Although a Villain, My Wish is World Peace

“Boss! Boss, did you see?”

I was just applying putty to the wall when Han Seo-hyeon called out urgently.

“What is it?”

“When someone’s calling, you should at least turn your head… No, that’s not important. Right now, someone has declared war against our name.”

What declaration of war?

It’s not even a funny word, but the expression on Han Seo-hyeon’s face as he said it was quite unsettling. I had no choice but to put down my tools and approach Han Seo-hyeon.

“What’s going on?”

“I think you need to see for yourself.”

I examined the screen on the smartphone Han Seo-hyeon handed me.

“Huh.”

The scene inside, and the content within, was so serious that a groan involuntarily escaped.

An entire village disappeared overnight. All the people in the village were horribly murdered, and the perpetrator of this act was the Butcher.

Far from hiding his crime, he boldly imprinted his name on the village.

The term ‘declaration of war’ is accurate.

Because the Butcher wrote our name with the blood of his victims.

[Can Weltschmerz kill more than me?]

“All the news is in an uproar over this. What, what on earth is this…”

In cases like this, sensational reporting should be restrained, but our country’s rotten media had long since abandoned such reporting guidelines.

I clicked my tongue as I watched a reporter holding a microphone to a student who had avoided the disaster by visiting a friend’s house in another area, asking ‘How do you feel now that all your family members are dead?’

Damn, even at a time like this, the vultures are the problem.

Well, it’s not just the problem of that one vulture. It’s obvious who’s gleefully fanning the flames behind this issue.

The most important thing should be the victims sacrificed in this sensational incident.

232 dead. It was a small rural village, so they were caught without anywhere to escape. While there have been cases of casualties from villains before, there’s never been an example of an entire village being wiped out like this.

Moreover, attacking a village solely for the purpose of slaughter like this is unprecedented in Korean history.

Han Seo-hyeon was clenching his fists in anger.

“He’s declaring war on us like this. Really, who do we think we are.”

We’re already overwhelmed with being entangled with Taika Cooper, and now some madman has gotten involved. My head was just as complicated.

I patted Han Seo-hyeon’s shoulder and said:

“You go and rest for a bit.”

“How can you tell me to rest after seeing this?”

“Yes, that’s why you need to rest even more.”

Han Seo-hyeon was getting too immersed right now. At times like this, it’s important to cool your head.

Seeing my eyes, Han Seo-hyeon reluctantly nodded. It seemed he realized he was getting too worked up.

I calmly checked the rest of the article.

—You tell that kid to go rest, but you’re looking at that?

‘This happened because of me. At least I shouldn’t run away.’

As far as I knew, the Butcher had never committed such a massacre before. So this is clearly because of ‘me’.

Over 230 people died because of ‘me’. I don’t intend to dwell on unnecessary sentiments. Even if I was the cause, it was the Butcher who committed this act after all.

Blaming others is always good for mental health.

The articles that unnecessarily described the scene in detail were quite helpful to me.

“It says all the corpses were half-burned…”

As far as I knew, the Butcher’s talent was far from flame-related. But the bodies found at the scene were discovered in a burned state. It seems quite a few were even completely reduced to ashes.

—What was his original talent?

‘It was to seep inside and destroy everything.’

That’s why bodies victimized by the Butcher often had their insides in a mess. Of course, the outside wasn’t intact either.

But there had never been signs of burning like this before.

Come to think of it, I think I heard that the Butcher obtained something around this time. My memory was vague because villains involved with the Top weren’t my responsibility.

While I was checking the article, Han Seo-hyeon, who seemed to have washed his face or something, came out wiping his face with a towel and asked me:

“Are you thinking of accepting this declaration of war?”

“There’s no reason to refuse.”

Since he challenged us by name, I had no intention of leaving the Butcher alone. He’s done something too. The Butcher was a bastard who shouldn’t be left alive for the future.

The problem is…

As someone who’s risen to the ‘Top’, the Butcher isn’t someone to be taken lightly.

“So let’s track him down first.”

We need to thoroughly investigate.

Unlike the opponents we’ve faced recently, the Butcher is a real strong one.

—Wasn’t that Chinese girl the strongest in terms of strength? Or that American guy?

‘That’s why I used a method to avoid fighting them.’

Strictly speaking, Xie Haozhu and Taika Cooper weren’t my enemies. Xie Haozhu might not agree with my thoughts, but I never considered her an enemy.

But the Butcher is different.

It might be foolish to be provoked, but I’ll take the bait.

I’m going to crush you thoroughly.

Even if killing you won’t bring back the people who have already died, it’s a hundred times better than you living shamelessly.

I got up from my seat and picked up the plastering equipment I had put down earlier.

—Hmm? What are you doing?

First, I need to finish applying the putty.

If that hardens, I’ll have to buy new ones.

* * *

The Butcher. Name: Park Sang-pyeon. Age: 33 this year.

The reason he first became a villain is ridiculous. He killed his family on the spot for nagging him. From the very start, it was familicide, this bastard.

After staining his hands with blood like that, he developed a taste for killing people.

The Butcher was a typical pleasure killer.

Even though he’s at the very bottom of the Top, he’s quite strong. He can’t be seen as just any ordinary person.

Just the fact that he’s risen to the Top means he’s not ordinary, and Park Sang-pyeon’s low evaluation isn’t because of his lack of power.

In other words, Park Sang-hyeon was a guy who lacked the charisma to rise to the Top.

If you’re a villain who can rise to the Top, how should I put it, each of them usually has something they pursue.

It’s ridiculous to demand such things from villains, but certainly, the villains in the Top are all those with extraordinary abilities that could be considered masters in their respective fields.

It’s just that the process of achieving that accomplishment, or the purpose they aim to achieve with that accomplishment, is something that would be considered terrible in the eyes of the public, so they’re defined as villains.

But Park Sang-pyeon is not like that.

Of course, he’s incredibly strong. He can tear dozens of humans to death in an instant.

But his ability is not special.

Compared to the ‘Puppeteer’ who can create moving dolls and commit all sorts of acts, the ‘Blood Magician Chu Ma-geol’ who created magic using blood as a medium, and ‘Cube’ who can fold anything he touches, Park Sang-pyeon’s strength is just monotonous.

He doesn’t have a talent that can surprise the public like ‘Gemini’ who carries the personalities of twins and freely uses two talents, or ‘Trickster’ who can cross spaces at will.

So, you know, Park Sang-pyeon is just…

“You know those characters, right? The weakest among the Four Heavenly Kings. Not popular, that kind of guy.”

“Is he as high as one of the Four Heavenly Kings?”

“Is that too much? Anyway, he’s that kind of guy. So boring and uninteresting that you only remember later, ‘Ah! There was such a guy there too.'”

The kind of guy who, before you know it, has quietly retired and no one cares.

Just a guy who occasionally appears, commits indiscriminate massacres, and disappears.

So he can’t help but be poorly evaluated.

Some people even tsk that he’s too primitive to fit in the Top.

But in other words, despite such poor evaluation, he’s ‘strong enough’ to rise to the Top in a way that no one can deny.

No matter how undervalued he is, he’s not someone shabby enough to be entangled with our Weltschmerz, who have just stepped into the villain world.

The reason the Butcher was seen as so ridiculous was that he had been quiet for three months without any activity.

I can roughly guess.

What Park Sang-pyeon had been bowing down for during those three months.

“He either obtained a new artifact or awakened a new talent.”

The changed crime scene is evidence of that.

“So we need to approach him differently from the existing him.”

“I think finding the Butcher should come first though.”

Han Seo-hyeon threw out a suggestion, but it wasn’t easy to find him as the search range was nationwide.

Finding information from a designated place is faster than anything, but it’s not easy to find one person in such a wide area.

Anyway, we’ll have to search for the Butcher’s location carefully.

“He’ll think he’s scored a point against us, so he probably won’t move right away. He’s probably scratching his belly while looking at the dark web.”

The dark web was in an uproar.

Of course, because we were the hottest topic on the dark web recently, and our name was involved in this incident.

Despite causing trouble at the auction and kidnapping children from the orphanage, we never revealed our full power.

We were smoke with an unknown substance.

People can’t help but want to know the substance that might be inside this smoke.

Are these guys just foam? Or are they real?

They seem amazing, but we don’t really know their abilities?

When they were already curious, a member of the Top comes out to settle the score directly.

Wow, my goodness. It would be so interesting even if I were just a spectator.

The problem is that I’m not a spectator, and I’m the substance hidden in that smoke.

Now that it’s come to this, I need to set the stage perfectly.

“Before that, I need to tell the Butcher something.”

“What?”

“That his method stinks.”

The Butcher wanted to kill more people than he had already killed. But we can’t let that happen.

“But we can’t let him kill more innocent people out of anger, so we need to send a clear message.”

There was just the right thing to do to point out how petty his actions were while preventing sparks from flying in the wrong direction.

* * *

I lay down on the hill and opened my mouth.

“Those guys over there are mercenaries. To be precise, mercenaries who have done some really trashy things.”

Han Seo-hyeon, who swallowed hard, asked me:

“W-what kind of things did they do?”

“Well, first they disguise themselves as a regular Gate raid team and join the conquest. When the comquest is almost over, they betray the people who were on the same team. Then they steal everything the raid team should have gotten and leave.”

It was a very common method, but an extremely dangerous one. In fact, it’s ranked second in the causes of raid team deaths, to the point where murders by such villains are listed. It’s also a problem that investigations are almost impossible because the cleared Gates disappear.

“Or they secretly enter Gates with no guards, wait for the raid team, and then ambush them.”

Whatever the case, killing the conquest team and stealing their spoils like that. That was the main source of income for the guild guys in front of us.

They’re disguised as a seemingly normal guild on the outside, but if you look inside, they’re completely a villain group.

Han Seo-hyeon also agreed to participate in this operation. To be precise, Han Seo-hyeon’s skeleton agreed to participate.

He should start getting some real experience too. I handed a dagger to the skeleton’s hand.

Kim Jae-ho had already infiltrated inside. Kim Jae-ho’s aptitude is assassination, and his talent is also hiding in shadows, so rather than fighting openly, it suits him best to burrow in secretly and aim for vital points in one go.

To be honest, if we let Kim Jae-ho sweep through that place freely, we wouldn’t even need to step in.

But today is the skeleton’s debut. At my signal, Han Seo-hyeon dismissed the skeleton and sent it to the corridor secured by Kim Jae-ho.

From then on, it was a one-sided massacre.

No matter what anyone says, these are two people I’ve trained. I didn’t raise them to be easily defeated by such riffraff.

Me? I just watched the two of them in action and checked for any deficiencies.

—Aren’t you taking it too easy?

‘Because we don’t need to fight here.’

Ah, there’s a gap just now.

I engraved in my mind the scolding I needed to give Han Seo-hyeon.