Chapter 108
Chapter 108
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 108
However, from the young man’s perspective, it was hard to be certain that he was the culprit, and he also didn’t want to torture him, so while worrying about what to do, he remembered Kyung-wan, who was famous for determining the truth.
At those words, Kyung-wan briefly checked the young man’s eyes, then looked down at the man whose head alone was sticking out of the burlap sack. Seeing him still blinking rapidly with his eyeballs rolling around, it was definitely a superpower.
“Did you do this with a superpower?”
“Yes.”
Kyung-wan’s gaze shifted toward the iron door of the cell. Strangely enough, the steel door had melted down as if candle wax had dripped over it. Even stranger was the fact that there was no residual heat at all. It was clearly melted using some kind of special superpower.
Noticing where his gaze was headed, the young man shrank back.
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, whatever. Anyway, all you need is for me to grant that request, right?”
“Yes.”
When the young man nodded, Kyung-wan reached out and placed his hand on the body of the man stuffed inside the burlap sack.
However, the man’s muscles were already stiff as rock, making it difficult to read any bodily reactions. Guessing it was probably due to the young man’s superpower, Kyung-wan spoke.
“Can you release this superpower?”
“W-Why?”
“The body’s too stiff, I can’t read the physical responses.”
At Kyung-wan’s words, the young man nodded and relaxed his power. As the previously rigid body loosened and began to move again, the man in the sack hurriedly opened his mouth.
“P-Please, s-save me!”
But before he could even scream, Kyung-wan’s slipper blocked his mouth.
“Don’t wake other people up while they’re sleeping, just rip your own eardrums instead.”
Having been woken up mid-sleep, Kyung-wan’s mouth was particularly rough.
“Is what he said true? That you’re a rapist? That you raped those two sisters?”
“Mmph! Mmph!”
The man shook his head frantically. But his body gave a different answer.
Kyung-wan nodded and looked at the young man.
“Yep. Rapist.”
“Thank you for your help.”
“Then hurry up and go. I’m going back to sleep.”
Kyung-wan promptly issued an eviction order.
As the young man bowed to Kyung-wan and began to stiffen the man again before stuffing him back into the burlap sack, at that moment! A searchlight shone on the entrance of Kyung-wan’s cell.
[Hey! Who’s there!]
Along with the guard’s shout booming through the speaker, the emergency alarm went off.
The young man, panic written all over his face, dragged the sack along before deciding it wouldn’t work and stretching out his hand toward it.
“Aaaaaaaargh!”
The man inside the sack screamed. The agony was so intense that its horror could be felt through his voice alone.
But the death-rattle-like scream quickly died down, and the young man leapt toward the hole he had punched through the wall.
[Lee Kyung-wan! Catch that bastard!]
The speaker barked orders at Kyung-wan, but Kyung-wan made a surprised face, pointed at himself, and mouthed a question.
‘Me?’
Why me?
When Kyung-wan hugged his precious body with both arms and shook his head with a sulky expression, a single line slipped out of the speaker on its own.
[Ugh, fuck.]
But what could they do? The thirsty dig the well.
Armed guards and superpowered security were deployed to chase after the fleeing intruder.
Meanwhile, Kyung-wan simply stared at the melted iron door, lost in thought. Mosquitoes had been really bad lately, what should he do?
Kyung-wan thought of the sleeping quarters stocked in the research facility. Then he used the phone in the cell to contact Director Maria and explain the situation.
Upon hearing that the door had melted and it was hard to sleep, she readily granted him access to the research facility. Kyung-wan enjoyed a deep, worry-free sleep in the facility’s sleeping quarters, without a mosquito in sight.
Perhaps Director Maria had contacted the prison in advance, because there was no uproar about Kyung-wan escaping. It was considerate to an admirable degree. With care like that, isn’t it understandable that Kyung-wan could put up with her even when she reeked of being a bitch?
Anyway, the next day. Kyung-wan learned the identity of the intruder from the previous night. It was none other than the villain whose name had been rising lately, Twister.
After finishing breakfast at the research facility cafeteria and preparing to return to the prison, Kyung-wan was stopped by Maria, who had come in early that morning.
“I heard Twister paid you a visit last night?”
“So he’s called Twister.”
Kyung-wan nodded and scraped up the remaining rice, stuffing it into his mouth.
Seeing that, Maria placed a photograph down in front of him.
“Ugh, hey! I’m not even done eating, what are you doing?”
Kyung-wan scowled fiercely and flicked the photo back toward her with his fingernail.
“This is the burlap sack Twister left behind last night.”
True to his villain name, Twister had turned the man inside the sack into a grotesque, twisted mass. The lump formed from the victim bore spiral patterns all over, with flesh and skin, muscle and bone, fused together with the clothes he was wearing, as if melted. He had been rushed to the hospital.
She explained that his life was not in immediate danger, but the possibility of ever returning to his original state was slim.
“Haaah... If Ms. Han Yeongmi were here, we could’ve tried treatment... What a shame.”
Saying that, she looked steadily at Kyung-wan.
Was she pressuring him to feel responsibility or guilt? Trying to squeeze something out of him, either finding Han Yeongmi or providing clues about Twister?
But Kyung-wan’s thick skin showed no reaction whatsoever to Kim Maria’s words.
“Are healing ability users really that rare?”
“In our country, we’ve only discovered one. Even worldwide, only a handful have been found, and the healing mechanism hasn’t been clearly identified.”
“Then that bastard has to live like that forever?”
At Kyung-wan’s question, Maria smiled and asked back.
“Who?”
It was obvious she knew, yet deliberately wanted to hear it from Kyung-wan’s mouth, because she wanted to confirm something.
But Kyung-wan had nothing to be ashamed of, so he answered boldly.
“That abomination in the photo.”
“That’s right. Unless he’s a major tycoon or someone highly influential, it’ll be hard for him to get help from a healer in another country. And even if he does receive help, it’s difficult to guarantee he could return to normal from a state like that.”
Kyung-wan rubbed his chin. Then does that mean other powerful people could be fully treated? The ones whose spines he personally folded?
Ah, damn! That doesn’t sit well with me.
As Kyung-wan tilted his head, thinking that, Maria continued.
“But why do you think something like that happened right in front of you?”
“Good question.”
Thinking about it, she was right. The fact that he lived in this prison had appeared in the news several times, so it wouldn’t be hard to find out. But which exact cell he was in was classified information, not something easily known.
However, it seemed the middle-aged woman in front of him wasn’t interested in that.
“Let me rephrase. Why did you stand by and let Twister do something like that right in front of you?”
What she wanted to hear became perfectly clear.
With a mindset of giving an extra rice cake to someone he disliked, Kyung-wan answered.
“Because that man was a rapist.”
“Then why did Twister deliberately bring that rapist right in front of you?”
Her fingertip rested on the photo of the abomination.
Kyung-wan answered confidently.
“Because I confirmed it for him.”
“Confirmed what?”
“That bastard’s guilt.”
“Hmm~”
Maria looked at Kyung-wan with an intrigued gaze.
A few more rounds of questions and answers followed, but Kyung-wan didn’t get annoyed. Thinking about the triple-A blockbuster she’d be buying him this winter naturally made his heart generous.
Thus, while there were people who felt suspicious yet somehow put him at ease, there were also those who didn’t seem suspicious at all yet made him feel burdened.
That person was Kim Jun.
About three days after Twister’s visit, Kim Jun came to see Kyung-wan and asked this.
“You said you met Twister, right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you happen to know what organization he belongs to?”
“No idea.”
At Kyung-wan’s clearly uninterested attitude, Kim Jun pondered for a moment, then revealed why he had come.
“Recently, Vigilance and Übermensch clashed in Korea.”
“Given the flow of the story, it sounds like someone named Twister is involved?”
“That’s correct.”
By breaking into the prison to meet Kyung-wan, Twister had revealed his trail. The superpower crime investigation unit began tracking him, and finally managed to latch onto him. But during the pursuit, they discovered superpowered individuals fighting in a sparsely populated area.
On one side was a duo from Übermensch already under investigation by the unit, the Hicks Man and the Muscle Man. On the other side were a violent offender known among prosecutors and police as the Eunuch Cutter, infamous for castrating high-ranking figures, and the villain called Graphite, who had become notorious due to his entanglement with a coup commander, though he wasn’t well known in mainstream media.
It was unclear why they were fighting each other, but from the investigation unit’s perspective, it was a chance to reap the benefits without effort.
The police urgently contacted their maximum force, the superpower crime unit’s Ha Jeonghun, along with heroes from hero companies and superpower security firms, requesting support from superpowered individuals.
They intended to decisively capture at least one of them this time.
But perhaps because they were criminals, they sensed something was off with uncanny speed and immediately began to flee.
An investigation unit composed of espers couldn’t catch them. Even armed with firearms, the bullets’ power was neutralized by the Hicks Man’s Hicks Field and Graphite’s black smoke.
“So firearms don’t work, frontline officers must be worried.”
“It’s a headache in the U.S. too.”
Not all superpowered individuals had the ability to stop bullets. But the moment someone like Graphite or the Hicks Man appeared, immune to bullets and utterly dismissive of public authority, it became a serious problem. There was a reason every country had established subordinate agencies to deal with superpower crimes.
They say power comes from the barrel of a gun, don’t they? Public authority that doesn’t presuppose a monopoly on violence is ultimately nothing more than a scarecrow waiting to be overthrown by a coup.
Anyway, while investigating the scene where Übermensch and Vigilance fled, the unit learned that they had been fighting over someone.
Nearby, they found trees, rocks, and ground grotesquely fused together as if melted. There were also traces of pursuit and escape.
The escape traces were clearly Twister’s, but it was difficult to determine whether the pursuer was Vigilance, Übermensch, or both. What was certain was that both sides wanted custody of Twister.
“At the moment, you’re the only person who’s actually met Twister, Mr. Kyung-wan, so I came to obtain some information.”
“All I can tell you is that he wore a mask, so I don’t know his face, that he’s a man, and that he doesn’t have mind-reading abilities.”
“Mind-reading? Don’t tell me you confirmed that the victim was a rapist?”
“Then how else? Just let them grab an innocent person?”
“...Hoo...”
As someone belonging to a government agency that wielded public authority, Kim Jun didn’t consider whether someone was innocent or not to be the issue. But knowing it wouldn’t get through anyway, he simply let out a small sigh. What mattered now was something else.
“Anyway, that incident seems to have triggered superpowered individuals clashing all over the world.”
“...All over the world?”
“Yes, all over the world.”
According to Kim Jun, on one side of these conflicts there was usually an organization called Übermensch. Opposing them were not only Vigilance, but also local groups, corporate private armies, or even organizations directly formed by cartels.
With a grim expression, Kim Jun continued.
“I don’t know what it is, but a major change has begun.”