There Is No Hidden Villain in This Novel Chapter 88

After that, Ryuseong started trying to sweep through the spirits more passionately than I did, so I had to rein him in. No matter what, it was too much for this bastard to wipe out the black goat colony all by himself.

No, if you have any common sense, shouldn’t you share the chance to be in the spotlight with me too?

“Excuse me. I’m supposed to be the main character of these raids, you know?”

“Just say everything I killed was your doing.”

But those words were annoying. How dare he overstep…

“…Do I look like someone who needs to receive that kind of pity from you?”

My voice rose in a momentary fit of anger. Ryuseong flinched as if flustered, and I raised a hand to signal that it was okay and spoke in a low voice.

“It’s something I can do. I have to do it…”

“…I’m sorry. I went too far.”

“It’s fine. You just focus on herding them properly.”

Anyway, looking at his hunting style, it’s obvious that the ones Ryuseong killed were his own doing. Ryuseong probably said that without knowing the hunters’ identification methods, but I didn’t want to cause myself unnecessary embarrassment by pretending I did something I didn’t.

Cassis de Millang already attracts attention as it is; imagine if I were to tarnish his name with my own hands.

‘The ones who revered me like some kind of celebrity gossip would turn their backs on me in an instant.’

Thinking about that made me tired.

Come to think of it, ah, I also need to call my underlings and set them straight.

‘I should borrow a phone and call them when we go for a joint raid.’

Until then, just hang in there a little longer, I write a letter in my heart to Hae Yuna and the others.

And with good reason; Cassis’s lackeys in the original novel had committed acts of evil beyond imagination. As if they weren’t afraid of the School Violence Committee, they mocked others as they pleased, and harassed people by bringing up their father’s job just because they didn’t like them…

The vigilante group that was running around trying to stop such evil deeds was none other than Hae Yuna and the others.

But the cornerstone of that force was, in the end, Ryuseong.

Since I had spirited him away, it was clear to see that the remaining members would be going through hell.

‘But it’s not like I can miss the chance to ride on his coattails.’

Ryuseong, who was already a strong protagonist from birth, becomes even more of an overpowered character as he breaks through the 12th volume. The problem is that the power balance is off, so the enemies also appear as equally overpowered characters, and because of that, Ryuseong suffered a lot. The worn and seasoned Ryuseong who had gone through all sorts of hardships and seen it all—that was this sexy man standing before my eyes right now.

‘…Describing it like this makes me really want to drag him to bed!’

Damn it. Don’t call me a pervert. I’m sorry, but my tastes were like this from the beginning. I was the kind of person whose heart would swell and whose nether regions would also swell when I saw a suffering protagonist, putting me in a difficult position. Is that wrong? Is it wrong, I ask you.

“What kind of random thoughts are you lost in all by yourself?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.”

As I left Ryuseong standing there blankly during my delusions, a dissatisfied remark quickly came back. You brat. When your hyung-nim is quietly lost in thought, you should know he’s concocting a fearsome scheme and stay put quietly. How dare you call them random thoughts. But since they were, objectively speaking, random thoughts, I decided to be magnanimous about it.

After the black foxes and black goats, we caught black pigs.

Since black pigs were edible monsters, we roasted them gently over a bonfire at our makeshift camp and had a veritable feast. The role of butchering them by part was, of course! Ryuseong’s, and the role of trimming branches to make skewers and grilling the meat was also, of course! Ryuseong’s. I was only in charge of checking if it was well-cooked by nom-nomming on it. Saying it like this makes me sound like a freeloader, but that’s not the case.

‘For a person with a weak stomach like me, they should be grateful that I’m even standing by them while they do that kind of thing!’

…Ah, I think I crossed the line just now.

There’s a limit to being an asshole. I told Ryuseong, thinking that I should reflect on my actions.

“Shall I cook next time?”

But an oddly strange response came back, making me wonder if it was okay to get this kind of reaction to those words. Ryuseong raised his eyebrows in a defensive posture, pulled the cooking utensils toward himself, and moved as if to hide them from me, then spoke slowly with tense lips.

“Do you know how to bake an egg?”

“Pardon? Bake an egg?”

“…Never mind.”

Wait a minute. I think there’s been a misunderstanding.

“Excuse me. I wasn’t asking because I don’t know what a fried egg is; there are also baked eggs, you know. I paused because I was confused whether you were asking if I knew how to make those, or if you were asking about fried eggs.”

“…Hmph.”

Ryuseong snorted as if he didn’t know whether to believe me. I was momentarily angered, but since I had resolved to be nice for a change, I decided to treat him gently.

“Forget it. The ingredients are too precious to entrust to a noble young master like you.”

Canceled. I’m going to be an asshole.

“We just saw my past together, and you’re still calling me a noble young master?”

“…”

Switching from doing something I wasn’t used to back to something I was used to made me feel refreshed. I decided to consider Ryuseong’s face, contorted with despair and guilt, as a bonus service.

Ah, of course I love Ryuseong. I do, but that doesn’t mean I won’t bully him.

In my opinion, for a guy who looked so virile, the virgin bastard was prettiest when he cried.

He was born to be made to cry in the first place. Sharp eyes under thick eyebrows and a strong jaw. Isn’t it in our nature to want to make someone cry the more manly and masculine they look? It’s a shame he’s the same age; I would have doted on him more if he were younger.

But is it fun because being the same age has the thrill of him trying to climb over me? If he were younger, he wouldn’t be able to respond when I put him down with my age and would just take it blankly, but since we’re the same age, there’s no such distance. I can’t borrow the authority of Confucianism either…

So it suited my taste of liking it when the one beneath me tries to climb over me. I continued to think that it was better that Ryuseong was the same age, until at some point I realized that I was spouting a ‘long live same-age relationships’ theory to justify my reasons for choosing Ryuseong.

‘Ah, shit. I really do like Ryuseong.’

Thinking that, maybe, just maybe, the way Ryuseong’s face crumpled as if he were about to cry and he whispered “I’m sorry” in a choked, wet voice.

It felt like it was throbbing and hurting.

It was the first time. The first time Cassis de Millang’s past felt heart-wrenching.

If I had been left alone to replay the past, it was something I would never have known. Because I don’t really feel pity or compassion even when I see a past like that. It was because Ryuseong was sad that I was able to know that it was sad.

But that’s not my story.

The truth is unknowable, but maybe I mistook my own heartache for the twisting of my insides at seeing Ryuseong grieving, firmly believing a past that wasn’t mine to be his.

That’s not to say I intend to buy pity with my own past. My past is not, not at all, sad.

Even if I wanted to gain pity, I’d need to have something to talk about. I just lived well.

I was living a super sweet life as the happy youngest son of a chaebol family, flexing, when I was suddenly transmigrated.

‘It would be ridiculous for someone like me to pretend to be a victim.’

I would have had to have gone through something to even be able to pretend.

So Ryuseong’s feelings are always treated as less than filth thrown on the street.

‘…Damn it.’

Saying it like that makes it sound like I should be sorry. But I wasn’t sorry. It’s not like I was transmigrated because I wanted to be, so what am I sorry for.

It’s also ridiculous for me to apologize. If I were to say, I’m sorry, but I’m actually not Cassis de Millang but a transmigrator named Jeong Ian.

‘What. What about it.’

Ryuseong, after feeling my forehead, would tie me up, and I would end up being dragged to a mental hospital. Even if I tried to provide evidence by revealing, ‘I know about your regression!’, nothing would change.

No, maybe something would change a little.

‘So you’ve regressed too. Die.’

An ending where Ryuseong says this and slaughters me. The end. It might not be a slaughter ending but a public humiliation ending, though.

In any case, Cassis de Millang has incurred the resentment and grudge of many. If I were to sell this body to them, there would be plenty who would gladly accept. Then what, I’d end up in Damyeon’s shoes. Thinking that, I suddenly felt sorry for Damyeon. Me, who knew how much he had suffered because of de Millang, and yet still deliberately poked at that wound.

‘Wow, isn’t that truly terrible?’

I knew. That my character was trash. That I deserved to roll in the mud. Still, suddenly being confronted with this so starkly made me feel nauseous.

“…Ugh.”

As I threw up what I had eaten of the black pig into my palm, Ryuseong approached in alarm. But my instincts rejected even the hand he extended. It wasn’t that I hated someone approaching, but that I specifically hated Ryuseong.

A murderous aura surged, and a lump of mana struck him away.

Unexpectedly, he didn’t counterattack or defend, and he was thrown into a tree trunk. A large pile of snow that had accumulated on the branches poured down on top of Ryuseong, and now I couldn’t even see him.

But the pile of snow didn’t stir in time. Did he suffocate? Come to think of it, seeing how my mana heart was rapidly depleting, it seemed I had injected an unimaginable amount of power when I launched the attack.

‘Fuck, my overpowered ride to victory!’

I couldn’t let Ryuseong die buried in the snow like this. As I prepared a spell to get him out, many thoughts flashed through my mind.

Even if the World Tree said it would pull him up with a bucket, I was determined to snatch him first. Whatever the scales of the underworld and this world said, I, Jeong Ian, would be the one to cheat the measurements.

“Gold. Sterling silver. Rusted bronze. Shine.”

Maybe this was the kind of mindset that made de Millang start researching eternal life. Love. Because when a person loves another person, they come to desire such foolish things…

“Drink mercury, cut off your breath…”

I’ve become such a fool too. As I thought that and was about to cut a line across my palm with a knife.

“Don’t. I’m right here.”

There was an embrace that pulled me in from behind, and I felt both solace and anger at the same time.

“…Why now.”

This bastard, he must have dodged the falling snow? Then whatever happened, he should have shown up right away.

“Where were you…”

Do I have to think that I almost killed you? Do you have to make me think such a fucked-up thought? Do I have to feel guilt, toward someone like you, of all people.

‘Ah.’

I’m screwed.

I’m crying right now.