The Crazy Villain Regains His Sanity - Chapter 26

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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 26

When Lee Se-hee arrived at Team 3 Hunting Ground, what met her eyes was the aftermath of a battle that defied belief, even with her own two eyes.

“Ah…….”

Lee Se-hee, along with Lee Young-tan and the Driver who had accompanied her, could not help but gasp.
Over two hundred puppets lay split in half, dead. They bled not a drop, a sight both grotesque and utterly overwhelming.
Having trained with a blade, she could discern the truth.
These puppets—every last one of them had been cut down in a single stroke. How? What manner of skill could any human wield to accomplish such a thing?

“First, gather the wounded!”

Lee Se-hee, snapping back to herself, issued orders and then set about collecting the injured alongside the Driver and Lee Young-tan. She approached Choi Yun-hee, who lay collapsed behind Choi Jun-ho.

“I’ll take her with us.”

As she saw his head nod, Lee Se-hee sensed something off about him. A killing intent far deeper than before—it felt as though he might cut down anything that displeased him on the spot.
Barely steadying herself, Lee Se-hee gathered Choi Yun-hee and returned to the car.
The problem was that the vehicle was now packed with the wounded.
Lee Se-hee made a decision.

“Go ahead without me.”
“What? But the team leader should come as well…….”
“I’ll stay here and monitor the situation.”
“Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous.”

Lee Young-tan objected vehemently. Lee Se-hee spoke with absolute resolve.

“Getting the wounded to safety is more important. Follow my orders. That’s a command.”
“…Understood.”
“And dangerous? Not in the slightest.”

Lee Se-hee spoke with conviction as she looked at Choi Jun-ho, who stood facing off against the puppets.

“This is the safest place in the world.”

* * *

“…….”

Watching the car depart, Lee Se-hee wiped the expression from her face.
What she had said about this being the safest place was sincere, but her true reason was that she did not wish to let others witness this battle scene.
The moment she saw over two hundred puppets lying fallen, she recognized that the vague suspicion that had been haunting her was fact.
Among all swordsmen in South Korea today, only three possessed the skill to achieve such a feat.
Two of them belonged to guilds, and one was a villain being hunted. Berserker would be added as a fourth.

“So it’s true after all.”

She had been investigating Choi Jun-ho for a long time.
A Level 7 Government Hunter who materialized from nowhere one day. In truth, a monster who had reached Level 8, though he had yet to undergo formal Level measurement.
Despite his mid-twenties age and having attained a level of mastery no one else had achieved, he desired neither massive contract bonuses nor excessive authority—a man of singular character.
Did his desire for Immunity from Arrest mean he sought power? Yet the very direction of his gaze differed from that of ordinary people.
Despite an ordinary path through childhood, something was missing from him. She had yet to discover precisely what that absence was.
But one thing remained certain.
Choi Jun-ho was a dangerous man.
Right now he’s a Government Hunter who catches Villains, but the moment the slightest opportunity arises, he could become the most vicious Villain imaginable.
The Immunity from Arrest alone tells you the direction of his thinking. The instant Choi Jun-ho steps outside his own principles, he’ll collide with any entrenched power without hesitation.
Even if it meant the President or the Chairman of Shinseong Group itself.
As a Government Hunter, his methods are rough enough that he’s called Head Breaker, but what would it feel like when he draws a sword?
Lee Se-hee spoke the certainty aloud.

“Mal-sozja.”

A tremor ran through her entire body.
It had taken considerable time and effort to reach this conclusion.
Choi Jun-ho’s friend O Jong-yeop is from Ansan.
The way O Jong-yeop, once poor, managed to secure hospital funds was through the sale of a Saber Tiger Corpse. Though he dispersed the proceeds carefully, he couldn’t escape the notice of Shinseong Guild.
A Saber Tiger is a Hazard Level 6 Monster. The Monster Heart that Choi Jun-ho handed him is also Level 6. That meant Choi Jun-ho had hunted the Saber Tiger himself and given its corpse to O Jong-yeop. Of everything O Jong-yeop had sold, only the heart was missing.
In other words, Choi Jun-ho showed himself in Ansan to meet O Jong-yeop. He hunted the Saber Tiger and passed it to O Jong-yeop. That same day, Big Tendo, which Mal-sozja obliterated, had its base in Ansan.

“There’s no such thing as coincidence in this world.”

Which was more rational—believing that two Level 8 superhuman beings suddenly appeared in the world, or thinking that two who emerged around the same time were one and the same person?
Lee Se-hee thought the latter overwhelmingly more likely.
The difference was that Mal-sozja wielded a sword, and that suspicion turned to certainty the moment she saw Choi Jun-ho holding one.
She’d hastily sent her subordinates away precisely because they might have caught on. If it were revealed that this Government Hunter was a Villain, the situation would spiral beyond control.
It was as though Choi Jun-ho had read her thoughts.

“Lee Se-hee.”

The moment their eyes met, her mind went white. Overwhelming terror paralyzed her brain.
She felt her teeth chattering but couldn’t stop it.

“Y-yes. Yes.”
“Forget what you saw today.”

The instant crimson Force flickered across the blade.

Slice!

Both of the puppet Jung Hae-sol’s arms, rated as Level 7, were severed.

* * *

O Jong-yeop’s Slash is a typical Gift of the line category, combining a weapon’s latent power and Force to push cutting force to the extreme.
Where Mine destroys everything, Slash cuts everything in two.
Two Gifts difficult to rank by merit—I used whichever suited my mood that day. Some days I wanted to obliterate everything, other days to slice it to ribbons. Today was the latter.
That thing forgot its place and handled Yun-hee too roughly. Only I’m allowed to handle my sister like that. The price for anyone else doing it is death.
The puppet with severed arms stumbled, its expression unchanged. Rather, seeing the cut surfaces where not a drop of blood leaked, it broke into a grotesque smile. This bastard’s insane too.

“Kehehehe! How astonishing, how wondrous! So you’re no mere Level 7?”

Whoosh-whoosh!

The arms rolling on the floor, as though connected by a string, snapped back to the severed stumps and reattached. Like sewing up a stuffed doll?

“I covet you, I covet you so! A well-honed body! A puppet with such a superior Gift! I’ll take you before Berserker does.”
“Shut up.”

Rip its mouth open and it won’t say another word.

“You’ll hear that till you’re sick of it, friend. Kehehehe!”

The puppet lunged forward with a maniacal laugh. Or rather, it tried to. But the Slash came in faster, severing the puppet’s arms, legs, and neck. Then its mouth as well.
I didn’t like it running its mouth when it had already served its purpose.

Crack!

I ground the head rolling across the floor beneath my heel. Its face caved in, but the puppet’s grin—that torn, lipless rictus—still trembled, curling upward.
Damage to the puppet doesn’t transfer to the puppeteer, then.

“Kee…kack! You can’t…kill me, ah! My inde…deceased army will….”
“Ones who shout like that tend to cling to their lives most fiercely.”

I withdrew my foot and seized it by the hair, lifting.
I forced Force into its skull and raked through the contents. The Brainwashing had reduced the brain to pulp, but what remained was a blank slate—nothing at all.
In other words, the puppet was fulfilling its purpose as a puppet. Which meant a controller existed somewhere, pulling the strings like a marionetteer. I unspooled my Force like thread, letting it touch every part of the puppet’s head.

“Found it.”

Deep within the puppet’s skull, an invisible, faint wavelength pulsed steadily, transmitting somewhere distant.
This was the link between puppet and master.

“Like Bluetooth, maybe.”
“You—what are you doing….”

I traced the wavelength through the Brainwashing, intuition pulling me along, chasing the dimming current of Force. Once I’d locked the shape of that frequency into memory, the location flared into instant clarity.
An abandoned house about five kilometers from here. A sealed room inside it. I knew the man within was the puppeteer’s true body.
Within the reach of my senses, where my Force exists, no distance can hide anything from my eyes. I activated the Thousand-Li Eye.
The space five kilometers distant unveiled itself. In the dilapidated, decrepit abandoned house left to rot for decades sat a pathetic, gaunt man in his late forties, his face mottled with age spots.
I made no attempt to hide my presence. This creature had set his sights on Yun-hee, rampaged without understanding his place, and deluded himself into immortality. I would deliver him the most certain death.
My prey’s eyes met mine, and I smiled.

“Found you, you little rat.”

* * *

“Insane bastard! Scum! Aaaaah!”

Cho Hyung-sik, the puppeteer, raged at the loss of his cherished puppet. Over two hundred of them—enough military force to annihilate a mid-tier guild—had crumbled before a single man.
The cruelest blow was the annihilation of Level 7 Jung Hae-sol, his most formidable instrument of violence. It had been shredded to pieces without mounting so much as a proper resistance.
The losses were catastrophic. Even if he made it to the League, the odds of receiving proper treatment were slim.

“Bastard, someday I’ll kill you and turn you into a puppet. I’ll make you kneel before me, make you lick the floor like a dog….”

In that instant, Cho Hyung-sik fell silent, his entire body seized by an uncanny wrongness. He trembled.
This room held only him. No one could access this abandoned, sealed sanctuary—a void where even an ant could not slip through.
No one could enter without his consent.
That’s how it should have been.
He lifted his head without thinking and met an enormous eye. His body convulsed.

“Shriek!”

A blue iris stared down from the ceiling. The fathomless darkness seemed to pull him into a bottomless swamp.
What in god’s name was that eye?

“Found you, you little rat.”
“Y-you’re… Head Breaker?”

How had he found this place?
It didn’t matter. He was immortal. Deathless. Eternal.
Even with two hundred puppets lost, countless more remained under his command.
Among them he was sovereign, king, undying. All Hunters feared him, begged his mercy. He had trampled and tormented those cocky enough to think themselves superior, reigning as the worst of Villains. He had become the thing nightmares were made of.
He tried to shake off that fear.
But the moment his eyes locked with Head Breaker’s, every shell around him shattered, and his pathetic, insignificant form lay stripped bare before the world.
That monster is off the charts. Never confront it directly. I have to run. Survive, grow stronger, and secure more puppets than before.

“Ugh—argh!”

Cho Hyung-sik desperately shook off the blue eyes and tried to escape the room.
But he couldn’t get out. Suddenly, searing pain flooded his chest.
From beyond, murderous intent bore down on him. The medium was the connection between Jung Hae-sol and himself. The pain, like a swamp he couldn’t escape, began in his chest and spread through his entire body.

“Ghhhh!”

He gritted his teeth and tried to sever the connection, but it was impossible. Instead, even more Force poured in through the link between him and his puppet.

Boom! Crackle-boom!

Explosions erupted inside his body in succession, twisting him in grotesque angles. The unbearable agony bleached his mind white.

“Ack!”

Cho Hyung-sik’s last thrashing resistance, his final struggle to live, ended with a wet crack as his chest burst open.
He should never have stood against it.
His head, still spilling blood, dropped forward limply.

* * *

I tossed the spent blade to the floor. When I turned my head, I saw Lee Se-hee watching from the side, hesitant to approach.
The woman has good instincts. She’d been unusually cautious around me since earlier. Maybe I’d been a bit sharp because of the Yun-hee thing. I loosened my stance deliberately, back to my usual gentleness.

“What… was that just now?”
“I killed the puppet master.”
“That’s impossible.”

Is it really that surprising that I killed him? He styled himself quite impressively as an immortal, but from where I stood, it was just a matter of one more move.

“He’s some distance away. Let’s go check the corpse.”

But then I realized I’d teleported and left the motorcycle behind. Should I walk? Five kilometers would take a fair amount of time on foot.
As if reading my mind about abandoning the bike, Lee Se-hee spoke up.

“There should be a vehicle that Team 3 came in nearby. We can use that to get there.”

That’s Lee Se-hee for you. She always knows what I need and brings it without being asked.
Shortly after, we picked up Team 3’s vehicle and headed to the puppet master’s hideout.
When we arrived at the destination and entered the abandoned house, I saw Cho Hyung-sik lying dead with his limbs bent at unnatural angles and his chest torn open.
Perhaps because I’d triggered the Mine from a distance. The corpse was in remarkably good condition otherwise. Lee Se-hee, however, made no attempt to hide her shock at the sight.

“This person is the puppet master?”
“Do you know his face?”
“No, no one knows the puppet master’s face. But since you said you killed him, that must be it. How did you do it?”
“I detected the wavelength of the connection between him and his puppet, backtracked it, and killed him with a Mine.”
……

Lee Se-hee’s expression as she looked at me was strange. It was an explanation even an elementary school student could understand.
I simply exerted my will and channeled Force to accomplish it.

“What’s wrong?”
“Is that even possible?”
“Seems possible enough since I did it.”
“…I don’t think there’s anything you can’t do, Jun-ho. If you need a witness that you killed the puppet master, I’ll testify.”
“I’ll report it or whatever, but it doesn’t matter if they don’t believe it.”

I touched the Mine with my foot, and Cho Hyung-sik’s body was shredded to pieces. Now that’s what getting hit by a Mine looks like.
I stepped out of the Abandoned House, got into the car with Lee Se-hee, and headed for Seoul.

“What are you planning to do next?”
“I’m going to catch Berserker.”
“…Berserker is a Villain who may have reached Level 8.”
“Level 8 is correct.”

Kim Young-hwan had stepped forward to monopolize the credit, but instead he’d proven that Berserker was Level 8 and gotten himself killed in the process.
Soon Berserker’s Level would be re-evaluated upward, and the authorities would tighten their guard.
Lee Se-hee let out a sigh.

“The death of the Red Snake will cause a seismic shift in the situation. This is an opportunity for Jun-ho’s value to climb even higher.”
“What are you getting at?”
“What if you postpone catching Berserker? You can still get what you want right now.”

She went on to mention the rumors surrounding Berserker.

“Berserker is a Villain who stays quiet as long as you don’t provoke him.”

Based on the sightings of Berserker that had come to light, Lee Se-hee laid out a strategy that would benefit me. But I’m targeting Berserker because of his Gift. There’s no reason to rush, but there’s no reason to wait either.

“That’s what you say because you don’t know Berserker.”
“I’m sorry, but…”
“Berserker’s already taken an interest in me. If I don’t step forward, he’ll make his move and cause chaos.”

The more I try to hide, the more he’ll rampage.
League membership was a variable, but there’s no way that freelancer would obey the League’s orders without question.
He’s a madman, after all.

“I need to ask you for something.”
“What is it?”
“Berserker will appear around here soon. I need someone to wait and hand him a means of contact.”

Lee Se-hee, who had accommodated my proposals all along, hesitated this time.

“This is something the messenger would have to risk their life for.”
“He’ll accept it readily.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know that madman better than anyone.”

I spoke with certainty. Perhaps no one knows him as well as I do—not just that he’s a Gift holder, but the strangely warped structure of his mind.
Lee Se-hee nodded, as if she understood.

“So mad people really do understand each other…”

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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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