novelraw Chapter 243 : Chapter 243
Chapter 243 : Chapter 243
Chapter 243: Villain Professor (2)
Before they knew it, the sun began to rise little by little between the towering buildings.
Watching the brightening city, Ho-cheol wiped the sweat flowing on his forehead with the back of his hand.
Then, leaning his back against the wall, he let out a long sigh.
“That was intense.”
He rarely showed signs of being genuinely exhausted.
It wasn't simply because the villains he faced today were strong.
Rather, among the villains he had faced recently, they belonged to the weaker side.
The real work was hunting down the villains spread all over the city.
Just counting the villains he caught while roaming around all night, there were 6 teams.
The number exceeded 20.
Considering the Association had deliberately set this up, one might see it as a small number, but looking closely, that wasn't the case.
Just the conditions were quite tricky.
Villains who weren't influenced by Ho-cheol, independent enough not to leave traces even if the Association cut ties, and with a disposition to move solely for money.
Rather, the Association's connections to find 20 villains meeting those conditions in just one day were impressive.
“In the first place, character and ability are separate things.”
And they were weak villains by Ho-cheol's standards; in reality, they weren't incompetent. Facing them alone, even Da-yeon or Ye-jin couldn't easily predict victory.
If the heroes' dispatch had been delayed as per the Association's plan and they had run wild unchecked, the damage would have been hard to estimate.
The city would have been paralyzed, and human casualties would have likely reached at least triple digits.
In fact, just a few villains whom Ho-cheol failed to get info on and was late to handle had turned parts of the city into a mess.
On top of that, the heroes who chased after them a beat late.
Chasing while simultaneously being chased—it was a complex situation even Ho-cheol was experiencing for the first time.
Still, thanks to his absurd basic stamina, Ho-cheol just brushed it off with a simple ‘That was intense.’
“Heu-euk— Heu-uh-euk— Ho-eh-ek—”
“U-eup. O-we-ek—!”
Da-yeon and Ye-jin, who had experienced real combat unlike anything before, were half-collapsed, gasping for breath or barely holding back retching while holding onto the alley walls.
Ji-an had already half-fainted and been sent back first.
Naturally, stamina was included in the basic skills Ho-cheol always emphasized were lacking.
“Still, you all worked hard. The cleanup will be done by the heroes coming leisurely, so let’s go back.”
And just a few hours later, the expression ‘Villain Professor’ dominated that day’s headlines.
Newspapers, news, and all sorts of miscellaneous places poured out stories about Ho-cheol and the masked villains.
With society's entire interest already directed at the Hero Association due to Ho-cheol picking a fight with them recently, it was bound to draw people's attention.
Some media outlets, seeing the ridiculously short interval between the villains' appearance and Ho-cheol's suppression of them, even put forth the quite plausible opinion that all of this was Ho-cheol's self-staged drama.
Of course, Ho-cheol didn't feel the need to refute such trivial nonsense one by one.
It wasn't a transparent opinion to begin with.
Perhaps the Association, seeing things not going according to plan, had separately influenced the press to attack Ho-cheol.
Ho-cheol, who had washed with hot water and was drying his hair, paused for a moment.
He had definitely tidied the bed neatly, but the center of the blanket was bulging upwards.
If that was an assassin hiding for a surprise attack, he would admire their infiltration ability to get this far, and be dumbfounded by their intelligence to hide so foolishly.
Of course, it wasn't an assassin.
When he clicked his tongue blatantly, the blanket squirmed, and Ji-an's head peeked out from the side.
Their eyes met, and Ho-cheol sighed.
“How do you keep getting out of there?”
He had definitely locked the door?
Above all...
“Why are you lying here, leaving your perfectly fine room alone?”
Of course, Ho-cheol's door lock posed no obstacle to Ji-an.
And if asked why she came here, she had her own thing to say.
She crumpled her expression and pouted her lips.
“I don't want to sleep in my room because it smells like a warehouse.”
It was natural.
Just until a few days ago, it was a room used as a warehouse.
Ji-an had actually tried to endure as much as possible.
She knew well how hard Ho-cheol was working to act spoiled like usual.
But the musty smell rising from the floor was too hard to bear continuously.
“...Can't I?”
Ji-an chewed on the edge of the blanket with anxious eyes.
The blanket quickly got teeth marks from her mouth shape and became wet around them.
Ho-cheol sighed.
“Only until the smell is gone.”
Still, she had suffered all night saving people, so this much reward should be fine.
In fact, without her Trait, the victims could have more than doubled.
Neither Da-yeon nor Ye-jin, nor even Ho-cheol, had the Trait or strength to perfectly support collapsing buildings.
“Yahoo!”
Ji-an cheered and shamelessly rolled herself up in the blanket again.
Instead of kicking her out, Ho-cheol turned his head and turned on the television.
News about the events that happened this dawn immediately flowed out as a special report.
Public opinion was half and half.
Half criticizing Ho-cheol, and half criticizing the Hero Association for being slower than Ho-cheol rather than defending him.
In fact, even saying half and half, there was no one on his side as a villain.
Still, the sight of the Association's propaganda failing to gain traction was good news for him.
Of course, one couldn't see the citizens as purely on Ho-cheol's side.
He was using his organization members to manipulate public opinion on the internet and such little by little.
Just as he was flipping through channels checking the news for a while.
Ho-cheol's hand holding the remote stopped.
It wasn't simply news about Ho-cheol.
The news investigated Ho-cheol's tracks after his release from prison, and consequently found out that he had worked as a professor at Clington Academy for half a year.
Thanks to that, countless reporters flocked to Clington to write even a single line of an article related to him.
The dean, Se-ah, and a few other professors would be pestered and suffer a bit, but he only felt regretful, not particularly sorry.
Up to this point was within Ho-cheol's expected range.
However, some reporters blinded by scoops didn't stop there.
His expression distorted more than ever.
Beyond displeasure, anger could be felt from his raised eyebrows.
“Crazy bastards.”
He muttered a small curse.
“Have they really lost their minds?”
To think they would dig up the personal information of the students he was in charge of and go find them.
He had been too complacent.
He hadn't thought at all about how vicious the breed called reporters would act for a scoop.
Soon, the screen switched, and scenes of cameras and microphones being thrust in real-time at students to get interviews were captured on screen.
Even the assigned heroes who should protect the students were in the same boat, troubled because they couldn't act coercively against the press.
No, rather, they were acting like that because they took the heroes lightly.
Ho-cheol ground his teeth—grrit.
“Trash-like scum.”
Their lax attitude was annoying, but it wasn't simply a problem with the media.
How did they obtain that nearly confidential information so quickly?
There must be the Association's intervention.
Just when he took off his mask and revealed his face in front of the Association last time, his personal information and Clington weren't linked.
Information that was controlled just fine until then was completely released today, even down to the students he was in charge of, in less than an hour.
Perhaps because the prepared propaganda work didn't go their way, the desperate Association seemed to be attacking using every means without holding back.
“I’m operating openly like this telling them not to bully the students. And they touch the students again?”
If it was an attack directed at him, he could take and endure any amount.
But to turn the arrow towards the students.
This was absolutely intolerable.
Villain and Hero.
He had taken care so that Awakeners outside this realm or civilians wouldn't get swept up as much as possible.
However, since the Association broke that implicit rule first, Ho-cheol had no reason to hold back either.
If they crossed the line, he would have to make them pay the price.
Ji-an, who had been holding her breath and watching Ho-cheol's mood until now, pulled the blanket down to below her nose and asked cautiously.
“Are you angry?”
Usually, Ho-cheol refrained from using even slang as much as possible, saying it was bad for education.
Seeing him use such provocative words, he must be unusually angry.
“...A little.”
Answering briefly, Ho-cheol got dressed.
“Even if villains fight and brawl, there are unwritten rules. Like eye-poking or kicking vital spots. Naturally, I thought this side would keep those too, but...”
He shook his head.
“It seems I was the only one keeping them. Villain Professor. I’ll have to teach them why I’m called that.”
With those final words, Ho-cheol left the room.
***
Smiley, who was watching the news, burst into laughter.
“Villain Professor. Truly the best.”
His naming sense was just as lame 10 years ago as it is now.
Of course, by Smiley's standards, it was an expression she quite liked.
Since she was someone who disliked both heroes and villains.
That expression 'Professor' was the kind that suited her quite well.
“The method is quite decent too.”
Although his moves and methods themselves were clumsy both as a hero and as a villain.
However, that clumsiness was rather the key.
At least Smiley could clearly understand his intention to protect the people around him as much as possible while making all attention focus on himself.
“But to touch the students like that. The Association did something stupid.”
They themselves crossed the line Ho-cheol was barely maintaining first.
This would not only give Ho-cheol a justification but also lead him to stop distinguishing between means and methods.
Since the situation continued to be disadvantageous, the Association seemed to have thrown its own winning move, but in the end, it was a bad move.
“Still, I wonder if Ho-cheol can endure it well.”
Smiley considered this unexpected second life a curse.
She wanted to die but couldn't; a terrible life where she harmed others against her will.
However, thanks to that, she could confirm that her effort and choice to turn Ho-cheol back to the right path were not wrong.
This alone was definitely a joyful result.
However, if there was one thing that weighed on her mind, it was the students he was taking around.
In the media, they didn't even have a small interest in them as mere sidekick villains, but Smiley knew clearly through So-hee who they were and what Traits they possessed.
“That is dangerous.”
“What is?”
So-hee, who was watching the news with nervous eyes from the side, asked back in panic.
“I mean the two students Ho-cheol is taking around. If he simply intended to protect them, there would be no reason to train them to that extent.”
“...What does that mean? Why those two?”
Smiley swept her face with both hands.
“Those two have a bigger role.”
Simply the talent to become excellent heroes, a close relationship outside of lectures?
Such things were secondary issues.
In fact, there's no way Ho-cheol would take care of them like that for such reasons.
Ho-cheol must have trained his students since the beginning of the semester, analyzed all their Traits, and understood them perfectly.
And the ones chosen after selection were those two.
Ho-cheol boasted overwhelming compatibility against most Traits, but that compatibility didn't apply to all Traits.
The Traits of those two were not devoured by Ho-cheol's Trait, and rather possessed the potential to drive a dagger into his heart.
So-hee urgently cut off Smiley's explanation.
“Wait. Wait a minute! Are you saying the reason Ho-cheol took those two and is raising them is?”
“Among the precious people around him that Ho-cheol protects. He himself is not included.”
He was still a ghost only living out of a sense of duty, looking for a place to die.
“Well, it’s fine.”
Smiley shrugged and smiled leisurely.
Perhaps the reason she came back to life was to prevent that.
Such a thought suddenly occurred to her.
“Because if things go according to our plan, that won't happen.”
Having stood up from her seat at some point, she looked at the bundle of documents So-hee was hugging and asked.
“Preparations are all done, right?”
“...For now.”
So-hee nodded reluctantly.
She was just captured as a hostage, but somehow she seemed to have taken on too big a role.
But it was too late to back out.
Above all, this was all for Ho-cheol...
“Good. We can't just wait forever. Shall we start moving?”
To Smiley, Ho-cheol's existence was no different from hope.
If that hope didn't come to her, if it was a situation where he couldn't possibly come.
“I guess I have to go to hope.”