The Professional's Approach (2)
At those words, Junil froze solid.
What?
Right in the center of the ragdoll golem, blatantly embedded like some grotesque trophy, was a painfully familiar middle-aged face.
It was Hae-il’s father.
This is insane.
Junil’s mind raced. Could Kang Hae-il actually take this thing down right now?
Based on all the big data he’d gathered so far…
No.
Absolutely not.
Then would the ragdoll golem suddenly awaken his father’s mind, stop attacking, and go “Hae… Hae-il-ah…?”
No.
That kind of miracle wasn’t even on the table.
A ragdoll golem was a fusion of countless corpses to begin with. The odds of only Kang Hae-il’s father’s consciousness waking up were ridiculous, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be able to seize full control of the entire construct.
At that point, Junil made his decision as a hero.
Run first.
He ran, but only far enough to slip out of Hae-il’s direct line of sight before stopping. In one fluid motion he stripped off his outer layer, tossed it into his inventory, and pulled out the clothes he’d prepared in advance.
A black coat. Black boots. Gloves.
A few of the sharper Constellations already knew exactly what he was doing.
He was transforming into Sagosul.
Right before he put on the mask, Junil looked down at his new outfit.
Yeah… this definitely looked different enough.
Normally he would have felt safe here.
But if I get caught, it’s over.
Hadn’t he just jumped into Kang Hae-il’s memory flashback earlier?
Right now, Junil was the enemy who had killed the man’s father.
On top of that, he had been standing right next to Hae-il until just moments ago. The voice alone could give him away, never mind everything else.
Shop.
Whoosh.
Anytime Anything Shop Lv.2
He hadn’t opened it to mess with camera angles this time.
There it is.
He scrolled past several pages until he reached the Narrative Trick series.
While browsing the catalog during his downtime, he had spotted something useful. He had been trying to save money so he could buy a sword right away, but…
Narrative Trick Mask
Price: 500 Feelings (FL)
He had no choice but to use it.
The price was reasonable. After all, it had zero defensive stats. It was purely a trick item.
“Please allow me to become a righteous thief once again today.”
A mask that has preached the theory of prosopagnosia across countless stories.
It makes it difficult for others to recognize the wearer and even alters the sound of their voice.
However, it appears exactly as it is to Constellations.
Can be changed into any mask design the user desires.
To Constellations, it looked exactly the same.
That was what made the item so terrifying.
How frustrating would it be to watch someone whose voice and clothes were identical and still not recognize them?
If the outfit was the same too, they’d be even more pissed.
But he decided to ignore that.
I can’t let my guard down.
Anything involving those damn fairies needed to be read with extreme care.
Makes it difficult to recognize.
It didn’t say they would be completely unable to recognize him.
Just that it would be hard.
If he crossed the line, they would figure it out.
[Purchase]
Jingle.
Junil spent every last bit of story currency he had left and paid for it.
The Constellations thought a perfectly timed item sponsorship had just arrived.
Thud.
A single box dropped in front of him.
“Huh? S-suddenly?”
Even though he was short on time, Junil still put on a performance. He acted surprised, slowly opened the box, and muttered in confusion.
“What is this…”
He pretended to read the description with a bewildered expression, then finally said,
“I got lucky.”
They had watched him suffer so much terrible luck that even a scene this conveniently lucky made the Constellations happy. They didn’t find it suspicious at all.
They had fallen for the gambler’s fallacy.
“Then…”
Click.
Junil put on the mask.
Black cat.
He changed it into the same cat mask shape he had used before. The design was a bit more refined now, about the difference between Spider-Man 2 and 3 masks. That was more than enough to pass as Sagosul.
Now that he was Sagosul, there was no need to hide his power.
He immediately sprinted back to where Kang Hae-il was.
Tatata—
In the distance, the massive golem came into view.
Looking at the level… this is gonna be tough.
His current arsenal of skills didn’t seem sufficient.
Undead like ragdoll golems were the type Junil hated facing the most. They had no clear weaknesses. The only way was to destroy the core.
And the core was obviously in the center.
The problem is that it’s way too big.
Junil thought hard. If Hae-il weren’t getting beaten up, he could take his time and dismantle the thing properly. But right now, he had to go straight for the core.
Otherwise this world would be finished.
Guess I have to use it.
Mana Blade.
I wondered why they gave me that skill.
It was a skill granted after a sudden flashback to his first life as a villain. When it first appeared, Junil hadn’t exactly been thrilled.
First, he could already use any skill he wanted by inheriting Julian’s power. There was no real benefit to being “granted” it.
Second, it just felt bad.
That uncomfortable memory…
The memory tied to this skill wasn’t a pleasant one.
Hadn’t the first-life villain said it was his favorite episode?
Junil’s opinion was the complete opposite. To him, that memory had been the most horrific.
Sigh… damn it.
And soon, Kang Hae-il’s memory would probably become the same.
Similar situation, huh.
Whoosh.
Junil pulled a goblin sword from his inventory and charged toward the ragdoll golem.
End it in one strike.
Since he was using it anyway, he might as well do it properly.
Junil made up his mind.
Tatata—
As he closed in, he closed his eyes.
Julian’s power, 10%.
He precisely sensed his own mana and drew it upward.
It really is different.
The gap between 7% and 10% was night and day. It felt like he had broken through some kind of wall.
Flash!
A blue gleam flickered across his eyes.
Mana Blade
Vrrrrrm!
A blue blade of energy shot forward, honed to a lethal edge. It sliced through everything in its path, even splitting the very air, and in the most natural way possible, it cut its target in half.
Slaaaaaash!
The golem, its body a mess of rigid corpses, was split cleanly down the middle like a perfectly sliced ham.
Thud…!
The two halves of the smooth-cut corpse collapsed to either side.
It was completely dead.
Beyond the fallen bodies stood Kang Hae-il.
Their eyes met.
“He’s doing it! Kang Hae-il! He’s finally awakening aaaah!”
Ram flew around in excitement, screaming at the top of her lungs. The signs of Hae-il’s awakening were so obvious.
“Sam! We’re about to blow up!”
“Yes! Ram-nim! We… we’re finally going to see the light, aren’t we?!”
“That’s right! Well done, Kang Hae-il!!”
Thankfully, Hae-il hadn’t given up. Here, he would personally grant his father peace, then be reborn as a true hero—just like so many heroes before him.
But in that moment, they had forgotten one crucial thing.
One of those past heroes was standing right here.
“?”
Slaaaaaash!
The ragdoll golem was cut in half.
Ram and Sam stared at each other with completely vacant eyes.
“Th-that… just now…”
They couldn’t believe it.
The guy who had just sliced Kang Hae-il’s father’s corpse in half… was that him?
His clothes and shoes were all different, so it was hard to tell…
Only after seeing the Constellations’ reactions did they finally believe it.
“J-Julian?!”
“Uwaaaaah?!”
Ram and Sam’s eyes bulged so wide they looked ready to pop out.
That guy is…?
Even through the shimmering heat haze and acrid smoke obscuring his vision, he could see clearly.
“Sagosul…?”
He was the mastermind behind the 4th Line incident that had driven his father to his death.
The 4th Line Goblin Slayer.
Kang Hae-il, on the verge of awakening, had his entire body engulfed in flames. His mind was clouded with rage as massive as the inferno burning across his skin.
“You…”
Killing intent slowly spread through his entire body.
Even Junil found it difficult to measure just how deep that fury ran. It was so intense he wondered if the anger alone might trigger an awakening.
But awakening wasn’t something that came from rage alone.
It was a blessing granted to those who, when forced to kill something precious with their own hands, felt the clash between their duty as a hero and their personal emotions, yet still chose the path of a hero.
The Constellations’ wishes, one’s own fighting spirit, and the overcoming of despair. When those three things aligned, it created the ‘Moment of the Star’—an awakening.
Once that moment passed, it would not return for a long time.
Hae-il had lost that chance.
Junil had stolen his opportunity to awaken.
At this rate, the Constellations’ interest would inevitably cool off. The hype would die.
This wasn’t what Junil had intended.
Phew. I saved him.
He had simply stepped in because it looked like no matter how you sliced it, Hae-il wouldn’t be able to kill his own father.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Didn’t I just save you?”
Junil deliberately lowered his voice in case he might be recognized.
His Constellations were loving it.
It was starting to feel like the Constellations watching this stream liked Junil more than Hae-il.
Maybe that was only natural. After all, they were the ones who had come looking for a side character who, until recently, had been treated as an extra. They already had peculiar tastes.
The real problem was that even the Constellations in Hae-il’s room were getting shaken by what had just been said.
This was exactly what Junil had intended.
From Hae-il’s perspective, Sagosul was hateful. But from the Constellations’ point of view, it was ambiguous.
They shared some of Hae-il’s emotions, but if it went too far?
Emotional overload.
Junil knew this all too well.
In the end, they won’t be able to fully empathize.
When a tragic backstory became too long-winded and didn’t lead to a satisfying payoff, some Constellations would simply shut off their emotions to protect themselves.
That was why blood relationships that could cause this kind of emotional overload were rarely given to protagonists.
This was also why Fairy Corporation usually selected orphans with no living parents as their main characters.
In Kang Hae-il’s case, the setting that his only blood relative—his father—would die had been added for that very reason.
The only problem was that the culprit who had driven his father to death was still alive inside this very story board.
And that culprit was standing right in front of him.
Not only that, he was a veteran who had already lived through seven lifetimes as a hero.
“Why… why are you here.”
“Coincidence.”
Everything was a coincidence.
Or perhaps the grand flow of the story.
“You expect me to believe that?”
He couldn’t believe it.
This bastard had killed his father twice—once while he was alive, once after he was dead.
The only reality given to Kang Hae-il was this.
In a situation like this, calming his emotions was impossible for a human being.
If he could stay calm here, that would make him less than human.
His reason blurred beneath a haze of rage.
“Fuck…”
Tatata!
Hae-il charged.
With a completely different intensity than before, his body burned several times hotter.
“Diiiiiie!!”
With the single thought of killing this man no matter what.
Hmm.
Behind the mask, Junil’s eyes narrowed in concern.
I might actually die if I’m not careful.
This was now 10% of Julian’s power. If he hit too hard, he could kill him.