Hero Technology Innovation Center Raid Incident (3)
Besides me, nearly ten other villains had issued terror threats against the event venue.
In truth, they were all subordinates of a single person.
The reason the villains had made those threats was to challenge Dimension Walker.
Naturally, only those powerful enough to even consider challenging him had stepped forward—and among them, I ranked dead last.
From the moment I issued my own terror threat, Eun Seol stopped speaking to me again. Whenever our eyes met she looked ready to devour me, bristling like a cat with its fur on end. And whenever we were alone she delivered a blood-chilling threat: she would stop me no matter what, and when she did she would fold me in half at the waist.
But for me, failure was not an option.
Whether I obtained an enormous new power hinged on this, and it was also a chance to deliver a devastating warning to the Korean government—those bastards for whom the only answer was complete overthrow.
The day of the event dawned. Moving separately from Eun Seol and Kim Sejin, I arrived at the Hero Technology Innovation Center where the ceremony would be held.
Because of the event, the entire first floor of the Innovation Center had been cleared, leaving the interior as wide open as an empty lot.
At the center of the venue stood something enormous, draped in a tent. In front of it, three smaller objects sat equally covered.
Those things, cordoned off by no-access lines, were the government’s technological prowess for the new generation that would be unveiled today… and the crystallized embodiment of its ugliness.
Plenty of people had arrived before me, so the first floor was already fairly crowded. Staff were frantically keeping the public away from the no-access lines.
I quickly scanned the area around the venue with my eyes.
First priority: the number of heroes providing security.
Heroes… just Dimension Walker alone.
Inside the no-access lines, in front of the four tent-covered objects, Dimension Walker stood dozing off with his head bobbing.
I had expected as much, but seeing that they had truly stationed only Dimension Walker for security left me speechless.
It wasn’t that the government was careless or suffering from a lack of safety awareness.
It was pure confidence that Dimension Walker alone was more than enough to handle every villain who had issued a terror threat.
Dimension Walker was already a butcher’s knife meant for slaughtering oxen; throwing additional heroes into the mix would only waste administrative resources. And in reality, that judgment wasn’t wrong.
If I hadn’t been here, that is.
Under normal circumstances, the moment Dimension Walker was guarding the venue, the chance of this place being breached would have been absolute zero. But as long as I was the one trying to breach it, it wasn’t quite zero.
To gauge the exact distance, I pushed through the crowd toward the front for a clearer look at Dimension Walker.
Leaning crookedly against one of the tent-covered objects while dozing, he reeked of alcohol so strongly it practically vibrated the air.
The people around him never even considered that the Dimension Walker assigned to protect the venue might have shown up drunk, so they kept looking around for the source of the liquor smell. But considering his usual private life…
Looks like he came straight from an orgy and drug party last night. Perfect opportunity.
I felt the odds climb a little higher.
No matter how famous an S-class hero he was, soaked in alcohol like that he couldn’t possibly be at a hundred percent.
I melted back into the crowd. Not long after, the event began.
Young government assemblymen came out and launched into a tedious stretch of self-praise about how monumental this event was and how hard the government had worked. Finally it was time for the veiled objects to reveal their true forms.
“It is truly an honor to introduce this era-changing new technology before you, the citizens. What we will show you today is something created through technological cooperation with the Japanese government… artificial heroes!”
“Artificial heroes…?”
“You mean robots, sir?”
The assemblyman answered the reporters with a smile.
“If they were mere robots we wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of holding an event like this. Seeing is believing! Behold them yourselves! We will now unveil the artificial heroes who will become the main force of the next generation!”
At the assemblyman’s signal, the four veils were pulled away simultaneously.
Inside the three smaller capsules and one large capsule, a person each was enclosed.
Two men and one woman in the small capsules, and another woman in the large one.
Their appearances were far too human to dismiss as robots, and the crowd began murmuring in surprise.
Soon the three small capsules opened and the people inside stepped out.
“I introduce to you the successful early artificial heroes of the Justice Deliverer, JD Project—P, D, and I!”
The two men had the letters P and I engraved on the chests of their outfits; the woman had D.
“They’re not robots? They don’t look any different from regular people…”
“How are they different from ordinary heroes, Assemblyman?”
“An excellent question. Watch this. P?”
“I will follow your command.”
The man called P—at a glance he looked around my age—answered the assemblyman, then without any device or visible ability activation rose into the air and floated weightlessly.
The crowd’s reaction was lukewarm.
“P? You need to show more of your abilities. Just one is boring.”
“Yes.”
Still floating, P immediately created clones of himself. Those clones then split their bodies apart and scattered the pieces in every direction like a disassembled action figure.
From that moment the reactions started coming.
The abilities P had just displayed were clearly three separate ones.
Ability users with two powers existed, but nowhere was there a person who possessed three. Cases that looked like three were merely secondary effects of a single ability.
Yet what P had shown were unmistakably distinct powers that could not be dismissed as secondary effects—and that wasn’t even the end of it.
Under the assemblyman’s direction, P casually crushed high-strength compressed steel with one hand. When the assemblyman deliberately injured P’s arm as a test, P immediately activated a regeneration ability and healed the wound.
Once the displayed abilities climbed past five, then six, the people finally began to gasp in horror.
“Th-this is… this is impossible!”
“How many abilities does he even have…? He’s invincible!”
“A-Assemblyman! How on earth did you create artificial heroes like that? Are there more of them?”
A barrage of questions poured from the reporters, and the public was even given an experience corner where they could personally touch the artificial heroes P, D, and I, or issue commands to have them demonstrate their abilities.
People marveled at the perfectly human skin texture, taking photos, poking their cheeks, speaking to them, each enjoying their own moment.
Once the experience corner ended, the government assemblymen took the microphone again.
“Through the JD Project we plan to gradually deploy next-generation heroes who have transcended human limits into public security and villain suppression. The P, D, and I you see before you are early models and still have many shortcomings, so they will not be fielded in actual combat yet. However, we will continue technical exchange with the Japanese government, address their deficiencies, improve them further, and aim for commercial use within five years.
The artificial heroes of the JD Project will think exactly like real heroes, prioritize justice, devote their strength to maintaining public order, and fight for the citizens so that all of you may live in safety and peace.”
Hearing that, I snorted inwardly.
“Assemblyman, then is the woman in that large capsule also an artificial hero like P, D, and I?”
“Correct. This is the very first achievement of the long JD Project—the prototype artificial hero, JD Eve.”
“Is there a reason you haven’t taken Eve out like the other three?”
“Because Eve is a prototype, we went through a tremendous number of trials and errors with her. We judged that commercial use would be difficult, so for now we keep her in stasis like this. She is used primarily to apply technologies intended for later improved artificial heroes, observe the results, and decide whether those technologies should be implemented. Still, as the monumental first product of the project, we wanted to show her to all of you.
Going forward we will continue conducting numerous technical verifications through Eve and produce artificial heroes like P, D, and I—”
Kuuung—!
At that moment the Innovation Center shook. Far across the first floor a wall collapsed, and a woman stepped into view.
“So that’s what you were up to—the government had quite the adorable little project planned, didn’t it? Then if I destroy every single one of those results right here, that would prove the government’s own incompetence, wouldn’t it? This could be fun.”
“Kyaaaaaah! I-it’s Black Rose!”
At the appearance of the S-class villain Black Rose, people screamed and fled. In an instant the interior became pure chaos.
It didn’t stop with Black Rose; seven more A-class villains appeared and tightened the encirclement around the venue.
People who had scattered screaming in every direction realized they were surrounded with nowhere to run and instead began clustering toward the center of the venue, huddling together.
“Hic… sob… I-I don’t want to die…”
“P-please save us! Dimension Walker!”
People desperately searched for and cried out to Dimension Walker, the only security hero at the venue. The man who had been standing still the entire time with his eyes closed from his hangover scratched his head and took a single step forward.
“Would’ve been nicer for everyone if this had just passed without incident… You ready to pay the price for being a pain in my ass?”
“Destroy the artificial heroes! I’ll handle Dimension Walker myself!”
At the order from the leader Black Rose, the A-class villains immediately lunged toward the center of the venue. Black Rose drew a whip that looked like a thorny rose vine and lashed it at Dimension Walker.
“Tsk.”
Dimension Walker clicked his tongue once, and countless black portals formed around his body.
He pulled ten daggers from his coat, slipped one between each finger, then split them into an enormous number of fragments and sent them flying into the portals.
Those black portals appeared around the scattered villains, and the tiny dagger blades began dancing through the air, attacking them.
“Gaaah!”
“Damn it, he split the blades…! Cover us!”
Villains with defensive abilities wrapped around the outside and formed a formation; the blade fragments could no longer deal serious damage.
Seizing that opening, Black Rose charged toward P, D, and I—but Dimension Walker’s severed arms and legs appeared from every direction to block her path.
“Dimension Walker! You think you can stop all of us by yourself?!”
“That’s why I’m here alone. If you thought every S-class was the same rank…”
Dimension Walker gestured, and the empty capsule that had held D was sucked whole into a black portal, vanished, then reappeared behind Black Rose and hurtled toward her at terrifying speed.
Black Rose yelped and dodged the capsule, but in that spot one of Dimension Walker’s legs appeared and kicked her in the stomach. From beneath her chin his right hand appeared and drove an uppercut into her jaw.
“I’d say your misconception was pretty severe.”
“Guh…!”
“That side’s formed a defensive formation? Looks like they came with a decent plan.”
Dimension Walker’s hands and feet vanished again and reappeared inside the defensive formation of the A-class villains.
A hand gripping a dagger stabbed straight into the unhardened abdomen of an A-class villain who had been blocking the blades; struck from within, the man coughed blood and collapsed.
“Khahk…!”
“Even a well-laid plan loses its luster in front of overwhelming power. Too bad for you.”
“What the hell are you all doing?! We already told you everything about Dimension Walker’s ability! We prepared for it—”
“Yeah, you’re right. My ability is spatial transfer—I can move my body or any object to anywhere within my line of sight. Even ordinary citizens know that much.”
Dimension Walker sent every object inside the Innovation Center flying into black portals, then unleashed attacks from every blind spot against Black Rose while casually dealing with the A-class villains using only the fragmented blades and a single arm and leg.
“When an ability user opens his power to the entire world like this, it’s because nothing changes even if people know about it.”
“Kh… ugh…!”
Overwhelming power, and overwhelming confidence.
Dimension Walker was single-handedly crushing one S-class villain and seven A-class villains, leisurely fending off every attack.
But was it truly true that knowing about him changed absolutely nothing?
Now!
At the moment when the battle between Black Rose plus the A-class villains and Dimension Walker had grown sufficiently intense, I launched the operation.
Puff-puff-boom—!
While watching the interior situation with my own eyes, I—who had been waiting outside—detonated the EMP bombs I had carefully procured from the black market outside the Hero Technology Innovation Center.
The moment the EMP bombs went off, every light in the Hero Technology Innovation Center died. Inside the suddenly pitch-black hall filled with screams, I put on the white mask, cloak, and hat I had prepared.
The Eve extraction operation had begun.