I stood tall and glared at that guy, while Bin Chi-seung quietly watched me before suddenly bursting into laughter.
“Hehehehe— Kwahaha! I knew it. That’s enough to understand your tendencies. This could be fun, right?! Hehehe!”
“……”
“… Hey. Stop widening your eyes like that… You’re going to die anyway. Shouldn’t you enjoy the moment while you’re still alive?”
“……”
“Come on— don’t be so boring. I just want to chat. Honestly, it’s almost my first time talking to someone as talented as you. So, how did you find out about this place?”
‘The system told me to kill you.’
“I… I didn’t even report my second awakening, and I haven’t done anything recently to get followed… well, I did make a few mistakes early in my awakening and got followed back then.
I learned a lot from that. So I invested everything to polish this space. And then you just destroyed it all.”
‘Invested everything?’
If a guy with this level of talent made a space with meticulous care, I could somewhat understand why I was having a tough time.
‘I have about 19 minutes left.’
I momentarily lost myself in thought.
Dolls that appear and disappear in an instant from anywhere, and Bin Chi-seung who freely manipulates that ability and uses them as shields.
On top of that, he had body capabilities equivalent to mid-tier even among B-ranks, immense magic power, and yet to be revealed shamanistic abilities.
I made a calm judgment.
‘In this state… it’s going to be hard to win. How unfortunate that I ended up here and got caught in a mess.’
I couldn’t think of any way to win while keeping the dolls safe under the current conditions.
I could sense it without even fighting.
If I pushed myself, I might win the battle, but losing in the contest seemed like a clear picture.
‘Returning home is only possible after the camouflage time has completely passed… even if I forcibly try to leave this space, he will notice. Then…’
“Hey, look at this. I’ll even make a pact, okay? I won’t let you suffer any disadvantages from what you say. Let’s talk, like men! Huh?”
‘What is he saying…?’
However, his suggestion aligned with my strategic thinking, so I nodded.
“Oooh— that’s right. Now, sign the pact.”
I briefly glanced at the woman doll that flew to me with the contract.
My brows furrowed involuntarily at her awkwardly bent fingers, but I accepted the pact and signed it.
There was no trick embedded in the pact. No, it wasn’t something that could be tampered with. That was as close to the truth of this world as it gets, so I didn’t doubt it.
That’s why Yeon-hee and Kang Yeon-su also didn’t question the guild contract, I suppose.
‘How did Jo Gi-man pull his tricks…?’
I realized once again how alien that guy was.
When he saw I had signed, he sat in a bizarrely shaped chair and gestured for me to sit across from him.
Of course, it wasn’t a normal chair.
It was a chair made of stacked dolls.
I couldn’t bring myself to sit on a doll that was drooling blood and saliva.
I stood beside the chair, brushed my palm across my chin, and said.
“What kind of trick are you pulling? You obviously have absolute power in this space.”
Why he wasn’t attacking me and insisting on having this pointless conversation was beyond me.
“Well, of course! I want to be a hero for a long time. I have to know how you found out my identity and entered the doll room.
This room isn’t something anyone can casually walk into! So speak up. Unless you want to scream for me to kill you and regret it for the rest of your life.”
As soon as I didn’t take a seat and spoke first, his magic began to surge uncontrollably.
‘Looks like he set some kind of trick on this chair. He’s getting angry now that I’m not complying… Is he uncomfortable with me, a being he can’t understand, being in his space? What a puzzling guy.’
He must have judged he couldn’t easily overpower me, which is why he was engaging in this tedious mental sparring.
Sweat beads on Bin Chi-seung’s forehead told me he was in a tense situation he himself wasn’t fully aware of.
I sighed lightly and said.
“Fine. Let’s sit down calmly and talk.”
I sat down in the doll chair as he suggested.
A slimy sensation transmitted through my backside.
Warm liquid splashing from the doll’s mouth sliding down my legs felt extremely unpleasant.
The moment I sat down, a grin returned to his face.
“See! It’s not so bad, right? Each piece was made with care. I put a lot of effort into it. Hehe!”
“It certainly seems that way.”
I threw him some casual agreement, focusing my senses on monitoring any tricks he might be playing.
The chair didn’t feel any different before I sat down, and nothing extraordinary happened after I did either.
“By the way, you’re really handsome. You had plastic surgery, right? The way you talk makes you seem like you’re from Seoul. If it’s that good, I might think about it too. How much would it cost? Your original face seems small, huh? Can you adjust your head size?”
“… In today’s world, what can’t you do? I could introduce you if you wanted.”
“Hehehe— really? Just write down the hospital name on this paper and—”
He handed me a piece of paper with an excited look on his face.
‘Was he serious…?’
I scribbled down the address of the White Knight Guild HQ and handed it to him.
“Ooooh…”
After that, I spent the remaining time until my camouflage was almost up engaging in utterly pointless conversation with him.
“This girl is garbage. She used to call our staff dozens of times a day under the guise of complaints. And this old guy? He assaulted a bus driver while drunk, leaving him in critical condition. Unbelievable, right? And this tattooed brat? Don’t be surprised. He’s still a teenager! This face and he’s got a little revolution? Plus, this guy has bullied more than five kids who withdrew from school because of him. How about that? Getting a sense now?”
Bin Chi-seung was giving me a long speech about how much he contributed to society.
‘Only the most plausible people are mentioned.’
The crimes of the people he had listed were enough to get them canceled on the internet.
But there were surely more people who had their lives ruined over petty grievances, and he didn’t mention a single one of those cases.
To provide evidence, he was changing the appearance of twenty dolls, making up lies as he went along.
Sounds like there’s a restriction where only dolls that haven’t committed real crimes can be used to fabricate stories.
“Impressive. You really were purging the society of terrible people.”
“Y-yeah! Hehehe! It feels good to be recognized for my efforts, doesn’t it?!”
As I continued to play along, he became even more excited and animated.
’60, 59, 58, 57…’
But the time I was waiting for was rapidly approaching.
It seemed he was satisfied with how much he had babbled, as he paused for a moment of silence.
“……”
“……”
An odd tension filled the air until he spoke in a slightly calmer voice.
“Again, I won’t kill you. Anyone who enters this space must become my collection.
Especially someone as beautiful as you… might eventually show their abilities and become mine…”
“Perhaps.”
“Hmph, still so at ease. Alright. I’ll tell you about my abilities. Let’s see if you still remain unflustered after hearing them.”
“……”
He cleared his throat and began to explain his unique abilities.
But I deliberately blocked my senses so that I couldn’t hear anything.
’30, 29, 28…’
Not accurately, but everything he was doing now was likely a buildup to trigger his ability.
He could add me to his collection. A power he was confident enough to call extraordinary.
‘I can feel it now. I need to focus to barely sense it.’
Seeing the concentration of magic rising sharply in Bin Chi-seung and the entire space, these blabberings were either the final conditions or a precursor to it.
“The second is even more amazing than the first. In fact, this is the most essential— every time I add a girl doll, my magic and agility increase at a fixed rate—”
‘3, 2, 1.’
Whoosh──
“Wait, where did you go?! What the?!”
The intruder disappeared without a trace.
The guy who was babbling excitedly sprang up and looked around in confusion.
“Not here… Really not here? No way…! Can you just leave at will? That’s impossible!”
Bin Chi-seung was finally at the last stage of conditions needed to add the intruder to his collection.
Which meant the intruder had been gradually assimilating into the space.
But he had no clue that it has happened.
This was a crazy spatial ability where he couldn’t use any power to leave the room. How could this be?
He fully believed he was about to gain complete mastery over the situation, and his shock was beyond words.
‘I’ve heard about such abilities in the shadow realm. Moving to designated coordinates… But that shouldn’t be possible here, right?’
After all, this was a space that skirted between reality and Bin Chi-seung’s sorcery.
A place where physical coordinates shouldn’t exist.
“I don’t get it… But he can’t activate such an awesome ability consecutively. First, I need to figure out how he got in—”
In the scant few seconds after the intruder left, the Great Evil One Bin Chi-seung was thrown into a state of extreme confusion, but it was only momentary.
The next emotion was one of deflation and emptiness.
The man who had seemed to understand him was now gone.
“I wanted to be… recognized… Hehehe.”
A hollow laugh escaped.
He had prided himself on purifying the world from behind the scenes, and it turned out he just wanted it acknowledged.
“Phew— I need to reorganize this space quickly. It feels like there must be some leeway for the phrase that says you can’t leave the room to vanish immediately upon using an ability. I need to modify this.”
He was an evil man with a twisted mindset, but his talents were extraordinary.
When he has something he desires intensely, he can at least exhibit similar abilities. A gift often called genius by the world.
“I’ll need to create a space that’s closer to an impenetrable zone… but to do that, I might have to narrow down the conditions a little, huh?”
He wasn’t worried at all if the man tried to invade again before he reinforced the space.
In fact, it would be a blessing; since the conditions he satisfied earlier wouldn’t vanish.
“Just come on over. This time, I’ll throw in all the dolls and beat you to a pulp—”
[Flame Cut]
Whoosh──!
“Guh?!”
A blood-soaked great sword pierced through Bin Chi-seung’s abdomen, sending a fountain of red spraying into the air.
“This bastard is still talking. Who’s getting beat up?”
“Grrawr…! You… you bastard—”
[b][Chain of Flame][/b]
“Graahhh!”
[b][Special Strong Acid][/b]
[b][Stagnated Sneaky Drain][/b]
[b][Fireball][/b]
[b][Thunderhorn][/b]
[b][Toxic Scale][/b]
“Gwaaaah…!”
Attacks of various attributes violently clawed at him in the blink of an eye.
The strong acid that spewed from his mouth melted his already malevolent face even further, and when the flames and lightning struck, he was in so much agony that even the paralyzing poison of the toxic scale was utterly ineffective.
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