3
My Villains Chapter 3
2.Opening Eyes (1)
Huh, what's this?
An amusement park? Why am I here?
"Uncle!"
A lovely voice calls from behind.
Startled by the sudden break in silence, I turned around with tears in my eyes.
A girl in a blue skirt and a t-shirt with a large printed image was bouncing towards me.
"Did you have fun?"
"Oh, it was really awesome! Did you take pictures?"
"Here."
When I held out the broken smartphone, Ji-won burst into laughter.
"Puhaha, what's this! Uncle, do you have tremors?"
The kid scrolled through the photos with a grin.
"Wow, you really can't take pictures. Uncle, you've become an old man. Your sense is completely dead."
"Hey, what do you mean old man? How can twenty-three be an old man?"
"Haa, uncle. Age isn't what's important."
"Then what?"
Ji-won made a mischievous expression at my question.
Just like her sister, annoyingly so.
"Of course, it's about looks!"
"Hey, I'm young-looking for my age, you know? They still check my ID at bars."
"They're just being polite. Uncle, don't you know that?"
Ji-won and I sat down on a bench, crossing the police line.
She massaged her calf and gestured to me with her chin.
"Uncle, they're selling churros over there."
"...So?"
"I'm hungryy."
"What nonsense. Do you want to get smacked?"
"Oh, hurry up!"
"Don't tell me... You want me to buy it?"
"Hehe."
"You call me an old man and now you're casually asking me to buy you food. You're in the prime of youth, go buy it yourself."
"Ah, I'm tired. Can't you do that much for your cute niece?"
Pestered by her, I finally got up and headed to the store.
As I waited for the churros to come out from the darkened store...
Wow, the smell of grilled butter squid stings my nose.
I can't resist this.
"Hey, Han Ji-won! Do you want squid-"
As I said that and turned around.
Of course, Ji-won wasn't on the bench.
"Huh."
Someone was sitting on that bench, which should have been empty, where no one should have been.
A beautiful girl with blonde hair and blue eyes.
"Huh?"
The familiar-looking girl was waving at me.
Cold wind and water droplets violently beat against my face.
...The smell of the sea?
I opened my eyes wide at the salty scent tickling my nose. I couldn't help but scream at the sight of the rough sea filling my vision.
"Aaaaah!"
"Damn it, you scared me!"
A sailor with a rough appearance growled while pulling the sail nearby.
"Hey! If you don't want to get hurt, sit down!"
"Yes, yes?"
Only then did I realize that I was standing on a ship being battered by wind and rain.
It was a ship with two large sails, but the deck was so crowded with all sorts of junk and merchants that there seemed to be no room to step.
The sailor shouted at me again as I looked around in confusion.
"I said sit down! It's already difficult enough!"
"What? Ah- yes, yes!"
Though I stammered, I glanced at the sailor's tanned, brawny shoulders. His rough appearance and harsh tone made me sit down involuntarily.
The seat was just a small gap between piles of luggage, but I had no choice but to squeeze my bottom in somehow.
As the damp air enveloped my whole body, my teeth chattered involuntarily.
What the hell. What is this place?
I sat down because that scary-looking guy yelled at me... But what on earth is going on here?
I tried to assess the situation by looking around.
As I had already figured out, I was sitting on the deck of a ship sailing on a stormy sea.
Despite my sudden outburst, the passengers on the deck barely gave me a glance, and the crew seemed busy running around frantically.
Come to think of it, the waves were so strong that it felt like the ship might capsize at any moment.
Oh, shit, I get seasick... Huh?
I used to get so seasick that I couldn't even ride a Han River cruise boat. But strangely, I feel fine now.
The cold raindrops, the sea breeze chilling my body, and all sorts of loud noises piercing my ears - my senses were sharper than ever, but oddly, I didn't feel dizzy.
"What, what is this..."
I wiped the moisture off my face and suddenly flinched in surprise.
I had definitely raised my hand to wipe my face, but it felt as if I was touching someone else's face with someone else's hand - the sensation was so unfamiliar.
The unfamiliar feeling was due to changes in both my face and hands.
First, my nose was too high, and my hands were large and rough. They were several times rougher than the hands I had when I worked part-time in a kitchen during high school or when they dried out during cold weather training.
"What, what the hell is this..."
Looking down again, my body was strange too.
If I were to recall my original body, Kim Seung-soo's body - it was a typical office worker's build with barely above-average height, skinny limbs, and a protruding beer belly.
But now... Every time I twisted my body, I could clearly feel the solid muscles embedded throughout my body.
My arms and legs were surprisingly long, and there was no fat around my waist. When I touched myself in surprise, I could feel chest muscles like marble.
My clothes were strange too.
The upper and lower garments were made of leather, but while the pants seemed to have been processed somewhat, the top was rough as if made of raw leather.
Loosely unfastened metal armor hung on my chest and shoulders.
At my feet lay a sword wrapped in cloth, which seemed to be something I had dropped when I got up earlier.
Looking down at the cumbersome feeling around my waist, I saw a shield as big as a head dangling from my belt.
What, what is going on? What was I wearing?
I tried to stay calm and started to strain my memory.
The Blood Knight ‘Pique Application Note’ that I had spent nearly a year cultivating was killed by a Trickster.
Whether it was a hack or a bug, I hurled insults at the guy for such blatant cheating.
The Trickster left, and I ate to calm down before sitting back down.
I played the level 1 Blood Knight ‘Hey Hacker Bastard’ that I had created in anger.
After easily clearing Chapter 1 and boarding the ship heading to Chapter 2, I exited the game and went to sleep...
'Wait, boarded a ship?'
My body shuddered as if struck by lightning.
The surrounding scenery, my changed body and clothes, the faint knowledge flowing into my mind... My brain quickly processed all the incoming information.
And what people commonly call a 'hunch' along with a piece of cold reason that remained came to the same conclusion.
"Oh no."
Me, a thirty-year-old youth, or perhaps an old man, in my third year of office work...
"Shit..."
I had become the hardcore character ‘Hey Hacker Bastard’, a Blood Knight in Dark World.
After trying everything to escape reality for a day, I finally came to accept the situation before me.
To satisfy my hunger, I took out some hardened black bread from a pouch that I wasn't sure was a bag or a bundle, soaked it in rainwater, and chewed on it. As I did so, I fell into thought.
The main stage of Dark World is divided into two branches: Campaign and Expedition.
Expedition is high-level content where you wander through hellish second dimensions farming for items, while Campaign is the content that progresses the game's story.
Dark World's campaign consists of ten chapters in total, including Chapter 1, which is essentially a tutorial.
During that campaign, the player embarks on a journey to prevent Middle World from being tainted by Dark World.
And the ship I was on was the passage connecting Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the Dark World campaign.
The decisive difference between the game and reality was that instead of skipping the journey with a short video, I was actually sailing the sea, enduring wind and rain.
"Fuck."
I wiped the moisture off my face and buried my forehead between my knees, spitting out a curse mixed with a sigh.
'Why did it have to be Dark World of all things...'
If I were to describe the world view of Dark World in one sentence, it would be 'a hopeless mess with no dreams.'
Kings wage wars, and lords engage in civil wars. The church is corrupt, and thieves, monsters, and undead are rampant everywhere.
The future becomes even more of a mess. All sorts of second dimensions, including Dark World, are set to break down the thinning dimensional boundaries and devour this place, Middle World.
"Sigh."
With a throbbing headache, I closed my eyes for a moment and recalled the scene I had seen in my dream when I had forcibly fallen asleep earlier.
Familiar text and symbols. Unmistakably, it was a character sheet displaying stats and skills.
For some reason, the equipment window didn't appear, but the character sheet alone was enough to confirm that I was now inside Dark World.
And I had checked the status of the stats and skills, as well as the ring on my finger.
The conclusion I came to was... I seemed to have become a character in Dark World. I had become ‘Hey Hacker Bastard’, a level 10 Blood Knight who had cleared Chapter 1.
Ha, if I was going to become a game character anyway, why couldn't it have been ‘Pique Application Note'?
‘Pique Application Note' was a hero who had successfully completed the campaign and was treated as the savior of not only the continent but the entire dimension.
Moreover, it was such a powerful character that the level of enemies appearing in the campaign could never threaten its life.
I quietly looked down at the relic left by ‘Pique Application Note'.
Seeing the ring emanating a red aura naturally reminded me of the Elemental Mage who had killed ‘Pique Application Note'.
Trickster. The guy I suspected of throwing me in here, judging from the circumstances.
In fact, I had no way of knowing if that bastard was a man or a woman.
I hadn't actually met him, I had just guessed their age and gender from our in-game interactions.
Anyway, judging from the talk about hidden quests and invitations, it seems clearly related to the current situation...
"Land ho!"
"It's South Harbor!"
I jerked my head up at the shouts from the ship's side. As people started getting up, I also rose from my seat.
The wind and rain had stopped, and the dark clouds were retreating to one side.
And under the brilliant sun, in the distance, a beautiful port city was bathed in a yellow light.
It was ‘South Harbor’, the start of Chapter 2 and the southernmost point of the Milanol Kingdom.
"Wow-"
I let out an exclamation, forgetting the situation I was in.
The young, healthy eyes of the Blood Knight clearly showed South Harbor despite the distance.
High walls built with brown bricks, long piers stretching towards the sea, large ships docked here and there, colorful roofs, merchants in distinctive attire and soldiers in chain mail, livestock of unfamiliar appearances...
Although I had traveled the world for five months right after graduating from university, the scenery of South Harbor was incomparably new.
I was captivated by the view that was incomparable to any coastal city on Earth - the endless coastline of Nice, the beautiful night view of Amsterdam, the bustling Barcelona, and so on.
It felt like I had escaped from the hellish life in Seoul - car installments, monthly rent, tiresome company dinners, my team leader who acted like an old fogy, and the incompetent department head.
And the incredibly robust physique and unprecedented power boiling in my blood gently brought out the sense of adventure that I had hidden in a corner of my heart.
However, this happy contemplation was shattered in less than five minutes.
Swoosh.
"Huh?"
Somewhere, there was a sound of wind being torn, followed by a chilling thud.
As I turned my eyes to the source of the sound without much thought, I was dazed by an unimaginable sight.
There was a man with an arrow in his neck, bleeding.
"Gurgle..."
"What, what..."
The arrow had enough force to pierce through the man's neck and was firmly embedded in the railing. The man was moving his mouth as if trying to say something with his neck bent.
He raised his hand to feel the blood-soaked arrow shaft, but he couldn't pull it out or break it off, just continuing to make meaningless gestures.
I stared blankly at the man's mouth, trying to figure out what he was trying to say.
"Pirates!"
I kept staring at the man's mouth until I fell over, bumping shoulders with a sailor on the swaying ship.
But in the end, I couldn't hear his last words.