You can learn the skills of an anonymous villain.
This is a skill belonging to.
Would you like to learn it?
“Learn it, learn it. Damn it…!”
I didn’t even expect much.
The greedy King Jeongjo seemed to feel satisfied only after taking every skill he could get his hands on.
Gritting his teeth so hard they made a grinding sound, he inwardly shouted to learn the skill, and an astonishing message popped up.
You are learning the skill.
The skill adapts to.
You can now use [Skill Name] LV.1. If you practice it before forgetting, you can make the skill your own.
“Hah, I’m not even surprised anymore. The skill name is utterly ridiculous.”
[Skill Name], huh… It’s not like it’s some fiery nonsense.
Since the skill name wouldn’t be shown to others anyway, it only added to her suffering.
With a resigned expression, Iris staggered and quickly retracted her chain tentacles.
But then, the dim-witted villain finally noticed the sensation of the chain tentacles clinging to his back and turned around.
“What… what’s this? What the hell? Huh?”
The villain’s eyes widened as he saw the wriggling chain tentacles retreating.
After awakening his powers, he had been filled with arrogance, smashing through anything in his path without hesitation.
But now, goosebumps rose on his arms.
In all his time since awakening, he had faced monsters and a few heroes, but he had never seen a being with tentacles like these.
Iris, confirming the villain’s panic, silently gathered the tentacles retreating between her legs.
After seeing skills with names resembling wrestling techniques in her status window, the villain’s outfit suddenly seemed far from ordinary.
Upon closer inspection, he was wearing a leopard-print wrestling outfit with a menacing masked persona.
As the tentacles disappeared behind a statue, the villain began striding toward Iris.
“Who… who are you? A monster? Whatever you are, I’ll crush you!”
Meanwhile, the moment the commotion began, Laika had started the car and fled from Lugang Park.
He figured Iris, who had gone into the convenience store, would survive somehow.
After all, she had managed to stay alive for twenty-two years, so as a citizen of Gyodam City, she’d probably find a way to escape.
The thoughtful idea of taking Iris with him, unfortunately, didn’t cross his mind.
Sacrificing himself for someone else didn’t align with his principles.
Laika’s top priority was avoiding getting tangled up with some unknown villain.
Whether it was a villain from his father’s company or another, it was all the same to him.
Except for a few of his father’s closest confidants and Abelus, no one knew Laika was a villain.
“Villains can’t be trusted. You never know when they’ll stab you in the back. Even that bastard Abelus… If he wasn’t one of Father’s favorites, I’d have half-killed him long ago.”
Abelus was, in many ways, an infuriating guy.
Once, when Laika was interrogating a thug for fun, Abelus had barged into the basement, mocking him and ruining his mood.
If it weren’t for the extra skill Laika gained thanks to Abelus’s methods, he would’ve long ago asked his father to kick him out.
Abelus was the kind of lunatic you’d regret crossing, so Laika left him alone.
Maybe he was too smart for his own good, or just plain crazy—Abelus seemed to be missing a few screws.
It felt like he didn’t even use his brain unless it was for something that interested him.
A complete mess.
The only reason Laika tolerated him was because Abelus was using his brilliant mind for the company’s benefit, for now.
If he were just a bit less clever, Laika would’ve treated him like a barking dog and disposed of him on the spot.
“Ugh… This is annoying.”
With a screech, the car stopped on a quiet road.
Burying his head in the steering wheel, Laika let out a deep sigh.
Something was off.
He had avoided the villain as usual, but it didn’t feel satisfying.
The farther he got from Lugang Park, the colder his chest felt, and an indescribable foul mood consumed him.
The image of Iris laughing cheerfully as she stepped out of the car flickered in his mind.
Finally, muttering a low curse, he turned the steering wheel.
He was heading back to Lugang Park.
“I just avoided it because it was a hassle, but she might misunderstand and think I ran away out of fear. And leaving things half-eaten will just leave a bad taste… You don’t let prey escape. That’s all there is to it.”
That’s right.
If it wasn’t for that, why would he bother turning back and retracing his steps?
He didn’t realize that he had already done things for Iris that he wouldn’t normally do—like texting for hours until his fingers ached, changing his recovery plans and leaving the hospital early despite her protests, or driving her all the way to Lugang Park in a car he’d never let anyone else ride in, just to mess around.
Before he knew it, Laika was pressing the accelerator at twice his usual speed.
Rushing back to Lugang Park, he parked at the quiet entrance and transformed.
Normally, he’d never park anywhere but a paid lot—his possessive nature couldn’t stand the thought of someone touching his things.
But now, he parked carelessly anywhere.
He was too anxious to even notice.
“Phew… It’s been a while since I transformed.”
A purple suit, a gray dress shirt, and a golden mask covering his eyes—this was his transformation outfit.
The lion’s mane attached to the golden mask was striking.
His villain name was the Lion King.
For some reason, he had a grandiose villain name.
Contrary to Iris’s suspicions, he hadn’t been bitten by a lion at a zoo.
Instead, he awakened his powers while rewatching The Lion King, a National Geographic masterpiece, for the twentieth time.
His busy father and disinterested mother had played a role in his awakening ability when he was young.
At first, he only had lion-related skills, but gradually, he awakened others.
A few additional skills came through Abelus’s Project X.
That project, which used the mysterious power of holy relics to awaken new abilities, had killed many ability users, but Laika survived.
Why did so many of his newly awakened skills involve mental manipulation?
He didn’t know.
He could only guess that his penchant for controlling others had influenced his skill awakenings.
The holy relic that granted him his powers, called the “Goddess’s Ring,” lost its glow after he acquired his skills.
Moreover, if anyone other than Laika touched it, the ring would instantly drain their moisture, killing them.
Opinions were divided on whether such a horrific object could be called a divine relic, but since it granted additional skills to ability users, it undeniably held mysterious power.
Abelus and the research team wanted to study the ring further despite its loss of glow, but since no one but Laika could touch it, further research was impossible.
The “Goddess’s Ring” was now stored at Laika’s home.
Striding forward, Laika narrowed his eyes.
If Iris is caught by a villain?
I’ll help her escape.
I’ll kill the villain.
Then I’ll reveal my identity and demand she repay the favor.
No, wait, should I hide my identity?
I don’t like that… It’s better to reveal I’m an able user than to be treated like a cowardly fugitive, right?
What would he say after revealing he was an able user?
He couldn’t introduce himself as a villain. Absolutely not.
How would Iris know what he did behind the scenes?
So, lying wouldn’t hurt.
Without realizing it, he was agonizing over excuses to give Iris.
Then, belatedly catching himself, he scoffed.
What does it matter if I say I’m a villain?
What’s that glasses-wearing girl going to do about it?
She should be crying with gratitude for saving her… Hmm, no.
It could cause trouble later, so I’ll just say I awakened my abilities but don’t use them.
Unlike usual, Laika was thinking hard.
He hesitated to admit to Iris that he was a villain.
But lying and saying he was a hero felt dirty—it didn’t suit his personality.
Saying he awakened his abilities but didn’t use them seemed like the perfect excuse.
An experienced ability user might notice his skills were too refined for that, but an ordinary person like Iris wouldn’t question the truth of his words.
BOOM! CRASH!
As he reached the area near the convenience store in an instant, a loud explosion shook the ground.
Laika lightly jumped onto a streetlamp and peered into the distance with the enhanced vision of a high-level ability user.
A masked villain in a leopard-print wrestling outfit was using fire-based skills.
And behind a nearby statue…
White clothes?
A hero…?
Wait, are those tentacles…?
Was the human machine real?