Day 7: The Heavenly Woman
“Nngh.”
The warden looked down at the four inmates who had been crushed into strips of flattened jerky and let out a strangled sound. How on earth had this happened?
The only thing that could kill people like this was an ability. But this was Tartaros. Every villain locked away here had an ability-suppression device that rendered their powers useless, and any guard who used an ability would trigger an alarm that went straight to him. There were no exceptions to that rule. Which left only one possibility.
“Still no confirmation of an outside intrusion?”
“W-well… the checks are finished, and they’re saying there’s no trace of a break-in anywhere.”
At his subordinate’s report from behind him, the warden’s brow furrowed. What in the world was going on? Who could have committed something this horrific?
“CCTV is… useless, I take it.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
Whoever had the nerve to commit murder inside Tartaros — and leave so little behind that even a tracking ability specialized for pursuit couldn’t find a trail — was never going to show up on something as ordinary as a security camera.
He was still turning over how to handle the situation when a shout rang out in the distance.
“W-Warden! We found them!”
“What?”
A guard came sprinting toward them. The warden’s eyes went wide. How? How had they found anything? More importantly — who was the culprit?
He watched the approaching guard, hungry for answers. The man skidded to a stop, gasping for air, and blurted out the words.
“Do you remember the prisoner in the solitary cell on the lowest floor?”
The lowest floor… the solitary cell. If it was that place…
“You mean the girl who performed heart devouring?”
“Yes! That girl is the culprit!”
The warden’s eyes flew open. He couldn’t believe it. He refused to believe it. That girl was wearing an ability-suppression device. On top of that, the solitary cell on Tartaros’s lowest floor was built so solidly that even a Class 1 ability user at full power couldn’t break out. How had she gotten free and committed murder from inside a cell like that? And more than that — how had this guard standing in front of him discovered it?
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, completely certain. Just to be sure, we went through every CCTV feed in Tartaros. We caught footage of her leaving the solitary cell and killing the villains here.”
“Ha—”
The warden let out a hollow laugh. A girl who could kill without leaving a single trace, who walked in and out of a Tartaros solitary cell as if it were her own front door — and she got caught by something as mundane as CCTV. Then again, dozens of people had already reviewed the footage, so it was unlikely to be some kind of illusion technique.
“Understood. I should review the recording myself first.”
With that, the warden hurried toward his office.
“Ha! Haha! Ahahaha—!”
Back in his office, the warden watched the CCTV and laughed like a madman. On the monitor before him, Cheon Seo-ah moved by tearing space itself open. Spatial-leap abilities existed, of course. But no one could travel by tearing space. As far as the warden knew, only one being in the world was capable of that.
It’s the Heavenly Woman!
His master. One of the nine most terrifying villains who stood at the absolute peak of the Illuminati. The oldest villain of them all, active since antiquity — since before the very concept of “villain” had even been defined. A being who wielded the power of the demons that dwelled in Hell. The Agent. A figure whose name, appearance, and age were all unknown, and who was therefore known by no title but “the Agent.”
There was no doubt. The Cheon Seo-ah on that monitor was the Heavenly Woman his master had been searching for all this time.
“To think fortune like this would fall into my lap!”
Staying cooped up in Tartaros all this time had been the right call after all. Joy spilled out of him in a rush. He was far from the only one hunting for the Heavenly Woman. The Agent had sent countless people out searching for her, and the Illuminati’s other villains had each loosed their own people as well. Of course, each of the nine villains called her by an entirely different name — but still.
“Th-this is no time to stand around. I need to contact Master right away…!”
BOOM!
A sudden blast tore through the air, and Tartaros’s solid structure shuddered from end to end.
“W-what was that! What just happened!”
The warden barked in alarm at the explosion. But everyone nearby was just as startled, and none of them knew the cause. His face twisted — and then another series of detonations crashed through the complex.
BOOM!
KRA-KOOM!
In the same instant, the warden understood where the blasts were coming from. The deepest part of Tartaros. The place built to cage villains who had committed crimes so vile they defied imagination — the cells they casually called “solitary.” And the explosions were happening there.
“Damn it all!”
As far as he knew, only one person could produce explosions of this magnitude. An ability user who had lost his parents to the Heart Devourer and lived for nothing but revenge. Cut off from ever reaching the Heart Devourer, he had redirected that fury into managing the countless villains of Tartaros instead.
“Kang Tae-shin, you idiot!”
Kang Tae-shin. Publicly, his ability was listed as Explosion, Class 3. But the force of the blasts still rocking the complex — enough to rattle Tartaros itself — put him solidly at Class 2. The warden also realized, in a flash, why Kang Tae-shin had done this, and who his target was.
“You miserable bastard! You dare aim at the Heavenly Woman?”
He no longer felt the slightest attachment to Tartaros. He had never belonged to Tartaros or the Hero Association in the first place — he belonged to the Illuminati, the villain organization ruled from the summit by the nine most terrifying villains alive. His plan had been to spirit the Heavenly Woman — Cheon Seo-ah — out of this place and return her to his master.
RUMBLE—!
“If so much as a single hair on the Heavenly Woman’s body is harmed, I will not let you die easily!”
CRUNCH! CRACK-CRACK!
Everything around him warped and compressed. Having worked that miracle, the warden bolted toward the solitary cells.
Meanwhile, in the solitary cell on Tartaros’s lowest floor, Cheon Seo-ah stood facing a guard whose eyes had rolled white with rage as he charged her through a storm of violent explosions from every direction.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, looking genuinely baffled. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
“Heart Devourer! Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize you just because you’re wearing a different face!”
“Heart Devourer?”
She tilted her head at the guard’s shout. She was Cheon Seo-ah, not the Heart Devourer. Why was this human confusing her with someone else?
“I’m Cheon Seo-ah. Who is this Heart Devourer person?”
“Still putting on that pathetic act! That suppression device can seal even a Class 1 ability user! The only ones who can use their powers while wearing it are the nine villains — and you!”
You were the one who performed heart devouring first!
KRA-KOOM!
Dozens of ferocious explosions erupted around Cheon Seo-ah. Shockwaves tore outward in every direction, and searing heat reduced everything it touched to ash. It wasn’t enough to bring Tartaros down, but it was more than enough to set the entire complex trembling.
And yet—
“Hmm. Heart devouring, heart devouring. What exactly is so terrible about this heart devouring of yours that you’d go this far? I truly don’t understand.”
She walked out of the explosions as if nothing at all had happened, still tilting her head in mild confusion. Had living so long in the cultivation world warped even her basic common sense to match that world’s standards? But that didn’t quite fit either. Even from her years living on Earth, she knew perfectly well that heart devouring was never something that inspired this level of rage, disgust, or terror. And for someone who had reached the Ancestral Dao Stage — who had transcended every law, rule, and thread of causality — forgetting was simply impossible.
The standoff that wasn’t quite a standoff stretched on: the guard still hurling explosions at her in a bid to kill her, and Cheon Seo-ah taking every attack as if it were nothing at all.
“Stop, Kang Tae-shin!”
CRACK-CRACK!
A man appeared and roared the order. Everything around him twisted and compressed. The guard called Kang Tae-shin stared in shock at the man who had suddenly emerged — and at the miracle he was performing.
“W-Warden? How are you here? No — more than that, that ability—!”
The warden Kang Tae-shin knew — the warden the world knew — was an ordinary human with no ability at all. And yet here he was, casually compressing Tartaros’s walls and floors, structures that even Class 1 ability users couldn’t breach. It was more than enough to leave Kang Tae-shin stunned and reeling.
The warden glared at him with fury in his eyes — then, the moment his gaze met Cheon Seo-ah’s, he dropped to both knees, bowed his head, and spoke with solemn reverence.
“I present myself before the Heavenly Woman I have waited so long to meet.”
Kang Tae-shin’s eyes flooded with even greater shock.
“Heavenly Woman. Heavenly Woman, is it. I’m sorry, but I’m not any Heavenly Woman. I’m simply Cheon Seo-ah.”
“I am aware. However, my master instructed me that if I ever met the Heavenly Woman, I was to deliver these words.”
Even faced with a Cheon Seo-ah who clearly had no idea what a Heavenly Woman was, the warden carried on without the slightest concern. It was only natural, in a way — the Agent had always thought of her as the Heavenly Woman, but he had never once spoken that title in her presence.
He bowed his head once more and spoke in a voice thick with devotion.
“The Ninefold Demon-Subduing True Art. Thanks to the grace the Heavenly Woman bestowed upon me, I was able to achieve my revenge.”
“Ah!”
The instant the words Ninefold Demon-Subduing True Art left the warden’s mouth, Cheon Seo-ah finally understood why this human was calling her the Heavenly Woman. The Ninefold Demon-Subduing True Art. It was one of the Demonic Cultivation Arts she had passed on long ago to the first pitiful human she had ever met — a small kindness, the first help she had ever offered anyone.
Still—
“To think you’ve survived all this time. You must have trained quite diligently.”
She nodded with an expression of mild approval. The warden only bowed his head in silence. Kang Tae-shin, meanwhile, wore a look of pure bewilderment, as if nothing unfolding before his eyes made any sense at all.
Just what—
“W-Warden? What is going on here?”
—was happening?
The moment Kang Tae-shin gave voice to the question, a sound cut through the air.
Riiip—.
Behind Cheon Seo-ah, space tore open, and a man stepped out of the rift at a leisurely pace. The warden bowed even lower. Kang Tae-shin stared at the figure emerging from the torn space and whispered in shock.
“The… Agent…?”
The Agent. One of the nine most terrifying villains who had founded the Illuminati and ruled it from its peak. And in truth, a deeply pitiful man — which was why Cheon Seo-ah had once offered him a small kindness.
The man smiled softly at her.
“It’s been a long time, Heavenly Woman.”
“It has been a while.”
Cheon Seo-ah smiled back at him just as gently.