Even the Villain Has a Story

note: short explanation of the difference between ‘class’ and ‘grade’ because even our pr got confused. class = a classification/rank of a category. eg. S-Class hunter. grade = quality/value of an item/skill. eg. school grades

‘Should I just pretend I didn’t see this?’

As Sayun had always done, he felt the need to pretend he didn’t know about karma. After thinking for a while, since it was a very tempting impulse, Sayun tapped the status window with his fingertips.

Humans are curious animals, so he simply just wondered.

Sayun just wanted to check how great a store worth 10 million karma would be.

It took 10 million just to unlock it. That said, the items in it must’ve been rare items that couldn’t be obtained as a gate reward, or would be useful in attacking a gate.

How much profit would he make if he sold or used them?

“Tsk…”

As expected, Sayun thought he would feel more relieved if he unlocked it.

Even if he wanted to give up, he should be able to keep going due to his curiosity. Sayun had guessed that this was how a fish biting a delicious-looking bait hung on a hook would feel, even though it knew it was going to die.

He checked his ‘Fame’, finding it necessary to start managing it to reduce meaningless karma losses.

Fame: 10,390,091 (Notorious)

“…”

Million.

Over ten million.

“Why don’t you just tell me to give up?”

Sayun was so excited to build up his karma. What did he do that was so bad his notoriety accumulated? He felt so wronged.

When he checked to see how much notoriety had to be maintained to not lose karma, the max limit was seven million. He had to cut three million with good deeds, so it felt very far away. It was a ridiculous shackle.

Becoming a good-natured villain to prevent karma losses. How could there be such a contradictory relationship?

Sayun barely managed to hold himself back from cursing the system after it threw all his hopes and goals out the window.

Unlocking the karma shop was something he’d have to do in the future. He didn’t even have half of the 10 million karma collected yet, so there was no reason to be distracted by the shop as of now. He shouldn’t cling to something he can’t have, because it would only hurt him.

The important thing was to unlock the ‘Genius Eyes’.

That was his priority.

After regaining his composure, Sayun checked the rest of the status window.

It was surprising that unlocking it cost the price he accumulated in 10 years, so he was only able to confirm his alignment, unopened skills, and karma. Sayun lowered his gaze because there was a lot of information that he couldn’t read, then looked at the title column and found something.

‘The One the Gods Watch (?)’

‘Maybe I am a Descendant of the gods (?)’

‘The Follower of the Evil Spirit (?)’

Unlike most of the titles Sayun had, those were things he had no memory of obtaining. If they had anything in common, it was the fact that all of them had ‘god’ included. When he clicked one of them, the detailed information was locked. Sayun was so fed up with seeing the inaccessible window to the point where he couldn’t even remember how many times he had seen it today.

Well, he didn’t know when he played in the hands of the gods. Had he experienced it himself already?

And the other perks, too.

He stared with cold eyes at the ‘Forced Execution’ in the ‘Privilege’ column, which he didn’t pay any attention to on purpose.

Sayun laughed at the ‘Forced Execution’ because he didn’t know it would be one of his privileges. He wanted to check what that even was, but like the other titles with question marks instead of classes, he was unable to see the detailed information.

In other words, it made it impossible to check detailed information. The gods, who pushed him towards this bloody fate, were even playing tricks on his status window.

Sayun turned red with anger, but he endured it because he knew it was what the gods wanted. However, it was when he checked a Grade L privilege that Sayun’s emotions exploded.

‘To you who will be most unhappy (L)’

It was a strangely unpleasant privilege because of its name.

[To you who will be most unhappy (L)]

— God has compassion for you, who is born with an unfortunate fate. Fixes a lucky grade of A- under any circumstances.

If he had to consume karma again, he was going to flip, but then the privilege came up. Sayun was angry because he wondered what that privilege even was, but he soon swallowed his words as he checked his stats.

‘Lucky: A- (F-)

According to the ‘Genius Eyes’ skill description, the grade in the parentheses was probably his maximum growth for ‘Luck’. To emphasise it again, it was the ‘maximum growth’, not the base grade.

“Huh…”

Sayun smirked.

Then came laughter. Later, only his shoulders shook without a single sound coming out of his mouth, and when viewed from behind, one couldn’t tell whether Sayun was laughing or crying. He suddenly tilted his head and looked up.

Clang!

The artefact that was placed on the table broke as he kicked it. If Jongsik had seen that, he would’ve shed bloody tears, but Sayun continued to kick it with force, almost as if he was trying to break the entire table. It was a sight that couldn’t be misunderstood. He was crazy and had problems controlling his anger.

Bang, bang, bang!

A sharp, loud noise filled the room. There were many things that broke and shattered, but Sayun’s anger wasn’t relieved. He exhaled, burning with rage.

Even if one’s luck level was only E, others would wonder how they would survive. Some holders of a Grade E luck were on the verge of dying eight times a day and went bankrupt twice.

But he was an F-. Not just an F, but an F-.

What Sayun thought was unfair wasn’t that his luck was low. It was that he was living an ordinary life until the world changed.

Until the gates appeared, Sayun lived a normal life. He lived a prosperous life in a harmonious family. He had a life far from being unhappy.

So, this lucky grade was not something Sayun was born with; it was the system. The gods were trying to give him the tendencies of becoming the true evil of mankind.

And now what? He was born to be unhappy?

If it was made to make him lose hope, it was extremely successful. Was it normal to lose something that didn’t even exist in the first place?

Sayun became even more displeased as he thought about the fact that it took karma to unlock ‘Genius Eyes’, and only then did he start repeating the breathing technique that Jongsik told him to do when he was angry. He took a deep breath and then exhaled, barely calming himself down. Sayun felt the heat that had reached the top of his head finally cool down, and then waved his hand to get rid of the blue window as if trying to shake off something dirty.

Rather, he might’ve cried out of happiness if it had given him something like the system itself instead of the status window. Had it done so, he would’ve started praising the gods he had cursed at as a daily routine and become their enthusiastic believer.

However, as with the worth ‘if’, it was difficult to realise an abstract assumption based on a fantasy.

Seeing that his wish to go back to 10 years in the past had never been fulfilled, the transfer of the system was just nonsense, so Sayun laid back on his bed with a tired face. Thanks to the system, it seemed that he had been labelled as unlucky. It felt like hell.

“Damn it, I was unlucky.”

After he became a hunter, he was unlucky enough to only step on mines when he walked through minefields. As he was thinking of those times, something knocked on Sayun’s window, which was draped with a blackout curtain.

Sayun waved his hand, pulling back the curtain.

It was a crow.

A crow, with its wings folded and sitting elegantly on the window sill, was knocking on the glass. Its black eyes turned red when it met Sayun’s.

“…Jongsik?”

It could’ve been the others, seeing that they sent a crow. Sayun got up and unlocked the window, as it could only be checked once he brought it inside. As soon as he unlocked it, the crow, who had been patiently waiting, fluttered in and rubbed itself against Sayun’s face.

“Please, please, please!”

Caw! Caw!

“Did you even wash yourself?”

‘Caw?’

“… You really are crazy.”

Still, he was the cleanest crow amongst the crows that Sayun was taking care of, so it must’ve cleaned up to some extent. Even though he knew that, the feeling of its wings rubbing against his face was strangely unpleasant. As Sayun grabbed the crow’s neck and pulled it off, its wings flapped.

“Start reporting.”

As it calmed down, the crow drew strength from its body. Sayun lifted it up with both hands and made eye contact.

The crow’s eyes turned red. Everything the crow remembered, along with a stinging pain, was shared with Sayun.

The Night Rats Guild was founded because it was said that rats heard rumours during the night, and birds heard them during the day.

Sayun didn’t just name the guild ‘Night Rats’ for nothing. It was built because he had snakes and crows to act as rats and birds.

It was no exaggeration to say that his ability to communicate with snakes and crows, as well as sharing memories, made the Night Rats the number one information guild.

In the crow’s memories, there was a scene where the guild members of the Night Rats kidnapped a member of a Chinese guild and dragged him to a torture chamber. Sayun closed his eyes because the last memory was that the guild members, who obtained the information they wanted through torture, had to catch the crow and it report to the guild leader. 

Sayun’s head started hurting as a result of using the skill. It was negligible, so Sayun kept his eyes closed for a couple more seconds, and then patted the crow after it had finished reporting.

“Good job. Have a snack and go.”

Caw!

Sayun pointed towards the door that led outside of the bedroom, and the crow nodded and flew away. He knew it could find its own way towards the snacks, so he sat down on the bed.

The quest competition window popped up at the right time.

< Achievement! ’The True Evil of Mankind Tortures People Once a Day’. 300 karma is paid as a periodic torture reward.>

— Current Karma: 1,000,089

It was over a million.

Now he was able to unlock Genius Eyes safely, and as he forgot the previous encounter with the system, he took a deep breath. He pressed the skill-unlocking button.

<Are you sure you want to unlock your skill by consuming 1,000,000 karma? (b ᵔ▽ᵔ)b>

He accepted it without a second thought because he found no reason to delay it.

“Agh! Ah…”

The sudden pain made Sayun fall.

Drip—

Blood flowed from his right eye, staining the bedsheets.