Chapter 83
Translator: crow
Chapter Title: Villains Protecting the Protagonist (1)
“Long time no see, everyone!”
It had been nearly ten days since he last came to work.
The staff all cheered at Yoo Jun-hyuk's return. He had taken vacation time to experiment with his skills on Lim A-young, preparing for any potential crises.
“Boss! How can your vacation be this long?”
“Yeah! You only give us four paid days off a month!”
“Do you have any idea how tough it’s been without you?”
These were complaints that weren’t really complaints. Playful banter between the boss and the employees he’d grown close to while working together.
“Yeah, if you’re jealous, become the boss yourselves.”
“Argh! It’s the evil boss!”
Yoo Jun-hyuk laughed and fired back, and the staff laughed along.
“……Boss. You’re back?”
Everyone except one.
Kim Soo-hyun, the acting manager, emerged from the staff room with a haggard face to greet him.
The café had already been busy, but it got even busier after it came out that Yoo Jun-hyuk was Choi Yu-ra’s boyfriend. She had shouldered the responsibility for ten days—early mornings and guaranteed overtime—and her body and mind had long been(?) utterly exhausted.
“Ahaha…… I was a bit late coming back, huh?”
“No. It’s fine.”
“You must’ve had it rough because of me. Sorry about that.”
As expected from a seasoned professional, those were the words she spoke.
But her inner thoughts were different.
[So just because you’re handsome, that makes it all okay? For ten days, I came in at 6 a.m. to check inventory all by myself! Even after everyone else clocked out, I handled cleanup, orders, and settlements until past 10 p.m.! Damn boss! Must be nice gallivanting alone! Please, God! Strike this guy down!]
“Eh, it wasn’t that bad. Nothing too tough.”
Her resentment was so intense that Yoo Jun-hyuk could practically hear her thoughts.
“……I’ll definitely give you a bonus this time. The full amount, including extra for all the overtime you covered for me.”
“Thank you.”
[Money solves everything? It’s not like you’re taking it to the afterlife! Oh God! Please grant this money-worshipping bastard kidney stones!]
She poured out the worst agony of her life as a curse.
Unfortunately, Yoo Jun-hyuk’s financial remedy had failed, so all he could offer was vacation time.
“Ah! So can I clock out now?”
“Yes. You handled a busy shop all by yourself, so take three days of paid leave.”
“Thank you!”
Now her thoughts finally went quiet.
And so, he returned to his daily routine.
“Ah, here it is.”
He made iced Americanos for Koreans who drank only cold coffee even if it froze them solid.
“Are you really Choi Yu-ra the Hunter’s boyfriend by any chance?”
The crowds had thinned a bit, but he still signed autographs and took photos with the visitors who came.
An utterly ordinary day—just the kind of everyday life Yoo Jun-hyuk had wanted.
“…….”
One woman watched that routine from a shadowy corner table in the café.
She quietly set down her cup and left. After observing Yoo Jun-hyuk like a detective, she drove to a small mansion in Incheon and finally spoke once inside.
“Hmm…….”
A groan laced with nasal tones. Amid the sweltering heat of midsummer, she headed down to the basement.
The basement was lined with all sorts of chemicals, beakers, alcohol lamps, and the like, looking just like a laboratory.
She booted up the computer there, and a video she’d been watching recently appeared on screen.
It was a video currently famous in the underworld—and among certain Hunters and Heroes—called “The Green Dragon’s Final Moments.”
“Haa…….”
She had watched it hundreds of times, yet it still amused her.
The video itself wasn’t entertaining. It was just imagining what would happen when its purpose was exposed that made it fun.
“If we kill the man they’re all protecting this desperately, I wonder what reaction he’ll have?”
It was known that countless villains had fled South Korea amid the war with villains.
But the general public didn’t know that more than half of those fleeing villains had been spurred by the video Choi Yu-ra had filmed of the Green Dragon’s slaughter.
No matter how villainous they were, they couldn’t accept a reality like a group project where one screw-up meant everyone died.
Honestly speaking, if one villain went mad and targeted Yoo Jun-hyuk?
And if that attempt miraculously succeeded?
Any sane villain would just leave for another country rather than accept that.
“Choi Yu-ra’s no fool, so she’s probably prepared other countermeasures besides this.”
That was why the villains still remaining in South Korea fell into four categories.
Those who had put down perfect roots and couldn’t leave even if they wanted to.
Those who believed Choi Yu-ra wouldn’t actually wipe out every last villain—and that if she tried, the government would stop her somehow.
Those confident they could evade her gaze through various means even if it came to that.
And the final type……
“I’ll have to challenge him as stealthily as possible.”
The crazies who moved purely out of personal amusement.
She belonged to the fourth category and had devised a plan to kill Yoo Jun-hyuk for her own entertainment.
Her goal was the chaos that would follow his death.
What would happen if he died?
Would Choi Yu-ra go berserk and get taken down by the government?
Or would she compromise with reality and waste away in sorrow like a tragic romance novel heroine?
Or would she truly slaughter every villain on this land, go mad, and become an unprecedented villain herself?
“No bodyguards around him, at least.”
She was a villain, but at the same time, not a villain.
Her pattern was to analyze and observe targets thoroughly like this and move in secrecy.
Naturally, the Hero Association had never caught her crimes, and since she wasn’t in their database, Choi Yu-ra’s safety net hadn’t detected her either.
What made that possible was her skill, 『Alchemist』.
“The ring is probably an artifact. Comparing it to old photos, there are signs of tampering.”
Her skill let her twist chemical formulas to create new drugs, perfectly controlling latency periods, addictiveness, and toxicity. She could even make drugs that accumulated harmlessly in the body until a specific other substance entered, and produce them in any form she wanted—spray, ingestible, skin-absorbent, and so on.
Getting caught committing crimes with a skill like this would be the real mystery.
“There’s gotta be a tracker function, of course. Probably detoxification too? I hear artifact detox functions added on top don’t exceed B-Rank, so max out the toxicity but add a latency period and…….”
Suddenly, a loud rumble from her stomach.
She’d used her brain too much and run low on calories.
After ordering food via delivery app, she refocused on her work.
“Injection via spray form would be best. Disguise it as vitamins to build up inside the body? Add three more compounds to accumulate, and use caffeine as the trigger.”
She was the café manager, so she’d drink coffee every day, right?
Rumor had it she often served directly too.
She could periodically spritz perfume-disguised drugs as she passed by to administer it.
“Hmm, instant death would be ideal if possible. Just in case he survives…….”
As she racked her brain, the doorbell rang.
“Delivery’s here already.”
Riders these days were seriously fast.
She came up from the basement and opened the front door.
“Yes, coming ri…….”
In that instant, a blow struck her temple.
‘Ah.’
Clutching the doorknob, she collapsed to the floor.
＊＊＊
“Yeah, good work. She’s an alchemist making drugs, so she’s immune to them—keep her knocked out physically instead of sedatives.”
-Understood. How should we handle disposal?
“Jem Cutter’s been moping lately about all the villains leaking out of the country. Toss her to him. Let’s rack up a favor this time.”
-Got it.
An utterly ordinary-looking office.
Leaves piled on the sign reading 『Ant Investment Company』 below the window tumbled down in the breeze.
“Phew, another one down.”
A woman with purple hair and eyes sighed as she gazed at the falling leaves.
The people in the office sighed identically at her back.
“Boss, do we really have to go this far?”
“Why not just relocate us all to another country?”
At that, the woman called Boss shot them a pathetic look.
“I told you. There’s nowhere to run.”
“But normally you explain in detail what’s gonna happen, and this time there’s none of that—just that one line. How are we supposed to get it?”
“Yeah. I know it’s kinda much coming from paid employees, but…… I just don’t get this job at all.”
A small grumble from the staff who always followed orders without question.
Of course, it was just grumbling. She always brought them immense wealth, and they knew what skill she had, so no one thought of betraying her.
She had gathered only such people using her own skill to begin with.
“Enough. Just do as I say. Yoo Jun-hyuk must absolutely not come to any harm.”
“Understood.”
The Boss withdrew her pathetic glare and turned her gaze back to the window.
Busy people reflected in her eyes, but she was seeing farther—the future.
“Just when things were getting livable.”
If anyone but her had said that, it would’ve been dismissed as the ravings of a madwoman.
But her words……
South Korea’s No. 2 villain organization, Thousand Gold Star’s boss.
『Clairvoyance』—from Yeo Bit’s mouth—were never empty talk or nonsense.
“Haa, life’s so damn hard.”
A truth known only to her utterly loyal underlings and a few heavyweight villains.
Clairvoyance didn’t spot distant objects or hidden things.
“Even novels would get flak for lacking plausibility if they wrote it like this.”
Clairvoyance.
Could see the future.
Countless possibilities branching from the present, changeable by her actions.
And in most of the futures she saw……
“A man destroys the world.”
It was a world destroyed by Yoo Jun-hyuk.