May I Kill Them?
"Are you truly saying we should just leave her be?"
"Yeah. Just leave her alone."
"B-but...!"
"But nothing. Just let the young lady enjoy herself."
At the voice coming through the smartphone, the man broke into a cold sweat.
No—what if she actually gets hurt?!
...was what he desperately wanted to scream back, but he swallowed it down hard.
The person on the other end of the line was none other than one of the infamous Nine Villains of supreme evil.
Chilgeomje, specifically.
Among the Nine Villains, he was the one who claimed Korea as his domain—and thus, he sat in something close to the position of overseer for this Infinite Hell tournament being held in the country.
If Chilgeomje himself said to leave her alone, then leaving her alone should have been the end of it.
But when did anything in this world ever go that smoothly?
If they truly left her alone and she took so much as a single scratch?
That very day, every single person involved in this Infinite Hell—himself included—would lose their heads.
And so the man...
Fuck it. I don't even know anymore.
Resolved that he would move behind the scenes however he could—to ensure not a single wound marked the young lady's body, and that she could enjoy Infinite Hell to the fullest.
Outwardly, of course:
"Understood."
He answered in a heavy, subdued voice.
The call cut off.
"The young lady has entered this Infinite Hell."
"The young lady has?"
"Eh, nothing will come of it. More importantly..."
The villains brushed past Chilgeomje's report as if it were nothing. From the start, every last one of them knew perfectly well that nothing on Earth could put so much as a scratch on the young lady's body.
What mattered right now was something else.
"Does the young lady want to become a hero?"
Hyeolrangje groaned as he spoke. On the round table around which the Nine Villains were seated lay a single card—and that card was the very reason they had all gathered in one place: Cheon Seo-ah's Hero License.
"We each became villains training the powers the young lady gave us, sure. But that doesn't mean she has any reason to become a villain herself, does it?"
"That doesn't mean she has any reason to become a hero, either."
"But she already got a Hero License issued, didn't she? What clearer proof do you need than that?"
"Even so! How can you make the young lady into some cheap hero?! No—more than that! You lot—can any of you even fight a young lady who's become a hero?!"
"That's a little..."
At Hyeolrangje's bellow, the other eight villains shook their heads.
Come on. How were they supposed to fight the young lady?
That was basically just telling them to go die. Ethics and all that aside, if it came down to her strength, she could crush the likes of them like ants under a fingertip.
Of course, even they had once idly wondered—how strong could the young lady, Cheon Seo-ah, really be?
That thought, however, had been wiped clean after they got thrown around by her doll.
What had she called it again?
Waa Mode, was it?
Even against a mere doll with its own power deliberately restricted, all nine of them had ganged up together and still gotten thrashed within an inch of their lives. If a doll alone could do that, just how terrifying was the young lady who had made it?
And so the Nine Villains could only fret over one question: how to keep the young lady from becoming a hero.
Waaaaah!
Kill him! Kill him already!
You worthless bastard! What the hell are you doing?!
A sea of people packed around the massive cage-like stage poured out cheers and every curse imaginable.
Cheon Seo-ah sat in the fighters' waiting room, watching the bout play out—and then...
"This is... a little different from what I was expecting."
She muttered it with a look of pure disappointment. The match unfolding before her eyes was light-years away from anything she had been hoping for.
Could you even call that a match? A street-thug brawl in some back alley would have looked more like a proper contest than this.
There was one redeeming point, at least.
"Still, thanks to the abilities, it looks fairly flashy."
Both fighters thrashing around inside that prison of a stage were ability users. Infinite Hell itself wouldn't even register someone without a power as a fighter, so every competitor here had an ability of their own.
Which meant that no matter how garbage their actual fighting skill was, there was still something to look at. Roaring flames bursting out left and right, bright yellow sparks crackling and snapping—it had all the charm of a movie caked in cheap CGI.
While Cheon Seo-ah sat there disappointed by the match on the monitors, the many fighters gathered in the waiting room kept stealing glances at her.
Some showed open surprise—what was a little kid like her doing here?
Others wore greasy smiles and looks full of thoroughly unpleasant ideas.
And a few of them...
That little brat...
We have to make sure she wins without a single scratch, right?
Fuck. Money or not, this is humiliating as hell.
They muttered to themselves. Every one of them had been bought off with cash by the overseer of this Infinite Hell.
The job they had been paid for was only two things.
One: make sure not a single wound appeared on Cheon Seo-ah's body.
Two: make sure she took the championship.
In other words, if they faced her, they had to stage a defeat natural enough that the audience wouldn't notice—and they also had to claw their way up to the finals of Infinite Hell themselves.
If they failed?
They wouldn't just have to vomit back every won they had taken. They would almost certainly face Infinite Hell's own brand of retaliation.
Match after match went by, and before long, Cheon Seo-ah's turn arrived.
Step. Step. Step.
She walked the path into the massive cage-like stage. At the appearance of a girl with such an innocent face, an awkward silence settled over the spectators packed around the iron bars.
Trashy lives or not, none of them had imagined a girl like Cheon Seo-ah would ever step into a fight like this.
Her opponent's thoughts, however, were a little different.
"Heh—so they're even putting a brat like this in. Hey, ref! This is fine, right?"
The referee glanced somewhere off to the side, then gave a slight nod.
"Good. Real good. Heh heh—looks like I'll get to enjoy myself for once."
With that, the fighter looked at Cheon Seo-ah and wore a thoroughly greasy smile. No matter how you sliced it, nothing about his words sounded wholesome.
Cheon Seo-ah showed not the slightest reaction to her opponent's garbage stare. She simply turned to the referee and asked a question.
"Um, excuse me. Am I allowed to kill them?"
...?
Kill? Who?
Who was killing who?
The moment the word "kill" left Cheon Seo-ah's mouth, the man's face went stiff as stone.
"No problem at all. Anyone fighting here is already a villain or trash on that level. Ah—of course, I'm not saying a little miss like you is in the same category as these scum."
Cold sweat ran down the referee's back as he forced a smile and answered.
Still...
Killing is allowed, is it. Cleanup shouldn't be an issue, then.
As expected, this place was thoroughly enjoyable—a truly entertaining venue. If she ran into that man again, maybe she ought to give him a little token of her gratitude.
Cheon Seo-ah smiled faintly at the thought. The man across from her twisted his face and shouted.
"Hey! How long are we just gonna stand here?!"
Ahem—!
At the fighter's yell, the referee cleared his throat and raised one hand high.
At the same time—
Fight!
The moment the referee's roar rang out, the man charged at Cheon Seo-ah. His body had already shifted into that of a beast—something close to a bear. That was his ability.
Commonly called a werebear: the power to transform into a bear-form beastman. The mechanism was simple enough, but the moment he became a bear therianthrope his physical abilities multiplied several times over, so it was considered a fairly useful power.
"Graaaargh—! I'll kill you—!"
He loosed a savage roar and swung a massive forepaw at Cheon Seo-ah. Any thought of toying with her had long since vanished from his head. All that filled him now was the urge to smash the girl who had ignored him into paste.
The spectators watching clicked their tongues. Infinite Hell took all kinds, sure—but there had to be limits. How could they let a girl that young into the ring?
Everyone assumed Cheon Seo-ah was about to die under the werebear's hand.
And then—
Space itself shoved outward.
As space was forced back, the body of the man swinging his forepaw at Cheon Seo-ah was shoved back with it.
Space split—and the man's right shoulder, caught in that cut, was cleanly sliced away.
"Gyaaaaaaah—!"
Having lost his right arm in an instant, the man clutched the cleanly severed stump of his shoulder and screamed.
"Mmm, good. Strictly speaking, ability users like you aren't cultivators. But from a broader view, aren't you a kind of cultivator yourselves? So as far as I'm concerned..."
She wasn't tormenting ordinary powerless people. She was only tormenting a proper cultivator in her own right.
Either way, the tormenting and toying were the same. But wasn't it better to think of it as bullying and playing with someone who had an ability—someone who, in cultivation terms, was practicing a kind of art—rather than with a complete civilian who had nothing at all?
How many times did Cheon Seo-ah murmur Sever?
Before long, the man's body—missing both arms and both legs—was rolling across the floor. Looking down at him, Cheon Seo-ah's smile was thoroughly sadistic.
"I think I've been bottling things up. I should pay a visit to one of the Ascending Gate's sects sometime soon."
With that quiet remark, she murmured Crush—
In an instant, the head of the man still screaming in pain and terror was compressed into nothing.
Upon the spectators who had witnessed that horrific, overwhelming sight with their own two eyes, a heavy silence of an entirely different kind settled down.