This Villain is Soft - Chapter 2
Only Noblemtl
Episode 2
The mana circuits inside the body were intact, and there was no problem in making contact with the device and sending signals.
It seems that the cell phone was damaged by the explosion.
‘Well, it’s strange that it didn’t break down when it prevented such a large explosion.’
Haon sighed, put his phone away, and headed for the exit. He had come in without permission, so he decided to get out of there for now.
As I opened the lab door, something clicked underneath.
‘what?’
When I looked down, what I saw was a woman’s body. Her face was hidden by her hair, and blood was pooling under the back of her head.
Haon closed his eyes tightly with a pale face and then opened them. That was all.
I didn’t feel nauseous or lose the strength in my legs.
Two years of war had changed the timid and fearful scientist.
‘He died not long ago.’
Ha-on, who was nervous, looked outside the door. There was no one.
‘Whoever the culprit was, he couldn’t have gotten far. Could he be a remnant of the terrorists?’
Haon paused as he tried to calm his anxiously beating heart.
‘This guy. Why does he look familiar?’
He carefully pushed away the hair that half-covered the corpse’s face.
When his bloodless face was revealed, Haon’s face turned red with shock.
“Me, me… … ?”
The dead woman had the exact same face as Haon.
Brown short hair and brown eyes like mine.
A mole under my left ear and a faint mole on my right index finger.
Even the gunshot scar on his right thigh was eerily identical.
Moreover, the name engraved on the gown the woman was wearing was ‘Eunhaon.’
‘Am I in REM sleep? Am I dreaming?’
My head didn’t work properly because of the unrealistic scene. No matter how I looked at it, the dead woman in front of me was myself.
‘It feels strange, like looking at my own dead body. But… … .’
The tight-fitting, thigh-high mini dress that ‘Eunha On’ was wearing was definitely not something I would wear.
So were the high heels, red lipstick, brightly painted fingernails, and the heavy scent of perfume and cigarettes.
‘He’s a different person from me.’
But, he has the same face as me and even the same name and job.
‘A doppelganger? Or a clone created using magic engineering?’
Haon’s gaze turned to Eunhaon’s forehead. There was one more thing that was concerning.
‘I got shot.’
There was a clear bullet mark on his forehead.
The terrorists were all magicians, so they didn’t use guns very often. Until their cell phone batteries or mana ran out.
‘I don’t know what happened, but we need to find the other people first.’
The moment I got up with that thought.
Suddenly, the corpse caught fire. It happened without any smoke or sparks.
“Huh?”
Haon, who was so surprised, took a step back. The body was instantly covered in fire.
“B, Blue! Find me a fire extinguisher!”
[λ%Ω is L/Ħ∈ɚß!]
“Eww!”
While they were running around in confusion, the corpse disappeared along with the flames that had grown in size.
There was not a speck of soot or blood left on the pure white floor.
Haon searched the place where the body had been in a daze. But the body that had disappeared did not return.
‘Have you seen the welcome?’
Just as I was doubting my eyes, a wind blew, shaking my hair.
“Oh,” I said, and when I raised my head, the lab door slid shut.
‘… … When did it open? No one came in?’
As I stood there dumbfounded by the series of incomprehensible situations, someone suddenly jumped out from the shadows next to the door.
“Wh, what, huh!”
“Hey, Doctor.”
For a moment, Haon was shocked by the unrealistic sight, but then he recognized a familiar voice and face, and his tension was relieved and he began to cry.
“Juyeol-ah!”
Haon cried as he hugged his precious childhood friend who had come to find him.
Then, with great fear, he was grabbed by the back of the neck and thrown to the floor.
“Ahh!”
Haon held his aching waist with a shocked expression.
“Hey, Joo-yeol?”
“What kind of nonsense is this?”
He patted my clothes as if he was displeased.
“Juyeol. Why, why are you like that?”
Haon, embarrassed, slowly reached out his hand and asked.
Disgust filled his black eyes, and he folded his knees and thrust the gun under Ha-on’s chin.
“Why do you keep calling me that annoying? Have you studied how to make people angry?”
Ha-on’s heart sank at the smell of gunpowder that wafted toward him.
“Hey, Dr. Eun.”
He snorted and pressed the muzzle of his gun against Haon’s chin.
“You didn’t even blink when a bullet hit your leg. Why are you suddenly acting scared?”
“Oh, no. I cried a lot back then too. Don’t you remember? Joo-yeol. I, I’m scared.”
He let out an annoyed sigh as Haon continued to babble on and on.
“What are you talking about, seriously? Did you experiment with my head? You’re acting like a beggar today.”
Haon followed him with trembling eyes as he put away his gun and got up.
‘Now that I think about it, it seemed like it came out of the shadows, but was it an illusion?’
Even if that weren’t the case, something felt off.
My childhood friend was tall and had broad shoulders, but not like that. His body, full of solid muscles, was also unfamiliar.
The man in front of him was wearing black clothes that revealed the outline of his body, and a black harness and belt.
There is a goblin pattern drawn on his chest, and a gun and sword are attached to his harness.
It was a special forces-like outfit that Juyeol would never wear.
Moreover, his affectionate and kind appearance was gone and he became unbelievably rough.
It was like a different person with the same face. Just like the ‘Eunhaon’ that had disappeared.
“You, are you perhaps Juyeol’s doppelganger?”
“F*ck. What the hell is the concept?”
“I guess that’s right. Our Juyeol doesn’t swear.”
Taang!
Before he could finish his sentence, a gunshot rang out, shattering his eardrums, and a bullet struck his ankle.
“Wow!”
Haon’s shoulders suddenly popped. He sat down in thought and slowly stepped back.
“Don’t call my name, it’s disgusting.”
As the man aimed his gun with a fierce expression, Haon clung to the wall and sobbed.
It seemed like he had just touched a button on the wall, but he had no time to pay attention when he was in front of the gun.
“Then what should I call you!”
“Just call me Ghost like you always do!”
“ghost?”
Ghost? As Haon muttered in a dazed manner, the blinds covering the walls of the lab slid up.
The previously hidden glass windows were revealed, revealing a night view of the city.
Haon looked back at the glass window as if entranced by the twinkling lights behind him.
“……uh?”
What I saw outside the window was the night view of Gimpo that I hadn’t seen in two years.
Gimpo before the war, with no collapsed buildings or smoke anywhere.
“What is this?”
But it wasn’t exactly the same as the Gimpo I remembered. The atmosphere was also a bit different.
In particular, Gimpo Technical College, one of Gimpo’s landmarks, is gone. Instead, the Kwon Young Rehabilitation Center stands proudly in its place.
This wasn’t a city I knew.
As Ha-on was slowly recalling the things he had experienced, a lightning-like realization struck his mind.
‘Dimensional shift!’
I staggered to my feet, not even realizing that blood was dripping from my waist.
I never thought this place would be another dimension. It had to be that way.
It was possible to gather and use residual mana that flowed naturally from other dimensions, but there were no successful cases of directly moving to another dimension.
From the beginning, there were many opinions that it was an impossible experiment, and dozens of projects failed before even being attempted.
But now, for the first time, GIT’s magician has reached another universe.
Haon shook his shoulders in excitement and held his phone high. The clicking sound behind him didn’t even reach his ears.
“There’s someone on top of Mana!”
Taang!
“Ahhhh!”
Haon was startled once again by the bullet lodged in his ankle and stamped his feet.
“Why, why again… … !”
When I turned around with a sad face, the man was glaring at me with a bewildered look.
“It looks like your head is injured, but why is blood coming from your side?”
“I am…….”
Haon, facing the man’s face, was speechless.
When I realized that this was an unfamiliar place and saw him, strangely enough, I felt a mixture of relief and emptiness.
The man in front of her was probably Woo Joo-yeol, but it wasn’t the ‘Ju-yeol’ she knew.
Looking at the large signs outside the window, the name of this city, which was similar to Gimpo but different, did not even seem to be Gimpo.
I lost my home and my friends in an instant. My heart ached.
“It’s annoying. I didn’t come here to argue, so stop talking nonsense and just talk.”
His best friend’s face, smiling gently, overlapped his crooked expression and then suddenly collapsed.
“What, what?”
“I definitely brought the stuff.”
Juyeol took out a black leather pouch from his bosom and opened it.
Haon’s eyes widened as a fist-sized golden sphere, shining like the moon, was revealed.
‘It’s a mana core!’
What he was holding was the very mana core that the terrorists were after and the magicians were guarding.
It was a natural energy source where the mana contained in the air was condensed into a fist-sized jewel that could be used in various places.
“You said you would tell me when I found the Awakening Orb. Tell me now.”
Here, it seemed that the mana core was called an awakening sphere.
Haon desperately needed that Awakening Orb. He needed it to quickly fix his broken magic tool, the cell phone, and to easily synchronize dimensional information.
But the ‘Eunhaon’ he was looking for was not me.
She hesitated and then said softly.
“I am Eunhaon, but I am not the ‘Eunhaon’ you know.”