The Respected Intelligence Officer (1)
Jeong Seok-hoon had been one of Black Moon's strongest executives.
Compared to the presence he commanded in the original story, his exit here was relatively anticlimactic. Going by the original plot, this wasn't a man who was supposed to die in a skirmish like this.
In the original, he faced off against Seo Woojin, and when the Academy sensed something strange and came running to help, he was the one who fled. The mage who got crushed into a bloody pulp while buying time for that escape—that guy there—was Jeong Seok-hoon himself.
In a sense, one of the work's main villains had just bowed out with ease. Not that I had any regrets about it.
'If the story goes off the rails, then so be it—I'll deal with it when the time comes.'
I had no intention of letting a killable enemy slip away just to preserve the original narrative. Leaving Jo Jin-hyun alive had been pure whim, nothing more—a matter of my interest in Min Ye-won and Yoon Selena.
Jeong Seok-hoon wasn't entirely without connected female characters either, but I had zero intention of keeping a dangerous bastard like him alive just to court one woman. Not when he was nowhere near as easy to handle as Jo Jin-hyun.
'With any luck, this will keep Black Moon quiet for a while.'
Despite the way he looked, the man was surprisingly a strategist. That limit release a moment ago wasn't supposed to appear in this fight at all—it was a technique meant to debut in a later battle.
But seeing him use it without hesitation the instant his life hung in the balance meant that, at the very least, his tactical awareness was sharp. With him gone, there was a real chance the other members of Black Moon might start moving.
'The most likely candidate would probably be Jin Soo-rin.'
Both back with Jo Jin-hyun and again this time, she'd intervened in the operations indirectly, which made her the strongest possibility. After all, the rest of Black Moon had no particular interest in Kim Isabel.
My policy with villains is that any reasonably attractive woman should be put to good use, but Jin Soo-rin might have to be the exception. I can't very well have the heroines exposed to danger just because I want to get my dick wet for once.
If I had combat strength on the level of the protagonist, it might be worth attempting, but I don't. Even this fight against Jeong Seok-hoon only worked because I knew his weakness and had a meat shield on hand—in a straight one-on-one with no intel, I wouldn't have lasted two seconds.
'Which means it's about time I got to work.'
The reason I'd deliberately let Yoon Selena take Kim Isabel in the first place instead of stopping her—why I'd let things play out all the way to this battle in the underground passage.
Killing Jeong Seok-hoon had been one of my goals, sure, but honestly, that part was closer to a bonus. Now it was time to collect payment from Yoon Selena for all her insolence.
…Well, before that, I'd need to pry Cha Eunju off my side first. She'd been clinging to me since earlier.
"Eunju, you should go get treated by Isabel too."
"S-Seonho…? You're not hurt anywhere, are you…?"
"I'm fine. You burned through a lot more mana than I did, remember?"
"I-I'm okay, though…. B-But what if another terrorist suddenly shows up…."
"That's exactly why I'm telling you to go check on things. Cheonho's injured right now—if it comes down to it, you're the only one who could hold the line with magic."
"Ah, uhm…. O-Okay, I'll be right back…."
Take your time, ideally. A very long time.
There was quite a bit I needed to discuss with Yoon Selena in the meantime.
…Fuck. It's over.
What do I do? How am I supposed to clean this up?
'Why the hell did that bastard Jeong Seok-hoon have to die like a goddamn idiot….'
He was supposed to be able to crush a handful of Academy students with one hand. So why did he end up getting crushed?
Balloon-muscled bastard. Overgrown loudmouth. A retard who clawed his way to an executive seat on the back of his ability alone.
And that subordinate of his had no goddamn awareness either. If you're going to die, then die quietly—why did you have to spill my identity on the way out?
'What do I do? Should I just run now?'
There still seemed to be time.
Past the underground passage there was a warp gate leading to headquarters. If I started sprinting now, I might just barely make it out.
The guys I left in the corridor would get caught, but who cares. My survival comes first.
'But then what the hell were these five years of suffering for?'
I went to the trouble of forging a fake identity, enrolling in Cheonmu Academy, even building a rapport with that Isabel woman—and I'm supposed to abandon all of it and run?
I could die of pure indignation. The admission competition that year was the steepest in history, even.
'…Maybe I haven't been found out yet.'
Honestly, would those kids even remember what that mage said? He was a dead man talking, after all.
Even if they did remember, I could just claim it was a disinformation tactic on my part. Mentioning an enemy's real name to sow confusion behind their lines is standard operating procedure, isn't it?
If I framed it as "no need to read too much into what a terrorist spewed," I could probably smooth it over somehow….
"Yoon Selena."
"……."
Ah, goddammit.
This cocksucker again.
Lee Seonho, that cursed son of a bitch. Everything goes wrong because of this bastard, always.
He delayed my schedule today too, trying to drag Kim Isabel off, and in that fight earlier, Jeong Seok-hoon probably died because of the way this guy kept getting underfoot.
'Come to think of it, earlier he was right on the verge of exposing my identity too….'
It was pure luck that Jeong Seok-hoon showed up right at that moment and muddied the waters. One thing gone wrong and I'd have been truly made.
…Is that why he's back to press the question? If so, I'm finished.
'…Can I talk my way out of it?'
If it were Kim Isabel, deceiving her would be easy enough.
That dim-looking boy and that gloomy girl too… I could probably bluff my way past them as well.
'The problem is this creepy bastard.'
The one mentioned most often out of Kim Isabel's mouth these days, and the single biggest thorn in Black Moon's operations—this guy.
One way or another, bluffing was my only option. Unless something actually worked on him, running was the fallback….
"Lee Se—"
"…I knew we'd been apart a long while, but I didn't expect you to fail to recognize your own superior. Until now I assumed it was an act—that your acting skills were simply that good. Apparently not."
"……What?"
What is this bastard saying all of a sudden?
Superior? What superior? Have I ever seen this Lee Seonho guy anywhere before?
'Wait—could this guy also be….'
I've heard it mentioned. That besides me, there were a few more Black Moon operatives infiltrating Cheonmu Academy as students.
For security reasons, nobody's told who is and isn't an organization member. But this reaction… this bastard really might be Black Moon….
"…The moon does not vanish. It is merely painted black."
"……!!!"
…He really was one of us.
Goddammit, what is this guy? He was actually Black Moon?
'No, that doesn't make any sense.'
If he was really Black Moon, why did he kill Jeong Seok-hoon? Not to mention the other organization members.
I heard the Isabel abduction operation failed because this guy interfered twice. What the hell is his deal?
And if he were really an organization member, why couldn't the other executives recognize him? Is he just a low-level grunt they've never seen? Or….
'…Wait. No way.'
He called me his 'superior' just now.
And he said it had been a long time since we'd met. He made a point of emphasizing it, which means there had to be something behind those words.
Someone who's served Black Moon longer than I have, and who could still speak of a "long time apart." Someone capable of disguise or transformation arts….
"Th-The Intelligence Officer?!"
"…Slow on the uptake, but not slow to catch on."
…Impossible. This can't be real.
Lee Seonho, that son of a—no, no. The Intelligence Officer was Lee Seonho?!
H-How could such a coincidence even exist?! Is this for real?
'I thought I would never see him again.'
To think I'd be granted another audience with the Intelligence Officer, the man who saved my life—and like this, of all ways.
Had I known he was so close, I would have sought him out and paid my respects long ago.
Ah—no. Now that I think about it, the problem isn't whether I greet him now or not. If I consider everything I've done to the Intelligence Officer up until this point….
"I-I'm so sorry, Intelligence Officer. I truly had no idea it was you until now, and I… I've been so discourteous…."
"…We'll discuss that later. Too many ears are listening right now."
"Yes…."
"Keep your cover intact for now. If you need to bluff your way past those others, I'll back you—so don't worry about it."
"U-Understood."
…Thank goodness. Lee Seonho—no, Lord Seonho—was the Intelligence Officer himself.
How did I not notice when he was right beside me? Now that I think about it, everything matched—the height, the way he spoke. He was the spitting image of the Intelligence Officer.
I should have assumed his appearance had changed—his face can be remade at will with the Officer's ability, of course it would be different.
'If anything, he seems even more striking than I remember….'
I'll be disciplined later, no doubt about it. But for now, the fact that we've met again is what matters.
…All that effort to claw my way into Cheonmu Academy really was worth something after all.
There's one ability that shows up like clockwork in every hunter story and every superpowered battle series worth its salt.
Disguise. With a flick of a hand or a shift of a step, one's entire appearance becomes another person—or, in some variants, you kill someone and take their face for your own.
It's typically handed to named villains because it's so useful for confusion, disruption, and driving wedges between enemies. Naturally, Surviving the Hunter Academy, the original work of this world, had its own villain equipped with such an ability.
Black Moon executive—Intelligence Officer Lim Soo-hyuk.
His awakened ability, Human Skin, made transforming into other people possible.
Limited to those he had killed, regardless of age or gender, he could don the "human skin" fashioned from that person and wear it over himself—even using the victim's awakened ability as his own.
He was a villain who appeared right before I dropped the original novel, so my grasp of the details isn't airtight, but I remember two things clearly.
First: this man, Lim Soo-hyuk, was the one who saved Yoon Selena in her childhood—and the one who brought her into Black Moon.
Second: despite being Black Moon's Intelligence Officer, he refused to cooperate with the other executives and ran only his own independent operations.
Truthfully, those two facts alone were all I needed for present purposes. When it came to deceiving Yoon Selena, they were more than sufficient.
"S-So then, Intelligence Officer… your continued approach to Kim Isabel—was that also part of your plan to secure her for yourself, alone…?"
"It was. If a certain imbecile of a woman hadn't kept interfering, I'd have had her long ago."
"…I-I'm so sorry…."
Watching a woman who'd been glaring at me like she wanted me dead mere minutes ago now bow so deeply it seemed her forehead might crack against the floor was quite the sight.
Not that what this woman should be slamming down before long is her forehead. Something else entirely.