Click—
Click—
After taking a couple of pictures, the woman bowed her head and thanked us.
Then…
Tap… tap tap… tap…
She immediately began fiddling with her phone screen.
Crack—
“Huh…?”
To prevent her from reporting us to the Hero Association, I folded her phone in half and smashed it right then and there.
“What a shame. You’ll never be able to recover those photos now.”
“……”
Then, when I spoke to her in a threatening tone, she finally seemed to grasp the situation and began to slowly back away.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Pyro Bomber who was ever quick to catch on was already blocking the entrance.
The woman, her strength seemingly drained, collapsed on the spot and looked up at me with a dazed expression.
“I… I want to live…”
“No one wants to die.”
Ignoring the look in her eyes, I turned my head and ripped open the steel door of the safe.
Then I began stuffing the bundles of 50,000 won bills neatly into the bags we had brought.
“Th… that’s why…”
“Consider yourself lucky.”
“…Huh?”
After casually emptying out the cash in the safe—
Thud—
“That’s for your phone. From now on, if you ever find yourself in a dangerous-looking place like this, it’d be best to run right away. You’ve got to be alive if you want to borrow or repay money.”
I tossed two bundles of 50,000 won bills in front of the woman still sitting on the floor.
“Let’s go.”
“You’re not going to kill her?”
“What’s the point in killing someone with no abilities?”
“True. Let’s go.”
And with that, I left the scene with Pyro Bomber.
…
“What’s this…?”
The total amount of money I earned today by hitting five loan shark companies came out to around 800 million won.
Of course, that figure only included pure cash.
If I considered the gold necklaces, luxury watches, and the phones those guys had been using,
it added up to at least 1.5 to 1.6 billion won.
“For now, this should be enough money to lay low for a while.”
“Lay low? We could do more than just that…!”
I handed a small bag containing 500 million won in cash to Mr. Song-won, who could no longer hope to live a normal life as a whistleblower from the Hero Association.
“You’re free now, too.”
“C-Could I… maybe stay a little longer?”
Lee Seong-won was an extremely helpful man.
By providing us with internal information from the Hero Association,
He had greatly assisted us in understanding them.
However…
“I’ll be honest with you. I’m not the kind of villain you think I am.”
I wasn’t the righteous figure he imagined me to be.
My actions, driven by personal goals, had only given people the mistaken impression that I was on the side of justice.
“…What do you mean by that?”
Others called me the [Villain ‘Hunter’]
But in my eyes, I was simply a [‘Villain’ Hunter].
“I am a villain. As always, I won’t hesitate to kill someone, and if an innocent person stands in my way, I won’t think twice about murdering them either.”
“…….”
“You and I… we’re not going to be a good match.”
In other words…
After spending a long time together, I knew that someday, the day would surely come when he would be disappointed in me.
When that moment arrived, just as he had once betrayed the Hero Association, he would undoubtedly begin planning to betray me as well.
Before such a thing could happen, I intended to end things gracefully, bringing everything to a proper close like this.
“It’s the perfect timing for me. You don’t know my face, you don’t know my name, and you don’t know the location of this underground facility. Wouldn’t it be better to cut ties before we get any closer?”
“But… that’s… I mean…”
“I valued the insider information you gave me about the Hero Association very highly. That’s why I set the amount at 500 million. That should be more than enough to escape the Hero Association’s eyes.”
Now, the time had come to say goodbye to him as well.
“…….”
I looked straight at the man who silently stared at my masked face.
“Well then, would you like to put on the blindfold?”
“…Alright.”
“We’ll escort you in a car we newly stole.”
“…May I ask where you stole it from?”
“It’s the car key used by the loan company employees we took down today. For your information, we have eight more.”
“Hoho…”
With a hollow laugh, the man put on the blindfold and followed my lead as we walked outside.
Once he got into the stolen car, he quietly let himself be driven by me.
After about 30 to 40 minutes of driving, I dropped him off at a random location.
“You can take off the blindfold in about a minute.”
“…Before I go, may I ask just one more question?”
“Go ahead.”
I could see him asking me a question heavy with meaning.
“Do you really… truly believe that you, Villain Hunter, are an evil villain yourself….?”
I didn’t know what he was hoping to hear by asking that question.
But I, who knew myself better than anyone, answered without hesitation.
Then, I grabbed the steering wheel and drove us out of there.
“Yes. From now on, I plan to commit countless acts that would likely disappoint you, Seong-won.”
“…I understand. Even so, it was truly an honor to have been with you until now.”
…
When I returned to our hideout, I saw Hye-won applying ointment to Pyro Bomber’s hand while watching the news.
“Did you let him go properly?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it was about time we let him go. Someone who’s betrayed us once is sure to do it again. I think it’s best to drive them out before they get the chance to betray us first.”
“I thought so too.”
“Oh~ Jji-jji~.”
“…You mean ‘jji-jji-ppong’, right?” (TN: This seems to be a children’s expression that’s used when two people say or think the same thing at the same time.)
“No, just jji-jji.”
I laughed off Pyro Bomber’s nonsense and sat down on a chair.
Since I had destroyed my phone out of fear it might be used to track me, I had nothing to do as a modern person, so I ended up watching the news with them…
“?”
“Ooh, it’s on.”
The news was covering how Pyro Bomber and I had hit multiple loan companies earlier today.
But then…
– I came here to borrow money, and Villain Hunter was here, robbing the place with another female villain…
“…Why is that woman being interviewed there?”
Why on earth was that woman being interviewed over there..?
“Well, it isn’t a bad thing. After all, I did smash her phone. It should definitely help in creating a negative image of me.”
Of course, this wasn’t entirely a bad situation…
The woman whose phone I broke might help break the illusion that Villain Hunter was merely a righteous villain…
– I… came here to borrow money for my parents’ surgery, right away.…
‘?’
– And Villain Hunter… paid the surgery costs for me…
“???????”
– I just really wanted to say how incredibly grateful I am…
“????????????????”
Things were starting to go a little differently from how I had imagined.
…
—
[15 Reasons Why Villain Hunter Is the GOAT]
[25 Reasons Why the Hero Association Needs to Recruit Villain Hunter Immediately]
[30 Reasons I’m Writing This Post Because I Want Upvotes]
[Villain Hunter: The Secret to Boosting Men’s Stamina with Just 30 Minutes a Day]
.
.
.
—
Honestly, it wasn’t such a bad thing that people were rating me this highly.
It was just that…
…This kind of expectation is dangerous.
Because of human nature, I simply wanted to keep myself in check from becoming too much of a dark hero.
After all…
A person who does 100 bad things and one good thing gets praised.
But someone who does 100 good things and makes one bad thing gets absolutely torn apart…
“Isn’t there a good way around this…?”
If only positive public opinion kept piling up without any bad press… then the moment I accidentally caused harm to innocent people,
It would be painfully obvious that the countless fingers once pointed at the Hero Association’s vice president would all turn toward me.
“What kind of incident would be good for swaying public opinion…?”
So, before people started glorifying me, I wanted to quickly plant a more negative image…
“Ah.”
Based on my own extremely inconvenient experience of not having a phone, I decided to generously gift others with the same level of discomfort.
“I’ll be stepping out for a bit.”
“Where are you going?”
“Thought I’d go commit a little terrorism and come back.”
“At this hour, all of a sudden?”
“Yes, all of a sudden at this hour. Terrorism is supposed to be sudden and without reason. Otherwise, it’s not nearly as annoying, is it?”
“You’re really diligent about this.”
“I need to build a negative image quickly. If I end up with too positive an image, we might end up in a situation where we have to check whether each terrorist act causes harm to civilians.”
I started driving toward one of South Korea’s major telecom companies.
***
“I’ve almost broken through.”
“Alright.”
After 6 p.m., the servers had a known vulnerability, and using that weakness, we infiltrated the main server room of HSK Telecom.
The hacking process was now entering its final stages.
“It’s all cracked!”
“Good job. Let’s download everything now.”
“Okay, I’ll start downloading all the data now~.”
With that, the personal information of people using this telecom service in Korea was soon going to be in our hands in massive quantities.
We could sell all of it on the dark web or to China and make a fortune.
“This is what makes being a villain worth it.”
Just as the so-called villain hunter, who had taken down an illegal loan company today, was starting to happily ponder what to do with the laughably small amount of money he’d recovered—
“…Huh?”
“?”
Before we knew it… the villain hunter had appeared right in front of us.
“…What brings you here?”
“Just came to smash up the server room. And you are?”
“…I-I’m just, uh, someone who does server maintenance… or something like that.”
“Really? Oh wow. Then please, make sure to spread the word, okay?”
“…Huh?”
And then—
Crunch—
Thud— Thud—
Bzzzt—
At his sudden rampage through the server room, my younger brother who had been hacking with me and I could do nothing but freeze on the spot.
“……”
“……”
“Whew!”
Looking completely satisfied, the villain hunter who had just destroyed the entire massive server room soon said—
“Make sure people hear about this, alright? That the villain hunter totally wrecked the server room. Got it? There’s CCTV here too, so that should do the trick.”
Then he started escaping the building as the emergency alarm began to blare.
“…Hyung, what do we do now?”
“Just keep pretending we’re staff… If we get caught trying to escape and he finds out we’re villains, we’re dead meat…”
“Mhmm…”
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