Chapter 116
I stood there for a moment.
Everything we had… our information and items?
The moment they said they’d take our items, it was the same as saying they had no intention of letting us live anyway. So I didn’t bother trying to persuade them.
I only confirmed one thing.
“Then what if we hand over part of it?”
“Part of it?”
“If we give everything, we’ll be left with nothing and thrown away again. That’s a bit much. So I’m asking if partial surrender works.”
The man let out a short scoff, then burst into loud laughter.
“Part of it? Ah, part of it….”
The way he kept repeating the word while laughing made it obvious he wasn’t in his right mind. Though in this novel, there were plenty of people like that, something about him felt familiar.
The problem was that his face was too ordinary to place.
When I lightly tapped Lee Hoin’s arm, he slowly took his stance.
In the end, we had to get rid of them.
‘It still doesn’t feel right making Lee Hoin do this kind of thing.’
But right now, he was more threatening holding that weapon than I would be.
“Let’s not do anything we’ll regret, kids.”
The man said it with a wide grin.
From his perspective, we were outnumbered, and they also had the advantage in distance. So his relaxed attitude wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
But that very confidence ironically showed he hadn’t fully adapted to this world yet.
Advantages like this could flip at any moment.
“Just subdue them.”
Don’t do anything we’ll regret.
—
[Worry about yourself first!]
[How can you act so self-righteous when you can barely take care of yourself?]
—
The moment I spoke, I grabbed a dagger and threw it swiftly.
The target: his hand.
Along with the flying dagger, Lee Hoin lunged forward like he was leaping.
The dagger didn’t hit the hand.
It struck the torso instead.
Startled, one of them fired their crossbow reflexively. The blind shot didn’t hit me or Lee Hoin and instead lodged somewhere in the ceiling.
“Aaaagh!!”
Hearing the reflexive scream, I quickly closed the distance.
We had to finish quickly and hide nearby.
Because with this commotion…
—
[That’s right. Humans aren’t the only ones here, are they?]
—
I swung my weapon quickly.
The weight distribution threw me off slightly, but at least one person was definitely incapacitated.
Lee Hoin also subdued one quickly.
“Ah–ah! Aaaagh!”
That guy had survived in Hermadion too.
Yeah, I knew that… but still.
The smirking face of our opponent lost its smile.
“You bastard!”
Someone unfamiliar with a longsword swung it at me awkwardly.
The tip wavered, and he couldn’t control the distance… it barely reached me.
I stepped back a couple of paces to dodge, and Lee Hoin grabbed the panting man and literally threw him.
“Aaagh!”
He just threw a person.
The man slammed into the wall, but not hard enough to kill him. Just a heavy impact.
It was obvious Lee Hoin had held back.
‘…Did he learn that from Johanna?’
Even the way he used strength looked similar.
Clang, clatter…
I looked at the longsword rolling on the ground, then at the man standing alone.
The slick-looking one, the apparent leader.
He stood there for a moment, calmly organizing the situation in his head.
Too calm.
Even for a world like this, his composure was unsettling.
I glanced around briefly.
From far away…
A grinding sound echoed.
We didn’t have much time.
“Ugh….”
—
[You shouldn’t leave loose ends!]
[〉 Kill them all.]
[〉 Let them go.]
—
I knew leaving loose ends was dangerous.
Kill them all here… or leave them to die later.
The man in front of me was obviously close to outright evil, so there wasn’t much to think about.
I moved my hand to strike again.
“I surrender!”
The man raised both hands instantly with the hammer right in front of him.
He kicked his crossbow far away.
“I surrender! You can take all our weapons if you want!”
It was such an easy surrender that it almost drained my strength.
Looking at his face, I frowned slightly.
Ah… this slick face…
A faint sense of déjà vu.
His tone, his expression…
It felt familiar… but hard to pinpoint.
There were just too many characters described as having “slick faces.”
‘Should I run through them one by one?’
The moment I lowered my weapon slightly…
He immediately reached behind his back, pulled out a hidden dagger, and swung.
Whoosh
The blade came close enough to graze me…
Bang!
Lee Hoin slammed him sideways.
As I looked at the man embedded in the corridor wall, countless names ran through my mind.
Villains. Opportunists. Slick talkers.
Too many to count.
And then…
—
[Character Dictionary Updated: “Kim Seonghyeok” has been added.]
[Kim Seonghyeok of the “Ruined World” (Smiling □□□)]
Importance: 2.5 / 5
<Records>
A character whose actions are only confirmed in specific chapters.
Search by chapter below to trace his actions.
—
Found him.
His blade hadn’t wavered.
At the very least, he had handled a knife before.
Or maybe…
He simply believed that if he didn’t kill me, he would die.
Still…
There was a clear difference between someone who had killed before and someone who hadn’t.
‘The others were sloppy.’
The guy with the longsword, the one with the crossbow…
None of them could properly attack.
But this one was different.
Kim Seonghyeok.
I rolled the name in my mind, then spoke.
“Dobong Station murder case.”
The man twitching against the wall turned his gaze to me.
“That’s you, right?”
With his hollow cheeks, his sunken face twisted into a weak grin.
Blood covering his face…
Kim Seonghyeok began laughing like a madman.
—
Kim Seonghyeok
[Chapter 13 Record ▼]
First appears in a pit. Begs Sa Jaeheon for help while lamenting his situation. The moment Sa Jaeheon approaches to help, he kills him with a dagger.
[Chapter 23 Record ▼]
Encounters Sa Jaeheon in the same place again. This time, Sa Jaeheon kills him with a dagger.
[Chapter 36 Record ▼]
Kills Kim Miri and four others using poison gas. Soon after, pushes two of his own companions to their deaths in his place.
—
This bastard and Sa Jaeheon have a deeply rooted grudge.
Not all the people Sa Jaeheon remembered were good or competent.
In fact, the ones he remembered longest were often villains or dead weight.
Because the best way to leave a strong impression… Is to be the worst.
And Sa Jaeheon was especially susceptible to that.
In the world I originally lived in, the name Kim Seonghyeok didn’t carry much weight.
“Dobong Station murder case…?”
But the man lying nearby with the longsword lifted his head.
This wasn’t my world.
In this world, that case had a huge impact.
Not many criminals become recognizable just from the name of their crime.
Kim Seonghyeok chuckled.
Still smiling.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
This bastard was absurdly lucky.
‘I heard he got a reduced sentence in the novel too.’
Criminals like this always think the same.
Struggle however they can to reduce their sentence.
But compared to the attention the case got at first, people lost interest quickly once the sentence was reduced.
Kim Seonghyeok was released sooner than expected as a model prisoner.
‘And then lived pretending to be normal…’
Until the apocalypse came…
And he became like a fish in water.
Manipulating people.
Pushing others into danger while pretending it was a mistake.
‘If I don’t kill him now, he’ll become far more dangerous later.’
There was a time when even Sa Jaeheon stopped paying attention to him.
Not intentionally… just because there were too many threats in a ruined world.
And in that timeline…
This bastard wiped out half of Sa Jaeheon’s party.
Using an item he later obtained:
“The Liar’s Mask.”
They eventually killed him.
But it still led to a regression.
Among readers, that was the moment the name “Kim Seonghyeok” burned into memory.
A villain you thought was just an early obstacle…
Coming back later to devastate the protagonist’s group?
That was shocking.
‘Looks like he hasn’t met Sa Jaeheon yet.’
Since he’s still alive in this timeline…
That must be true.
‘Even if I don’t kill him…’
Sa Jaeheon will.
Without fail.
“So you want to justify it, right? Hoping the person you killed was a bad one. I understand that feeling.”
I looked at him as he kept talking despite bleeding.
The kind of guy who’d keep running his mouth even one second before drowning.
He can still smile like that…
Because he doesn’t know his future.
What does it feel like?
To be hated by the one who will save the world.
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