The Hero Technology Innovation Center Raid
I already knew from the original work just how strong S-class villains and heroes could be, but knowing something and seeing it with your own eyes were two completely different things.
Each of the three villains collapsed on the ground right now was strong enough to crush not only me, but even the current Valkyrie without breaking a sweat. Those three had even struck first—and yet Nightingale had taken all of them down in under ten seconds. She hadn't so much as broken a sweat, looking as if the whole thing had been nothing special at all, composure to spare.
"I'm glad you weren't hurt. It wouldn't be good for you to stay here long, so you should head back right away, Yechan. There's no telling if another attack might come if you linger."
"Yes. Thank you for saving me."
The subdued villains twisted on the pavement, their faces painted with pure disbelief.
"This… this is impossible…! That bitch is just a healer! Even if she's S-class, how the hell did she—"
"To think you'd rush me under the simple assumption that my ability is merely healing… You people really need to gather your information more carefully. Not that it matters anymore."
"Fuck…! What the hell is your power, you bitch?! What did you do to our bodies?!"
"You didn't actually think I was going to tell you, did you? All of you will be taken into custody at headquarters. If you don't want things to get any uglier here, I'd suggest you stop with the pointless resistance."
Most ability users tried to keep their powers as secret as possible, and Nightingale was no exception. But I knew what her ability really was.
To the public she was known simply as someone with healing powers. Nightingale's true ability was regeneration. When she used it on an inanimate object, she restored it to its original form. When she used it on a living being, she triggered cellular regeneration on a monstrous scale. Because she regenerated the body from the cellular level up, as long as someone wasn't already dead she could restore even a person whose limbs had been severed. It was an incredible power.
And Nightingale also applied that ability in reverse for offense—exactly the way she had just subdued these villains.
The three who had fallen to her kept cursing and screaming, but their bodies couldn't so much as twitch under her restraint. The places where Nightingale had touched them had gone black and dead. That was the truly terrifying part of her power.
If she willed it, she could force the cellular regeneration of any living tissue she touched into overdrive. The number of times a living organism's cells can divide in a lifetime is finite. Nightingale cranked the regeneration rate of the cells she touched to insane levels at will, burning through that body part's entire lifespan in an instant.
The three villains lying there had had the exact parts they used to manifest their abilities—eyes, tailbone—plus the ankles and knees essential for standing, the shoulders and wrists essential for attacking—all of them killed. With those sections of their bodies reduced to the state of a corpse, of course they could no longer stand on two legs, swing their arms to attack, or activate their powers. They were living corpses.
From now on, survival itself would be impossible for them without lifelong dependence on drugs. Even Nightingale herself couldn't revive cells that had already died, so there was no reversing it. They still didn't seem to understand what fate had just befallen them; once they learned the truth, they would thrash in despair.
To civilians she was an angel of kindness and warmth. To villains, a single touch from her could mean instantaneous death on the spot—a terrifying reaper. That was Nightingale. At this point in time, no villain knew the precise nature of her ability, so she was considerably underestimated relative to her actual combat power. Anyone who charged her thinking she was just a healer ended up like these three.
Of course the ability had various restrictions and wasn't all-powerful—but seeing it with my own eyes, it was certainly frightening.
Nightingale gathered the three completely neutralized villains together, called in personnel from Union headquarters, and sent me on my way.
"Headquarters staff will be here soon to take these people into custody. If they find out a civilian was hanging around for no reason, you'll get stuck with all sorts of annoying questioning, so please head back."
"Yes. Thank you, Nightingale. It was an honor to meet you. I hope we get the chance to meet again."
"Heh. Meeting me often might not actually be a good thing."
On the taxi ride home from the ruined streets of Myeongdong, it struck me that seeing Nightingale praying there just now had been no coincidence.
Nightingale was a fairly moderate hero by nature—she avoided unnecessary killing and took no pleasure in it. At the same time, she wasn't so soft-hearted that she would let excessive pity for villains ruin an operation. And yet that same woman had come to the Myeongdong terror site—an incident already long over—to offer a memorial prayer for the terrorists who had died that day?
If those men had carried out the terror attack of their own free will, Nightingale would never have prayed for them. Skull Crusher, who had wiped them all out in one stroke as if to silence them, and Nightingale, who had come alone in the dead of night to mourn the dead—together they made it certain that the Myeongdong terror had been a self-orchestrated play by the government, or at the very least by the Union.
If the government was going to screw me over, then I would screw the government right back… and I already knew where its biggest weak point lay.
KU Bio. Yuseong Pharmaceuticals. Korea Union Severance Hospital.
The moment I hit any one of those three and spilled the secrets inside into the open, the resulting chaos would be beyond even the government's media control. And of course it would have enormous repercussions for Valkyrie, Kim Sejin, and any number of other heroes as well.
But precisely because those facilities were so critical to the government, the instant I showed any sign of going after even one of them, they would throw public safety to the dogs and mobilize every S-class and A-class hero they had to kill me. Unfortunately, I still wasn't strong enough to crack any of those three places. Even if I spent another ten or twenty years doing nothing but training, taking them alone would be impossible.
That left only one option. Raise my own combat power while simultaneously creating fractures from the inside.
After that, my daily life didn't change in any major way. Forcing down a meal too quickly gives you indigestion; I wasn't even close enough to Valkyrie yet to call us friends, so the idea of cracking open the Hero Union in that state was pure fantasy. I still went about my ordinary days the same as always, occasionally sending out warnings when I found a target, and when night fell I faced Valkyrie again and again as Kid G.
More time passed, and one day near the end of April when the weather had grown quite warm, Seoul Hero Academy was in a frenzy from early morning. Far more students than usual were pouring onto campus. Even people who had free periods that day were flooding in, and the building where we had morning classes was so packed that getting inside was nearly impossible.
"Hey! Don't push! I said don't push! I have class in here!!"
Eun Seol and I saw Kim Sejin being jostled back and forth in the middle of the crowd and headed toward her. Eun Seol casually slipped an arm into the throng and gave a light shove; the mass of people let out startled noises and gradually parted. After fishing Kim Sejin out of the human tide, we pushed our way into the building that housed the lecture halls. Inside was at least a little better than the chaos outside.
Kim Sejin finally managed to exhale and started venting.
"Pwah! I thought I was going to get crushed to death. Seriously, what day is it? Why are there so many people here? Is some celebrity visiting or something?"
Eun Seol answered for me.
"Hey… the Union said Dimension Walker is coming today for some government event promo. Everyone's been talking about it for days—how did you not know?"
"Oh, Dad's looked busy lately—is that why? I wasn't interested so I didn't notice."
"Shouldn't you care at least a little…?"
I hadn't heard the rumor either, so I asked Valkyrie for the details.
"This is the first I've heard of it too. What kind of promotion requires a hero of Dimension Walker's caliber?"
"Right, of course this is the first you've heard. You're completely swamped with work day and night, after all."
"I've never done any construction."
I grinned and delivered the dumb joke. Eun Seol's eyes narrowed to slits.
"…You're doing this on purpose to piss me off, aren't you?"
"Who knows?"
Eun Seol's fist trembled for a second, then she simply told me what she knew. There was no reason or point in hiding it. The information she shared went like this:
This coming weekend the government would hold a major event at the Hero Technology Innovation Center near Gwanghwamun—an event that would bring huge change to the era. Because it was the first public unveiling of a project the government had poured enormous effort into, huge crowds and invited reporters would be present. And for promotional purposes, as well as to boost the pride and motivation of the students, they were sending Dimension Walker—an S-class hero who had graduated from this very school—to Seoul Hero Academy today.
I knew nearly every major incident from the original work, yet I had no memory of any such event.
What is this? An event big enough to send Dimension Walker for promotion means the scale and importance are considerable… Did something like this happen in the original? A project that would bring great change to the era… Ah!
I dug through my memories again and again until one thing finally surfaced. In the original it had been mentioned only once, in passing, during a flashback to the past. It hadn't even been covered while the present timeline was unfolding; only much later, after time had passed, did it become known as a rather meaningful moment. And what had been unveiled that day was definitely…
This is it!!!
In my mind I rapidly simulated everything that would happen at that event and began drafting a plan of attack. If I succeeded, I would obtain an enormous card to play against the government.