Chapter 335: No, I Said Let’s Just Enjoy the Festival Normally! (7)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 335: No, I Said Let’s Just Enjoy the Festival Normally! (7)
Before the regression.
In the 1st Timeline, there was an incident where heroes desecrated my mother’s grave.
One might ask what kind of hero would do such a thing, but it was practically the end of the world back then. The world was crawling with bastards who wouldn’t hesitate to do far worse, so the act itself wasn’t particularly surprising.
They did it simply to provoke me, and at the time, I just laughed it off.
Part of it was because the brainwashing was still strong, and since I had never even visited the grave, I didn’t know what it was supposed to look like anyway. I figured it didn’t matter if it was ruined.
In fact, since the world looked like a puppet show to me back then, I might not have even processed that it was my mother’s grave.
But funnily enough, despite laughing it off, it wasn’t as if I wasn’t angry.
No, far from being calm, I acted as if I were about to explode at any second, even though I didn’t even know who the culprit was.
I made up all sorts of nonsense excuses—that their provocation was pathetic, or that they were heroes I had to deal with eventually anyway—while sharpening my blade, determined to find them and kill them.
During that time, the Honor Faction broadcasted a video to provoke me on national television, and one of the bastards in that video was this guy, Keras.
It must have been a trap.
But it didn’t matter.
If they dug a pit and waited, I just had to crush the trap along with them.
I was seeing red, determined to make them pay for daring to provoke me.
And the Sword Ghost, who had been silently watching me, made the first move without a word.
…We weren’t on those kinds of terms back then, but perhaps she did it out of consideration, fearing I might lose my mind completely.
After all, even now I’m this angry; back then, I surely would have gone on a rampage without a care for my surroundings.
I grabbed him by the neck and hurled him out the window.
[Now then. I could have ended it right there, but that would be unfair, wouldn’t it? I’ll give you one more chance, so give it your best shot this time.]
I said that, but in truth, I threw him because I felt like I would snap his neck if I kept holding on.
He couldn’t be broken just yet.
This bastard needs to report what he experienced here today to the Association.
So, I had to be satisfied with just beating him enough to instill absolute terror.
However, the sight he showed in the next moment became yet another trial for my barely-holding patience.
He fled.
He turned around and lunged into the crowd using his superhuman leg strength.
That alone was pathetic enough, but his depravity exceeded all imagination.
“D-Don’t come any closer…!”
He took a hostage.
“O-Oh…? Oh…!”
The person taken hostage, however, seemed to think this was part of the event, reacting like a child caught by a villain in a hero show.
I wondered if he was actively utilizing the stage I had set, but seeing his frantic eyes, it seemed he just acted out of desperation.
[…An Impact Conversion Device is currently active here. Do you really think a hostage has any meaning?]
“It doesn’t nullify the damage; it just converts it into mental shock, doesn’t it? Shall we see what happens if I keep applying continuous shock?”
Sigh. This isn’t good. I need to hold back.
Seriously, these bastards have always had a natural talent for getting on my nerves.
To be honest, it’s not like I didn’t expect him to act like this.
I’ve experienced it in the 1st Timeline; how could I not know?
Taking a hostage is actually on the milder side. These are the kind of people who would do much worse if they could.
Yes, perhaps deep down, I was hoping he would act like this.
[Let go if you don’t want to regret it.]
Because I didn’t want to hold back. I wanted a justification—a reason not to forgive him, a reason to torment him even more thoroughly.
So that the last dregs of my long-lost humanity or my illusions about heroes would vanish completely, allowing me to cross the line without a shred of guilt.
“You’re the one who should—if you don’t want the hostage to get hurt…!”
[One warning should be enough, right?]
“…Huh?”
Keras is an S-rank Hero.
He’s an idiot who can’t even handle his own Talent properly, but his total Mana capacity is vast, and he’s not exactly bad at close-quarters combat.
Even the sword he uses is a famous blade, better than Ha-ni’s Seol-ah.
But even so, he’s just an S-rank who got there on the back of his Talent—the weakest among the S-ranks. He’s a mediocre man, neither faster nor stronger than Cathy Noona.
[If you’re going to take a hostage, you shouldn’t be so half-hearted about it. Where in the world is there a guy who keeps his blade that far away from the hostage?]
To me, who can move faster than he can even react, the hostage he held was no threat at all.
A scream erupted from Keras’s mouth a beat late as he realized his arm had been twisted in a grotesque direction.
[Instead of screaming, you should have tried to secure the hostage in your arms.]
When I taunted him in a calm, explanatory tone, he hurriedly tried to grab the hostage again, but his movements were still so sluggish it was laughable.
[Can you really call yourself an S-rank when you’re that slow?]
“Whoa…!?”
I lightly kicked his outstretched arm away and snatched the hostage. The cadet who had been held captive looked at me with strangely sparkling eyes.
“U-Uh? But… which side is the villain?”
Is this a relief? It seems they still believe it’s a show.
[There is no law saying a villain’s enemy must be a hero.]
“Pardon?”
[It means you weren’t rescued from a villain, but simply handed over to another villain. But you don’t seem very useful, so you may go.]
“…Can’t I stay like this just a little longer?”
…What? Is this person crazy?
Normally, I might have played along, but right now is a bit difficult.
Now that I have my justification, there’s no need to be moderate anymore.
[I have no business with you.]
And so, I released the hostage—who, for some unknown reason, looked disappointed—and approached the bastard who was still groveling.
[It’s been converted to mental shock, so it shouldn’t even hurt that much. Get up. Where did that guy go who asked if I thought an S-rank was a joke?]
“Hee…! Eek…!”
But the sight he showed was, once again, unexpected in a bad way.
As if his spirit had been broken by just this much, he couldn’t even think of standing up and began to crawl away on the floor.
…A pathetic piece of trash like this dared to provoke me by bringing up my mother?
Well, that was a point further in the future than now, so he might have been slightly better then, but I’m also weaker now than I was then.
[With such weak mental fortitude, you’ll have trouble with your hero activities. Let me help you with some training.]
I raised my leg and stepped on the neck of the fleeing man.
Even with the Impact Conversion Device, applying enough force to crush a head will render someone incapacitated for a while.
There’s a non-zero chance of death by shock, but well, he’s an S-rank in his own right, so surely he can endure it.
Just as I was grinning at the thought of popping his head and raised my leg again—
At the same time Keras’s face contorted, someone snatched him away and blocked my path.
“…Stop.”
That woman wasn’t someone I had seen often enough to call familiar.
But she was also a woman who had intervened at too many crucial moments in my life to say I didn’t know her.
[…Well, if it isn’t a person who loves blurring the lines between public and private.]
Seo Ye-hwa.
Member of the Hero Association. Rank 1. The owner of a Talent granted the special rank of SS-rank. At this point in time, she is likely the person who can be called the strongest of humanity.
And she was also a woman I despised.
“…Please, stop. This incident is not the consensus of the Association.”
It was the same when she blocked me as a child, the same the few times she blocked me in the 1st Timeline, and it’s the same now.
With that flawlessly beautiful face that hadn’t changed a bit, and even that gaze looking at me as if she were slightly sad.
Her appearance, which hadn’t changed at all in a bad way, made me angry every time I saw it.
I hated that woman who looked at me with pitying eyes, yet always stood on the opposite side to block me.
[A hero making a request to a villain… how laughable.]
“If it can be resolved through dialogue, then dialogue is the best way.”
Glancing around, I saw that most of the people nearby were looking this way with expressions of relief.
…Ah, stepping on his head to pop it might have been too provocative for a performance.
I almost made a mistake because I was excited.
No matter what, I shouldn’t go so far as to let them realize this is a real situation.
…Fine. It’s a waste, but let’s drop it. Drop it.
She probably doesn’t even know who I am.
I have the mask’s perception interference, and we haven’t really met this time around, so how could she recognize me? She likely just thinks of me as some dangerous masked villain.
At this point, there’s no chance of me winning in a fight against that monster, and while it’s a bit disappointing, this should be enough of a warning to the Association.
Given that she said it wasn’t the Association’s consensus, those Honor Faction bastards must have rushed things.
Since I’ve mostly achieved my goal, it’s right to end this while keeping an eye on the remnants so they don’t cause any more trouble.
“Please.”
But why does this woman… just as I’m trying to hold back…
“Ms. Ha-na wouldn’t want you to act like this either.”
…have to go and press my goddamn trigger button?
Many thoughts flashed through my mind.
How did she know my identity? Why is she leaving me alone even though she knows? If she knows, how much does she know?
There were so many questions, but for now, those trivial details didn’t matter.
How dare she.
How dare she casually utter my mother’s name with that mouth. I have to make her pay the price.
Ah, come to think of it, was it a similar situation when I was first defeated by her in the 1st Timeline?
I tried to avoid her because clashing would only result in a loss for me, but in the end, she pissed me off by bringing up my mother’s name.
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
She seemed to realize she had made a slip of the tongue, but to me, it only looked like hypocrisy.
[Shut up. Don’t say another word.]
Even though I was wearing a mask, my head was so hot that my persona was slipping.
“…I’m sorry. But I still…”
In the 1st Timeline as well, every single time she met me, she would mention my mother.
— Ms. Ha-na wouldn’t want this.
—Ms. Ha-na would be sad.
—Please stop for Ms. Ha-na’s sake.
—Think of Ms. Ha-na and endure.
Every time she did that, I would resist more violently and pick a fight, and after I was beaten to a pulp, she would look at me with those sad eyes and apologize, just like she was doing now.
You bitch, you don’t even have the right to pity me.
Before being a regressor, I am also a transmigrator.
I don’t claim to know everything in the world, but it means I at least know the information of those who appeared significantly in the original work.
Therefore, I knew what her Talent was.
And therefore, I knew better than anyone that she was someone who didn’t have the right to pity anyone.
[I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll take Keras’s head with me.]
“Please, don’t do this. You’ve only just…”
God, she’s annoying.
When I see that sad-looking face, I can’t help but want to contort it.
She probably thinks I don’t know anything. That’s why she dares to look at me with that face.
The one who stood by and watched my mother die. The one who didn’t stop the things she could have stopped.
That regressor bitch.
[It’s disgusting. Shut your mouth.]
Wings of shadow, formed from the Black Shadow, slashed at the hero before me.