Prologue + Chapter 1
Han Chasu was a small-fry villain in the modern fantasy novel,
A villain who was like the incarnation of an inferiority complex, envying and resenting the protagonist, S-rank Hunter Jeong Iheun.
[I could have become like you, too. If I’d been born with everything like you…! Someone like you would’ve been nothing!]
[A lucky bastard like you could never understand the suffering of someone as pitiful as me!]
He was a character as trite as his lines, but surprisingly, many readers remembered him until the very end.
Why?
Because of him, the protagonist’s younger brother suddenly died an empty death early in the novel.
Jeong Iheun had something urgent come up, so his younger brother entered the dungeon in his stead, died inside, and they couldn’t even recover the body.
[That was a place Seoheun could have handled well enough. Find out who did it. Right now.]
That became the catalyst for the protagonist, who had been a born pushover, to suddenly turn into a psychopath protagonist….
[Han Chasu? Are you telling me this piece of trash tampered with the potions, and that’s why Seoheun died?]
[I’m sorry. We should have inspected them thoroughly beforehand….]
[…
Cut off his limbs and throw him into a dungeon.]
[Pardon?]
[Playing games with people’s lives. I’d like to try it once myself.]
Han Chasu was tortured in every horrible way a person could imagine, kept alive, tortured again, and then killed.
“Fuck….”
In other words, I had possessed that body.
***
It had been an hour since I opened my eyes in an unfamiliar room.
No matter how much I racked my brain, I still couldn’t understand why this had happened.
At the end, I was sure I’d fallen asleep while reading the novel in my room at the shelter.
“This is absurd.”
A sigh burst out from deep within my chest.
As if getting dragged into a novel wasn’t enough, I had to possess a villain of all things.
As I sighed, the state of the room—ransacked as if a thief had broken in—entered my eyes.
It was the result of me being shocked by the unfamiliar body reflected in the mirror and rummaging around for anything I could find.
“Han Chasu. Of all people, I possessed Han Chasu….”
I muttered blankly, flicking the ID card. The spotless white ceiling felt unfamiliar.
In my head, I went over the contents of the novel I had been reading until yesterday.
Han Chasu, a researcher in Potion Manufacturing Team 1, affiliated with Cheollyeong Guild.
An ordinary loner with no real reputation within the company.
A life where he couldn’t get along with people, couldn’t get promoted, worked overtime every day, and looked as if he would retire as a rank-and-file employee forever.
“But in truth, he’s a lunatic steeped in an inferiority complex.”
What an exhausting way to live.
“Why the hell did he turn out so twisted? He could have lived without envying anyone.”
A Hunter with potion manufacturing skills earned a salary that could rival most major corporations.
The same was true for Han Chasu, who belonged to Cheollyeong Guild.
‘Come to think of it, was Han Chasu B-rank?’
That part hadn’t been treated as important in the novel, so I couldn’t remember.
Since it came to mind, I called up the status window to check.
And soon, I had to press my lips shut in bewilderment.
[ Name: Han Chasu (A-rank)
Title: Failed Assassin, Breath-Held Star, Rebel
Traits: Assassination-type, Combat
Skills: Disguised Identity (A): Active
Regeneration (B)
Silent Footsteps (B)
Shadow Curtain (C)
Poison Manufacturing (A)
Presence Dilution (A)
Rebellion (A)
* Skill ‘Disguised Identity’ is currently active.
* Certain information will be displayed differently to others.
* Penalties will be imposed for actions that do not match the disguised identity. ]
“…
I thought he was a potion manufacturer.”
***
After sitting there and staring at the status window for quite a while, I began to get a sense of things.
Starting from his assassination-type trait to poison manufacturing.
It seemed this guy hadn’t entered the company to make potions and then gone mad from an inferiority complex. He’d just been born that way.
“So this is why he committed so many things and still never got caught.”
Looking over the effects, they were skills perfectly suited for erasing traces.
No wonder someone who joined as a researcher had gone wild without fear.
“So he had something to rely on.”
Clicking my tongue, I thought about it. True to his role as an inferiority-exploding villain, Han Chasu’s villainous deeds weren’t just one or two.
Tampering with potions was par for the course. As it turned out, he had even messed with the protagonist party’s equipment before.
Then why did he suddenly get caught after getting away with it all that time?
Well, I suppose the plot needed it to happen.
I quietly closed the status window and flicked my finger.
In any case, the reason Han Chasu’s bullshit was exposed in the story was purely bad luck.
Most of the potions Han Chasu tampered with only had their effects reduced by extremely ambiguous amounts.
For example, lowering the medicinal effect of a healing potion by about 6 percent.
Or shortening the duration of an abnormal status resistance potion by 4.5 percent.
For an S-rank Hunter like Jeong Iheun, it was a petty trick he could compensate for with his own abilities and move past.
Perhaps because of that, Han Chasu grew increasingly bold.
‘And then an accident happened.’
A-rank flame-type Hunter Jeong Seoheun.
While fighting against a frost giant, he died because of the freezing resistance potion Han Chasu had made.
It was a potion whose duration and efficacy had merely been lowered by 8 percent. If the raid had gone smoothly, it was such a minor difference that it would have passed without incident.
But that day, the frost giant went berserk for an unknown reason.
The raid team was flustered, but they tried to retreat calmly.
Although the cold air the frost giant emitted was more than three times stronger than usual, they would have been fine as long as they drank the potions in time.
But the potions were the problem.
The number 8 percent may seem like nothing at first glance.
However, in a situation where lives hung by a thread. In a moment when life and death were decided by a single second’s judgment.
Amid a brush with death, where hands and feet froze and the body gradually grew sluggish, it was a number that could determine a person’s life.
In the end, because the potions ran out sooner than expected, the raid team was stranded in the snowfield and died.
And the protagonist, Jeong Iheun, who had sent his younger brother in his stead, writhed in agony.
Because he thought he had driven his younger brother to his death.
But no matter how he thought about it, it wasn’t a situation where they should have been wiped out so emptily.
The raid team may not have been able to subjugate the berserk frost giant, but they had enough resources to retreat safely.
So Jeong Iheun thoroughly investigated his younger brother’s death… and as a result, the person known as Han Chasu was revealed.
Along with every petty and despicable evil deed he had committed all along.
Once I thought that far, the answer to what I had to do came to me quickly.
“This won’t do.”
I should resign.
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