A Hero Is Born (5)
What is justice?
In a comic book, the answer was simple. The hero was good, and the villain was evil. A brutally simple logic.
But reality was not that neat.
Everyone lived with their own little mix of light and darkness. Unless they were some irredeemable monster, there weren’t many people who could draw a clear, clean line between good and evil.
In my previous life, I had hired a private hunter to capture the villain who had killed my younger brother. I had paid him and begged him to make sure I got my revenge. In other words, I had commissioned a murder.
Then was I evil too? Was I a good man?
Beanpole had been a gang member. Judging by everything he’d done, he leaned toward the side of evil. And yet even Beanpole had had a shred of decency. When our one-on-one fight ended, he had admitted defeat cleanly and backed off. I didn’t know whether he’d truly repented, but he had quit the gang and stopped harassing the factory workers.
But Cha Chi-do?
The man standing before me didn’t even possess the bare minimum of human decency. He sucked the blood out of factory laborers and, whenever someone stopped being useful to him, cut their bodies apart without a second thought. From the start, he didn’t seem to care about anyone else’s pain at all.
Cha Chi-do tilted his head.
"An apostle of justice?"
I had charged in out of nowhere, yet he didn’t seem the least bit rattled. Instead, he stared at me with open, almost delighted curiosity.
"An apostle is someone who devotes their body to a holy cause, isn’t that right? It can also refer to the twelve disciples chosen by Jesus. Peter, Andrew, James, John…"
The man was crazy enough to be rattling off trivia in the middle of all this, but I knew better than to underestimate him.
There had once been more than five gangs operating at the Ilsan Hunter Complex. Back when those factions were all busy jostling for scraps of power, the Chi-do Gang appeared. Cha Chi-do had united the gangs in no time at all. After the factory workers saw him fight with a sashimi knife in his hand, none of them ever dared to stand up to a gang again.
Cha Chi-do wasn’t really a fighter so much as a man who enjoyed murder itself.
"…and finally Judas the traitor. So which apostle are you?"
I still didn’t know what justice truly was, but the yardstick I had set for myself right now was simple enough.
"The apostle who beats scum like you into the ground."
There was no point dragging this out. I was ending it in one shot.
Clutching the sashimi knife, I raised one fist to activate Judgment of the Superhuman.
Slash!
In an instant, Cha Chi-do slipped out of range. The sashimi knife that had been in my grasp was gone; he had already taken it back.
So I missed.
When I looked down, I saw a single cut across my palm and two more near my wrist. If I hadn’t been wearing the suit, my wrist would have been severed clean off.
Damn. Dangerous. If I let my guard down for even a second, he’d take a piece of my body away too.
Cha Chi-do tapped the scar near his eye with the tip of the knife.
"Oh? That armor. It’s quite sturdy."
He smiled with a thin, greasy sort of amusement and went on, "I was aiming for the artery."
Beanpole looked up at me from where he was kneeling, dazed.
I stared back at him and said, "Hey. Get up."
Only then did Beanpole haul himself to his feet, one leg dragging.
"…Who are you?"
He couldn’t have recognized me with the armor suit on and my face hidden.
"Why are you saving me?"
Good question. Why was I?
I had thrown myself into a gang fight without anyone telling me to do it. But after dying once and returning to the past, I had learned something. Bad people and good people were the same in one respect: everybody made mistakes.
Just like I was fixing my own mistakes one by one while living my second life, I wanted to give Beanpole a chance. Unlike Cha Chi-do, there was still hope for redemption in this guy.
"Because I don’t want to see a grown man bawling his eyes out."
"…What?"
I glanced at the blood-soaked ear lying on the floor.
"Hurry up and pick those up."
When you worked in a factory, things like sliced fingers or chopped-off fingertips were everyday occurrences, just like they had been for Karki. If a body part got cut off, you had to collect it. That was common sense, but panic had a way of making people forget even that.
If you wanted to reattach a severed limb, the golden hour mattered.
"You’ve got to put your men’s ears back on, right?"
Beanpole swallowed hard, then nodded.
"…Thanks. Hey, all of you, hurry up!"
"Yes, sir!"
His underlings clutched the sides of their bleeding ears while scrambling to pick up the pieces from the floor.
Beanpole turned back to me.
"What about you?"
What was left now was…
Leaving Beanpole and his men behind, I stepped forward.
"Wait. I’m going to deal with that pale bastard over there."
Cha Chi-do shrugged.
"How admirable. It seems you really are an apostle of justice, trying to face us all alone. Foolish. No, rather, very brave."
"Us? Don’t talk nonsense. Just you and me. I’ll peel that pale skin right off your body."
"My, how scary!"
Cha Chi-do shrank back theatrically, pretending to be frightened. Then he hid behind one of his fat subordinates and peeked out at me from over the man’s shoulder.
"By the looks of it, you’re an Awakened."
The closer I got, the farther he backed away. I had expected a one-on-one fight, but Cha Chi-do flicked the sashimi knife through the air and jerked his chin at his men.
"Let’s see what you’re made of."
His underlings began edging toward me.
I hesitated for a moment.
My awakened talent was Purchase, the ability to buy the techniques of comic-book heroes and reproduce them in reality. It was a power that worked even on most strong opponents, but its limitations were just as clear.
I can’t use it forever.
I counted the enemies at a glance. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-three… Even if I used Judgment of the Superhuman just once on each of them, that would still cost twenty-three million won.
Too expensive. No matter how I looked at it, it was terribly inefficient from a cost standpoint.
Then maybe…
Should I use that?
In my head, a trump card surfaced.
Judgment of the Superhuman (Special) Ticket: 10/0
I still had a finishing move left over from my last reward.
While I was stalling, three of Cha Chi-do’s men charged straight at me.
Let’s test it.
I clicked it and threw out a punch.
Judgment of the Superhuman (Special) activated.
Immediately, a mana explosion ripped outward, and the three charging men were blown back like rag dolls.
"Ghk!"
"Ugh!"
"Aaaagh!!"
It was a wide-area attack, like mana being fired from my fist in a shotgun blast.
…Amazing.
Cha Chi-do, watching from the side, opened his mouth in exaggerated surprise.
"Wow! Apostle of justice, you’ve got some skill."
Judgment of the Superhuman (Special) Ticket: 10/1
The men who had been hit by the mana shotgun collapsed onto the floor, twitching.
Cha Chi-do issued a new order.
"Everyone, get your weapons out."
At his command, the men moved with ruthless efficiency, each of them pulling out a bowie knife, an axe, or a long machete.
Cha Chi-do sat down on a stack of cement bags as if he were watching a show across a river. Then he pointed the tip of his sashimi knife at me.
"I’ll give a gift to the person who brings me the head of that purple helmet."
The underlings circled me, tightening the ring of steel and flesh.
Had I ever fought so many people at once in my life?
My throat went dry with tension, and the sound of my own heartbeat hammered in my ears. A sticky, murderous intent rode the air and pressed against my skin.
Was I afraid?
Well. I couldn’t say I was completely unafraid.
But the honest feeling rising in my chest right now was…
So this is what it feels like to be alive.
Ever since I’d been reborn, I had sometimes felt like I was only dreaming. But once I was put in a life-or-death situation, reality came rushing in with brutal clarity.
Right. A hero has to be able to fight a crowd.
So this wasn’t a trial. It was simply the story that inevitably belonged to the protagonist.
Cha Chi-do signaled his men.
"Go kill him."
They answered with loud, feral shouts.
"Yes, big brother!"
"Everybody, swarm him!"
From the front, the sides, and behind me… they charged from every direction.
I gathered mana into both hands and blasted first to the right, then to the left.
Bang! Bang-bang-bang!!!
Judgment of the Superhuman (Special) activated in a brilliant burst, and the enemies went flying.
"W-What the hell!"
"What is that thing?"
"…A bomb?"
Pressing the advantage, I drove my right foot into the man in front of me and kicked him away.
There was no need to rely solely on the special skill. I mixed ordinary punches and kicks with the power of my own body, using the basics at the right moment. Whenever it looked like several enemies were about to close in on me at once, I fired off another blow without hesitation.
Crash!!!
A thunderous boom rang out, and another shotgun blast of mana sent the opposition exploding backward.
This time, five men dropped at once.
The upgraded power of Super Kid was at its best in a fight against multiple opponents.
At this point, it was basically a kindergarten kid fighting a pro mixed martial artist. I had nothing left to worry about.
I rampaged like a madman.
"…Ugh."
"Ow."
"Nnngh."
Cha Chi-do’s men rolled across the floor. The weapons they’d been holding became useless clutter, scattered all over the place.
One, two, three…
There had been more than twenty of them, but now only four remained.
Even those survivors had lost the will to fight and no longer dared rush me head-on. Like children calling for their mother, they kept glancing at each other and backing toward Cha Chi-do.
Cha Chi-do, seated on the cement bags, let out a long sigh.
"Phew. There’s no one useful left. Until now, Yeong-cheol was the quickest one…"
Before Cha Chi-do could even finish speaking, I sprinted.
That’s enough dealing with the small fry.
I charged toward Cha Chi-do to bring down the final boss, just as I had when I smashed Big Lava to pieces. The moment I was about to drive all my strength into his face…
"Oh-ho. Come here."
Cha Chi-do grabbed one of his men by the neck and yanked him forward, then shoved the man out in front of him.
"…Big brother?"
The cement bag burst apart, and black-pearl powder scattered into the air. Like rain, the drug spilled down and slowly revealed two human shapes.
Cha Chi-do, using his underling as a shield, remained perfectly fine. The man he’d grabbed had his clothes shredded to pieces and was standing there unconscious.
And then, in the confusion, Cha Chi-do shoved the sashimi knife into my side.
It slid perfectly into the narrow gap between one section of my armor and another.
A cold, crawling sensation raced up my spine, and the hairs on my body stood on end.
"Ghk!"
I staggered, clutching my ribs.
Warm, thick blood welled up in my hand almost immediately.
"Darn. That was a little shallow. I was trying to stab deeper."
Watching Cha Chi-do joke around with that innocent expression on his face, I gritted my teeth.
"Oh-ho. That worked nicely!"
He casually tossed away the underling he had used as a shield.
The bloodied man hit the floor and rolled there like a lump of meat. I caught sight of his face.
…
I already knew Cha Chi-do treated people like tools.
So why was I so angry?
Cha Chi-do spun the sashimi knife in his hand and approached me.
"That hurts, doesn’t it? I wonder what expression you’re making under that helmet. I’m dying to know."
I had miscalculated. I had been thinking too much about cost-effectiveness.
There was no reason to save money when it came to putting down a villain.
I summoned the blue screen and, without hesitation, clicked the second hero skill again.
Purchase complete: Speeder’s Infinite Acceleration.
I lowered my body like a sprinter at the starting line and shifted my weight forward, preparing to burst out at any moment.
"Hmm?"
Cha Chi-do tilted his head.
"What are you doing? Planning to run away?"
I stared at Cha Chi-do the way you’d stare at the end of a marathon track and said, "Don’t worry."
From Super Kid to Speeder.
"This only ends when one of us dies."
As the hero changed, the rhythm of mana coursing through my entire body shifted into something lighter, sharper, and far more ferocious.