The Villains' End 2
The villains nailed to the wall figured the intent behind parading those things in front of them was visual torture.
What other reason could there be for herding such grotesque creatures—who plainly weren't even mana awakeners—into this place, if not to inflict visual terrorism on the people hanging from the walls like ornaments?
"I'm hungry... and looking at those disgusting things is making my stomach turn."
"I haven't even eaten anything and I already feel like throwing up."
Like Tantalus of Greco-Roman myth, condemned in Tartarus to the punishment of eternal hunger and thirst, those hanging on the walls like decorations were likewise wracked by the agony of starvation and thirst. The grotesque spectacle forced upon them on top of that had turned their stomachs inside out.
"Wh-what the hell are those men saying?"
"Waaah! I'm going to sue! I'm going to sue all of you! This is all those men's fault!"
"I only got this because I'm a woman! Because I'm a woman!"
"Give me a break. Who the hell would even look at that and think it's a woman?"
That barb from one of the villains decorating the wall made the women's group members—already deeply insecure about their looks—see red.
"This is all because those man-pests discriminated against us for being women!"
"Th-that's right! It's because they discriminated against us for being women!"
"When I get back I'm posting this on Twitter! Aaaaagh!"
"Aaaaagh! Fuck, I hate this so much! Why am I stuck in here with these men?!"
The women's group members shrieked, and before long they were screaming as their bodies slammed into the walls and nails were driven into them by force.
"Aaaaaagh! It hurts! Waaaaaah! It hurts!"
"Mommy! Save meeee!"
"You men! Don't just stand there watching—save us!"
"You call yourselves men? You just got nailed to a wall and you're sitting there watching?!"
At that feast of deranged garbage so stupid it wasn't even worth calling nonsense, one of the villains decorating the wall spoke in a hollow voice.
"I've never regretted a single thing I did as a villain. But looking at those things... I'm starting to."
The other villains immediately piled on.
"The fuck are those fat sows even babbling about?"
"If my body still worked I'd kill those fat bitches first. Fuck."
The villains found themselves regretting—after a fashion—that their past selves hadn't killed those insufferable women when they'd had the chance.
It was almost fascinating, even through a villain's eyes, how just looking at them could provoke this much murderous intent.
So this was what people meant by images so disgusting you wanted them erased from existence?
"Aaaaaagh! What the hell are these men mumbling about!"
"You man-pests can go kill yourselves!"
"Why do I have to suffer this just because I'm a woman?! This is the kind of thing those tiny-dicked men should be going through! Why aren't you sacrificing yourselves in our place?!"
The fat covering not just their limbs but their entire bodies was so thick that driving the nails in was a struggle, but the nails moved on their own and succeeded in decorating the walls with the women's group members.
"Aaaagh! Fuck! It hurts! Hnngh, Mommyyy!"
"What's Dad doing?! He's supposed to save me! If he's a man he should save me! He should die in my place!"
The villains' end was to live on in the agony of hunger, thirst, and pain.
And the researchers who had performed human experiments on me were all living in hell, subjected to a repeating cycle of suffering similar to what I had endured.
"Those ones should slim down nicely."
The women's group members decorating the walls would be getting a bit of a forced diet here.
But no matter how starved they became, they wouldn't die. I had taken measures to ensure this hell would continue, so that they couldn't die easily.
In this place, even if their heads were cut off, they wouldn't die—the severed neck would simply rejoin, top to bottom.
"A fitting end for villains."
No easy death. Forced to keep living, endlessly, in pain.
That was the form that suited villains perfectly.
Five years ago, I hadn't been a villain. I'd been a ten-year-old boy, sold off thanks to my wonderful biological parents, and I'd experienced every kind of hell—to the point that I had genuinely wished someone would just kill me.
Back then, I told myself that even if I was treated differently, it was fine as long as it wasn't abuse.
I'd let the discrimination slide, grown used to it, and that had led to that miserable end.
When I'd been driven to the point of craving death over life, I'd wanted to die—but after being thrown into a rift and finding my freedom, I realized what I truly wanted.
I wanted revenge on those who had caused me pain. I wanted to show them the sight of everything they had built crumbling to nothing.
Baek Hyeong-won, Kim Yu-jeong, and even Baek Seo-jin. I would wait until their happiness reached its peak before I tore it down. But for these villains, right now was already the peak of their happiness.
The women's groups, who couldn't accept that they—who had so cheerfully trampled others—had come to this, were still shrieking. Before an hour had even passed, they were weeping and begging to be saved, over and over.
"They had a blast stomping on other people. The moment it's their turn, they can't endure even a little of it."
"Truly feeble humans. And yet it's remarkable how cruel they can be to their own kind."
"That's just how they are. They rationalize what they do to others and enjoy it, but they can't stand even a fraction of it when it's done to them."
Honestly, I couldn't understand how anyone lived that way either. Even as a fellow human being, they were trash so far beneath comprehension that I couldn't begin to grasp them.
If anything, So Gang-seok's underlings—the villains who'd been captured first and hung on the walls as decorations—were easier to understand.
Far from welcoming the newcomers, So Gang-seok's villains were cursing them out, resenting their past selves for not having found and killed these women sooner.
"These villains can stay in Somalia from now on."
What remained now was the Baekho Guild, run by Baek Hyeong-won and Kim Yu-jeong.
Even though the Baekho Guild had orchestrated all of this, it still couldn't be allowed to disappear just yet, so it was maintaining its signboard as one of the top ten guilds.
But a single internet search was enough to see that public opinion was beating it to a pulp.
Why?
Baek Seo-jin couldn't believe the torrent of abuse directed at the Baekho Guild flooding the internet.
Search for "Baekho Guild" on any website and what came up was mostly people tearing the guild apart.
There were especially many posts attacking his father, Baek Hyeong-won—critical comments about how he could still have the nerve to sit there as guild leader after doing something like this.
Reading them, Baek Seo-jin felt a wave of displeasure.
Why are they attacking Dad this badly?
Why was everyone treating his father like a villain and cursing him out?
In Baek Seo-jin's world, his father Baek Hyeong-won was a hero. The idea that people would speak of him this way was something he simply could not accept.
But the scene before his eyes was sowing chaos in him.
At the same time, a defiant impulse rose up.
Dad couldn't have done anything wrong. People are misunderstanding something.
There was no way his father had done something bad.
Baek Seo-jin thought of Seomun Ye-jin, the woman the articles kept calling the victim of this incident.
She was far too beautiful to be hanging around a nasty, strange person like Kim Ho-jun. No matter how he looked at it, Seomun Ye-jin was wasted on him.
But when he asked his father and mother, the two people who normally answered anything he asked wouldn't give him any answer at all.
If anything, that only threw Baek Seo-jin's heart into greater confusion.
What if that Seomun Ye-jin unnie is misunderstanding Dad too?
There was something that nagged at him, but for now he decided to follow the line of thought that was easier. Or rather—he'd decided not to think about the problems that made his head hurt and his chest feel tight.
The thought that Seomun Ye-jin, the victim of this incident, might also be cursing his father made his chest feel stifled.
But there was nothing he could do about it right now.
"Seo-jin, Mom's coming in for a moment."
Just then, his mother Kim Yu-jeong's voice came from outside the door.
"Yes, Mom. Come in."
At Baek Seo-jin's reply, Kim Yu-jeong opened the door and stepped inside.
The sight of his always kind and loving mother's poor complexion made Baek Seo-jin's chest ache.
"My good boy, why do you look so worried?"
Kim Yu-jeong came over to Baek Seo-jin and, despite her own poor color, worried about her son first.
Receiving his mother's warm touch and concern, Baek Seo-jin was certain once again that parents like these couldn't possibly have done anything wrong.
There was some kind of misunderstanding right now, and that misunderstanding had gotten tangled up so that nothing was getting resolved. That had to be it.
"Lately I keep seeing so many people online cursing Dad. Our dad is a good person... why won't people see that?"
"Ah, Seo-jin. Just think of it as a passing rain shower. There'll be a little hardship for a while, but good days will come too. My sweet boy~"
Baek Seo-jin quietly nestled into his mother's arms as she held him and soothed him.
Yeah. Maybe a day like that would come.
"Seo-jin, aren't you bored being all by yourself? Don't you need a friend?"
"A friend?"
"That's right. I found a girl around your age—younger than that Seomun Ye-jin girl, but one who looks like she'll grow up to be exceptionally beautiful."
Baek Seo-jin murmured the name of the girl Kim Yu-jeong went on to mention.
"Han Se-hee?"
Han Se-hee.
In the original novel, she had been the heroine who was childhood friends with the protagonist, Baek Seo-jin.