I'm Not Your Dad, I'm a Villain - Chapter 85

Chapter 85

Disdain for the Weak (2)

A blunder…

She couldn’t even entertain such a thought.

The opponent knew nothing about her.

Because she had erased her existence from the world through ‘His’ power.

Though she had left the organization, she trusted His power enough to never have expected this outcome.

“Edmund McCoy…!!”

But the situation had already escalated, and even now, her strength was fading.

That realization turned her cold rational revenge into desperate urgency, and her weakened body began to rise fueled by sheer determination.

-Bzzzt!!

But then, a searing pain erupted from deep within her body.

“Ahhhhh!!!”

It was as if thousands of parasites were gnawing on her insides.

Her entire nervous system felt like it was being torn apart, and eventually, she collapsed to the ground.

Even while writhing on the floor, she screamed in agony.

“Uh, ugh…”

As she neared her physical limits and her screams subsided, blood oozed from every orifice on her face, yet she was still breathing.

Yes, a person doesn’t die from just this. McCoy was certain of that.

He had long completed experiments to determine how much this device needed to be used to kill someone.

“Talk.”

If the device worked, she wouldn’t even be able to move a finger, let alone use her power.

With her barely clinging to life, McCoy removed her mask and gripped her face with his rough, wrinkled hand, pulling her close.

“Talk now… Who are you? Who perfected your power? Who completed the results I had pursued and revealed them to the world before me?!”

Multi-Gift was the culmination of his lifetime of research.

But even the versions spread in the underworld were not the finished product.

They merely supplemented other abilities… That was far from what he sought.

What he sought was a perfect fusion of multiple abilities, bending existing physical laws to appear as if they had been completely twisted.

An omnipotent power overwhelming everyone it faced; that was his true pursuit.

“Never.”

But Seolhwa refused to reveal the truth.

“I will never forgive you.”

This man must know nothing.

He must die unaware, and the truth tied to him must be revealed later for her revenge to be complete.

She needed to show the world that evil born from justice despises and seeks to destroy it.

Her story had to end that way.

“Oh, yes. Those eyes.”

McCoy met her eyes, burning with hatred, with an emotion ironically called joy.

“Is that why you sought me out? Because your power began with me?”

Though he knew nothing, he could see traces of his research in her.

Though he didn’t recognize it as his achievement.

Seeing the results come to him, after pouring his life into this research, he felt a sense of gratification.

“Yes, someone must have secretly continued my research and applied it to people like you. You must resent being experimented on without knowing anything.”

“That’s… nonsense…”

“But I am truly glad. Even if not by my hands, someone completed the remnants of my research!”

His research had been publicly discredited, labeled a failure because it yielded no results.

Yet, continuing his research in a limited capacity, the perfect result, having investigated the traces, had come to meet him directly.

Though the research itself didn’t bear fruit, the being of evil had returned to his side… To McCoy, it was an ‘opportunity.’

“I was… not wrong.”

Yes, it was something the avenger never wanted to see.

That her existence brought him hope was something that must never happen.

‘No, I can’t…’

Toward the enraptured McCoy, Seolhwa reached out with her hand, squeezing out her remaining strength.

‘Not this way, not so futilely…’

Just a little more.

If she could at least touch him, exercise her power unnoticed…

-Thud!!

A sharp pain struck her abdomen. Her body flew through the air, crashing into the wall and collapsing.

As blood filled her mouth again.

Approaching her weakened body wasn’t McCoy but his follower.

“Vanguard, that’s enough.”

A voice called out before the fist could land.

Unable to ignore the voice, the man withdrew his hand and turned his masked face back to McCoy.

“She is the perfect work I have longed for, the one that I could never complete. I appreciate your concern, but do not handle her too roughly.”

He could forgive a single act of violence.

As long as she was alive, her gift wouldn’t be lost. McCoy, interested in her gift rather than her as a villain, didn’t care about her pain and resentment.

“What do you intend to do with her?”

Vanguard quietly asked McCoy.

To a follower of justice, she deserved to die, but he owed his path to the man before him.

“Once preparations are complete, I will dismantle her body and examine every part. I will extract everything I can.”

Even if the act was brutal, he would comply.

He, too, ultimately acted for the greater good, even if the methods were twisted.

“I wish to transfer all I can to a righteous person… Vanguard, I am glad you volunteered for the new procedure. It’s fortunate… No, lucky she came here.”

Believing that.

Believing firmly it was a path for justice, he prepared to accept the power bestowed upon him.

“So, please protect her during the preparation. She will be the sacrifice to create a perfect superhuman exceeding Justice.”

Leaving to prepare, Edmund McCoy exited.

He would likely use his authority as an Association executive to distort and report the current events.

Despite the fall from grace, he could still do that.

“Unforgivable…”

Mutters escaped her lips as if refusing to acknowledge reality.

“Unforgivable, never…”

But even that was just a mumble from an unconscious state.

Vanguard, watching silently, then grabbed her robe and walked into the darkness of the laboratory.

And…

***

“The executive who took over Hell Scout is from the Association.”

I was hearing all these facts from the person I was grabbing by the collar.

“Well, even as an executive, he has almost no power now. Ten years ago, he was a promising researcher… As you know, the Association has a lot of dirty laundry. I found out while investigating for Seolhwa, the Association did a lot of messed-up things behind the scenes.”

Even without exaggeration, tens of thousands of orphans were disposed of under them.

Despite such a huge cost, they had no significant results. To cover that up, they publicly blamed all the problems on one executive.

Yes, it’s a very predictable story.

Even after his downfall, he couldn’t give up on forbidden research and continued secretly with the underworld.

“Hell Scout would have been a very tempting enterprise for such a person. When I was there, it was the leading place for body modification.”

Anatomy had managed the modifications for the organization’s members.

The Rank-Up that temporarily augmented gift power.

The new stockholder who took over Anatomy’s place had simply repurposed the Association’s horrific experimental remnants.

Isn’t it funny? An executive of the Association, short on funds, sells his research to villains.

“Well, it wouldn’t have happened if Seolhwa hadn’t escaped from that lab.”

And he said it all nonchalantly.

The truth of the situation.

As if it had nothing to do with him.

“Don’t you find it funny too? How they’re obsessively researching, forgetting the ‘only successful experiment’ that vanished thanks to the Boss’s power…”

-Thud!!

Disgusted, I punched him in the face.

Anatomy, bleeding from his nose, fell, and I pulled him back up by his collar.

“Why…”

I couldn’t hold back.

He knew everything yet said nothing to her or me.

Knowing it, he stayed by my side all night.

Just drinking and laughing at the news.

“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me something so important…!!”

Why did he go to such lengths?

“Why should I?”

He answered calmly, wiping the blood from his lips with his hand.

As if he felt no guilt for his actions.

“What…?”

His unexpected answer left me speechless, but he continued.

“She’s not our ally anymore, so why should I care if she lives or dies?”

Because she abandoned the organization’s ideals and became a stranger?

No, that couldn’t be the reason. He wasn’t someone who operated in shades of gray.

If he had pushed her aside, he wouldn’t have interacted with her at all.

There was clearly malice in his actions.

“She caused us a lot of trouble by staying alive. We both had headaches with other villains on the ship, and the Association will now use this to justify interfering in our lives.”

Couldn’t he have prevented this by telling us…

If he wasn’t a villain, I might have argued that.

“So calm down, friend. You found her disgusting too, didn’t you?”

But as a villain, I understood.

His disgust wasn’t at the scale of the event or the victims, but at her mindset.

“Her sudden, unplanned massacre isn’t Ouroboros’s style. She even walked away as if it was nothing despite her name being on the line…”

Not only did she break from the organization after one defeat, but she also walked a completely opposite path she had once denied.

Everything she did from that decision disgusted him.

So he had been watching her inevitable downfall from the start.

“It’s all her own fault.”

“Shut up, you damn bastard!!”

But all his so-called reasons sounded like pure malice to me.

He had a chance.

Unlike me, he could have stopped her. Unlike me, he had the means and information, but he chose not to.

Yet he said she deserved it.

Why did he stay by my side, resigned to the outcome?

“And you’re also mistaken about something else.”

The reason was obvious.

He might have forgotten about me, but I had watched him for over ten years.

“You think you can mess with me?”

His nature hadn’t changed, as the past few months had shown.

I knew I disgusted him too.

-Crack, snap.

His arm twisted harshly.

-Screech!!

The monster he controlled bit into me, staining the room with blood.

End of Chapter