Seong Hangyeol. The third-year class president of the Hero Department at Justice Hero Academy, and the Hero Shield.
Though he had faced countless crises, he had never given up and had overcome them all. Though he was still only a student, the world judged that after graduation he would become a great hero—
“Guh!”
“Hahaha! It finally landed!”
Right now, he was facing the greatest crisis of his life.
Struck by a punch that flew into his chest, Hangyeol was sent flying backward and slammed into the wall. Because his head hit the wall, his vision went white; blood spilled from his mouth, and the pain in his chest made his mind grow faint.
He was on the verge of losing consciousness just like that—
“—Hangyeol!”
At the sound of someone calling his name, he somehow clung to his senses and instinctively thrust both hands forward.
“Tch.”
Telekinetic force surged along his outstretched hands. He sent the woman who had been swinging her foot toward his head to finish him off flying backward.
“Tsk. You really are annoying.”
The villain, shoved back, clicked her tongue and planted strength into both feet, enduring the force pushing her away. Hangyeol panted harshly and wiped the blood running down the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
“—Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
To his teacher, who asked in a trembling voice while collapsed on the floor, he answered with a smile as if nothing were wrong—but in truth, he was not fine.
It was hard to breathe. Judging by the throbbing in his chest whenever he moved, his bones were probably broken. If he had not pushed her away as much as possible with his power, his sternum would have caved in and he would have died on the spot, so he could consider himself lucky even in this state.
“...This is troublesome.”
His superpower was psychokinesis. And not ordinary psychokinesis, but an invisible force powerful enough to hold an average villain in place without letting them so much as lift a finger.
“To break through my telekinesis with sheer strength... What the hell kind of power is that...!”
But the villain before him was no ordinary villain. That woman was a powerhouse unlike anyone he had ever faced before. She was someone who forced her way through his telekinesis with nothing but raw strength—a branch chief of the worst villain organization in history, the Brigade of Evil.
He had scarcely any experience fighting someone like her, and in the end, he had allowed her to land a blow—
“Still, aren’t you more hero-like than that guy?”
For a sprout of a hero who had not even graduated yet to accomplish this much—didn’t he deserve applause for that alone?
“But I’m starting to get bored now—so why don’t you just die already!”
“Don’t make me laugh...!”
Grinding his teeth, he followed with his eyes the villain as she charged at him again, laughing.
When he tilted his head to the side, her fist grazed past him and slammed into the wall behind him, collapsing it with a thunderous roar. When he raised his arm and spread his palm, the foot flying toward his abdomen stopped, and seizing that opening, he thrust his hand forward, sending the villain’s body hurtling backward in an instant.
The villain’s body rose into the air. A brief opening. Hangyeol did not miss it. He crossed his hands in opposite directions, clapped his palms together, and poured in all the strength he had left—
“Invisible Prison!”
An unseen force acted around the villain’s body, beginning to press inward as if to crush her.
Had he caught her this time? Just as Hangyeol thought that—
“You don’t have enough power. As expected, a student is still a student.”
When she swung her right arm to the side, he felt his telekinesis vanish without a trace and frowned.
“Still, this much is impressive. Looks like you’ve already reached ‘full bloom,’ haven’t you?”
It was not empty flattery, but praise uttered because she was truly astonished.
She was genuinely astounded by the fact that the student before her was on the verge of reaching the same level as her.
Since she had encountered him in the third-year classroom of the Hero Department, the student before her was still eighteen. Despite the twenty-one-year age gap between him and her, a thirty-nine-year-old, he was already on the verge of catching up to her realm.
He was dangerous. If she had delayed her attack even a little, there was no telling how much stronger the student before her would have become. If that had happened, she might not have been able to force her way through the unfavorable compatibility of their abilities with strength, and she might have been subdued instead.
But that was all merely a what-if. Right now, she was the one overwhelming him, so all of that amounted to nothing more than meaningless speculation. In the end, Hangyeol, panting from having overused his ability, would not be able to draw out any more strength than this.
“He might become dangerous later—so I have to kill him here, no matter what!”
Determined to kill the one who might someday become the worst hero for her, she began gathering all of her strength in earnest. She charged forward, about to swing her fist—
“Pleased to meet you.”
But the sudden voice and the door that opened with it stole her gaze.
“And who the hell are—”
“You don’t need to be curious about that. Just die and spit out some experience points, boss mob.”
The moment she confirmed that a masked third party was swinging a sword, she instinctively kicked off the floor and leaped upward.
“—Huh?”
Why had she jumped upward? Even though she had acted on instinct, she could not understand why she had done such a thing.
Crack—
However.
Craaaack—
After seeing what happened next, she thanked her instincts.
He had clearly only swung his arm lightly. The sword had merely seemed to graze the wall, leaving a shallow cut and a small crack.
Craaaaack—shaaaaak!
But the crack gradually widened, and the wall, the blackboard, the windows, the lockers—
Kwadududuk!
Everything along the trajectory of the swung sword was “cut” in half. As if the sword had sliced through it all, it split apart and collapsed.
“Haha—crazy bastard.”
After witnessing that sight, she broke into a hollow laugh as cold sweat ran down her face. If she had not instinctively jumped up, wouldn’t she have been split in half like those structures and lost her life?
At the absurd sight, she clicked her tongue and turned her head, glaring at the man who had committed this insanity.
“So the monster bastard came here himself?”
At first she was flustered, but upon seeing his superpower and mask, she soon realized his identity. There was no way she would not know information about the leader of the bastards who had ruined her work countless times until now. Besides, from the start, there was only one person who could pull off such a monstrous feat.
“Guardian.”
Guardian. A villain who had appeared only three times since his first emergence. A lunatic who, despite being a villain who took lives himself, absurdly bore the name of one who protected, and the leader of lunatics who, despite being a villain organization, called themselves Repentance.
“Why has the coward who never shows himself come all the way here? Finally feel like killing yourself? Huh?”
The moment she realized who he was, she spat out a provocation and moved cautiously, trying to close the distance somehow. No matter how he possessed an ability that could cut through anything, if she killed him in a single blow, it would be over. Then she simply had to seize an opening and kill him in one hit.
“Seoul, Gangseo-gu branch chief, villain Wild Pig of the Brigade of Evil—I finally found you.”
Just as she was thinking that and looking for an opening, her expression hardened at the sound of something splitting along with his voice—
“You crazy bastard!”
When she lowered her gaze to find the source of the sound, she confirmed that a crack spreading across the floor had reached right in front of her—and, shuddering, threw herself to the side.
Kwaaaaaang!
The moment she moved away, the floor was cut and collapsed downward. But realizing that the crack did not stop, she shouted in a voice mixed with a scream.
“This is the third floor!”
Suspecting that the man before her had finally gone insane, she smashed through the wall and ran out into the hallway, only to be horrified when even the hallway floor began to split continuously.
“If this place collapses—everyone dies, you know?!”
Heroes? Villains? Or someone else? This was no time to distinguish such things. Guardian was using his ability with the intent of bringing down this third floor—no, this entire building—if it meant he could kill her.
“You call yourself Guardian, but instead of protecting the others, you’re planning to kill them all? Huh?!”
It was already a large building. Even if that one classroom collapsed, only part of it would be damaged; the building itself would not fall. But it was a different story if a hallway this wide collapsed in its entirety. The moment this place supporting all the classrooms disappeared, the building itself would collapse, and then their comrades would die as well.
She shouted while looking at the people she encountered in the hallway, his masked comrades—
“Even if this place collapses, heroes won’t die.”
But hearing Guardian’s indifferent words from beyond the collapsed wall, chills ran across her entire body.
Did he trust that even if the building caved in, his comrades would not die? She could not sense even a trace of that in his flat tone. In fact, the villains of Repentance were panicking at the sight of the cracks, so he had truly only declared, word for word, that “heroes” would not die.
Did he not care even if his comrades died? Truly? There was already too little information on Guardian, who rarely acted in person. She could not judge whether he would bury everyone just to kill her, or whether those words were nothing but bravado.
Feeling confused, she clenched her teeth, then soon made up her mind and swung her fist at the wall—
Kwaaaaaang!
And smashed the wall apart.
“Then you can go die by yourself!”
She threw herself through the hole blasted into the wall by the impact, then cursed as she leaped down from the third floor.
“—Boss?”
“We pursue.”
The villains of Repentance, who had been watching that sight, all looked at Guardian and asked, but he answered firmly in his altered voice.
Had she fled outside because she was at a disadvantage indoors? Certainly, the compatibility of their abilities was not very favorable for her. But that did not mean he intended to let her get away so easily. Since all of this was flowing exactly according to the game’s story in the first place, he had kept this possibility in mind as well.
The villain called Guardian, Hyeonu, clicked his tongue as he thought about how to act from here, and was about to chase after her—
“Don’t move!”
“...Damn it.”
Sighing at the intangible force that seized him, he turned his head.
“Haaah, I don’t know who you are—but you’re definitely a villain!”
The one who held him in place, even though he had already been driven to his limit, was none other than Seong Hangyeol. He was his classmate, one of the only friends who had taken his side, the protagonist of this game, and—
“—Hero Shield.”
At this moment, a hero he had no choice but to stand against.
Hyeonu looked at him and smiled bitterly, but his face, hidden behind the mask, could not be seen by anyone.