I Woke Up as the Villain

"That’s fine. Let’s go, my love. There's no reason for us to risk any danger..."

"Wait!" Choi Min-Seok gritted his teeth and raised his voice at the two people who were turning to return to the car without hesitation. "I'm not asking you to do anything to Choi Yu-Seong."

From the very beginning, Min-Seok had no intention of touching Choi Yu-Seong.

‘I’d be happy if I could do that, but if Choi Yu-Seong dies right after Byung-Chan hyung-nim, the whole family will flip out.’ 

It would become a big incident that would anger Choi Woo-Jae, who would then be determined to find the answer and easily discover where Choi Min-Seok had used his secret funds.

Just like it had been previously discussed with Choi In-Young, Min-Seok’s goal was to reduce Woo-Jae’s favorable interest toward Yu-Seong. As a matter of fact, when he first arrived here and saw the picture, he had come up with a decent idea.

"There are two women in the picture. Check it out."

"Women?"

As Geom-Gui asked, the two villains looked back at the picture.

"You just have to kill the shorter one,” said Choi Min-Seok with his eyes shining.

"She looks like a student. What grudge would you have against her?"

“Since when did you care about reasons when murdering?” commented Min-Seok.

"I wondered what's different about being born lucky, but your thoughts are no different from mine,” Geom-Gui revealed a strange smile.

Min-Seok had a simple reason for targeting Chae Ye-Ryeong.

Unlike Jin Yu-Ri, Ye-Ryeong was not a hunter but an ordinary player. In addition, there was also information that Choi Yu-Seong had hired her somewhat urgently not too long ago. This certainly raised suspicions.

‘He brought an ordinary E-rank player into his house, employed her, and suddenly dragged her to a quiet place like this?’

Min-Seok could already think of many malicious things he would do in that situation.

‘Yeah, I wondered how a troublemaker like you endured it until now!’

It would be a good excuse to ruin Choi Yu-Seong’s reputation, especially since Choi Woo-Jae favored him so much these days.

"Are you going to do it or not?” asked Min-Seok.

Just as Medusa was about to nod at Min-Seok’s urging…

"But it has to be 7 billion won. After all, we are interfering with the Comet Group. We have to get paid for the extra risk we have to take,” Geom-Gui said as he stepped forward.

‘Damn it…’

At first, Min-Seok thought Medusa, who dealt with snakes, was more cunning, but he could now tell that Geom-Gui was the truly cunning one. It was clear from the look in Geom-Gui’s eyes that he had already accepted the request but it seemed like he had no intention of accepting the request for just 5 billion won. He knew very well who the desperate one was in this scenario.

Choi Min-Seok became impatient.

‘If I miss this opportunity, I don't know when I'll get another.’ 

Eventually, Min-Seok closed his eyes tightly and nodded. "...6 billion."

"I should just head on home.”

"Damn, okay okay! 7 billion!"

"So, Choi Yu-Seong’s the only one I have to keep alive, right?" said Geom-Gui with a huge grin.

"What?" asked Min-Seok.

"There could possibly be more people, right? It's not our cup of tea to choose and kill only one,” Medusa said with a cool smile.

Choi Min-Seok, who looked worried for a while, nodded. He said, "That would be even better.”

Every single death would become another black mark against Choi Yu-Seong.

***

While making eye contact with Chae Ye-Ryeong, Kim Hee-Jin slowly swung the superwatch, which was made by a skill, for a long time. Then, she suddenly stopped her movement with a surprised look. She looked straight at Choi Yu-Seong who was standing in the back and said, “The hypnosis has worn off."

Nevertheless, Chae Ye-Ryeong was staring into the distance with a pretty blank expression. She still looked hypnotized. What could have changed?

Choi Yu-Seong’s intuition quickly picked up on something when he looked at Ye-Ryeong, who had stopped struggling. She no longer looked like she was suffering while being hypnotized.

‘It’s here.’

Around that time, a gushing sound rang out, and the mana stones’ mana rained down from the ceiling and onto Chae Ye-Ryeong. This was the start of the next step—the mana transition.

‘The really important part starts from now.’

This was the most sensitive period. If something were incorrectly touched, a mana explosion would occur.

"What's going on?" asked Kim Doo-Jun. He looked at the unexpected turn of events in surprise. His surprise was understandable since, besides Jin Yu-Ri and Chae Ye-Ryeong, no one else here had heard Yu-Seong’s explanation of the Re-Awakening.

"We'll talk about the details later. Ms. Kim Hee-Jin, since there’s nothing for you to do now, you can go ahead and leave. Thank you.”

"Ah…?" Kim Hee-Jin looked at Chae Ye-Ryeong's change with a somewhat surprised look. She looked around before getting up from her seat with a nod. She didn’t know what exactly had happened, but she knew that Choi Yu-Seong was a chaebol family’s son and that nothing good could come about from knowing a chaebol family’s secrets.

“Then I’ll take my leave now…”

When Kim Hee-Jin began making moves to leave, Kim Doo-Jun looked over at Choi Yu-Seong.

Choi Yu-Seong nodded at him.

Doo-Jun said, "I'll take you home."

After getting permission, Kim Doo-Jun quickly led Kim Hee-Jin out.

Despite the conversation happening next to him, Hwang Ki-Chul continued to quietly focus on the flow of mana inside the glass room. If the situation took a turn for the worse, he had to immediately activate his Mana-Blocking skill.

A brief period of silence went by.

"Ahhhhhhh-!" Kim Hee-Jin suddenly screamed after heading outside, shattering the surrounding silence.

Everyone turned their heads in surprise, but Jin Yu-Ri was one step ahead of them. She immediately opened the warehouse door and ran outside. Then, looking toward where the scream had come from, she frowned.

On a desolate rice field less than 500m away, Kim Doo-Jun was dead with dozens of snakes burrowing into his back. It was clear that he had died a miserable death. Kim Hee-Jin, who had screamed in terror earlier, had all her limbs torn off, and her face was frozen in pain and fear.

"What the..." Jin Yu-Ri cursed upon looking at the terrible scene. She turned to look at the attacking woman, who wore a mask with dozens of snakes drawn on a white background. Looking at the woman’s hair, which had become black snakes, Yu-Ri could easily guess who she was. She called out, "Villain Medusa. Are you the one who killed both of them?”

"Maybe, huehue," said Medusa with a light shrug.

In case of an emergency, Geom-Gui was hiding nearby, but there was no reason for Medusa to reveal that fact. At the same time, Medusa's hair snakes lengthened and shot toward Jin Yu-Ri.

Yu-Ri stretched her arm out. Her quick action brought about a thick, black shroud. She obscured the vision of Medusa’s snakes, which rose higher into the air upon making contact with the black shroud.

The snakes had lethal venom, but individually, they didn’t have much strength. Therefore, it was unsurprising that they couldn’t penetrate the magic shroud created by hunters of the same rank, A-rank, like Jin Yu-Ri.

However, Medusa had two main thoughts.

‘Why did she block the view?’ 

Medusa also wondered what Jin Yu-Ri's ability could be.

Even before the first question was answered, a long sharp sword stretched out from Yu-Ri’s hand, swinging out from below the black shroud. She cut off hundreds of snakes, which all fell to the ground.

At that moment, Jin Yu-Ri stepped back and widened the distance. She looked at the bisected snakes, which touched the ground and became fluttering strands of hair again.

‘Does it lose power after getting cut? Or is it a trap?’

During a fight between the same rank, even similar talents, the most important thing was to clearly grasp the opponent's ability. Generally, A-rank hunters had at least 15 skills. Among those skills, most of them had Physical Strength, Stamina, and Vision Reinforcement, so it was safe to guess that slightly more than 10 skills would be used in combat.

‘If she is a psychic type hunter, she is more likely to have mana-enhancing skills.’

In other words, besides the one or two main skills, all the other skills could be guessed and appropriate preparations should be made to counter them. Therefore, even though Jin Yu-Ri took the opportunity to attack, she was quick to take a step back so she could try to figure out Medusa's ability.

"You are pretty strong, but you get frightened easily.”

"I’m just being cautious," snorted Yu-Ri.

Medusa's eyes flashed when she looked at Jin Yu-Ri.

‘The skill is black in color and she is a psychic type player like me. It’s possible that she has the same Shapeshift skills as me…but I don’t see a medium.’

Soon, Medusa widened her eyes upon remembering something.

It can be hard to make great work when its stolen from bit.ly/3iBfjkV.

‘No way…! Does she have a Phenomenal skill?’ 

There were various and diverse skills that hunters dealt with. In general, if it was divided into large categories such as Physical type and Psychic type, as indicated in the system interface, it could also be divided into even more detailed and distinct subcategories.

Typically, the Psychic type was divided into five types, not to mention the most common Projection skill. Everything with the ability to shoot something in connection with a particular movement was called Projection skill, such as shooting fire, shooting ice, or blowing wind. Thus, a large number of subcategories was necessary.

The next skill type with a large number of subcategories was the Shapeshift skill, like Medusa’s. These Shapeshift skills had several characteristics that differ from the Projection skill. For one, mana that was expressed after the activation of the first skill would mostly be dark-toned. This was the reason why Medusa's hair would change from pink to black.

Second, as it was called a Shapeshift skill, there was a condition that a shape-altering medium had to exist. For example, Medusa’s hair would be a medium. Fingers would also be a possibility. Even if it was not a body part, it could be any tool such as chopsticks or spoons.

Those skills could rarely be used by physical type players. These included people such as Jin Do-Yoon, who was classified as a werewolf.

The types that followed such a skill were the Restoration skill and the Support skill. In the case of the Restoration skill, it could be said that almost 99 percent of them were combat assistants rather than direct attackers. On the other hand, in the case of Support skill, the people often belonged to direct combat forces according to the skill utilization method, in addition to the role of simple combat assistance.

Last but not least, the final skill type that existed with the least number of subcategories was the Phenomenal skill. The biggest feature and disadvantage of Phenomenal skill was… In some ways, it seemed to be a top-level skill of the Shapeshift skill. It was somewhat general-purpose compared to the other types, and it was accompanied by intense mana consumption every time it was used, so as to produce more power. Therefore, the psychic players who had Phenomenal skill did not like to prolong the battle.

"You use Phenomenal skills,” said Medusa with a knowing smile before shooting a snake toward Yu-Ri.

"Maybe?"

And once again, the black shroud unfolded.