novelraw Chapter 206 : Chapter 206
Chapter 206 : Chapter 206
Chapter 206: Smiley (2)
Although it was a rather cute naming, it was hard to just laugh it off when it was attached to Ho-cheol.
Wolf Fang muttered with a displeased expression.
“Actually, I think not just Smiley, but everyone in this country will lose their smiles.”
In the past, Ho-cheol had been passionate about controlling information, so the citizens did not know of his existence, but this time, there was no team or subordinates to handle Ho-cheol's clean-up.
His actions would probably be tracked and recorded in detail.
At Wolf Fang's worry, Ho-cheol waved his hand nonchalantly.
“In any case, how often will I have to deal with the ordinary commoners? In fact, I’m more worried about you.”
“Pardon?”
Wolf Fang asked back, flustered.
What did I do?
Although they had gotten quite close now, there was still a fear of Ho-cheol deep in Wolf Fang's heart.
No, in the first place, it was also the most primal driving force that moved him.
“I was just wondering if you were going to sell me out later.”
Looking at Ho-cheol, who had his eyes narrowed, Wolf Fang jumped up from his spot.
“No, what are you talking about? Do you think I’m crazy enough to sell you out, boss!”
He shouted as if genuinely resentful.
There were many kinds of death.
And Wolf Fang could be sure that among them, dying at Ho-cheol's hands was the most malicious and miserable end.
“I’m more afraid of having my limbs torn off by the boss than of going to prison, so don't worry about that.”
Although Ho-cheol had softened a lot now, that didn't mean his past had disappeared.
If he had seen Ho-cheol dismembering a traitor alive in front of him, he would never have looked down on him.
He couldn't even think of betraying him.
“Right. I suppose you wouldn’t betray me.”
Ho-cheol turned his body and leaned his back against the railing.
He tapped a calculator in his head for a moment and went over the cards he currently had one by one.
There were quite a few useful ones, but there was no card that could decisively confirm his victory.
“As expected, it’s difficult with just the two of us, and a few dregs.”
Most importantly, the card that he could use most often now was as good as useless, which was fatal.
The villain organization he had used when he had caught Hong Beom-do.
At that time, it didn't matter as long as he could just sell the business card of a boss of some minor organization.
The capabilities of the subordinates were not worth considering at all.
But not now.
His opponent now was the New World Trait Liberation Society, which had given Ho-cheol a hard time several times so far.
And on top of that, Smiley had even been resurrected and had joined them.
The military power he could mobilize was also important.
In the current state, it was obvious that Ho-cheol's side would be overwhelmingly pushed back in a large-scale battle.
“The fake Smiley. No, that fake Smiley bastard, I came out of the academy because of his obsession with me. If the battle flows in that form…”
Ho-cheol closed one eye and ran a simulation.
If Jeong Yu-hwa had the same level of power as her prime when she was alive.
“This is screwed.”
A certain defeat.
No matter how strong Ho-cheol was, he was no match for a group.
If she and a few more S-rank villains were to join, there was no way he could win.
“I’ll just barely hold on and then get my body out.”
“The fact that you can hold on and get your body out against three or four S-ranks including Smiley is a comedy in itself.”
In fact, even that was absurd to Wolf Fang.
It was only because it was Ho-cheol that he could completely ignore S-ranks; in the first place, even if you combined all the villains and heroes in this country, the number of S-ranks did not even reach double digits.
“You idiot. What I can do, conversely, that guy can do too.”
“Ah. Right.”
It meant that to perfectly catch the fake Smiley, he would also need several more S-ranks, including Ho-cheol.
“But isn’t this side more advantageous in terms of position?”
Since the fake Smiley was obsessed with Ho-cheol, her goal was naturally to subdue him.
On the other hand, Ho-cheol's goal was to kill the fake Smiley.
Simple suppression and ending a life.
Which was easier?
It was not even a comparison.
But Ho-cheol could not just be positive.
“It’s easier said than done.”
He scratched the back of his head.
Of course, he had decided to kill her, but how could he harbor a killing intent after seeing that face?
After subduing her and making a proper decision, he would probably be able to barely kill her.
As he was stroking his chin and making future plans, Ho-cheol felt a presence and turned to the side.
“What is this now…”
Why is she here again?
Under the dim light, an unexpected person appeared.
“I knew you’d be here.”
A confident tone and a dignified gait.
The dean's granddaughter.
Ha-rin, who should have been at the hospital with the dean, was standing there with her arms crossed.
“What are you two guys whispering about? Do you have a lot of secrets?”
“Why are you here?”
She covered her mouth and smiled.
“The nurses will take much better care of my grandpa than I can. And my relatives have already laid claim to the family business, so where is there room for me to get involved?”
“No. That’s not what I’m asking, I’m asking why you’re here.”
Ho-cheol's head throbbed for a moment, and he touched his forehead with his fingertips.
After all the trouble of getting her revenge, to think she would come back to this shithole, Ho-cheol could not understand it at all.
“Why did I come?”
Ha-rin grinned.
“I came to help.”
“Did you talk to the old man?”
“I got scolded. It was the first time my grandpa had been so angry. I almost had to be put on a respirator.”
Ahahaha looking at her, who was laughing nonchalantly, Ho-cheol let out another sigh.
Setting aside her combat power, the more trustworthy people there were, the better.
However, Ho-cheol still muttered with a troubled tone.
“The old man will try to kill me later if he finds out.”
“If…”
She removed the hand that had been covering her mouth and smiled with a strange expression.
“If my grandpa had really tried to stop me, he could have stopped me as much as he wanted. But in the end, I arrived here like this. Maybe my grandpa also secretly wished that you had someone to help you, no matter who it was.”
Ho-cheol finally shook his head as if he couldn't win.
“Well, if you’re volunteering to be a slave, there’s no reason not to use you.”
“Huh? A slave? Not a colleague?”
Ignoring the flustered Ha-rin's protest, Wolf Fang asked.
“So what are you going to do?”
“First…”
Ho-cheol shook a piece of paper up and down.
“The S-rank villain list. I’m going to recruit as many of them as possible.”
“Ah.”
“Hmm.”
Just from Wolf Fang and Ha-rin's expressions and short reactions, it was easy to tell what the two of them were thinking.
“Will that be easy?”
“To recruit those madmen?”
Both the villain of 10 years ago and the villain of the present era had a skeptical reaction.
But Ho-cheol was relaxed despite their worries.
“There are ways. Well, it’s called recruiting, but it’s closer to a negotiation? A deal?”
What kind of amazing method was there to be able to negotiate or make a deal with those crazy S-rank villains?
At their expectant gazes, Ho-cheol answered.
“Just meet them and don’t say anything. Just beat them up. Even if they ask why you’re hitting them, beat them up, even if they resist, beat them up, and even if they beg for forgiveness, beat them up.”
Their complexions instantly turned pale.
“Until they feel like they’re going to die. By then, they’ll ask you what you want.”
In the first place, the way Ho-cheol had built such a huge organization in the past was extremely simple.
An overwhelming difference in power.
The key was to not just show it, but to make them feel it with their own bodies.
“Then you can negotiate. ‘I’ll let you live, so do as I say.’”
Surprisingly, this worked well.
The organization he had built in the past had also grown in size in this way at first.
Looking at the completely fed-up two, Ho-cheol shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, I’m not a professor anymore. I can do some bad things for the sake of education.”
***
The New World Trait Liberation Society.
Their headquarters was hidden in a secret place that no one knew.
A separate space with a different concept from a gate.
You had to perfectly recognize its unique coordinates, and you could only enter through a few extremely cumbersome processes in the correct order.
And that was only if you had a Trait that could twist space and open a door.
That's how secret and safe their headquarters was.
The reason why even Ho-cheol, the Association, and the dean, who had been secretly tracking them, had not even been able to catch their tail was thanks to their fanatical obsession with security.
And at that Society's headquarters.
A shabby yet majestic building reminiscent of an ancient temple.
A person was standing at its entrance.
Smiley.
No, Jeong Yu-hwa, who had now abandoned that alias.
She, who had been staggering, leaned her shoulder against a stone pillar.
But even that did not last long, and her body slid down and she half-sat down.
A pale, even purple, complexion, a hot fever was boiling from her body, and a heat haze seemed to shimmer around her.
“Sseuheup……. Haa…”
Her rough breathing made it seem as if it was even difficult to breathe.
She let out a painful groan and clutched her chest.
Her mind was hazy from the splitting headache and the pain that seemed to be tearing at her heart.
No, this dizziness was not just due to the pain.
A low voice was heard from behind her, who was trying to hold on to her consciousness somehow.
“My, my. It would be a problem if you were to come all the way out here.”
Yu-hwa's gaze turned back.
White.
His skin, his hair, his pupils, and even the clothes he was wearing.
A man dressed in white from head to toe slowly approached.
Looking down at Yu-hwa, he asked.
“Are you alright?”
“Shut up!”
She growled lowly.
“Judging by your reaction, it seems you are alright.”
The man stroked his chin and smiled softly.
The emotion felt in his voice was half annoyance, half bewilderment, and a very faint respect.
“To think you’re like this even after receiving the baptism.”
Baptism.
They did not just end with reviving the dead.
They would construct and insert a new personality into a body that was already dead.
After that, when they revived it, the personality they wanted would dominate, possessing that body, memory, personality, and everything else.
Naturally, the same went for the resurrected Smiley.
A violent and sadistic personality, the complete opposite of her.
And yet, they had created and inserted a useful personality that was faithful to the Society's commands.
That was the fake Smiley that Ho-cheol had seen.
“To think that a consciousness that remained like dregs in a dead body would pierce through the main personality and be expressed like this.”
But not now.
The guardian of order, the hope of the citizens, and Ho-cheol's friend.
She was the real one.
Looking at Smiley, who was still glaring at him, the man was once again impressed.
“I’ve seen a few cases of a residual consciousness remaining in a body, but this is the first time it’s been so vivid.”
Including the failures so far, they had repeated the baptism and resurrection experiments hundreds, perhaps even over a thousand times.
But Jeong Yu-hwa was the one and only case where a personality had suppressed a new personality and had come to the surface.
“It’s truly amazing every time I see it.”
Even the key researchers of this experiment had expressed this phenomenon as a miracle created by a mental strength and will that far surpassed a human's.
“Well, it’s fine for you to get some air like this sometimes, but it would be a problem if you were to influence the new personality.”
In fact, the command given to the fake Smiley's personality by the Society was not such an indiscriminate destruction.
“Wasn’t our command to shake his emotions to their very core and to induce anguish and conflict?”
If the fake Smiley had been determined to ‘pretend’ to be the real one, if she had appealed to past memories and emotions, even Ho-cheol would have been swayed.
The Society had been planning to relentlessly aim for the crack created by that emotional turmoil.
But that had been completely messed up from the start due to Yu-hwa's rampage.
“To think she would further encourage a violent tendency there.”
The unpleasant expressions and words she had shot at Ho-cheol.
The real Yu-hwa's personality had been deeply involved in that.
At the very least, it was a desperate SOS to make him realize that she was a fake.
And thankfully, Ho-cheol, whom she had believed in, had captured that signal.
Since she had so blatantly shown that she was a fake, Ho-cheol had pulled himself together without even having to go through any anguish or whatever.
Yu-hwa twisted her lips into a smile even in her pain.
“Then kill me, you idiot.”
Although ordinary citizens did not know, she had a foul mouth.
Her eyes shone menacingly from between her disheveled hair.
“No. How could I?”
The man bowed his waist and met her eyes.
“You are the most intense stimulus for his transcendence, and in the end, we have even prepared a fitting end for you. So please take care of yourself until then.”
The head of the Society bowed and greeted her.
“Then when we meet next time, shall we meet as that violent, disorderly, and sadistic personality again?”
Of course, although her original personality had been revealed now, that was just for about ten minutes every few days.
This soul, which had become infinitely weak after dying once, could not suppress not only that body, but also the new personality that was trying to take over the initiative again even now.
And judging by that reaction, this week's struggle would probably be over in 1 or 2 minutes, without him having to do anything.
With a smiling eye, he left.
Yu-hwa, who was left alone, leaned her back against a pillar and stared blankly up at the ceiling.
These black and sticky emotions that were welling up even now.
The things that she had always suppressed with reason and a smile were now so simply eating away at her brain and mind.
Yu-hwa hugged her body tightly with both hands.
Although her personality was split, she also remembered everything the other personality had done.
Even all the sins she had committed.
Guilt was strangling her.
Today, thanks to the efforts of a student and the dean, no one had died.
But it was just that much.
She had already gotten blood on her hands.
And there was no guarantee that such luck would be repeated.
If someone's life were to be cut off at her hands next time.
Even this faint existence that remained now would surely be completely destroyed.
So please, before such a worst-case scenario comes.
“Please.”
She covered her face with both hands.
“Anyone is fine, so please…”
The first thing that came to mind was Ho-cheol's face.
No, there was no one else.
Because that was the promise.
Yu-hwa's voice trembled pitifully.
“Kill me…”
Save me.