Chapter 23

Chapter 23
### Chapter 23: Mask (1)

Hans slipped quietly through the darkness, approaching the source of the commotion.

The local guardians had already arrived and were attempting to manage the situation.

“Dammit, how often are we going to deal with this? Can’t we just get one peaceful day?”

“…These incidents are endless, and we don’t have enough people. I forget what my own house looks like.”

As they vented to each other, I took a look around. Aside from the shattered front window of my usual fried chicken spot, the destruction seemed minimal.

‘Probably collateral damage from that recent terrorist attack nearby. With this level of damage, they should be back in business shortly.’

I had noted that such disruptions had been spiking strangely as of late.

The enforcers were echoing the exact same thought.

“With these organized terror rings popping up, public safety is a joke, and it’s making the regular street thugs bolder.”

“If this keeps up, we’re in real trouble. Nabbing these ringleaders is nearly impossible.”

Having heard enough of their grumbling, I slipped away.

‘There has to be a root cause. Are the villains gaining momentum?’

Criminal syndicates had been forming for some time, but South Korea had historically managed them far better than other nations.

Recently, however, the authorities seemed to be losing their grip, failing even to apprehend the culprits.

Melding deeper into the thickening night, I cast an enhanced stealth-detection spell, sweeping my senses across the urban landscape.

‘I set out with a clear objective, only for the situation to fizzle out, leaving me empty-handed.’

I needed to evaluate the city’s safety firsthand.

Fortunately, Hans required very little sleep. Bolstered by an abundance of mana, roaming the streets from dusk till dawn didn’t drain his stamina in the slightest.

Suddenly, my sharpened awareness picked up a minor disturbance nearby.

‘Hmm… What could that be?’

I stopped in my tracks, weighing my options for a brief second before shifting my path toward the noise.

My pause hadn’t been out of fear for my safety, nor was it anxiety about blowing my cover.

“Hey, are you talking back to me? Huh?”

“N-no, I didn’t mean…”

“Spit it out clearly! You want a beating, you little punk?”

Deep in a secluded alley, several teenagers clad in school uniforms were clustered together.

One boy was trapped in the center, while another slouched nearby, puffing casually on a cigarette.

It was a classic case of teenage bullying.

‘…I came out here hunting real villains. Is it really my place to intervene with a bunch of juvenile delinquents?’

That was the true reason I had hesitated.

If I was going to draw my blade, I wanted a worthy target; utilizing my abilities to scold unruly high schoolers felt like massive overkill.

“Yo! I just had a brilliant thought. Let’s strip this buzz-cut loser.”

“Why? What for?”

As I lingered in the shadows watching the scene unfold, one of the bullies who had been smoking stepped closer to the victim.

“Let’s carve the Big Dipper right into his chest. That would look badass, right?”

“Hahaha, you’re psychotic… But yeah, that sounds awesome. Let’s do it right now.”

The gang grabbed the boy in the middle and forcefully yanked his shirt open.

His torso was already littered with ugly bruises and fresh cuts.

“Please… stop!”

“This is rich. You think we’ll just stop because you asked nicely?”

“You still haven’t learned your lesson? Let’s carve the Orion constellation on his back instead.”

“Whoa! Do you even know what the Orion constellation looks like? It’s pretty complex, you know.”

“Who cares? Just look it up online. Hold him down, he keeps squirming.”

As the victim thrashed about, the others pinned him forcefully, throwing punches while one of them filmed the entire ordeal.

The smoking teenager stepped closer, snickering as he captured the brutal scene on his smartphone.

Witnessing this, my hesitation vanished.

What exactly defines a villain?

If a person harms others and commits malicious acts, don’t they fit the description?

By that metric, these teenagers were already top-tier villains.

Once I reached a decision, my execution was immediate.

“Huh?”

The teenager with the cigarette, just about to take another drag, abruptly froze.

It wasn’t just him; the struggling victim and the cackling bullies all locked up, completely paralyzed.

A suffocating silence instantly crashed down upon the narrow alleyway.

“Why… why can’t I… what’s going on?”

“Uh, me neither. I can’t… move…”

Remaining completely concealed, I merely projected a subtle wave of pressure, and the entire group stood as petrified as mice before a serpent.

*Crack!*

The smartphone belonging to the boy recording the assault abruptly warped and shattered into pieces.

There were no security cameras monitoring this dead-end street.

It was likely why these thugs felt so emboldened to do whatever they pleased here.

“Huh? I’m suddenly… so tired…”

*Swoosh—*

*Thud!*

I seamlessly applied a sleep enchantment to the battered boy, allowing him to slump over safely, before slowly stepping out of the shadows to face his tormentors.

“Ugh!”

“Oh, God…”

*Drip, drip…*

The moment I stepped forward, discarding any attempt to mask my overwhelming aura, a terrifying realization washed over them. One after another, their eyes locked onto mine in sheer terror, and they began uncontrollably wetting themselves.

I stepped closer, creating a deliberate, echoing tap with my teeth, observing their bodies shuddering uncontrollably like leaves in a violent storm.

They couldn’t turn their heads or even force themselves to blink; instead, they stared fixedly at me, their eyes bloodshot and unblinking.

‘This effect is no joke.’

I had purposely unleashed my aura to give them a fright, but this reaction felt slightly excessive.

They might act like fearless tough guys, but at the end of the day, they were just naive kids entirely ignorant of the world’s true horrors.

Leaving them in this state could cause permanent psychological trauma.

I reeled in my aura and pointed a single finger in their direction, weaving a spell.

‘I was debating what the right level of punishment should be…’

Just because they were acting like monsters didn’t mean I was justified in slaughtering them.

Yet, if they were the type to reform after a stern lecture, they wouldn’t be carving constellations into a classmate’s skin to begin with.

So, I opted for an alternative route.

> [Seeds of evil, remember this moment. When you are entirely swallowed by the dark, you shall face me once more.]

I referred to it as magic, but in reality, it functioned entirely as a curse.

I branded their very souls with insurmountable dread, implanting psychological triggers deep within their subconscious minds.

*Swoosh—*

*Thud!*

The paralyzed gang members simultaneously rolled their eyes to the back of their heads and crumpled to the pavement.

One of them even began frothing at the mouth as he lost consciousness.

‘Hmm, should I just leave them here like this?’

I casually slid a shattered phone from one of their pockets.

After dialing the emergency hotline, I dropped the device back onto his chest.

This would have to do.

‘Now, stay out of trouble and try to live decently. Though, knowing you, that might be a tall order.’

Satisfied with my impromptu community service, I melted back into the comforting embrace of the shadows.

The night was still young, and I had plenty of hours left to kill.

—

“Ugh… my head is killing me.”

Choi Hosik fought against his heavy eyelids.

His skull throbbed relentlessly, making it impossible to string a coherent thought together.

“Hey! Hosik, are you with us? Over here, doctor! Hurry, our boy is waking up!”

The shrill, piercing voice directly beside his ear only amplified his agonizing migraine.

He desperately wanted to shout at them to shut up, but his throat felt like sandpaper, refusing to produce even a whisper.

“Patient, can you hear me?”

A nurse hurried over to assess him, while Choi Hosik, having finally managed to wet his throat with a sip of water, took in his surroundings.

“Where… is this a hospital? Why am I here?”

His brain felt completely scrambled, rendering him unable to piece together how he had arrived.

“Oh, Hosik! We got a sudden call, you must have been so terrified, right? What in the world happened? Who did this to our precious boy!”

Choi Hosik scowled at his mother’s overbearing fussing.

Still, her frantic babbling helped him connect the dots.

An anonymous call to the authorities, paramedics dispatched via GPS tracking because the caller didn’t speak, a group of students discovered unconscious in a back alley, and his subsequent transport to the emergency room.

“…And that’s why you’re stuck in this bed. I rushed over the second I got the call. But seriously, what actually happened? What are the cops even doing? They’re happy to collect our taxes, but when it matters…”

As his mother continued her tirade, Choi Hosik buried his face in his palms, desperately attempting to sift through his fragmented memories.

“Right, I was smoking behind that building, and we were just about to mess with that loser…”

The precise moment of the encounter suddenly hit him.

His breathing hitched, his entire body locking up in sheer panic.

Billowing black garments.

Piercing blue eyes shining through a distorted, nightmarish gaze.

Grasping, shadowy hands reaching out for him. And then…

> [Seeds of evil, remember this moment. When you are entirely swallowed by the dark, you shall face me once more.]

“Ahhhh!”

“Gasp! Hosik! Hosik! What’s wrong with you?!”

“Patient! Please, try to calm down!”

An all-consuming terror was permanently carved into his very being.

The medical team sprinted over, forcefully holding down his thrashing limbs while injecting a powerful sedative into his IV.

“Ah… ah…”

As the heavy medication dragged him back into the dark, Choi Hosik sincerely wished he had never woken up at all.

—

The penalty I had administered was, at its core, a curse designed to manifest as severe psychological trauma.

Its function was straightforward: it would force them to relive that exact paralyzing terror whenever they crossed paths with me.

The activation trigger was the generation of malicious intent.

The truly devious aspect of this spell was that it fired even if they kept their dark thoughts completely internalized, bypassing any psychological barriers or self-denial.

To ensure it worked on those with warped moral compasses, I calibrated the curse to align strictly with my personal ethics.

Even if the target genuinely believed their atrocious actions were completely justified, the curse would still activate based on my definition of evil.

‘Though, if they merely entertain a passing dark thought, I engineered it to only trigger as a mild warning.’

Their own survival instincts would naturally condition them to purge any sinister intentions.

If the curse were to activate at full intensity, it possessed the potential to entirely shatter a person’s psyche.

Setting that matter aside for the moment…

‘Hmm, this approach is far too inefficient.’

Having enjoyed a restful slumber and fully awoken, I reviewed the night’s events and muttered to myself.

I was, naturally, reflecting on Hans, who had spent the entire night scouring the city streets.

‘Regardless of how fast I can move or how broad my detection radius is, blindly patrolling like this is a waste of effort.’

It was an undeniable fact that I had neutralized numerous threats the previous night, ranging from juvenile bullies and petty thieves to organized thugs and even a sexual predator.

I had put in the work, employing hexes to siphon the life force from the thugs and amplifying the defensive resilience of the predator’s intended victim. However…

‘I’m burning way too much time on pointless wandering.’

Even though I had willingly taken up the mantle of taking out the city’s trash, nobody could dispute that Hans was an incredibly high-caliber asset.

‘But I can’t just let undead roam freely through a populated city.’

As I stared absently through the glass, lost in thought, a passing flock of birds soaring across the morning sky captured my attention.

‘Wait a minute. I don’t necessarily have to rely on animating corpses.’

There was absolutely no rule stating I had to utilize undead to build a network of informants. I could easily forge familiars or bind spirits instead.

Better yet, I already possessed the exact magical formulas required, courtesy of **Forbidden Knowledge**.

I immediately shifted my primary focus to Hans, plotting to transform every random pigeon and alley cat in the district into an active familiar.

‘I can’t directly enslave all of them, though. I’ll have to tweak the spell’s parameters.’

The goal was to let them roam naturally, but with an ingrained directive to transmit specific sensory data back to me under certain conditions.

‘I need to strip the spell down to its core components. Optimize it so that the mana cost for activation is virtually zero.’

Furthermore, discretion was paramount to prevent any rival summoners from catching onto my network.

‘When it comes to staying hidden, curses are undeniably the superior option. I’ll use that as the foundation. It will be even more effective if we can drastically cut down the initial mana requirement.’

Given that casting the spell on each individual animal manually was completely unfeasible, the ideal solution would be an enchantment that could spread from beast to beast through physical proximity.

‘Fusing a minor contagion hex with the primary curse should do the trick.’

Capitalizing on the potent synergy between **Forbidden Knowledge** and **Vile Wisdom**, Hans successfully formulated an entirely original spell.

I called forth my avatar—now capable of manifesting an additional presence thanks to the integration of **Persona**—and channeled every available resource directly into Hans.

> [If only I were back in Outerica, I could manage my time far more effectively… What a frustrating limitation.]

That fleeting pang of regret didn’t last long, however.

In just a handful of hours, the interdimensional transit array would become available once more.

‘Heinz is navigating his journey without any hiccups, so this time around, I’ll dedicate the portal’s usage to furthering Hans’s magical developments.’

And the moment the dimensional gate’s cooldown timer expired, Hans initiated the jump to Outerica.