Five-Minute Response Team
Five-Minute Response Team
"Mmm..."
Seo Ja-yeong.
A month had already passed since she'd come to live at Egostic's place.
Honestly, she'd come on a whim because the place seemed nice, but life here was far better than she expected, and she was satisfied.
And everyone was kind.
She had heard this was a villain alliance and did not know why everyone was so kind, but she did not think too deeply about it. Good was good.
Anyway, everyone was kind, and that was nice.
Especially compared to people she'd met before...
"..."
...When she was little, plenty of people had avoided her after seeing her ability.
She'd shrugged it off—let the dogs bark—but still, it was the kind of memory that soured her mood whenever it came up.
Anyway, compared to people like that, the Ego Stream members had all accepted her without prejudice. Maybe because they all had abilities of their own.
After moving into Ego House, Seo Ja-yeong spent all day sprawled in the same spot on the living-room floor. Nothing beat the warm sunlight heating her body.
And from there, she'd met and observed quite a few Ego Stream members.
First, Han Seo-eun—a kid a little shorter than her, with short silver hair. Cute. Kind. Supposedly smart, too. Ja-yeong thought she was impressive.
And Eun-wol, who was always with Seo-eun. She had long black hair, the complete opposite of Han Seo-eun’s, and sometimes wore her ceremonial robes even at home. She was cute and kind too. Since their abilities seemed somewhat similar, they talked especially often.
Lee Soo-bin was... kind of the mom of the house. If Egostic and Dain handled outside business, then Lee Soo-bin ran the household. She was always smiling, but she was a little scary. A real mom vibe...
Choi Se-hee. She was one of the few people here the same age as her. Probably why they got close fast.
Death Knight...? This black knight ghost seemed to love cleaning. Ja-yeong had helped him once too. Only once, but still.
Ha-yul and Cha-yun, was it? She hadn't seen much of them—they were busy with school.
And then there was Dain, the center of the house.
He was the person she'd observed the longest, really.
When she watched him on YouTube and when they first met, he'd definitely seemed like a lunatic. But in person, he was surprisingly normal.
She let her stream of consciousness keep running.
...Honestly, when she first got here and saw he was the only guy and everyone else was a woman, she'd wondered what the deal was. But after watching him, he didn't seem to have any ulterior motives. If anything, he seemed like he only liked that woman, Stardus.
'Do you like Stardus?'
'Yeah. I do.'
When she'd casually tossed that question at him before, he'd answered without a flicker of hesitation, so he must like her. Whether that was romantic or just general liking, she wasn't sure. For the record, when she'd asked that, she'd felt the people around her getting flustered. Hmm...
"...What're you doing?"
Just as she drifted through those thoughts, a voice from in front of her pulled her back.
She blinked herself awake. She was lying on the floor by the window beside the living-room sofa.
And Dain, who'd been working on the sofa, was looking down at her with a puzzled expression.
...Oh. Come to think of it, she'd been lying there staring at his face for a while now.
Dain had probably been wondering why she kept staring at him. She grinned and answered honestly.
"Thinking about you."
"Yeah?"
At her answer, he smirked, set the laptop he'd been working on down beside the sofa, and got up.
And he said to her, still smiling as he looked down at her lying there:
"You must be bored if you’re wasting time on thoughts like that. Come on, let’s go train again."
"Ah, no..."
"You can."
He raised a hand and used telekinesis to float her up into the air.
Ja-yeong desperately tried to grab onto the living room mat, but it was already too late.
...Dain. He was a nice guy, but he had one big problem.
Namely, he kept trying to train her ability.
She just wanted to keep lying around the house, so it wasn't exactly her thing—but somehow, when he demanded it, she found it hard to refuse. Was this landlord tyranny???
And so, she was being dragged out to the yard again today.
"Somebody save me..."
"Big sis, you can do it...?"
For the record, on her way out she'd fired an SOS at Baek Eun-wol, but all she got back was an awkward smile and some encouragement.
Everyone in this house seemed to be on Dain's side...
***
The woods in front of the house.
As I trained Seo Ja-yeong there, I thought carefully.
...How many more times could I personally go out and carry out attacks like this?
By the Original Work’s timeline, enough time had passed that once Stardus became strong enough, there would be no need for me to remain on the front lines.
Every single attack already made me feel like retiring. Maybe it was genuinely time to think a bit seriously about what came later.
'...Ego Stream's getting stronger and stronger too, after all.'
Of course, it still wasn't enough. We'd need a few more ability users to be perfect. But finding villains with good abilities and good personalities wasn't easy, so I wasn't sure how many more I could recruit.
On top of that, there was the Mango Squad—no, the Ego Squad—I was thinking of forming by gathering lower-tier villains including the Lepis Squad, and the ability-user PMC I was planning to create in cooperation with Lee Seol-ah.
Thinking about everything I needed to prepare for the power inflation of the Original's late stages made my head hurt. Plus all the other villains that would be too much for Stardus to handle alone...
Ugh, my head hurt. Fine. Retirement or whatever could wait. For now, I had an attack to prepare.
So I called out to Ja-yeong, who was flailing about.
"Stop flailing and try firing a fireball!"
"...Ugh, firebaaall—"
She stretched the word out like it was the hardest thing in the world and swung her hand loosely.
But despite the half-hearted motion, blazing violet flames shot from her palm.
"Ooh..."
The moment it touched a tree, it erupted with a violet explosion and a roar.
She could control the flame’s heat and spread, so it did not catch on anything else. It burned violet only where it struck.
See? She could do it when she tried.
She had grown far stronger than when she arrived. Behold the work of the number-one villain-studies instructor: she was getting comfortable in combat.
"Waaa..."
"Hey. Get down already..."
...She'd gotten so comfortable that she'd whipped up a violet flame vortex and was riding it.
Hm. Anyway, this should be enough.
"Hmm. I was just starting to have some fun for the first time in a while."
"Wait. The real fun is next. Let’s stage an attack."
"...Oh, finally?"
The girl who'd been flopping around showed interest for the first time.
"You're confident you can handle an attack?"
"Yeah. What’s hard about it? Shoot some flames at the hero, then run if it looks like I’m about to get caught, right?"
She said it perfectly calmly.
...As expected of someone who had launched attacks on her own in the Original Work, she understood the essence surprisingly well.
"Oh, and you know you'll be on the broadcast too, right?"
"I know. Don’t worry. I’m good at fan service."
Seo Ja-yeong said it with the faintest lift at the corner of her mouth.
...That somehow made it scarier.
Anyway. Once we got back, we finally started laying out the concrete plan.
Attack time, attack location, attack progression...
And most importantly: what Seo Ja-yeong's villain name was going to be.
"How about Black Spirit?"
I asked that first.
Well, she'd picked this name for herself in the Original, so obviously she'd go with it this time too. She'd probably be shocked and ask how I knew.
But contrary to my expectations, Seo Ja-yeong just looked back at me with an exasperated glare.
"...Wow. Your naming sense is awful."
"Big bro. Who names a girl Black Spirit...?"
Seo-eun, listening in beside us, said that like she felt sorry for me.
...This was so unfair! She had named herself that in the Original Work!
But I couldn't exactly tell them that...
Regardless of my sense of injustice, Seo Ja-yeong's villain name was ultimately decided as Mist.
...A name with absolutely no relation to Black Spirit.
Anyway, with all the preparations done, time passed.
And at last.
The time had come.
***
That evening, at Shadow Walker Kim Ja-hyun's home.
He sat in his spot, recalling his earlier conversation with Lee Seol-ah.
"Hm... So Egostic commits attacks for Stardus."
Everything she'd told him was exactly what he'd already guessed.
Egostic—he was a hero pretending to be a villain, protecting South Korea from the shadows. A hero who defended South Korea with a fervor rivaling Stardus's own.
"Committing attacks... to help Stardus grow?"
He tilted his head.
So Egostic staged attacks entirely for Stardus—to make her grow. No wonder he always attacked during the day.
"Why Stardus, though...?"
He did wonder slightly why it had to be Stardus, of course.
But after thinking for a moment, he understood. Ah! It was because he liked Stardus, obviously. Really, that was the obvious answer.
"...Sniff. To endure her hatred and still do all that just to help the woman he loves grow... Egostic. He’s..."
A man among men: that was Egostic.
As he was having those thoughts, his phone suddenly rang.
He checked—the Association.
And as soon as he picked up, what he heard was:
[Shadow Walker! The villain Egostic has launched an attack. Since it's nighttime, we need you to deploy!]
"Huh???"
He was slightly taken aback.
Why me...?
In South Korea, evening attacks meant Shadow Walker. Everyone knew that.
He couldn't possibly not know that, so why had Egostic launched an attack at night?
After a moment of puzzlement, he reached a clean conclusion.
Maybe Egostic thought it would be unfair to face only Stardus and decided to help me grow too.
Yeah. That was probably it.
Well then... I could not pass that up.
"All right! Egostic, I’m coming. Wait for me!"
Shadow Walker laughed heartily and got ready to leave.
...With a hint of curiosity about what kind of attack Egostic had prepared to face him.
***
[Since Shadow Walker has already deployed, Stardus, please remain on standby for now—]
"...."