The Crazy Villain Regains His Sanity - Chapter 102

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 102

“Head Breaker!”

Argos’s body lurched where he sat motionless, his eyes snapping wide open.
Heinz jolted to his feet, startled.

“Al!”
……

But Argos didn’t answer.
Blood trickled from his eyes, yet he didn’t flinch — his gaze remained sharp and focused, his expression grave.
A moment later, he sank into his chair as though his legs had given way.

“…Constantina is dead.”

“It was unspeakable. Her body torn to shreds, her will to live mocked until the very end.”
Black Hound closed his eyes.

The image of Constantina as she’d first arrived at the League surfaced in his mind.
She’d loathed evil — far from the villain her alias, Witch Doctor, suggested. Yet she’d always shone brilliantly in her role.
A comrade who’d stood with them for the League’s cause, hoping for a beautiful outcome.

“Head Breaker’s work?”
“Yes. But it was different.”
“Different how?”
“I’m not sure. But there was madness there — a different kind than the Head Breaker we know.”

Argos said he was Choi Jun-ho and yet not Choi Jun-ho.
Black Hound wrestled with what that meant.

“Constantina’s death is regrettable, but we still have time to respond. First, we need to regroup the forces we deployed——”
“Too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re all dead. Every last one. The Head Breaker did it.”

The League’s branch in Fukuoka housed four Superhuman Awakened Ones, including Constantina, and over two hundred Villains.
All dead?
Argos’s gaze fixed on Black Hound, who had gone rigid with shock.

“Heinz.”
“No.”

The refusal came immediately.
Knowing it would, Argos offered a thin smile.

“In terms of matchup, he’s the better choice to kill the Head Breaker. You know that. We can’t just stand by and do nothing.”
“No. You won’t survive it.”

“Your goal isn’t to kill the Head Breaker. Think of the members looking to you. You can achieve your objectives without facing him directly.”
“But if we don’t eliminate the Head Breaker, we’ll be blocked at every turn.”

Argos clung to his intention, but Black Hound remained unyielding.

“He still needs time. Don’t summon the worst evil to destroy the worst. That’s not victory.”
“…If you say so, Heinz, I’ll let it go. But the Head Breaker will always be a noose around our necks.”
“There’s nothing to be done about it then.”

Heinz felt that Argos had overstepped his bounds.
His fixation on Choi Jun-ho had gone too far.
Black Hound wanted to point this out, but held his tongue.
He believed that the Argos he knew would soon regain his composure and return to his true self.

“Sorry, Constantina.”

* * *

The awakening of my Lineage brought a profound sense of crisis crashing down on me.
The dread that I might lose myself again.
I had sworn it would never happen a second time.
Yet Constantina’s Curse proved powerful enough to tear my mind away, if only for a moment.
I recovered from the abnormal state quickly thanks to Man-deuk, but the emergence of the Lineage’s personality was something I hadn’t anticipated.

“The more I think about it, the more infuriating it becomes.”

This entire mess was Man-deuk’s doing. That wretch didn’t actively help me—he was just testing the waters. I decided I’d have to give him a thorough education before I destroyed the Lineage entirely.
But that aside.
I found myself in deeper contemplation over what to do with this Lineage creature who had followed me all the way to the end.
He might not realize it, but I heard every word he said.
He’s still waiting for his chance, watching and waiting for an opening?

“Let’s try it then.”

Constantina’s Curse won’t repeat itself a second time.
I’ll reinforce my Mental Barrier and properly train Man-deuk.
After gathering my thoughts, I looked around at the surroundings.
The carnage was the Lineage’s doing, but it would be attributed to me.
Looking at it again, I could see he’d committed slaughter purely for his own amusement.
If it were me, I would have handled it far more efficiently. This is why I end up taking unnecessary damage in combat.
Though what should I expect from a madman?

“They should be arriving soon.”

The deed was done; now I had to clean up the aftermath. I’d sent word to Gunji and the others who were standing by, so they’d arrive shortly.
About thirty minutes passed before the sound of exhaust engines filled the air, and dozens of vehicles began pouring into the Factory grounds.
People spilling out of the cars—Japanese Awakened Ones who had been waiting to execute the operation.

…….

At first, they couldn’t process what lay before their eyes, but soon they realized they were looking at mountains of corpses and pools of congealed blood, and their bodies reacted instinctively.

“Bleeegh!”
“W-what is this! Uurgh!”
“Uuuugh!”

Making such a fuss over this.
When you’ve killed enough Villains, you see horrors that make this look tame. Their shock just proves they haven’t built up immunity yet.
…Though, come to think of it, the atrocities even worse than this were things I perpetrated back when I was the Lineage.
For someone operating as an Awakened One, witnessing scenes like this would be rare indeed.
The Awakened Ones who barely managed to hold back their vomit turned away or stared at me with uncomfortable eyes.
Frustrating. I didn’t do this. The Lineage did.
Yet the blood splattered across my body was testifying that I had committed this atrocity.
Gunji, the leader guiding the Awakened Ones, stepped forward through the crowd.

“Gunji.”
“Head Breaker, what is this……?”
“I’ve killed them all. The League has no foothold left in Japan.”
“…….”

Gunji stared at the mountain of corpses with an expressionless face.
But there was something more urgent.
I pointed to the limbless figure collapsed beside me.

“This one—as far as I know, he’s a Superhuman who betrayed and abandoned your ranks.”

She must have taken him for a corpse until I spoke.
Still, I’d used Recovery Potion to keep him from bleeding out.
Gunji’s eyes widened.

“…Nakayama.”
“That’s right?”
“Yes. Nakayama. Once he was one of us.”

The way she said it implied he wasn’t anymore. It seemed the Cabinet’s position and Gunji’s thinking didn’t quite align on this matter.
Apparently, Nakayama had been the youngest Superhuman among Japanese Awakened Ones and was wildly favored within the nation. When he defected to the League, the shock was enormous, or so I’d heard.
But such traitors were hardly uncommon. There was no reason to dwell on it.

“I didn’t kill him because the Cabinet requested it. His severed limbs are over there—take them and reattach them if you can. Whether you persuade him or execute him doesn’t concern me.”
“Thank you. And…….”

I understood what Gunji wanted to ask as her voice trailed off.

“Tsuyoshi is dead. Constantina used his blood and heart as a Curse conduit.”

Since there was no way to know whether his body remained inside, Gunji nodded and headed in to search the interior for Tsuyoshi’s corpse.
My work here was finished.
I’d come to Japan precisely to eliminate the League’s forces entering the country.
What was meant to be resolved through collective effort, I’d handled alone.
As I watched the Japanese Awakeners hurrying off, I noticed a familiar face approaching—Park Young-hoo.

“Sir.”
“You didn’t need to come to a place like this.”
“What would I do waiting around alone?”

He joked that it was better to show his face here and score some points that way.
He knew what he was about, that much was clear.
But something felt off about his reaction.
He’d spoken casually enough, yet I noticed he was deliberately avoiding looking toward where the bodies lay. His face seemed to have drained of color.
Was he actually frightened?
Given how he looked—like someone who could eat three meals a day in a field of corpses—his sensitivity was surprisingly delicate.
I felt the urge to make him face it directly.

“Why don’t we go inside together?”
“…Wouldn’t it be all right if I stayed here?”
“Weren’t you trying to follow me anyway?”
“Well, I was, but…….”
“Then let’s go.”
“Please…….”

Park Young-hoo’s face went even paler. There was a certain pleasure in needling him like this.
I stopped before he actually started retching.

“We’ll leave the scene to the Japanese side then.”
“Thank you for your consideration.”
“It’s not consideration, really. There’s no point in doing anything more here.”

This was precisely the moment to make an exit. Park Young-hoo’s expression shifted to one of genuine admiration.

“I’m impressed. I’ve heard rumors that your political instincts have been exceptional of late, but this is truly something else.”

Just this much?

“I’m not sure I deserve the credit.”
“Simply knowing when to step in and when to step back puts you in the top ten percent. And between you and me, the higher-ranking officials rarely manage even that.”

I can see what he means. But there are people who don’t even grasp that much? Where did they bury their sense of timing? Regardless, since Park Young-hoo agrees, it’s time to act.
Either way, it’s time to move forward.

“Then we should withdraw.”
“Pardon? You’re planning to leave the site entirely?”

I’ve already arranged to hand off the site. Why does he seem so shocked?

“More than that—I intend to return to South Korea. Arrange a flight.”
“I beg your pardon?”

If I’m going to slip away, I might as well do it properly.
I didn’t use the Recovery Potion to prevent Nakayama from bleeding out—not for that reason.
Truth is, once you apply a recovery potion like that, reattaching limbs becomes extraordinarily difficult.
That’s genuinely not why I did it.
Really.

* * *

The Fukuoka Catastrophe.
That’s what they called the incident Choi Jun-ho had triggered—a blood-soaked catastrophe.
Usually, when people hear “catastrophe,” they assume enormous casualties on their own side.
Japan’s losses were indeed severe.
An Awakened One had been killed, after all. The loss of Immovable Heart Tsuyoshi, one of their core combat assets, was a painful blow.
But the League’s losses were overwhelming. The Japanese division’s forces had been annihilated entirely.
The scale of slaughter had been so immense that “catastrophe” was the only word that fit.
Three League Awakened Ones were dead, and one was crippled. One of the dead was Witch Doctor Constantina Stanila, a member of the Twelve Zodiac itself.
The Twelve Zodiac’s notoriety is formidable—they are the League’s backbone and notorious villains building infamy across the globe. Though Witch Doctor’s direct combat strength is said to be lower, the devastation she demonstrated in Europe was nothing short of calamitous.
Romania, which had tried to exploit her power, suffered a catastrophic blow.
The mere fact that she had slipped away effortlessly from top-tier Awakener Franz at the time was itself proof of just how extraordinary an Awakened One Constantina truly was.
And now she was dead.
Moreover, two hundred villains had fallen alongside her. Among them, more than ten had reached Level 7, and over a hundred had reached Level 6.
An entire nation’s military strength had been obliterated.
By a single person.
Prime Minister Takeda had received the report and, thinking the field commander had filled it out incorrectly, ordered a cross-verification to be conducted once more.
But the contents of the report were fact.

……

The Awakening Minister, summoned to the Prime Minister’s Office, stared at the report in silence.
The Prime Minister watched his expression and let out a hollow laugh.
It was the very reaction the Prime Minister himself had shown only moments before.

“Do you believe it?”
“…Honestly, even seeing it with my own eyes makes it hard to accept.”
“Neither do I. But they’re saying it’s true. I’ve had it cross-verified multiple times.”
“Ha.”

The absurdity was so complete that laughter spilled out unbidden.
Could a human being have actually done this?
It would have seemed more fitting to say that a recently emerging Plus Plus Stage Demonic Beast had attacked the League’s branch office.
The Prime Minister leaned forward, his expression grave.

“At this level, how would you assess him? Among the Three Evils? A top-tier Awakener?”
“Even if he were one of them, I doubt they could have achieved such results.”
“You’re saying Choi Jun-ho ranks above them?”
“Based on the demonstrated performance, yes, that appears to be the case.”

Constantina, a member of the Twelve Zodiac, had dismissed herself as a Superhuman lacking in direct combat ability, yet the forces assembled at the League’s branch rivaled the military strength of the world’s top ten nations combined.
The sheer concentration of power in Fukuoka was such that Japan itself would need over thirty years to recover if it attempted a direct assault on the League’s headquarters.
Choi Jun-ho had annihilated it alone.
The Prime Minister exhaled slowly.

“So Choi Jun-ho is the world’s strongest.”
“Yes, though it would be premature to accept this based solely on a report.”

The Awakening Minister raised a note of caution, though his own thoughts were equally turbulent.
No matter how much he downplayed or belittled the facts, the achievements of the man who had caused the catastrophe remained undeniable.
There was no one else present to contradict them.
He almost wanted to believe that such a force had been deliberately sacrificed to infiltrate Choi Jun-ho.

“Even with every allowance for underestimation, he’s at least a top-tier Awakener, then.”
…….

The Awakening Minister’s silence was affirmation. Calling him the highest among the top-tier would not have been an overstatement.
In particular, Nakayama, the Superhuman who had brought honor to Japan, had been repatriated with all four limbs severed. Though the limbs had been reattached with difficulty, it would take a very long time for him to recover his original strength.
Had it been intentional?
Suspicion gnawed at him, but since the man had been sent back alive and unharmed, there was no basis for complaint.
With Tsuyoshi dead, Japan had lost another Superhuman it could ill afford.
The Awakening Minister offered counsel.

“Keep Choi Jun-ho here in Japan, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is a Superhuman from another nation, but his achievements are truly extraordinary. One could say he has saved Japan.”
“You want me to show him treatment Korea could never offer?”
“Precisely. This is an opportunity to turn his loyalty toward us.”
“But I’ve heard that the seduction gambit doesn’t work on Choi Jun-ho.”

There were persistent rumors that even the notorious succubus Anna Christine had failed to seduce him.
Seduction was a high-success stratagem regardless of East or West—countless Superhumans had fallen to it, changed their nationality, been recruited into the League, or defected to become Villains.
But Choi Jun-ho had never once succumbed to it.
He barely even glanced at such approaches.
This had even sparked rumors that he preferred his own gender.

“I will go to Fukuoka myself and dedicate myself entirely to him. I’ll analyze his preferences in detail and make him understand that living in Japan would be to his advantage.”
“Provide whatever support is needed.”

Fortunately, Japan had a well-developed industry in anime, games, and adult films that would appeal to men his age.
If offered entertainment unavailable in South Korea, perhaps his mind could be swayed.
If they could only keep him in Japan, the nation could not only recoup all the damage it had suffered but come out ahead.
But this scheme never came to fruition.
Just as the Awakening Minister was about to leave the Prime Minister’s Office, another report arrived.

“Choi Jun-ho has left the country?”
“Yes, apparently something urgent came up—”
“Why didn’t anyone stop him?”
“He said his role was complete, so we had no grounds to detain him. And there was no one on-site capable of persuading him, and when we tried to force the issue… I sincerely apologize.”
…….

Both the Prime Minister and the Awakening Minister fell silent, looking up at the ceiling like fools who had chased a dog only to lose their rooftop.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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