There Is No Hidden Villain in This Novel Chapter 64

When I used to read books, I wasn’t interested in the spine, so I didn’t even see the author’s name and don’t know who the author is, but this world is a field created by an author.

From the start, when the author set the difficulty of the world, they made it hardcore. The symbol of that difficulty is the Black Fog and the Named. This means that the world’s default settings themselves are like that. The set difficulty is not a factor that can be changed by anything I do.

It would have been nice if I could have received a ton of transmigrator privileges and lived by smashing the original story to pieces, but as long as I live bearing the name of Cassis de Millang, I must become a subjugator. There is no era with as many heroes as a turbulent one. Now is precisely that time. Every day, thousands of hero candidates appear and disappear. If I fail to prove my qualifications as a hero at Areia Academy, the privileges that de Millang enjoys as a minor head of the family will also become a blank slate. But instead of going all out to become a hero, let’s just work hard enough to save face, cleverly.

Is what I had been thinking until now.

‘But now the tables have turned.’

A lovers’ quarrel. Now that it has begun, from this point on, I have decided to aim to become the family head as quickly as possible. It was one of the schemes to forge a weapon that would allow me to mess with Ryuseong and not be killed, but there were practical benefits as well.

‘Family heads don’t go to war.’

If the head of a family falls, the family falls. There have been quite a few families that were annihilated after their head foolishly went to the front lines for the sake of a greater cause and was lost. Therefore, if I become the head of the de Millang family, it means I can sidestep the crisis of getting X-ed by being swept up in the original plot.

Above all, the point that if Ryuseong were to kill me, it wouldn’t be a simple death but would transform into the incident of the de Millang family head’s assassination is attractive. The death of a minor head of the family is also a big deal, but the family head is the pride of the family and a being equivalent to the family itself. If I just write in my will that the culprit is Ryuseong, Ryuseong is X-ed. It’s not just him who’s X-ed, the entire Hanra Sect is X-ed.

Could Ryuseong really handle that risk?

‘Can you accept the annihilation of your family for the sake of the world?’

In summary, becoming the family head means I can ensure my own well-being. No, well, if I really wanted to live safely, running away or going into hiding would be the only answers, but…

‘I’m pissed off right now.’

So I’m in a state where I can’t perform the rational act of living just to live. Because I can’t do things like run away and leave you behind, or give up on love and grovel.

So at least for now, I’ll be faithful to the purpose of destroying you too if I have to die.

‘I’ll show you what a proper piece of work I can be.’

When the car had stopped at some point, the butler got out first and opened my car door for me.

The place we arrived at was a simple and cozy cottage in the woods, but I couldn’t sense any presence. I stepped out, my loafers crunching on the fallen leaves. And a casual remark.

“A good location to attempt an assassination.”

“Young master.”

“Ah, I wasn’t suspecting the butler.”

That was a lie. But isn’t it better for pressuring the other person to smile prettily and sound them out, rather than openly saying you suspect them?

The butler wasn’t so dense as to not grasp my intentions, and he bowed his waist deferentially.

“I have sent word, but as time was short, it seems it will be difficult to receive you just yet, young master. If you would please wait just a little…”

I didn’t listen to his words to the end. Not only did I have no intention of standing idly and waiting in front of the leaf-strewn cottage, but I also wondered what could possibly take so long to tidy up that small house inside.

Still, if it’s a garbage dump, it’ll make me sick, so I’ll just have to turn around and leave, I thought, and took big strides. In one go, I grabbed the doorknob.

But right after, whoosh! A burning sensation gripped my palm.

As I felt it, this was the magic surrounding the cottage attacking me. But how many things have I learned at Areia Academy? There are very slow and common ways to break magic, and there are fast and extraordinary ones…

Most choose the common method, even if it takes a long time. But I was a genius. Cassis de Millang’s body possessed a natural magic control that allowed it to survive even with its mana confined in the spiritual center, and Jung Ian’s brain scans everything it reads.

Since I have read through the original novel what the ‘extraordinary method’ was, which Areia had skipped over, saying it was not suited for your level.

I was able to perform it.

“Young master, it’s danger—!”

I wrap mana around my palm to crush the burning sensation and thinly hone another branch of mana extending out.

With that, I intend to dismantle the barrier that dared to touch me.

Just as one can open a locked door without a key by poking a wire into the lock and stimulating the right places.

In other words, a process of guessing a word drawn hugely on a sandy beach by tracing each side with a sense as small as an ant’s.

A feat that is extremely simple compared to the complex method of having to infer the magic formula and then draw a breaking formula for each one, but one that cannot even be attempted if one lacks even a little talent.

—Click.

It was easier than breathing for me. I watched a green glow flash once over the cottage and then fade, before kicking the door with my loafer.

I was wondering what they were doing that they wouldn’t even let the precious minor head of the family in and were fussing about waiting, and I also wanted to show them this body’s foul temper. It’s not like I came here to spew kind and gentle words.

Do I need to be a gentleman when I’m here to demand why they swapped the medicine without my permission?

Around the time I was thinking that.

“…”

The inside of the door came into view, and I furrowed my brow.

The interior of the cottage, with its rural atmosphere smelling of grass, was…

‘A mirror?’

All the walls were made of fragmented mirrors. That was something strange. If it were an environment where a person lived, it couldn’t be configured this way. An environment where whatever you do, you yourself are reflected hundreds of times. As Cassis de Millang’s appearance was distorted, stretched, and split, reflected hundreds of times, I momentarily panicked.

I was about to step back hesitantly when a smile was returned from the hundreds of ‘me’s’ reflected before me. The smile, skillfully painted over pale skin, was split into hundreds of pieces, and its curve was terrifying, as if it were embracing something like ecstasy or rapture.

How should I put it, a feeling of my self becoming not-me.

…Did I really smile? Is it even true that I smiled? No, is that even me?

Of course not, fuck. I’m Jung Ian.

‘Then why do I have to be here?’

Exactly at the moment I had thought that far, the mirrors shattered. Crash! A tearing sound echoed in my ears like tinnitus, and the very next moment after all the falling fragments scattered like dust.

“Grandson, you’re here.”

With a voice as sweet as honey, my great-grandfather, who called me grandson despite looking younger than me, appeared wearing a shabby robe.

The boyish-looking man immediately tried to extend his hand as if to welcome me, but my pointing the staff at him was faster.

“…”

“…Oh, my.”

To be honest, this might be because of a trauma that Jung Ian has. But it might not be. I acted reflexively because I shouldn’t overlook the possibility that Cassis de Millang’s great-grandfather is also a scumbag, as is typical of the de Millangs, but the wiser choice would have been to be wary without showing it, so I regretted it a little. If I treat him with open hostility, I won’t be able to backstab him in our future relationship, will I?

Despite that, the great-grandfather simply smiled benevolently with an awkward expression.

“It seems I have startled you. Well, it’s not as if threatening events have been rare lately.”

“…”

Then, he bowed.

I heard the butler let out a gasp. Even by my common sense, it was unthinkable for the elder chairman of the de Millangs to bow to someone. But the great-grandfather did it.

“I am sorry for not keeping the family head in check properly. I apologize.”

He formally apologized to his great-grandson just for the reason that he couldn’t keep his own son, my grandfather, in check properly.

But wait a minute here.

‘…What is he talking about?’

I don’t know what the family head did to me!

No, we did have an argument, but I landed some punchlines there too. And from the sound of what my great-grandfather is saying, the nuance is that he did something much worse than that.

So I decided to bring out the strategy I used on Shin Myo-han.

“—Is it just a day or two for the esteemed head of the family.”

Literally, pretending to know. The grand operation of sounding someone out without a shred of information.

And thankfully, the great-grandfather took the bait.

“Even so, sending assassins countless times is crossing a line. Does it make sense that more than half of the attempts to harm you are from your own blood relatives? I know you are handling it wisely, but I am sorry for not being able to step in due to a lack of justification.”

“Justification…”

“Because a family head is a being who can ‘test’ the successor. So, about that.”

The next moment, the oldest elder who was once the top dog on Earth said this.

“Would you like to try being the family head?”

As in, I’ll back you.