist.
Ugh? What, was this guy always that strong…? Hmm, maybe because of that Growth thing? Yeah, even in the game he had a gimmick where the longer you dragged it out the stronger he got.
I was sure when I locked him up ten years ago he wasn't anywhere near this level. He'd leveled up a lot while I wasn't looking. Specifically, back then he'd been about the size of a little diving beetle; now he was basically a giant water scorpion…?
…Though both were still just bugs, so whether water scorpion or diving beetle, it hardly mattered.
Yeah, whatever. There's a kill order out anyway. Stronger or not, what do I care? Just erase him and go home.
So I strode toward Eternox to put down the several-stages-evolved pervert villain and stepped in front of Ravi. Then the thoroughly exhausted hero suddenly approached and whispered right next to my ear with a deadly serious face.
"Hngh…. Listen carefully, Smile. My suit's cooling system is shot, and I've only got one more flame left in me."
Fwoosh—!
"…But even if this body burns to ash, I'll create an opening with that one shot. You hit him then."
Huh…? What kind of insane nonsense is Ravi spouting right now…?
In front of me—of me—another hero was talking about "sacrifice" to take down a villain?
…No, what kind of terrifying line was that?
If Ravi actually pulled something that ridiculous, the system window's special massage would crush my heart hard enough to melt my brain and kill me on the spot.
…At least while I was present, no civilian and no hero was allowed to die. That was the "ideal hero" image this damned system demanded of me.
Mmm, the retirement door finally cracked open. Absolute zero chance I'm letting that happen. And against a two-bit punk like this, what's all this talk about creating openings…?
Eternox might be a nightmare for other heroes, but to me he was basically no different from a powerless ordinary crook.
…So before Ravi did anything stupid, I put on the perfectly natural expression of a hero whose "conviction" would never stand by and watch someone else sacrifice, and whose "strength" would never let the enemy touch him—the face I'd worn so long it was second nature—and casually wiped out her excessive worry in one go.
"Hahaha! No need for that, Ravi. You've done more than your duty. Fall back and rest. Look at that reinforcement suit of yours—it's already in tatters."
"…Ugh! Don't spout nonsense! That thing was a monster that gave even you a hard time before! And seeing how he stripped the restraint suit and broke out, he's got to be way stronger now…! I won't leave you to fight alone!"
Huh…? Gave me a hard time…? Me? Against this filthy naked old pervert?
…Ravi must be so worn out from fighting that she's been talking pure nonsense this whole time.
…Just to set the record straight, the idea of me struggling in "combat" against a villain was basically impossible. The Invincible Hero trait of the defense-game character I'd possessed wasn't some metaphor. It meant invincible in the dictionary sense. Sure, the city could still get wrecked and trigger a game-over like any tower-defense title, but this one unit with the invincible trait never lost a single hit point no matter what.
So in this reality that inherited the same rules, even if the final boss of Stage 99 became ten times or a hundred times stronger than now, none of his attacks would ever hurt me.
And while the invincible trait made defense literally infinite, this unit's attack power was also completely unhinged. Even without dumping a single upgrade resource from stage clears into him, his raw attack stat sat at roughly double the fully maxed strongest glass-cannon unit in the entire game.
…Honestly, for a gacha unit you could only pull with real money, if this hadn't been a one-man indie game with crude SD chibis that barely even had idle animations—something I was only killing time with—it never would have been allowed to ship with balance this broken. The half-day of twisting my body and grinding time into a wall that refused to clear turned into an easy ending the second I rolled one broken whale unit.
…Though of course I got isekai'd right before the actual ending, so I never saw the credits.
Anyway, no matter how strong a villain popped out, to me—plastered in the insane specs of a balance-failure cash-shop carry—they were no different from powerless civilians.
A water scorpion living in a pond could grow big enough to hunt frogs and fish all it wanted; it still couldn't put a dent in a giant aircraft carrier floating on the ocean.
…So why was Ravi under the ridiculous delusion that me fighting this guy alone would be dangerous?
Ah, wait. Is it because of that…? Did she misunderstand because of that?
Yeah, thinking back carefully… ten years ago when I arrested him, it was the first time I'd faced an enemy with that much durability and regeneration. I did drag it out longer than usual and had a bit of trouble. Normally I tapped villains as gently as giving a kid a light noogie, so he'd just regenerate without a scratch. But if I put any real power behind the punch, regeneration or not, the body would go pop and explode, so I had to carefully ramp the force up little by little to test it.
Back then my combat experience was way lower, so I had zero data on how hard to hit something that tanky. Plus there were tons of civilians watching the fight. I couldn't exactly show them Eternox bursting like a balloon in some gory spectacle.
But right now the only spectator is Ravi, and there's a kill order on him anyway…?
…So all I needed to do was persuade Ravi to fall back, slap the guy a few times until he turned into cosmic dust, and return to my narrow but cozy bed.
"Hngh…! So I'm absolutely not leaving you in danger alone! I'm an S-class hero now too, so I can definitely help—"
Stroke.
"Haha! Ravi. You're talking nonsense. Why do you think I'd be in danger?"
"Ugh, because! He was already a monster back then, and now he's way stronger than that… Hngh! Wh-what! Why are you suddenly rubbing my h—"
Pat-pat.
"Watch carefully, Ravi. When a villain with nothing to protect charges forward alone, driven only by his own desires—"
I kept stroking her head the way that always broke her stubbornness while I fed her a suitably grand-sounding line.
"—we heroes, carrying the safety of countless people on our backs, take one step that is far heavier and slower than theirs. And that is exactly how we grow larger and stronger behind them."
After calming her with that plausible nonsense, I clenched both fists tight like a hero steeling himself for a fateful battle, turned my back with a smile, and said,
"So if that guy is several times stronger than he was ten years ago…."
Grin—.
"…then the me of today is far stronger still."
And I strode forward toward the damn villain who'd dared to interrupt my sleep.