Hahoe Mask (1)
Hans hid in the shadows and stealthily moved toward the place where the disturbance had occurred.
The Guardians had already been dispatched and were cleaning up the scene.
“Damn, how many times has this happened already? Is there not a single day that can pass without something happening?”
“···Trouble keeps breaking out, but we’re far too short-staffed. I can barely remember the last time I made it home.”
They grumbled as they talked.
Looking around, I saw that my regular chicken restaurant had suffered no major damage apart from its windows being shattered and its interior left in disarray.
‘It must be collateral damage from the terrorist attack nearby. With damage like that, they should be able to reopen soon.’
Come to think of it, incidents had been increasing at an unusually alarming rate lately.
The Guardians were talking about that very subject.
“With those organized terrorists throwing the city’s security into chaos, all sorts of other riffraff are running wild too.”
“We’re already having trouble catching those bastards···. If this keeps up, things are going to get dangerous.”
After listening to their conversation for a while, I left the area.
‘So there really was a cause. Have the villains formed some kind of organization?’
Of course, villains had formed criminal organizations before.
But unlike other countries, our country had been handling them fairly well···.
This time, however, it seemed they had failed to contain them and had not even managed to catch their trail.
I swiftly crossed the city, hiding in the darkness that had begun to settle over it.
Activating the detection magic that had grown even more discreet as I progressed, I swept my surroundings.
‘I made a dramatic entrance, but it would be awkward to return empty-handed just because the situation was already over.’
I needed to assess the state of public security for myself.
In any case, Hans did not need to sleep, and he had an abundance of mana, so wandering around all night would not tire him.
Then my enhanced senses detected a minor disturbance.
‘Hmm··· what is this···?’
I stopped where I was and assessed the situation. After hesitating for a moment, I changed direction and headed there.
The reason I hesitated.
It was neither because the situation was dangerous nor because I was worried my identity might be exposed.
“Hey, you got a problem with what I’m saying? You got a problem, you little shit?”
“N-no··· It’s not like that···.”
“Can’t you speak properly? You want to get the shit beaten out of you, punk?”
In a back alley, a group of boys in school uniforms had gathered.
A group with cigarettes in their mouths surrounded one boy.
It was a scene of school violence.
‘···I came out to hunt villains. Is it really right to deal with a bunch of punks?’
That was the biggest reason I had hesitated.
They say that once you draw a sword, you should at least cut a radish, but wasn’t using this kind of power to discipline some children going too far?
“Hey! I just had a great idea. Take his shirt off.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
As I observed the situation, one of the punks who had been smoking in the back approached the boy being bullied.
“We’ll carve the Big Dipper into his chest. Isn’t that fucking cool?”
“Hehehe, you crazy bastard···. That’s insanely cool. Let’s do it right now.”
The punks grabbed the boy in the center and tore open his buttons.
His exposed body was already covered in bruises and wounds.
“D-don’t··· Stop!”
“What a funny bastard. If you tell us to stop, do you think we have to stop?”
“You still haven’t come to your senses? We’ll stamp Orion on your back.”
“Oh! Do you even know what Orion looks like? That’s awesome.”
“No. We can just search for it online. Grab that bastard. He keeps resisting.”
The boy resisted in tears as the others beat him down and subdued him.
One of them approached with a cigarette while the rest snickered and filmed the scene.
After watching that much, I made up my mind.
Why else would villains be called villains?
If someone harmed others and committed crimes, weren’t they villains?
And these people were already excellent villains.
Once I had made up my mind, acting took only an instant.
“···Huh?”
The one thrusting the lit cigarette forward stopped moving.
Not only him, but the resisting boy and the snickering punks all froze in place.
The entire alley was suddenly engulfed in silence.
“Uh··· Why is my body suddenly doing this···?”
“Uh, uh, me too. I-I can’t move···.”
I had merely remained hidden and sent out a slight wave of energy, yet they all stiffened like frogs before a snake.
Crack!
The smartphone of the one recording the video crumpled and shattered.
There were no CCTV cameras in this alley, either.
That made sense. It was probably why those punks had behaved so freely here.
“Huh? I’m suddenly··· sleepy···.”
Sss···
Thud!
I cast sleep magic on the victim, then slowly revealed myself before the punks.
“···Eek!”
“Ah, uh··· Aah···.”
Trickle···
The moment I revealed my presence without hiding my aura, every one of them began wetting themselves as soon as our eyes met.
I deliberately set the mood and slowly approached them.
Click, click, click···
Their bodies trembled like aspens, accompanied by the sound of their teeth chattering.
Their eyes, unable to turn away or even blink, remained fixed on me, their whites bloodshot.
One particularly fainthearted boy’s pupils had already rolled back.
‘The effect is no joke.’
I had deliberately revealed my aura to frighten them, but this seemed a bit excessive.
They might claim to run wild because they feared nothing in the world, but at the end of the day, they were still just minors with nothing to their names.
If they remained like this, their minds could be destroyed.
I moderated my aura to an appropriate level, pointed a finger at them, and cast a spell.
‘I had been wondering how severe their punishment should be···.’
No matter how bad they were, I could not exactly kill them.
But if a mild beating were enough to make them come to their senses, they would never have committed acts like this in the first place.
That was why I chose this method.
[Seeds of evil. Remember this moment. When you are completely tainted by darkness and finally bloom, you will meet me again.]
I called it magic, but strictly speaking, it was a curse.
The overwhelming terror engraved into them when they faced me.
I planted a trigger in that trauma and drove it into their minds.
Sss···
Thud!
The boys, frozen like ice, simultaneously rolled their eyes back and collapsed.
One of them passed out foaming at the mouth.
‘Hmm, it feels a bit wrong to leave them like this.’
Whoosh—
A smartphone flew out of one punk’s pocket and was drawn into my hand.
I used it to call 119, then tossed it back onto the boy’s body.
That was enough.
‘Now stop doing bad things and live good lives. Though I doubt you’ll be able to.’
Feeling pleased that I had done a good deed, I hid myself in the darkness once more.
The night was still long, and I had plenty of time.
***
‘Ugh··· My head hurts.’
Choi Hosik opened his eyes with difficulty.
His head was throbbing, and he could not think straight.
“Hosik! Hosik, are you awake? Over here, over here! Hurry up and come here! Our boy opened his eyes!”
The shrill voice ringing right beside him made his headache even worse.
He wanted to yell at her to be quiet, but his throat was so raw that no sound came out.
“Patient, are you conscious?”
In the meantime, a nurse approached him and began checking his condition.
After wetting his throat with water and recovering a little of his strength, Choi Hosik finally looked around.
“Where is this··· a hospital? Why am I here?”
His mind was confused, and he could not properly understand the situation.
“Oh, my goodness, Hosik! Do you know how frightened I was when I suddenly got the call? What happened? Who did this? What bastard turned my precious son into this state!”
Choi Hosik frowned at his mother’s hysterical voice beside him.
Still, thanks to her, he was able to piece together what had happened.
A call to 119, a nonresponsive emergency report, and the responders dispatched through GPS.
The students found collapsed together in an alley.
And himself, transported to the hospital unconscious before finally opening his eyes.
“···They called and said you’d been admitted to the hospital, and I was watching my drama when I got such a fright that I came running right over. But what on earth happened? What are the police even doing? They collect our taxes without fail, yet they can’t···.”
As he tuned out his mother’s continuing complaints, Choi Hosik clutched his head as his memories returned.
‘Right, we were smoking in the back alley, and we were about to teach that loser bastard a lesson···.’
The moment his thoughts reached that point,
he stopped even breathing and froze in place.
A fluttering black garment. A blue radiance burning in narrowed eyes. A black hand reaching toward him. And···
[Seeds of evil. Remember this moment. When you are completely tainted by darkness and finally bloom, you will meet me again.]
“Aaaaah!”
“Eek! H-Hosik? Hosik! What’s wrong?”
“Patient? Please come to your senses, patient!”
The overwhelming terror engraved into his soul.
Medical personnel who had rushed over restrained his convulsing body and administered a sedative.
“Ah··· Aah···.”
As his consciousness slowly faded, Choi Hosik thought that he would rather have remained asleep.
***
The basic form of punishment was to plant a trauma in the target through a curse.
The effect was simple: it repeatedly replayed the terror they had felt when facing me.
The activation condition was harboring evil intentions.
The vicious part was that it activated even if they only thought about doing something bad without actually acting on it.
Self-hypnosis could not be used to circumvent it, either.
I had mixed my own thoughts into the curse to account for those with twisted values.
Even if the target did not consider their actions evil, the curse would activate according to my standards.
‘Still, when they only think about it, I made it manifest weakly as a warning, so they should try to cultivate good intentions on their own.’
After being exposed to it repeatedly, their survival instincts would automatically reject evil thoughts.
A curse that activated fully could cause the ego itself to collapse.
That aside···
“Hmm, this is too inefficient.”
After sleeping soundly and waking up, I assessed the situation and muttered quietly.
Of course, I was talking about Hans, who had spent the entire night roaming the city.
‘No matter how fast he can move or how wide his detection range is, wandering around aimlessly like this is inefficient.’
It was true that I had dealt with a lot of matters the previous night.
Starting with school bullies, there had been thieves, thugs, and even rapists.
I had accomplished plenty, using curses as a basis, draining the thugs’ vitality to turn them into weaklings, castrating rapists, and so on, but···
‘Far too much time is being wasted unnecessarily.’
I was sorting recyclables as volunteer work, but no matter what anyone said, Hans was an elite-level asset.
‘But I can’t scatter undead throughout the city, either.’
I was staring blankly out the window, deep in thought, when I saw a flock of birds flying across the sky.
‘Wait. There’s no need to turn them into undead.’
I did not necessarily need undead to create minions.
I could turn them into familiars.
And I knew the spell through 「Forbidden Knowledge」.
I began concentrating my thoughts through Hans.
Birds scattered throughout the city, including pigeons, as well as stray cats roaming the streets at night.
‘I can’t make all of them familiars. I’ll have to modify the spell.’
They would ordinarily wander around as usual, but under specific conditions, they would be able to transmit information.
‘Simplify the spell formation and retain only the necessary parts. Then minimize the mana required for activation through optimization.’
Stealth was also important so that the other returnees would not discover it.
‘When it comes to stealth, curses are the best. I’ll use that as the foundation. If I can reduce the activation cost as well, it’ll be even easier to conceal.’
Since I could not cast the spell on each one individually, it would be useful to have its effects spread to other animals through contact.
‘It should be possible if I mix a plague formula into the curse.’
Hans began combining a new spell through the synergy between 「Forbidden Knowledge」 and 「Wicked Wisdom」.
I even brought in the avatar that had become capable of summoning one more entity after obtaining 「Persona」, concentrating every resource on Hans.
[If this body were in Auteurika, I could use the resource of time more efficiently···. What a pity.]
But the regret lasted only a moment.
In a few hours, I would be able to use the Interdimensional Transmission Array again.
‘Heinz is traveling smoothly as well, so let’s use this transmission for Hans’s magical research.’
And when the array’s cooldown ended, Hans moved to Auteurika.
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