The Purest Villain
Pure evil, of course. But that indecisiveness wasn't something only Yeonhee suffered from.
— Ah… everything looks good, but I’ll take a closer look and get back to you!! Yeonhee, please send me your list of candidates too! It’d be great if you could pick a man if possible!
“Huh? Ah, um! I-I’ll look it over and contact you. Yes, yes…”
The reason Helen asked for a man wasn’t because she had a preference for them. It was simply that a party made up entirely of women tended to draw far more unwanted attention from other hunters. Especially when both Helen and Jin-gyeong were above average in looks, and Yeonhee was with them. It only made sense.
“A man… a man, huh…”
Yeonhee spent a long time scrolling through the list of applicants before finally pointing at one profile.
“H-how about this guy? He looks like the nicest one?”
‘……’
When I opened the profile of the man Yeonhee had chosen, his face alone screamed model student. He had a moderately plump build, wore neat glasses, and even had a photo attached without them. His features were rather plain. The kind of face you’d see anywhere on the street. His track record in this range, however, was impressive. He had already cleared the Lizardman Swamp more than ten times and boasted over two hundred lower-grade dungeon subjugations. A true veteran.
“He must be really strong. To have gone through over two hundred dungeons and still have such a clean face.”
It was a simple thought, but it wasn’t wrong.
‘Yeonhee’s sharper than she lets on… This bastard’s probably mid-tier even among D-grades.’
I already knew this man.
Lee Yeong-cheol. The future serial killer.
It was an unexpected encounter, but I didn’t hesitate for a second.
‘Hmm—should I just kill him while I have the chance?’
I gave a casual nod, and Yeonhee immediately sent his profile to Helen.
There were hunters known as villains. People whose sudden surge of power had unleashed the dark desires they’d kept buried inside. Each had their own tragic story that led them down that path, but what did any of that matter if they dragged innocent people into suffering?
Among them, Lee Yeong-cheol was a villain who satisfied his twisted sexual urges inside dungeons. In a way, he was the purest kind of evil. He waited until the dungeon raid was nearly over—when people were most off guard—then subdued them and fulfilled his sick needs. In my previous life, he had confessed to killing over a hundred women to satisfy his desires.
‘At this point in time… he’s probably already started killing.’
It seemed he had already settled into the habit of targeting parties made up entirely of women.
For some reason, the moment I cracked my neck and clenched my fists, Yeonhee announced that preparations for tomorrow were complete. It looked like Helen had agreed to go with the man Yeonhee picked.
“Something about this! I feel like a real veteran hunter right now! Don’t I, Ilwol?”
“Clack clack clack……”
“Hehehee~”
I wasn’t sure what part of this made her feel like a veteran, but if she was satisfied, that was good enough. Yeonhee kept grinning at me with that silly smile for a long while before finally picking up Wangwang and heading into her room.
‘Hmm…’
But I couldn’t rest even for a moment. There were still the goblin and kobold corpses, along with the big boar remains, that I hadn’t finished processing after the hobgoblin.
“Krrk?”
As I headed into the bathroom, I spoke to No. 1, who was still showing off his body to the orcs instead of doing the training I’d assigned him.
(Why don’t you try exercising instead? Your bodies will grow much bigger that way.)
“—!!”
(Exercise… what is that?)
(Krrk???)
I demonstrated push-ups to the blankly staring No. 1 and Deonni, just like I had with Ttungi. I told them to do sets of twenty, five times each, while firmly anchoring their bones to the floor.
(Twenty? One set?)
(Ah… just keep going until you feel like you’d rather die.)
I didn’t think they’d actually listen just because I told them to, but the mention of growing bigger must have motivated them. Both immediately started doing push-ups with great enthusiasm. They were so large that when the two of them got into position, they practically filled the entire living room floor.
‘Maybe it’s time to move into a proper house. There’s no way I can live with these beastly things.’
I shook my head and began butchering the monsters.
Thwack! Thud! Riiip—
Blood splattered everywhere. For a brief moment I wondered who was really closer to being a beast, but I quickly shook the thought away.
About thirty minutes later—
“Skeleton!!”
At No. 1’s deeply moved voice, I turned around to see two hulking monsters standing there, flexing their massively swollen biceps.
(Skeleton… it really got bigger… someday… I will repay this kindness!)
(Me too! It got bigger! Skeleton is our master!)
‘These crazy bastards… you really pump up that much after just a few reps?’
Were natural warriors able to grow like this with minimal effort? If so, the world was incredibly unfair. After all, I didn’t even have muscles. Come to think of it, it didn’t make sense that I even had a strength stat.
(Hey, did your strength stats go up too?)
(Muscles…?)
(Not muscles, strength!)
(Krrk? It didn’t go up.)
Just as I thought. So summoned creatures operated on a different mechanism than hunters after all. If stats could be raised through exercise, every hunter in the world would have become high-rank by now. Since the gates first opened, the only way awakeners could grow stronger was through combat with monsters. It seemed the same rule applied to us summons as well.
Clack. Clatter.
There wasn’t much deboning to do, so I finished the work fairly quickly. Until Yeonhee came out, I repeatedly opened and closed my inventory while making bombs.
‘I’ve expanded my senses as much as possible… If I keep getting used to the feeling of the inventory space opening and closing, something should come of it eventually.’
And then the next day.
Summoned to the Lizardman Swamp dungeon, I was able to meet Helen and Jin-gyeong again—the two I had only briefly seen during the dungeon break.
“Hello!”
“It’s been a while. Hehe.”
Glance. Glance.
Whoa… what a figure.
Helen was still wearing that strangely revealing, tight-fitting outfit that drew the eyes of other hunters, while Jin-gyeong, true to her thief class, was dressed lightly. They had specifically chosen a man to avoid drawing attention from male hunters, yet they dressed like this. The hearts of women were truly impossible to understand.
‘Is Helen still only using a sword? She could probably afford to put more emphasis on defense. As for Jin-gyeong, her center of gravity looks lower than before. She must have been training. Still, both of them have improved a lot since I first saw them.’
Carefully observing the capabilities of your potential party members was basic common sense. And soon, the newly joined murderer, Lee Yeong-cheol, made his appearance.
“Hello, my name is Lee Yeong-cheol. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
A polite, well-mannered man in his late twenties who looked utterly dependable. Anyone would welcome him. At the very least, he didn’t give off the impression that he’d cause any trouble.
“Oh my—the profile didn’t do your build justice. You’re a vanguard, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct. We discussed focusing on defense yesterday. Is that still the plan?”
“Yes, yes. That will be perfect.”
Lee Yeong-cheol carried a massive kite shield large enough to cover his entire body and wore chainmail that was several grades higher than the big boar leather armor I had on.
‘Chainmail made from iron thread silk…’
Iron thread silk came from a snake-type monster. When driven to the brink of death, it would create a cocoon-like chain cocoon to protect itself. The thread-like material it produced from its tail could be used to craft truly excellent defensive armor. Since they were as widespread as orcs, they were classified by rank, but because they were fairly high-tier, they weren’t easy to hunt.
‘Just looking at his gear, it’s obvious he’s robbed quite a few people. Tsk tsk.’
According to his records, he was still E-grade. There was no way he could have entered a dungeon only D-grades could access and hunted iron thread silk himself. He had probably backstabbed a D-grade hunter who had come down to farm experience in the Lizardman Swamp at their leisure and stolen the armor.
Woooong—
I could feel that his mana was surprisingly clean and well-controlled. Just as I expected, he was skilled enough to be in the middle ranks of D-grade.
“Please take care of me……”
“Ah! Summoner-nim! I’m a huge fan!”
The moment Yeonhee greeted him, Lee Yeong-cheol stepped forward and gave a deep bow as if he had been waiting for it.
“……”
Of course, Yeonhee didn’t respond. She simply pulled her robe down lower over her face, but Lee Yeong-cheol didn’t seem particularly bothered.
“I was so excited yesterday that I couldn’t sleep. Haha. You’re even more beautiful than the rumors suggested.”
‘What a load of bullshit. Ha… I should just kill him right now…’
“Yes, yes—Mr. Yeong-cheol, let’s put the personal compliments aside and focus on the job, shall we?”
“Ah! I’m sorry! During combat, I absolutely won’t let my attention wander, so please don’t worry!”
“He kinda gives off the same vibe as Hyeon-seok~”
“Sigh—didn’t we agree you’d keep your mouth shut, Jin-gyeong?”
“Yessir, yessir~”
Yeonhee kept as much distance from Lee Yeong-cheol as possible as she began walking forward.
That morning, before we headed to the dungeon, I had told Yeonhee something right before she tried to send me into the Dark Space.
(Tell them that today in the swamp, I’ll be refraining from using stealth as much as possible.)
The spirit Ran translated for me. I wasn’t sure how accurately she would convey it, but I had no other way to speak.
(Master! The skeleton guy says he doesn’t want to use stealth!)
‘That little shit…’
“Huh? Why? Are you feeling sick?”
Pfft— As if a summoned creature could have something like a condition.
(Tell her that stealth effects are reduced in the swamp.)
Ran nodded again and spoke to Yeonhee.
(He’s asking if you really didn’t know that stealth effects are weaker in the swamp?)
‘The message is getting subtly twisted…’
“Eh? Oh… it does sound familiar! Wait a second, let me search……”
Yeonhee actually looked it up after hearing that and, having found similar information, nodded.
“It’s true… Can Ilwol somehow remember even the information I only half-heard before? Anyway, I definitely remember hearing it now! But that’s not the only reason, right? Is it because you don’t want to show your stealth to other people?”
“Clack……”
“Hehe, I got it right!”
Thanks to that, I would be fighting without stealth today. Of course, I was reluctant to openly reveal my stealth ability to others, but that wasn’t the main reason today.
After walking for about five minutes and properly entering the swamp—
“Just a moment… I’ll call out my summoned creatures and then we can go.”
“Ooh……”
Lee Yeong-cheol, who had sworn just minutes ago that he wouldn’t let his eyes wander, stared at Yeonhee with wide eyes. Even Helen, who had scolded him earlier, didn’t say anything about it. It really was that fascinating a sight.