Villain Hides His True Colors

I checked the information of my newly inherited skill.

Classification: Ability

Grade: D

Description: Changes the body’s state of matter.

*Elementary: Liquid

As expected, the inherited skill had also reset.

Just like when I had first acquired the skill, I could only change my body into liquid.

I activated the skill to test.

*Liquid

Along with a stimulating sensation, my whole body began to shake.

My face was slowly flowing down like a Salvador Dali painting when I looked at myself in the mirror.

Hmm…I think it could be considered a success based on my appearance.

It was too long ago that I had used Phase Change when I was still a beginner, so it was necessary to get an accurate understanding of its limitations.

Looking around, I saw an old kitchen knife. I immediately picked it up and slit my wrist.

Shish–

The knife passed through my body without any resistance as if it was cutting tofu. And, the area where the knife had passed was intact without a drop of blood.

Success.

Fortunately, even at the elementary level, this level of skill seemed practical.

In fact, the reason why I had chosen this skill was because of its advantage of ignoring most of these kinds of physical attacks.

When it comes to most games, the priority should always be to protect oneself first.

It was a waste to throw away the other skills, but what I needed right now was the right means to protect this fragile body.

And if it was Phase Change, it’ll be a good stepping stone to carry me to the end.

But for the time being, I didn’t think I could use this skill as much as I used to.

Perhaps because of my low mental strength, I had only used it for a while before my head already felt dizzy and tired.

I guess my current limit was about 10 minutes.

Has this ever happened?

It had been a very long time since I felt this sensation, so the current situation itself felt refreshing.

It was fun like this, but…I shouldn’t leave it as it was.

After quickly releasing the skill, I opened my status window to distribute my stats.

Body: 0.59

Dexterity: 1.35

Mana: 0.18

Spirit: 1.12

*2 Fragments of Growth

Looking at my poor stats, I felt like I was going to sigh again. It was amazing I had survived so far with these insignificant stats.

Well, I didn’t have much of a choice now.

In the end, whatever the skill was, it could only be used if my stamina could support it.

I invested both Fragments of Growth I had into Body.

Body: 0.59 -> 1.21 (+0.62)

Dexterity: 1.35

Mana: 0.18

Spirit: 1.12

*0 Fragment of Growth

Oh?

Maybe I was lucky, but the stat rose more than I had expected. At best, I had expected it to rise by 0.4 – 0.5. However, this was almost equivalent to 3 fragments.

I took off my clothes and looked at my reflection in the mirror.

The body, which used to be so skinny where even the ribs showed, had suddenly changed to a slim body with quite fine muscles. In addition, my eye level had strangely increased, perhaps because I had grown a few centimeters taller.

I was still skinny, but…if it was this much, I was certain I was as strong as a normal adult.

After finishing everything, I took a big bite of the sandwich I had just warmed up.

“What!? What’s this? What’s wrong with the taste?”

The sandwich tasted like garbage.

No. When I was running away as a villain, the food I had picked up from the trash was better than this.

Opening the bread, I saw thin tofu instead of ham or beef. Did he buy a vegetarian sandwich by mistake? I guess it was bound to taste bad. 

“Why did my father put this in the refrigerator?”

It looks like I’ll need to go out and buy my own food.

The moment I tossed the sandwich at my father’s corpse and was about to rummage through his pocket–

Beep, beep–

Suddenly, I heard the sound of the door code being pressed at the entrance.

And without time for me to hide the body, the door opened and a high-pitch sound of high heels echoed through the house.

Clack–

Clack–

Strapless blouse that revealed the shoulders and slim legs that go well with the miniskirt.

And…

Sharp teeth and fur covering the whole body.

A wolf dressed in provocative clothes was walking into the corridor, wagging her tail.

Feoria.

The only child of the Turbak Brotherhood’s boss, and the beast girlfriend that my father was dating.

“Ahjussi~ I’m here!”

I made eye contact with her, but she looked for my father first as if she didn’t care about me.

However, the answer she was hoping for will never come.

On any other day, my father would have come out first, but today there was only cold silence.

“…Ahjussi?”

Did she detect something was amiss? She looked around the house with a puzzled look.

In a little bit, a sharp scream burst out of her mouth.

“Ahh! A-ahjussi!”

She threw away her purse and ran in front of my father’s corpse.

“Ah, no! Ahjussi! Don’t die!”

She became frantic as she tried to stop the bleeding and did CPR. For a while she was at a loss for words and could only wail.

After an unknown amount of time, she slowly stood up and asked me in a cold voice.

“…Who did this?”

The breath she exhaled chilled my skin. Was this what it felt like to stand in front of a beast?

In front of her anger, I started acting with all my heart.

“I don’t know…I was in the basement when I heard gunshots…heuk!”

Soon, I covered my face with both hands. I couldn’t help it because I thought I would smile from the cheesy acting.

But my acting was fairly good, right?

I was hoping she would give me a high score for my acting, but I didn’t think that was going to happen.

“…Lie.”

She approached me with a growl. Stepping backward, I replied.

“N-no I didn’t! Why would I lie? Trust me. I-I’m also sad about my father’s death. How can you…” 

“Smell.”

“What?”

“Your small body smells like gunpowder.”

“…”

Feoria looked convinced of everything. And soon I noticed the hidden claws on her feet were pushing out little by little.

She seemed to have already made up her mind to kill me, whether I was the culprit or not.

“Ah, um…That’s…”

I was certain of that, and I didn’t really have anything to say either.

“Haha, you caught me.”

I smiled awkwardly at her.

Anyway, wolves were also dogs. There was no use trying to deceive their nose.

“…I’ll chew you up and eat your bones!”

She rushed at me with her lightning fast movements.

* * * * * * * * * *

Since young, Feoria had always felt that she was different.

“Dad, why do I have so much hair?”

She hated the fur on her body.

“Dad! I told you I don’t like meat on the table!”

Unlike beasts who traditionally preferred meat, she was a vegetarian who enjoyed eating salads.

Because of that, she had always agonized over her identity.

Why was I born like this…?

How nice would it have been to be born as a smooth-skinned human like the ones on TV, she thought.

Then she won’t be teased for being a beast while walking down the street, and she won’t be kicked out of restaurants for being hairy.

“Oh, my~ My cute Feoria. Were you worried about such a thing? But it’s natural for us beasts to eat meat.”

However, no one understood her feelings. All the people around her were either loyal to her father or a beast like herself.

***

[ Translator – Yasi ]

[ Proofreader – Karane ]

Everyone just told her that her thinking was wrong.

But then one day, a man came under her father’s wing.

And he said the following.

“Vegetarian? Well, as long as you like it. I also like tofu. I’ve been eating it a lot ever since I was released from prison.”

For the first time, someone had recognized that she was ‘different.’

From then on, she was unable to keep the thought of the man out of her head.

Strangely enough, whenever she thought of him, the tip of her ear would flare up and her tail would unconsciously flap.

As she went through puberty, such feelings became deeper and deeper. She spent each day imagining their relationship.

But…

“A-ahjussi…Who is that woman?”

“Oh, this woman here? She’s Helena. Someone who I’ve been living with for a while. Hey! Hurry up and say hello to the girl!”

“…Hello.”

He had chosen a woman other than herself.

With soft, hairless skin, and a more beautiful appearance than any woman she had ever seen.

She wanted to immediately tear that pretty face with her claws. But she couldn’t do that.

Mister would hate me…

So she endured and waited. She carried on her days like usual while blaming herself.

Then…After a long wait, an opportunity finally came to her.

The day when mister Choi went out on a faraway business trip for a transaction between cartels.

She approached Helena and whispered sweetly into her small, pretty ear.

“Don’t you want to live freely?”

Helena hesitated. However, she accepted the offer shortly after when Feoria revealed that she was the boss’ daughter.

She helped her as promised by giving her the password to the safe and the location of the hidden drugs. She even made a fake ID card for her to enter the city.

Helena thanked her several times before running away from the slums.

Glancing at her back, she called mister Choi.

“Uh, Ahjussi? I think you should come back right away. Ah, it’s nothing special. Just, the woman that was with you has stolen the organization’s money and ran away.”

Helena’s escape route was already well known, so it wasn’t that difficult to catch her.

She died like that, and Feoria was able to bond with mister Choi.

Anyway…

There was one more thing that she didn’t like.

That kid…

The gloomy boy who always looked at her with a corpse-like gaze.

She could feel the traces of Helena every time she saw his purple eyes. She had to erase the last remnant of her.

I’ll have to deal with him someday.

She waited for another opportunity. She was already an experienced hunter, and a hunter was used to waiting.

How many years had it been? She had finally found a good justification to deal with the kid.

“Ahjussi, you know the mole that we discovered recently, right? I’m talking about the ‘Hairy’ guy.”

“Yes. Even if you didn’t tell me, I would have taken care of that bastard…The problem is that since he’s a police officer, one wrong move and I’ll land in jail to rot for several years.”

“I mean, I have a good idea. Do you want to hear it?”

She decided to coax mister Choi and use the child as a weapon.

It would be great if everything went well and the police officer was removed, but it was even better if things didn’t go well and the child was beaten and killed by Hairy.

Wasn’t today the day of the plan?

It had been a really long wait.

However, everything would end today. Then she can enjoy living with mister Choi who she had wanted so much.

There should be results by now, right?

She opened the front door in anticipation of the outcome. But… 

“Haha, I got caught.”

Her beloved man had become a cold corpse, and smiling in front of her was the abominable little boy.

She looked down at the corpse.

There were so many holes here and there that it was hard to guess how many times he was shot. This wasn’t done in retaliation between cartels.

…How painful it must have been.

His inaudible scream lingered in her ears.

She recalled what her father had told her.

[Humans call us beast animals, but this world is full of people who are worse than animals.]

And in front of her now, there was a human waste that would even kill the one who had given birth to him.

Today, for the first time in her life, she felt grateful for having been born a beast.

She had been given claws to tear up trash like this.

“…I’ll chew on your bones!”

*Berserk

Her heart began to beat faster than ever.

Blood pumped through every blood vessel in her body like crazy and the dormant wildness within her was awakened.

As her vision turned red, she felt as if every vein in her body was about to burst. And in the red colored world, she ran like a ray of light.

“Die!!!”

It could be said that the claws she took out for the first time in her life were sharper than any that belonged to a predator.

The force of a lion’s front paws was about 3 tons, and now the force of her claws were comparable to that.

In front of her stood the boy without any reaction.

Pak–!

Facing an angry beast, his skull was crushed like tofu.

Crushed debris scattered everywhere.

Time that seemed to have froze returned to normal.

“Heuk…Heuk…”

The moment she exhaled, the boy’s body fell to the floor with its head missing.

Her revenge was over, but her beloved man was gone forever.

She felt empty realizing that fact as tears flowed down.

“Why…why…?”

She grabbed the corpse and shook it.

“You promised me that we would live a happy life together…So why are you lying here!?”

If she had plucked up her courage a little earlier so he wouldn’t have met that woman.

“If I had…This wouldn’t have happened.”

Next to the man’s corpse was a sandwich with a bite taken from it. It was the half-eaten tofu sandwich she had made a few days ago.

He had said he would keep it in the refrigerator because he couldn’t eat it and that it would be a waste to throw away.

“Fool! That’s why I told you to eat it right away! You didn’t even finish it…Get up quickly! Get up and eat!”

While sobbing, a child’s voice was heard from behind her back.

“Oh, you made that sandwich? It wasn’t delicious at all.”

“?!”

She looked back with her fur standing on ends. The boy she had killed moments ago, the one with his head missing, was standing there.

“Oh? Are you crying now?”

The boy was smiling as if teasing a crying child.

What’s going on here? Is it a ghost?

She swung her claws at the small boy who was approaching her little by little.

But…

“Wh-what are you?!”

Little by little, her claws were sucked in and it became embedded in the boy’s body. It was as if her arm had been inserted into sticky mud.

With a creepy sensation, she hurriedly tried to push it out with her other hand, but instead, both hands became stuck.

Even with her arms stuck in the boy’s body, he was still smiling.

“L-let me go! Let go of me!”

The more she struggled, the more she was sucked into what she felt like was a swamp. She couldn’t run away.

The boy’s face was getting closer and closer. The distance was close enough for their lips to touch at any moment.

She could see the boy’s purple eyes through his covered hair.

Eyes that were empty like a cold corpse. And the moment she peeked at the brutality beyond that, for the first time in her life, she felt fear.

Her frightened face was reflected in the boy’s transparent eyes.

The slum villains who were known for their wickedness, and her father, who people feared, compared to the boy she was facing now, all of them were like a joke you tell children.

This bastard…

It wasn’t like this just a few days ago, so what had happened since then?

The boy opened his mouth.

“Noona, didn’t you say that you were going to chew me up?”

(TN: Noona means sister, older female friend, older female, etc…)

“Th-that…No, I’ve never said that”

“No, you don’t have to refuse.”

“W-wait a minute! Please! Ah, Please…”

“Eat up. Noona.”

The boy’s face drew closer. Through her mouth and nostrils, unidentified flesh began to seep in.

“Keuk! Ha! Heuk!”

It didn’t stop and continued to pour in.

S-stop!

She screamed, but only nonsensical babbling noises came out of her mouth. She felt herself suffocating. 

Her nose hurt like the time she was drowning, and her stomach also gradually swelled.

At some point…everything began to feel comfortable.

She thought, wasn’t there a saying that people who were on their last breath as they drowned, the secretion of hormones would make them feel better?

Along with the feeling of gradually becoming drowsy, she saw a cozy and bright light.

Ahjussi…

And then her world turned black.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Ack! Pftpft!”

I released my skill and turned back to normal after unintentionally helping Feoria wash her intestines.

There were unknown pieces of food stuck all over my body. Looking at my pathetic appearance, I sighed without realizing it.

“I’m never doing this again.”

A peculiar animal smell permeated my whole body.

I looked at Feoria’s body lying on the floor.

Perhaps because there was no apparent trauma, it looked like she had fallen asleep.

“Wait, or is she pretending?”

She wasn’t breathing at the moment, but you never know.

Bang–!

I put a bullet between her forehead. And just like that…

Ding–!

[ Level has risen. ] 

[ Gained a Fragment of Growth. ] 

[ You’ve reached level 4. ]

[ Inventory function unlocked. ]

As expected, I shouldn’t let my guard down until I see the level up message. There was no way to check my experience through the status window, so it was better to make it clear in this regard.

After confirming her death, I searched her pocket freely and looted the items.

There was no cash and only cards in her purse. I couldn’t believe she didn’t have cash when she was the daughter of the Turbak Brotherhood’s boss.

I was going to need money to live in the city from now on…

In the previous round I had killed Hairy and looted the cash, but now that I see it, my father and Feoria didn’t have much cash.

Should I just go rob Hairy one more time?

The moment I was agonizing over it, I heard another notification.

Ding–!

[Challenge – Clean Up the Bandits]

Condition: Assassinate Yifret, the boss of the Turbak Brotherhood.

Time: 1 Week.

Reward: 1x Random Box (Low).

“Oh!”

It had been a long time since I had seen a Challenge. Perhaps because I had become too strong in the past, I had forgotten about its existence.

Challenges were a must if I could do them.

There was no penalty for giving up or failing a Challenge. It was just difficult to complete because the difficulty of the task itself was high.

Still, it was better to try if possible.

On top of that, I was in need of money…

The timing was just right.

He was probably a D-Rank villain, right?

Honestly, it was almost impossible to secretly assassinate a superhuman with the power I have now, but…

Well, does it have to have no witnesses for it to be an assassination?

After sitting down for a while and devising a strategy, I left the house with the items I needed in my inventory.

“When you’re a beginner, catching wolves and bandits is the norm.”

I didn’t feel so bad about being a beginner now.