Chapter 129 – Lucky Boy (1)

Recently, a sense of crisis had been growing in the country.

In the past, thanks to the Wizard System which boasted an accuracy rate of over 99%, the country prided itself on having one of the best defense rates in the world.

However, rumors circulated that the Wizard System had been destroyed due to the recent terror attack by the Disaster Agency.

Since that day, gate measurements had become nearly impossible.

The government hastily established the Wizard Second System.

It attached the database from the existing system and pressured major telecommunication companies to deploy an AP system.

It measured the special electromagnetic waves generated when a gate opens, then quickly received and transmitted the data to the central communication information processing area.

It was a case of locking the barn door after the horse had bolted, but the new system was still fairly well-regarded. However, there was a problem.

Unlike the First Wizard System, which had predicted disasters ‘in advance’ as if it were a fortune teller, the Second Wizard System could only measure the waves after a gate had already formed.

If they increased the sensitivity of the nationwide sensor network, they were plagued by all sorts of false reports. If they lowered it, small gates went completely undetected, leading to casualties.

Currently, awakened criminals—that is, Villains—had been quiet for a while.

But as if their previous silence had been a lie, they began to run rampant again.

Just like now.

For the middle-aged man, today was the worst day of his life.

He was a department head at a company called Giheung Construction, a firm of considerable age and size.

He had dedicated his life to the company, and after being a perennial department head, he was finally slated for a promotion to an executive position.

It was, quite literally, the path to success.

To escape his long-held title, how many subcontractors had he ruined, and how many employees had he ground into dust?

“L-Lower your eyes, you bastards!”

Assailants had stormed the company.

“H-H-Head Han, you damn bastard!”

The stuttering man kicked Head Han without warning.

“Keuk!”

Head Han rolled across the marble floor several times, unable to regain his senses.

“W-Who are you! Are you crazy?”

More than the pain, Head Han was concerned about the damage to his dignity from being beaten and sent tumbling in front of his employees.

Just then, something entered his line of sight.

The stuttering man pulled something out of thin air.

A knife.

Not a common kitchen knife you’d see in a kitchen, but a military-grade knife.

Seeing the blade, which looked sharp enough to slice paper, the employees swallowed hard and froze, stiff as boards.

“W-Why are you suddenly doing this?”

Faced with the knife, Head Han became extremely polite.

He didn’t know what the man, whose eyes were crazed, might do.

The term “awakened criminal”—a Villain—flashed through Head Han’s mind.

“Y-You d-don’t know, and y-you’re asking?”

The stuttering man had already lost all reason.

“H-Head Han. B-Because of y-you, you bastard!”

“President Jo?”

Head Han’s heart sank.

President Jo, the head of a subcontractor for Giheung Construction.

To create results, Head Han had squeezed his subcontractors dry.

Using the contract as an excuse, he demanded unreasonable price cuts and dumped all legal responsibility onto the subcontractors.

Even when they said they couldn’t possibly meet the prices, the unfair contract was already in place, leaving the subcontractors no choice but to absorb the losses.

As a result, the projects Head Han managed turned a large profit, but rumors had trickled in that the subcontractors had become debt-ridden, unable to even pay their employees’ salaries, or had even committed suicide.

That’s just how business worked in this industry. So, he never bothered to dwell on the word ‘guilt’.

“Head Han. You damn bastard, look at that greasy face of yours.”

“W-What the. Representative Kim, you’re here too? There seems to be a misunderstanding…”

“Misunderstanding? A misunderstanding?”

Not the stutterer, but a fat man scowled viciously and punched Head Han in the face.

*Thwack!*

With a dull thud, Head Han let out a groan and collapsed to the floor.

The pain, something he hadn’t felt in a very long time, seemed to numb his mind.

“H-Head Han, b-because of you, e-everything’s ruined!”

“You bastard, I told you. One day you’d reap what you sow!”

A one-sided beating continued.

The middle-aged man was being pummeled, but no one dared to step in.

“Gak, keuk! S-Stop. Y-You two must have awakened. C-Congrats. Congratulations. But, please stop now. Please.”

Even as he spoke, it was difficult to form words with his shattered teeth.

Head Han thought he might die if he took another hit.

Thanks to that fear, he groveled on the floor, clinging to the trouser legs of the very people he used to lord over, and begged.

“My, why is the ever-so-arrogant Head Han acting like this?”

The fat man chuckled, and the other Villains around them sneered.

Those two weren’t the only Villains.

There were five more, and all the captive employees had some connection to them.

“If you’re going to ruin other people’s lives, you should have thought about your own lives being ruined.”

“P-Please, spare me…”

“Please, my child is waiting at home. Please. Please!”

The security guards in the company building had already all been killed.

These people, whose lives had been destroyed by the abuse of power and who had been driven to contemplate suicide in despair, had awakened and gained a chance for revenge.

The twenty people held captive here were the very ones who, directly or indirectly, had ruined the Villains’ lives.

“You can’t do this. If you cause this kind of incident, you’ll never be able to return to society…”

“Society? Because of you, our families were destroyed, and now we have nothing. Ah, wait, we have one thing. Vengeance.”

The Villains, smiling vilely, raised their swords.

As the longswords, looking like something out of a medieval fantasy movie, flashed their cold, sharp blades, the hostages began to tremble.

From outside, the sound of police sirens could be heard. Along with the murmuring of a crowd, a negotiator wearing a headset began to speak, trying to reason with the Villains.

It was obvious what he would say without even listening. He’d try to get them to release the hostages and negotiate.

The Villains had no intention of looking back anyway.

They would kill all the trash here and then blow up this filthy building, bringing it down.

“Let’s begin.”

“Agreed. Let’s start with this bastard.”

There was one person the Villains had tacitly agreed would be the first victim.

Seeing the Villains looking at him, Head Han scrambled backward, backward. But soon his back was against a wall with nowhere to go, and his eyes darted around frantically.

“N-No! Please, please! Aaaargh!”

Head Han’s wrist was severed.

He saw his own hand lying on the floor and began to convulse, foaming at the mouth with blood.

The pain and the scene were so surreal that he prayed it was all a dream.

The Villains grabbed Head Han by the collar and threw him straight out the window.

Falling from the 10th floor, Head Han felt an unnatural sense of weightlessness as he plummeted toward the ground, ever downward.

Experiencing the bizarre sensation of feeling every single gaze of the people watching him, he saw his life flash before his eyes.

*Crack! Splat!*

Head Han smashed into the hood of a car parked below and died instantly.

“Oh, oh, oh! Aaaaaaaargh!”

“Kyaaaaaa!”

The screams of the people all blended together.

There weren’t many people controlling the scene yet, so they hadn’t been able to chase away all the civilians, and the Villains’ crimes were being exposed in real time.

There was no turning back now.

Because they had killed someone.

A woman who made eye contact with one of the panting Villains tried desperately to look away.

“Kyaaak!”

The woman, grabbed by her hair, was forced to the same window Head Han had just fallen from.

The difference in strength between an Awakened and a normal person was absolute. No matter how much she struggled to escape, it was a meaningless act.

“Giheung Construction, report on these bastards’ corruption right now! If you don’t, one person dies every five minutes! Got it?”

The fat man who was shouting saw the people’s gazes fixed on him.

He had awakened, gained stats, and acquired abilities.

Before, he had only ever bowed and scraped before others, but now he could control their emotions, striking fear into them.

In other words, he had become superior.

That sensation, which could be mistaken for power, didn’t crawl unpleasantly over his skin but instead brought him pleasure.

“And you Guarder bastards crawling in here like rats, get the hell out! For every 30 seconds you’re inside, I’ll kill one of them!”

The Villains also had detection abilities.

A colleague, who had also suffered from the abuse of power and awakened, nodded.

A human with mana, a Guarder, was avoiding the building’s internal CCTVs and making their way up to the 10th floor where they were.

To make an example for the Guarders who ignored his warning, the fat man pushed the woman, sending her plummeting.

The woman let out a scream as she felt the sickening weightlessness, and the people below squeezed their eyes shut.

The falling woman flailed her arms. More than anger, there was fear, and more than fear, the desire to live surged within her.

Miracles don’t happen.

The slow-witted Guarder was just stamping his feet, not even prepared to catch her.

In that fleeting moment, the woman’s eyes met someone’s.

She didn’t know how she managed to see that person in the vast crowd, just moments before death.

She saw the man’s lips move.

“Store.”

***

A pillar of light shot up from a hex block that formed near me, enveloping the woman.

The falling woman went straight into my inventory.

The Villains froze, seeing what had just happened.

“It’s the Delivery Man!”

“Waaaaah!”

The people, finally understanding the situation, began to cheer.

I was able to save the woman because I had rushed over after hearing that Villains were holding hostages at the construction company.

Thanks to my level increasing so much, my space has expanded, and I can now store most low-level beings without any consent.

In other words, I could now store any ordinary person, whether they were hostile or friendly to me.

It really has become like a delivery skill.

The Villains won’t be able to drop any more hostages now.

Of course, it’s not like they’ll give up.

Just as I expected, a Villain dragged out the next hostage and held a knife to their throat.

The feel of a sharp blade, something an ordinary office worker would never experience.

I can see the hostage’s mouth moving, trembling as they plead for their life.

Is he not making his move yet?

I thought he would move right about now.

I snapped my fingers in the air, activating the Shadowless Arrow skill.

A silently formed arrow burst with mana and shot upward with resilient force.

Will it hit? It’ll be embarrassing if it misses.

*Pang!*

The Villain’s arm, holding the knife, was struck by the Shadowless Arrow and knocked away.

The Villain screamed from the sudden pain. Unfortunately, the bound hostage lost their balance and was in danger of falling.

It doesn’t matter anyway. I can just catch them.

The hostage lost their balance and fell, and I activated my inventory skill to catch them.

The Villains, sensing they had been attacked by me, retreated out of sight.

Now I can’t use Shadowless Arrow anymore.

Still, it doesn’t matter now.

The sound of a gunshot rang out.

*Bang!*

A Villain who had been holding a sword was hit by a sudden sniper shot and fell backward.

The special forces team had finally gotten into their sniper positions and begun providing covering fire.

“Shit!”

The Villains, finally realizing they were being sniped, moved away from the window and deeper inside.

They may be Awakened, but since they were ordinary people until just recently, they were easily caught by such basic tactics.

Of course, that didn’t mean the hostages were safe.

This was the time for the assault team to move in.

*Swoooosh!*

“It’s Lee Han-seong!”

“Lucky Boy!”

The hero with the ridiculous moniker “Lucky Boy” cut through the air like Superman and single-handedly burst through the building’s window.

“The Delivery Man and Lucky Boy. Wow, this is totally epic!”

Additional police personnel arrived and began to control the excited crowd, pushing them back from the scene.

Leaving the clamor of the crowd behind me, I entered the building.

‘He’s finally here.’

The one I was waiting for, Lucky Boy, had arrived.