How to Redeem a Trashy Side Villain

Chapter 137: Hunting Losers

[Maya]

The date is April 16th.

Two days ago, someone whom I consider to be the bane of my existence, while simultaneously being someone who I was getting closer to disappeared.

To be more accurate, he was dragged into a portal during an attack on Valentine's Day.

When I first heard the news, I thought to myself that perhaps he deserved it after all the emotional turmoil he had put me through, but that thought lasted for less than a second. Despite being two-faced, he was a good person who had accomplished things that made him deserving of the title of being a young hero.

To say that the academy was tense was an understatement.

Everyone was either visibly worried about him or was trying to hide their feelings, only to fail as he was the topic of conversation everywhere they walked.

My club members have been trying their hardest to find any other news about his disappearance but other than what the public knew, they weren't able to find anything.

One thing that I personally discovered by stalking Diana, someone who I knew was closely attached to Bell, was that she had come to some sort of truce with Ichiko and the two of them had been working together the entire night yesterday in an attempt to find a clue on how to rescue Bell.

It seems like the two of them were able to put their differences aside when it came to Bell. But at the same time — their differences also clashed because of their relationship with Bell…

Anyways.

A lot of things have been on my mind but none more so than the existence of Aldo Niro, the man whom Bell had agreed to help me take on.

Now that I was alone, I would need to get assistance from someone else. But who else was crazy enough to kill another human with only substantial evidence and the conviction coming from a teenage student, aka myself.

Bell, hurry up and come back, you bastard! You promised me that you would help. How am I supposed to do this by myself?

Obviously, the only response I would get to the question is silence.

Halfway through the school day, something clicked in my mind.

I know that I wasn't supposed to do this and if Bell were here, he would've stopped me, not because he was worried about me, but because he had some sort of plan that he was keeping a secret from me.

But he isn't here. Only I am.

And what was it that clicked?

I was going to move by myself.

Even if I didn't have a partner and the chances of things going awry for me were extremely high, I was already starting to get impatient and the chances of Aldo getting stronger every day that passed were highly likely.

Although it would be much better if I had a partner-in-crime, I had been working alone for so many years. I was used to this.

It's just — those instances in the past were just investigating rumours at the academy. This would be my first time working alone, dealing with a real threat and creating a story for the world to eat up.

My first was supposed to be during that time around Christmas but my plans had been thwarted by Bell, albeit he did save my life, so…

I can do this. I can do this.

That's what I told myself as I opened up the bottom drawer of my desk and pulled out the file filled with all the scraps of evidence that I had gathered on Aldo Niro. A lot of it was circumstantial and I had no physical photos or videos because that would require me to deactivate my invisibility.

The problem wasn't proving to others that I was right. That could be done afterwards.

The problem was not dying.

I wasn't strong enough to overpower him directly, which was why I had asked for Bell's help to begin with.

So, my only option was not to fight fair.

I knew of him but he didn't know of me. He didn't know that I had been following him around without his knowledge.

In his mind, he probably thinks that nobody knows his secret.

Surprise motherfucker!

I know.

"I need to set up a trap for him."

❖ ❖ ❖

[Bell]

'Master, are you sure that this plan of yours is going to work?' asked Kimi.

'Are you doubting him?!' Liona shrieked.

I understood why Kimi was sceptical of the plan. After all, I wasn't even 100% certain it would work. It relied on luck, the correct circumstances, and a vague remembering of the novel's content.

In the meantime, while I was working on the plan behind the scenes, I would spend my free time hunting down the lesser demons.

Although their demon cores weren't as valuable as the one in my bag which belonged to Selgaath, I was trying to make up for the quality by targeting quantity.

I had to be careful though as I didn't want to expose the fact that I was hunting demons.

So what I did was carefully follow the demons and only kill the ones who seemed like loners who had no friends, no partners, and no motion.

Although there was no day and night cycle here, the concept of them did somewhat exist as the demons and creatures here would be awake around the same time as each other and then head to sleep at the same time.

I had adjusted my schedule so that I was resting when they worked and would be awake during the entirety of the time they slept.

"I'm glad that I kept it on me just in case," I uttered, referring to the demon core and the Warrior Elixir. Although my original plans with them weren't possible in the Underworld, that didn't matter anymore because I was able to pivot to something better.

I guess there are some benefits to being here despite the cons outweighing them by a fuckton.

'Master, sometimes you scare me,' Kimi muttered while I was crouching on the edge of a slanted rooftop that was made of this hard, blackened stone.

In a good way?

'I'm not sure if there's a good way of being scary, but… sure.'

Below me, my next target had just stepped out of a building stained with soot. The building also leaned slightly like the tower in Italy, except there were no redeeming qualities about this one.

This lesser demon was a male who had four eyes. Two of them faced forward like a human while the other two sat higher up on their forehead and were set wider apart near where the temple was.

They walked with a hunched back like the shape of a cane. Their skin was the color of blood that been dried out from being left out too long in the sun.

I would observe multiple lesser demons at the same time and this one, six days had passed since he first grabbed my attention.

I understood this demon at a level that would allow me to gaslight him into believing that I was a friend whom he didn't recognise if we were to meet at a bar.

This demon worked at one of the ore-sorting facilities near the western ridge.

Every "morning", he would leave his home at around the same time and would join a long line of lesser demons heading toward the processing pits while dragging their legs with a yawn.

He didn't speak much.

That was the first thing that caught my eye and why I chose to pay attention to him.

During the break when the others would gather in small clusters, he stayed at the edge and would eat by himself. Whenever someone told a funny joke, causing laughter to erupt like an earthquake, his upper set of eyes would twitch toward them, but he never joined in.

At most, he would give a small chuckle to himself before resuming his meal.

He also had no mate. Not that he wasn't trying; in the six days I watched him, he went on two dates. Both times, he was so boring that the demonesses would make an excuse about needing to use the bathroom, then disappear, leaving him to pay the check for two.

For a second, if I squinted hard enough that I couldn't see the finer details of the demons, I could've mistaken them for humans.

This demon also had no visitors at his home. No friends. No family.

What a sad sad life.

Every day, he would buy food from the same vendor and yet, he was so unremarkable that when he tried asking for the usual once, the vendor cursed at him.

"What usual? I don't fucking know you. Why would I know what your usual is?"

He ate alone while walking back to his home. Then he hopped into his stiff bed and went to sleep.

He had a very predictable schedule. He was a very isolated demon and his life was very disposable. If he were to disappear, no one would even realise it.

'Another day of him interacting with others a total of once, and that's just to order his food,' Kimi said quietly. She was probably shaking her head if she had one.

That's exactly why he's perfect.

Waiting until he turned down this narrow alleyway that led to his home, I dropped down from the rooftop. Landing without a sound, the cloak I had on swallowed my silhouette and made me basically invisible in this dark alley.

Maintaining a distance where he wouldn't notice me, I only stepped forward when he stepped forward. Our pace was perfectly synced up.

Not once did he look back or suspect that he was being followed.

Once he was inside his home, he turned on his lamp and sighed. Slipping in through a window I had pried open before he got off work, I observed him from the shadows as he took off his boots.

His shoulders sagged as he shuffled toward a low couch that was made from stitched hides of demonic monsters.

His home was very small with only one bedroom and a bathroom that was nastier than most sewers.

Sitting down, the couch sank to the ground and he exhaled through his sharp, uneven teeth.

His upper set of eyes closed first, and then the other pair followed shortly after.

He must be tired after a hard day at work.

Stepping out of where I was hiding, even though the floors creaked whenever he walked, it didn't even let out the slightest sound beneath my weight.

It wasn't until I was a measly three steps away from him that one of his lower eyes snapped open.

He saw me and the other three eyes immediately widened at the realisation that he wasn't home alone.

His mouth began to open but before he could even utter the first syllable, I had clamped over it with my left hand.

My other hand had already plunged Gon forward and the blade slid between his ribs and the cavity where his core was contained.

Beneath my grip, his body jerked violently and he tried to resist, but it was too late.

Letting out a muffled, stranggled sound that vibrated against my palm, I twisted the blood and watched as his limbs spasmed once. Twice. Three times.

His upper pair of eyes rolled first, losing focus as if someone had blown out a candle behind them. The lower pair held on for a few seconds longer and they stared at me with confusion, pain, and finally — nothing.

The light drained from all four of his eyes.

Holding his body there for a few seconds longer to ensure silence, when I finally let go, his body slumped sideways on the couch.

After letting Gon soak up the blood, I then watched as the body turned into black ash.

Thankfully, lesser demons weren't really the demons mentioned in the novel because no curses were attached to them.

I could kill them without any hesitation.

Higher demons, I'd have to be more careful and only kill when necessary until I acquired a way to counteract the curses.

"Another one down," I murmured with a smirk as I picked up the demon core in the pile of ashes.

The quality compared to Selgaath's was the equivalent of comparing a beater car to an F1 rocket ship, but it would do.

No one would notice his absence until the next work cycle. And that was if they would even notice it.

"Gotta get moving," I said. "We have three more demons to kill before they leave for work tomorrow morning."