Teleportation
Teleportation
A vast, picturesque mansion.
Its white exterior exuded an air of modern, imposing elegance.
The neighborhood, where the wealthy cloistered themselves away, seemed designed to deny entry to ordinary people.
...And somewhere near that place, I was lying low.
The target I was after was the A-rank villain, Teleporter.
His specialty, fittingly, was teleportation.
Unlike my own flawed version, his teleportation was on a completely different level of effectiveness.
That made him a genuine teleporter, with none of the side effects I suffered after a jump. Though he did seem to have some kind of range limit.
In a way, one could call it a broken ability. No, it was simply flat-out broken. But whether that Teleporter guy was a coward or merely stupid, he only used an ability like that to rob banks.
Well, for now, at least.
If I compared the current timeline with the Original Work, we were around issue five. It was seriously the very beginning—only five issues into a comic that ran for hundreds.
Honestly, that was a relief. If I'd wound up possessing a character in the middle or later stages, the whole thing would already have been a total disaster. The author had lost all grip on the power balance, and the losers who started as small-time villains had disappeared, replaced by monsters who could each bring about global annihilation.
Even our own Seo-eun, who appeared as the final villain in the Part 3 Great Depression episode, could have brought down the entire global information network if she'd set her mind to it, but she only aimed to conquer South Korea, so things ended there.
This Teleporter. This one's a really persistent bastard. He fights Stardus early on. She catches him off guard and somehow manages to knock him out, then ships him off to prison pumped full of anesthetic. It's the only way, since he'd teleport away the moment he woke up.
Captured early on as just some small-time crook, this guy makes a glorious return in the 'Great Prison Break' episode, where every villain to date escapes. He then rises to become the enemy who torments Stardus the most.
Originally, even among villains, he was the sort who settled for small, simple pleasures, skimming money here and there. But after spending years locked up and kept sedated because of Stardus, then finally breaking out...
He lived for one thing: revenge on Stardus, the person who had put him away. The guy became completely twisted.
And I mean, teleportation. What a perfect, cheap ability for hit-and-run tactics. In the later episodes, he'd pop out of nowhere, hit her once, then bolt. Hit her, run, hit her, run...
If Stardust! had been a webtoon, the comments would have been flooded with people calling it a frustrating drag and begging for him to be killed off. Since it was a published manhwa, you couldn't see the real-time reactions, but I was sure plenty of readers had raged as they turned the pages.
And naturally, I was one of them.
So this guy had to die then, while I could still kill him.
Back in front of the mansion.
I'd parked my car nearby and was lying in wait. I contacted Seo-eun through my earpiece.
Under normal circumstances, I could handle this perfectly well on my own without bothering Seo-eun, but this particular guy was just way too tricky.
"Seo-eun, should I go in now?"
[No, bro, have you still not gone in? Just get in there already.]
"No, I mean, am I really supposed to just teleport straight into the living room? What if that bastard's in the living room when I do?"
[Sigh. How many times do I have to tell you? If he is, just throw the location tracker at the same time you fire your gun. He'll probably teleport away to dodge the bullet, but you never know. Still, the location tracker's mechanism uses spider silk, so it's faster than a bullet—it'll definitely stick to him.]
"What the hell kind of location tracker uses spider silk to move faster than a bullet... it doesn't make any sense to me."
[The bullet was made in a factory. I made the tracker myself, so of course mine's faster. It shoots out of a hole next to a silk-firing port, so the physical resistance is even lower... but whatever. Even if I explain, bro, you're a liberal arts guy—you won't get it. You're probably better off not asking questions...]
"Hey... even a liberal arts major gets the gist. Mostly. Anyway, I still don't get it. You know how in spy movies, they just bump into someone on the street to plant a tracker? Smooth and natural, like 'oh, excuse me'? Why can't we do that?"
[...First of all, the guy uses teleport to move around and never sets foot on the street. And pulling a stunt like that on CCTV would just be a bigger headache. So let's do it my way. This is the most accurate method. I'm the one who analyzed his daily routine and movement routes to set this up. He almost always teleports to leave his house, and it's impossible to predict where he'll go next. So right now, this approach is the correct one.]
"Okay, but still... isn't there a better way to attach a movement tracker than this..."
[There are more reasons you don't know about that back up what I'm saying, so just do it this way, please. Hah.]
Seo-eun's tone was so exasperated that it completely deflated me. What a brat... I was almost ten years older than her, the little punk...
"...Fine. Got it..."
When I answered her in my oddly deflated voice, I could sense Seo-eun getting a little flustered.
[Oh, big bro. What's wrong? Don't go all gloomy on me all of a sudden. We've already talked about this, and you're doing it again...]
Then I heard some murmuring in the background, and Seo-eun cut herself off. It sounded like Soo-bin next to her had just chimed in with something.
I heard a 'yeah... yeah...' and then Seo-eun came back on the line and spoke to me again.
[...Sorry. So just get in there already, big bro! There's no time to waste.]
"Alright, I got it."
I wanted to tell her to pick one form of address and stick with it, because her constant switching between 'bro' and 'big bro' was confusing me. But it didn't seem like the right time, so I held it in.
...And if I did tell her to pick one, I had a feeling she'd just keep calling me 'bro' forever. From what she'd shown me the day we first met, I figured she'd a slight fear of men, which was why she deliberately called herself a guy and referred to me that way. Did it have something to do with all the researchers in the lab being male?
Still, after a few months together, she'd gotten better. Maybe she'd realized I was harmless and had started opening up to me. Even without knowing the Original Work, anyone could tell at a glance that she was a girl... She seemed to think a short haircut alone made her look like a boy. That was kind of cute.
To be honest, the best plan would be to sneak in at night and shoot him, but a certain someone makes that impossible.
Because of 'Shadow Walker,' one of the few A-rank heroes in South Korea alongside Stardus.
With his ability, if you pull anything at night, you get caught immediately.
He's the reason almost every terrorist attack in Korea happens in broad daylight.
Bastard. If he weren't around, I could sweep through villains without a problem. But killing him just because he was a hero would weigh on my conscience, and getting rid of him would only create bigger problems. So I limited myself to working during the day.
Huh. All sorts of random thoughts were popping into my head now that I was about to enter actual combat. It felt a little like my school days, when my mind would wander the moment I sat down at my desk.
I adjusted the mask that was hanging halfway off my face.
Alright. It was time to move.
[You remember the plan, right?]
"Yeah."
Teleport from here straight into the bastard's living room.
If he's not there, search quietly and take him out silently.
If I got caught, I'd already have planted the tracker, so we would simply switch to Plan B.
"Here goes."
I took a deep breath and readied myself for teleportation.
The time for assassination had come.
***
I teleported into Teleporter's living room.
And the moment I appeared...
I saw his face?
"Ah, crap."
"Huh-ah!"
[Bro, shoot!]
We both jolted in surprise, and in the same instant, I fired the gun in my right hand while throwing the location tracker with my left.
-Bang!
After the shot, I saw he was already gone from my sight.
Not sure if I even hit him with the bullet.
God damn it, why the hell had he been in the living room? And now he'd bolted.
Well, since it had come to this, we would go with Plan B.
"Seo-eun! Did the tracker attach?"
[Yes! Big sis Soo-bin, pull up the location!]
[Got it! It's... 500 meters east of you right now!]
[You heard that, right? Bro, go!]
"No, hey, I've got side effects from teleporting this much in a row..."
[Go!]
"Argh, fine."
I jumped again.
***
I popped out roughly 500 meters away.
Wait, this is downtown?
"Aaaah!"
"Wh-what the?!"
Appearing out of nowhere in a crowded area threw me for a loop.
What the, this is the main street???
I could see the people around me panicking as a guy covered head-to-toe in a black robe and a mask just *poofed* into existence in midair.
"Uh, who is that???"
"Hey, isn't that Egostic?"
"Huh? It really is!"
The citizens were starting to recognize me.
Just as I was breaking out in a cold sweat from the panic, Seo-eun's voice crackled in my ear.
[Bro! On your right!]
My right?
I turned to the right and saw him, far off in the distance.
A man clutching his stomach, blood dripping from his body.
Oh, there you are.
And he's already been shot?
I felt a grin spread across my face without me even realizing it.
Yeah. Every now and then, things have to go the easy way.
Just as I raised my gun and was about to teleport toward him, the guy saw me and vanished again, staggering.
"Alright, you wanna do this, huh?"
And just like that, an impromptu teleportation chase broke out in the middle of Seoul.
***
"...Hello, this is the Korean Hero Association. How can I help you?"
"Excuse me? You said Egostic has appeared in the middle of downtown?"