The Psycher Mad Obsession
I stared at the screen, my stomach already twisting into knots. Psyker Mad. A channel exclusively dedicated to Phantom footage. A bunch of lunatics far worse than any idol stalker. And the same deranged group that had saddled me with the utterly ridiculous nickname “Rabbit Vader.” Honestly, there was no way I could feel any positive emotions toward them. So when Yu Hana shoved another one of their videos in my face, how exactly was I supposed to feel?
At least this time I was slightly puzzled. There hadn’t been any event that should have drawn their attention today. The Superhuman Administration would have kept everything under tight control. What could a random YouTuber possibly do? But the moment I checked the video, that naïve expectation shattered into a million pieces.
Because right there on their footage, perfectly captured, was me—Rabbit Vader—hiding behind a tree.
“Oh, what’s that BGM…”
“The Lion on the Savannah?”
These guys were truly something else. They’d slapped some bizarre background music over the footage of me crouching behind the tree. You know, the exact track from nature documentaries that plays right before a predator pounces on its prey. What made it even more infuriating was how perfectly the music matched the scene. These bastards were annoyingly talented.
“Wait, did I just hear something weird? A tip? Who the hell would tip them about something like this?”
“Ah, that? I did it~”
“…You?”
“Yep, yep. I told you we should make our debut properly. If we didn’t do at least this much, our glorious first operation would’ve been completely buried, right?”
“So you contacted Psyker Mad and…”
“But seriously, aren’t they hilarious? I just sent one text and they came running like their lives depended on it. Guess being a five-million-subscriber YouTuber isn’t for just anyone~”
Five million already? I could’ve sworn they only had about a million when Tasha made her debut. If their numbers had ballooned so suddenly, it was obviously thanks to the “Midnight Showdown” between Rabbit Vader and Black Yaksha. There hadn’t been any other major incidents lately.
The fact that those damn leeches were fattening themselves off my back made me even more depressed. Was this really the right thing to do?
It looked like Psyker Mad hadn’t sent out just one cameraman today. While they were filming me, they were also capturing Ji Seoeun on the roof, magic wand and all. All that from a single text tip? The sheer obsession and madness these people had for Phantom made my stomach churn.
Ji Seoeun firing her wand and me breaking into the second floor were broadcast in vivid, uncensored detail. But Psyker Mad’s madness didn’t stop there.
The camera panned to the front of the building, capturing the Scorpion members frantically blocking the entrance. Then, out of thin air, Seong Jiyeong and Tasha appeared.
The moment Tasha reached the front, she summoned her clones to act as decoys against the gunfire, then used her real body to smash through the barricade. She’d been training hard on this lately, and it showed—her clone control had improved dramatically. The superhuman villains who rushed her after she broke through didn’t stand a chance. Tasha crushed everything with just her two fists. She even shattered psychic attacks with her punches. That was another application of Fa Jin. Just a few days ago she was still clumsy with it, yet here she was already using it so creatively. Her combat sense really was on another level.
The footage switched back to the roof. Seong Jiyeong had appeared mid-air and landed gracefully, then began whipping her weapon in every direction, neutralizing the villains. Once a teleportation user starts going all out like this, there really is no counter. The superhuman villains were firing off psychic abilities from all sides, but unless those attacks actually landed, they were nothing but wasted effort.
“How many cameras did that bastard even deploy? How is he not missing a single thing?”
“Right~? I was shocked too~”
I already knew how skilled Seong Jiyeong was with a whip. I’d seen it firsthand the day she came to rescue me and Tasha. Her teleportation was so impressive that it tended to overshadow everything else, but her whip work was genuinely incredible. A whip was an extremely difficult weapon to handle, especially using it so precisely in the heat of battle. Almost no one could pull that off.
But what astonished me even more than Seong Jiyeong’s whip mastery was how many cameras these insane Psyker Mad lunatics had used to capture every single member perfectly. These guys really must have staked their lives on Phantom.
“Hmm, I like it. They even know that a whip is a difficult weapon to master.”
“Yep, yep. Psyker Mad actually knows quite a lot.”
“People on the internet were saying Golden Roll is just a teleportation one-trick pony and would pop like a bubble in a straight fight.”
“Did that bother you?”
“It wasn’t so much that it bothered me… more that it felt like they were underestimating me too much. It was annoying.”
“I don’t know about anything else, but I acknowledge Seong Jiyeong’s skill with the whip. In the place where I used to work, there wasn’t a single warrior who could handle a whip as well as her.”
“Hmph, what’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing. I just acknowledge what deserves acknowledging. That everything you bring to the table is bland is also a fact.”
“Your taste buds are just broken.”
Yeah… no. Even though our Phantom activities had been uploaded in full to a five-million-subscriber channel, none of the members seemed to feel even the slightest sense of crisis. If anything, they looked like they were enjoying it. Was I the weird one here? At this point, I was starting to feel like the strange one for worrying alone.
So I decided to just let it all go and keep watching the video.
“Wait, was Ji Seoeun really like that?”
“Yep, yep. That Dr. Um? Her whole torso is made of metal, so walking is hard for her.”
“There was a bug.”
“Really?”
“But it’ll be fixed soon.”
“Well, good luck with that.”
From this point on, the footage would be of us operating inside the building, so even Psyker Mad probably couldn’t have captured anything special. I was about to close the video when I noticed there was still quite a bit left. Five more minutes? While I was tilting my head in confusion, the video switched to an entirely different angle of the building.
“Uh… that’s…”
“Huh?”
“Oh…”
It was shot from far away, as if flying toward the building. As far as I remembered, the only thing that could film from that angle was the news helicopter from earlier. These guys… did they seriously get their hands on the helicopter footage too?
“No way… how did they get this?”
“Ah, Psyker Mad has pretty good connections. Since it was footage that was banned from broadcast anyway, maybe they just handed it over?”
“Wouldn’t they get penalized for that?”
“Who knows how they did it~”
Yu Hana’s evasive answer was suspicious, but that wasn’t the important part right now. Because the video currently showing was—
“Wait… no way.”
“No, how did it turn out like this?”
Even after the cheerful BGM faded and Psyker Mad disappeared from the screen, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I simply couldn’t accept the reality that I had suddenly been branded as the leader of a Phantom organization.
And the video kept replaying the scene of our members perfectly lined up, pointing finger guns at the camera like they were idols striking a final pose.