Chapter 150 – I Also Have Loyalty (3)

The bloody battle under the moon had ended.

“…Oh God, I’m going to die.”

Choi Seol-Ah let out a groan of pain as she collapsed to the ground. Normally, she complained about everything, but this time, she was completely sincere.

To bite Reaper’s hand, she had squeezed out every last drop of energy she had left. Now, she couldn’t even move her fingers.

She examined herself. Her body was a complete mess. Her lips were split, her right eye was swollen a deep purple, and her limbs were so battered that her joints seemed to bend in unnatural directions.

Even so, the corner of her lips twitched slightly. A strange euphoria flooded her. She had been literally on the verge of death, so if not now, when would she allow herself to feel relieved?

She slowly lifted her eyelids. Before her, the trail of the massacre still stretched out, the blood barely beginning to dry.

Corpses were scattered everywhere, their eyes empty and lifeless. Each one had knives embedded in their vital points—like dartboards—the forehead, the solar plexus, the lower abdomen.

Among villains, there was a saying: if you were marked by Vendetta, you only had two choices. Either you took your own life, or you died tortured by them. But in the end, both options led to the same destination—death.

And yet, they had been annihilated in an instant. They had unleashed every kind of combined spell in an all-out assault, but they were wiped out in less than a minute—by a single person.

With her less swollen eye, Choi Seol-Ah looked at Kang Geom-Ma. The moonlight shone behind him, giving him an almost divine aura. He looked like an angel… or a demon disguised as a human.

Tears welled up in Choi Seol-Ah’s eyes. To be honest, she had considered begging for her life. Maybe, if she confessed everything, they might let her live—she had harbored a tiny hope.

But in the end, she had kept her mouth shut. Her instincts, sharpened by years of desperate struggle for survival, told her that if she wanted to live, the best thing was to say nothing. And that decision had saved her in the final moment.

‘In the end, my choice was the right one.’

Hehe— Choi Seol-Ah let out a small laugh, but suddenly, a shiver ran down her spine.

She turned her gaze to the side.

One of the villains, still holding a knife, was staggering with an unfocused stare. His eyes looked like those of a dead fish—clouded, lifeless.

Choi Seol-Ah’s eyes widened in horror.

“Kyah!”

She scrambled backward, crawling across the ground. It didn’t matter that she was a villain—her survival instincts screamed that this was not normal.

A corpse moving on its own!

She had never heard of such sinister magic before.

Could it be one of those forbidden arts that the Villain Union was secretly researching? Some kind of necromancy?

If that was the case, then they had truly crossed all boundaries.

Whatever it was, it sent chills down her spine.

Curled up at a distance, Choi Seol-Ah trembled like a leaf.

At that moment, Kang Geom-Ma approached the corpse, his knife still dripping blood.

Choi Seol-Ah screamed desperately.

“W-wait, Kang Geom-Ma-nim! The corpse is moving! It might be dark magic! You shouldn’t get close!”

“Dark magic?”

“I heard a rumor a long time ago… Supposedly, the Villain Union was developing its own magic instead of using conventional elements. This could be one of those things!”

Kang Geom-Ma sighed. He didn’t like that his special ability was being mistaken for black magic.

‘Well… I guess from her perspective, it makes sense.’

After all, his ability did resemble necromancy a bit too much.

Without a word, Kang Geom-Ma approached the corpse.

The villain’s glassy eyes and bluish skin were even more unsettling up close. His mouth was frozen in a grimace of horror, dried blood stuck to his lips.

Definitely creepy.

But Kang Geom-Ma didn’t care. This man had been a villain. He felt no guilt in using his corpse.

It wasn’t worth hesitating or feeling remorse. From the beginning, he had accepted that this world was cruel.

To survive, he had to be more ruthless than anyone in the future.

As long as his ability could reduce the casualties of his allies, he didn’t care about manipulating the corpses of his enemies.

Having reached that conclusion, he withdrew his knife. In that instant, the corpse collapsed to the ground, lifeless once more.

It was surely in hell now, along with the others.

Choi Seol-Ah watched everything in silence, her eyes filled with uncertainty.

‘What did I just see? What was that? How…?’

Her mind swirled with questions without answers.

Kang Geom-Ma walked toward her.

Choi Seol-Ah felt her breath catch.

Her body, exhausted from the torture, no longer responded.

Kang Geom-Ma stopped in front of her and pulled out his knife.

Buzz—

The hairs on her arms stood on end.
Choi Seol-Ah squeezed her eyes shut. But in the next moment, the heavy weight on her body disappeared.

She hesitantly opened one eye. The iron chains binding her had been cut cleanly. She was free to move.

‘How did he cut them?’

She knew they weren’t ordinary chains. Vendetta had reinforced them with restrictive magic.

Yet Kang Geom-Ma had sliced through them effortlessly.

Still confused, she looked up at him.

“Take off your shirt.”

“……?”

Choi Seol-Ah swallowed hard in shock.

Her bruised face turned bright red. It was so sudden. She simply lifted her eyes to him.

She saw Kang Geom-Ma staring down at her with those deeply cold eyes. His voice came again, firm and insistent.

Choi Seol-Ah held her breath, her already swollen face flushing even more.

“I won’t say it twice. Hurry up and take it off.”

It was a direct order.

“Alright, alright, alright! Wait a minute! Sir, it’s not that I don’t want to because you’re my lord, but, ah, I’m still not ready…! I’m all beaten up and—”

Kang Geom-Ma frowned and pointed at her shoulder with the tip of his knife.

“Your shoulder is dislocated. If you don’t fix it, you’re going to end up with a useless arm. But if you’d rather have only one functional arm, suit yourself.”

“Ah…”

Choi Seol-Ah let out a deep sigh of relief—then immediately lowered her head in a deep bow.

With her forehead pressed to the ground, she spoke in a hushed voice.

“I sincerely apologize for my impure thoughts, My Lord!”

“…Stop calling me that.”

As someone from 21st-century Earth, the weird title of lord was way too uncomfortable.

“Then… should I call you Master…?”

“No, forget it. Just call me as you always have.”

Kang Geom-Ma sighed.

“Come on, hurry up. We don’t have much time.”

Choi Seol-Ah hesitated before whispering timidly.

“…Could you let me stay like this for just a moment longer?”

“……”

Kang Geom-Ma was at a loss for words. Out of nowhere, she had bowed her head and asked to stay like that a little longer. It wasn’t like she was doing a New Year’s greeting bow or something.

Kang Geom-Ma was about to walk away but soon nodded. Maybe the aftereffects of the torture had caught up to her.

Above all, if her emergency treatment was delayed any further, Choi Seol-Ah would definitely need a coffin soon. It was surprising she was still breathing at all.

‘Look at that, she’s lying face down, but her body is still trembling.’

However, it wasn’t pain that made Choi Seol-Ah’s body shake. It was embarrassment.

It had been years since she felt like this. Maybe… ever since she became a villain.

…Meanwhile, Choi Seol-Ah, still with her face pressed against the ground, tried desperately to calm her embarrassment and her wildly racing heart.

***

Crack!

[The Blessing of Regeneration has manifested.]

“Kyaaah! Wait, wait, stop for a second! It hurts too much! I feel like I’m going to die! No, seriously, I’m going to die!”

“I’m almost done, stay still. Bite down on a piece of that broken chain if you have to. If you bite your tongue off, I won’t be able to stick it back on, so just shut your mouth.”

“Agh… Wait, seriously, just give me a brea—!”

Crack!

[The Blessing of Transfer has manifested.]

“…Gaaah…”

Choi Seol-Ah’s eyes rolled back. She fell onto her back and writhed on the ground as if she were scrubbing the floor with her body. Her face was covered in tears and snot, but at least she no longer seemed to be in life-threatening danger.

After finishing the makeshift surgery, I opened and closed my hand a few times. Something felt off. Her recovery rate had slowed down significantly. Now, it was barely better than that of a growing teenager.

It was strange. Even if the Fifth Army Corps Commander, her mana provider, was no longer around, this was still odd. Her eyes even seemed to have regained some light, almost as if she was becoming human again.

‘…Could she be recovering the humanity she sold to the Commander?’

Once the commotion settled a bit, I asked her,

“Leaving that aside, how did you end up here?”

“Oh, well…”

Still in pain, Choi Seol-Ah began to recount what had happened. Her story was long, but it could be summed up in a single sentence. Most of it was just complaints anyway.

The essential part was that the corpses lying cold on the ground were an assassination squad sent by the Villain Alliance to eliminate her for her betrayal.

I looked around. Corpses scattered across the floor, still radiating the heat of battle. I clicked my tongue in disgust.

‘No wonder they fought so well—they were from Vendetta.’

I knew who they were. Vendetta was the Villain Alliance’s retaliation unit. In the game, they even had a confrontation with Leon at one point.

I didn’t remember exactly what had triggered the conflict. They had probably done something evil, as always.

‘This is getting annoying.’

I frowned. This wasn’t the first time I had turned a villain into a corpse, but Vendetta was a different case. To be more precise, the problem wasn’t them—it was what was behind them.

The Villain Alliance. They appeared as the main enemy faction halfway through the story when Leon was already in his second year. Simply put, they were the mid-boss of Miracle Blessing M.

The turning point in their conflict with Leon was… when he killed Lei Shen.

Lei Shen, the leader of Undertaker.

In the original story, her death was the trigger that ignited the real battle against the Villain Alliance.

It’s worth mentioning that Miracle Blessing M had multiple narrative routes where the story changed based on the player’s choices.

However, there were certain events that never changed—the so-called “immutable checkpoints.”

These were events directly tied to the game’s endings.

One of them was the hunt for Lei Shen, after she had turned into a villain.

Her death was the spark that set the Villain Alliance ablaze.

And the prologue of that story began with the appearance of Vendetta.

…But now that I think about it, I was the one who killed Lei Shen. There was a variation in the story where she was used as a vessel for the Fifth Army Corps Commander, Agor, but she was still Lei Shen.

‘Could it be that what happened on Avalon Island accelerated the original story…?’

The deeper I sank into thought, the darker my expression became. Noticing my grim look, Choi Seol-Ah, visibly anxious, spoke cautiously.

“M-my lord… Don’t worry about whether the Villain Alliance has marked you because of me. Now that everything is out in the open, we could take this opportunity to get away from the academy for a while. Well…”

I turned my gaze to Choi Seol-Ah. Even though she had a foolish smile on her lips, her eyes told a different story. They trembled with unease.

“Choi Seol-Ah.”

At the sound of her name, she, who had been murmuring with a pale face, responded immediately.

“Y-Yes, My Lord!”

I relaxed my expression. I recalled the moment she had bitten the gunman’s hand.

Despite being completely immobilized, she had lashed out like a guard dog protecting its home.

She could have stayed still and pretended to be dead, but instead, she chose to cooperate with me.

Maybe, in some way, she had developed some attachment toward me.

It was strange for someone so obsessed with survival to take such an action.

Maybe she had an ulterior motive.

But that was exactly why I couldn’t discard her. You keep your allies close… and your enemies even closer.

Besides, the conflict with the Villain Alliance was practically inevitable.

When that time came, Choi Seol-Ah’s role would be crucial.

There was a long silence.

She looked at me with tension, waiting for my response.

Finally, I spoke.

“Stay in the academy, just like before.”

“…But if I stay.”

Her voice wavered with uncertainty.

I shook my head.

“If the Villain Alliance has marked you as a target, you know better than anyone that they’ll kill you no matter where you go. And from what I saw earlier, tracking my number is only a matter of time.”

“……”

“To be honest with you, think carefully. Is there a safer place than Joaquin Academy? Besides, someone as obsessed with life as you—since when do you care so much about me?”

“I-I’m telling the truth!”

“Enough.”

Since she had gone as far as to call me Lord and treat me like her lord, I might as well make use of it.

“You have a lot of work to do by my side.”