A Kidnapping Gone Wrong
“Well, I did kidnap her, but… it’ll be fine, right?”
The Rank 8 villain Jumper, whose ability was teleportation, wore an uneasy expression.
The girl before him remained special even now. Despite being in the middle of a kidnapping, she still wore that pure, innocent look without the slightest hint of fear.
A girl escorted by an ability user who looked to be at least Rank 4. Every little mannerism of hers proved that her identity was anything but ordinary.
And yet—
“Damn it! Whose kid is this supposed to be?!”
The villain who had carried out this kidnapping with Jumper—or more precisely, the Rank 5 villain Shadow Hunter who had used Jumper to orchestrate the whole thing—bellowed in frustration.
No matter how hard he tried, Shadow Hunter simply could not figure out which family Cheon Seo-ah belonged to. Was she even the child of an influential house to begin with?
The only clothes she wore were a plain black dress, and even that didn’t look particularly expensive. Still, Shadow Hunter couldn’t give up.
He had planned to pull off one big score this time, pin the crime on Jumper, and wash his hands of the whole business. At this rate he would walk away with nothing. Worse, if things went sideways he might end up locked away in Tartaros, the prison reserved for only the worst villains in the world.
Of course, all of that only mattered if the girl in front of them really was the child of some powerful family.
While Jumper fretted on his own and Shadow Hunter fretted on his, the girl who had kept silent until now finally spoke.
“At this point, even I’m starting to get a little annoyed.”
The moment Cheon Seo-ah opened her mouth, both villains’ eyes snapped toward her.
Snap.
Snap-snap.
The ropes binding her hands and feet simply broke apart and fell to the floor. Jumper and Shadow Hunter’s eyes flew wide.
Those ropes were no ordinary bindings. A normal person without any ability could not leave so much as a scratch on them even with the sharpest blade; they were that tough and resilient. To snap them so easily would take an ability user of at least Rank 7.
That little brat is an ability user?
Shadow Hunter screamed the thought inside his head and found himself inching backward without realizing it.
Something was wrong. Wrong in the worst possible way.
From everything they had observed, the girl in front of them had looked like an ordinary child with no powers at all. Even if a Rank 4 or higher ability user stayed glued to her side, they had assumed it was just a mercenary hired by some rich family to protect a powerless daughter. That was why they had broken their usual rules and gone ahead with the kidnapping.
Meanwhile, having freed herself, Cheon Seo-ah slowly rose to her feet and looked the two villains over—Jumper and Shadow Hunter.
“I see. So that’s how it was.”
After sweeping her gaze across them she muttered something neither of them could understand, and the confusion in their eyes only deepened. Seo-ah paid their reactions no mind whatsoever and instead tipped her head back to study the sealed ceiling.
“Still, this is lucky. I’ve actually gotten closer to ‘home.’”
What the hell is she talking about?!
Shadow Hunter forced down the urge to shout. Every single word that left her mouth made no sense. Right now he simply needed to salvage a situation that had gone spectacularly off the rails.
As he carefully watched her face and prepared to use his ability—
“First, shall we clear away that annoying bug?”
Seo-ah suddenly smiled and spoke. Those eyes of hers locked onto Shadow Hunter.
Unlike the pure expression on her face, her pupils held not a single emotion. They were simply dyed black, as if one were staring into a bottomless abyss.
The instant his gaze met hers, Shadow Hunter was seized by the illusion that he had been dropped into the middle of the universe.
A black cosmos studded with thousands—tens of thousands—of enormous, beautiful stars. Yet anyone who looked closely would realize those were no stars at all.
Every one of those brilliantly colored lights was a gigantic eye the size of a star. And every last one of those countless eyes was staring straight at Shadow Hunter.
Aaaah!
Aaaaaah!
Aaaaaaaaaaah!
Beneath the simultaneous gaze of thousands upon thousands of colossal eyes, Shadow Hunter stood in the middle of that cosmos screaming for his life.
Meanwhile Jumper urgently shook his partner’s body.
“Snap out of it! What’s wrong with you?!”
The Shadow Hunter reflected in Jumper’s eyes was far from normal. His clouded, unfocused pupils stared blankly into empty air. Drool ran freely from his mouth as he did nothing but mutter the same word over and over: “Save me…”
He looked no different from a broken wreck whose mind had completely collapsed. Watching his comrade transform into that ruined state in the blink of an eye, Jumper’s own eyes filled with pure terror.
At the same time—
“S-save me! I’m sorry! I was wrong!”
Jumper flung himself to the ground before Cheon Seo-ah and cried out.
Thinking back, everything had been strange. No matter how strong a Rank 4 bodyguard might be, the child of an influential family would never have only one escort. Even if only one was visible, there should have been others watching from the shadows—yet their kidnapping had succeeded with absurd ease.
No, the kidnapping itself had been the real problem. Someone who could casually snap ropes that Rank 7 ability users would struggle with, someone who could shatter a person’s mind simply by locking eyes with them… would allow herself to be kidnapped by the likes of them?
Only then did Jumper understand why the girl—Cheon Seo-ah—had willingly let herself be taken.
From the start their little operation had posed no threat to her at all. Far from a threat, the entire chain of events had been nothing more than a form of entertainment to her.
Seo-ah looked down at Jumper, whose face was a mess of tears and snot as he kept begging for his life, and offered him a gentle smile.
“You were simply deceived by that foolish bug. Did you know? The moment that insect finished kidnapping me and collected the ransom, he planned to leave you as a scapegoat and run away alone.”
“What…?”
Jumper’s face twisted in confusion at her words. Use him as a scapegoat and run? The Shadow Hunter he knew would never do something like that. After all, they had operated as a two-man villain team for nearly six years.
Reading those thoughts, Seo-ah spoke again with a soft smile.
“And it would actually be better for you to die by my hand right here. Do you have any idea who the girl you kidnapped really is?”
Who she was? If they had known that, this whole mess would never have happened in the first place.
As Jumper looked up at her with that thought in mind, Seo-ah answered in a low voice.
“The Agent. Hyeolrangje. Maraseung. Geomma. The Heart Devourer. Blood Master. Disaster. Asura. And Chilgeomje.”
…?
Jumper’s expression grew even more bewildered. The names she had just listed were so famous that even a three-year-old would recognize them—the nine most terrifying villains who stood at the absolute peak of the worst villain organization in the world, the Illuminati.
“W-why would you mention them…?”
“Because I am the one who sponsors those ‘children.’”
…!
At her answer Jumper’s eyes nearly split open. He had missed her calling them “children,” but he heard the part about her sponsoring them with perfect clarity.
Of course, the phrase “I receive their sponsorship” was little more than a convenient cover story for Illuminati villains who did not know Seo-ah’s true identity. And a mere Rank 8 like Jumper could never know the organization’s inner workings. Even so, he could tell her words were true.
No ordinary human would dare utter the Illuminati’s names so casually. Anyone capable of doing so could only be someone under their protection.
Therefore—
“Do you understand what I mean now?”
Nod, nod.
At her next question Jumper could only hang his head in despair. Even if she spared him here, the Illuminati would never leave alone the man who had kidnapped the girl they sponsored. In fact, they had probably already identified exactly who he and Shadow Hunter were, where their hideout was, and where they had brought the girl. For all he knew, an Illuminati pursuit team was already racing toward this place.
No matter that his ability was teleportation—he was still only Rank 8. There was no escaping the Illuminati’s reach. If they caught him, the things they would do would make him beg for death.
Looking at the despairing Jumper, Seo-ah whispered gently.
“So, as a mercy for someone who was merely used, I will grant you a kindness.”
Mer…cy…?
Was she going to spare him? Protect him from the Illuminati?
For a fleeting moment hope bloomed in Jumper’s eyes.
Th-that’s right! I was just used! I’m only Rank 8! The one who planned and led this whole kidnapping was that bastard lying there!
Clinging to that scrap of hope, he looked up at Seo-ah—
“Don’t worry. You won’t feel any pain at all.”
The instant her whisper ended, the body of Jumper—whose eyes had been full of hope—was compressed in a single moment into a tiny, perfect sphere.
“You’ve arrived?”
High atop a skyscraper, Cheon Seo-ah sat perched on the railing, looking down at the streets far below as she spoke.
“This humble monk greets Lady Cheon Seo-ah.”
Behind her stood Maraseung—one of the nine most dreaded villains—who had fought fiercely for the right to carry out the mission of rescuing her.
“You handled things rather loudly.”
“My deepest apologies. When this humble monk heard that Lady Cheon Seo-ah had been kidnapped, the rage boiling inside me simply could not be restrained.”
“I’m not scolding you.”
As Maraseung bowed his head deeply, Seo-ah answered. In her eyes lay the place where, mere minutes earlier, she had been held—a small building that had now vanished without a trace.
Well, not entirely without a trace. A gigantic handprint was carved into the ground where the building had stood, and the heroes who had rushed over at the sudden disaster could not hide their shock.
The only villain they could think of who could erase an entire building while leaving behind a colossal handprint was Maraseung, one of the nine worst villains in existence.
In any case—
“Your mastery of the Mara Great Hand Secrets I taught you is quite impressive.”
“It is nothing more than the grace of Lady Cheon Seo-ah… of the Heavenly Demon.”
At her praise Maraseung let out a gentle, merciful laugh.
Seo-ah watched the flustered heroes scrambling about for a moment longer, then spoke.
“Well, I think this outing has gone on long enough. Shall we head back?”
“In that case, how would you feel about visiting China, where this humble monk resides?”
“China… China, hmm. That doesn’t sound bad at all.”
At Maraseung’s suggestion, Cheon Seo-ah smiled brightly and nodded.