Villain: Your Heroines Were Delicious

Chapter 190: Chapter 55

“What… What is that!?”

Taro’s voice cracked, the words barely escaping his throat as he stared at the abomination as it unfurled in the cramped, dimly lit lobby.

It was a monster beyond comprehension…no, this wasn’t just a monster, it was a violation of reality, a mass of oil-slick darkness that seemed to draw the very light out of the fluorescent bulbs overhead!

As Taro stared at it in fear, Yumanbi, however, looked absolutely delighted, his face was twisted into a mask of manic fervor, his eyes blown wide with a zealot’s light.

“Y-You… You must be the god that Mister believed in, right!? The true source of the mask!” He fell to his knees, ignoring the bruises Taro had just dealt him.

Mister? Taro’s brow furrowed. Who the hell is that mister he is talking about? Could it be the one who gave him that power?

He reached slowly toward his hoodie pocket, his fingers brushing the cool glass of his smartphone, but he didn’t dare pull it out; he was terrified that any sudden movement would draw the gaze of those hundreds of unblinking, lidless eyes.

“K-Kill him! I want you to kill him!” Yumanbi shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at Taro. “He tried to take you away! He tried to stop me! Make him suffer! Tear him apart slowly so he knows what it feels like to be the one on the ground!”

The entity stared at Taro, but surprisingly it didn’t strike him, and instead, several whip-like limbs, translucent and shifting like smoke, erupted from its central mass as they coiled around Yumanbi’s waist and throat, lifting him off the floor.

“Eh? W-What are you—!? No! I’m your master! I’m the one who wears—!”

Under Taro’s horrified gaze, the entity’s central mass split open as dozens of mouths, some with human teeth, others with jagged rows of obsidian, opened simultaneously.

It began to pull Yumanbi into itself in a sickening, slow-motion feast and began to devour him.

The sound was wet and rhythmic, a chorus of crunching bone and tearing fabric that almost made Taro threw up on the spot.

Yumanbi’s screams were shrill, high-pitched whistles of agony, his tears and snot flying through the air as he was hoisted toward the largest maw.

“AAAAHHH! HELP! HELFF MHEEE! MISTER! HELP—!”

A wet snap silenced him.

Before Taro could even find his footing or compose his shattered nerves, the boy who had been his target was gone, swallowed whole by the very power he had worshipped.

At that exact moment, the air in front of Taro’s eyes fractured into a wall of scarlet notifications.

[Emergency Quest!]

[Target: Destroy the Fragment of {REDACTED}]

[Reward: All Stats Increase By +10, Skill: Ki Manipulation (A), Awakening of Origin]

[Penalty for Failure: Death]

Death? Taro’s breath hitched, a cold stone of dread settling in his gut.

This was the first time the System had ever explicitly stated a penalty, and it was so severe too! Not even a “Level Reset” or “Stat Deduction”, but a final, absolute ultimatum.

The entity shifted, its form stabilizing as it incorporated Yumanbi’s essence and stared at Taro, all its mouths twisted into a synchronized, creepy smile that stretched across its shifting face.

“What a… perfect vessel,” it whispered.

It doesn’t only have one voice, but it was a thousand, a discordant harmony of whispers and roars that vibrated in Taro’s marrow, as if each of its countless mouths has their own different voice.

“You… you can talk!?” Taro’s eyes widened, the sheer wrongness of the sound sending goosebumps racing across his skin.

The entity let out a bubbling laugh. “Human, you possess a spark the other lacked. Let us form a pact. Give me your permission to inhabit that shell, and I will grant you power beyond your most fevered dreams.”

“Power…” Taro repeated, his voice hollow.

“That’s right. You saw what I could do, even through a mere fragment like the mask. I can grant you the ultimate invisibility. I can erase you from the memory of the world. You can take whatever you want, whenever you want. No one will ever see you and no one will ever judge you. You can have any girl you desire, any wealth you crave. An absolute, and total freedom.”

Taro took a deep, shuddering breath as he looked at his shaking hands, then back at the nightmare. “Such disgusting power… I refuse! I’d rather be a nobody than to become such a person!”

The entity went deathly still for a moment, its hundreds of eyes blinking in slow, ominous succession. “Is that so? Then your existence is no longer necessary. Die.”

At that, a single, obsidian-black limb materialized with the speed of a bullet and slammed into Taro’s chest before he could blink, throwing him backward into the lobby wall.

The drywall shattered with a resounding crack, and Taro slumped to the floor, coughing up a spray of crimson, his whole body was seized by a rhythmic, agonizing tremor.

The entity hovered toward him, its form expanding to fill the hallway, and once again, it whipped another limb, this time toward his head.

“Not… today!” Taro roared.

He flooded his arms with Ki, the pale blue energy flickering desperately as he caught the limb mid-air.

The friction burned his palms, but he didn’t let go, then using his Ki-enhanced Golden Legs, he launched a desperate, explosive kick into what looked like the entity’s chest.

But his foot passed through the body as if striking water, there wasn’t even any solid impact!

The entity laughed, letting out a sound like grinding glass as it manifested four, six, eight more limbs, and began to systematically batter Taro.

Each blow was like being hit by a sledgehammer as he was slammed deeper and deeper into the wall, the brickwork behind the drywall finally giving way under the relentless assault.

With a final, thunderous crash, the wall collapsed entirely and Taro was thrown backward, skidding across the floor of an empty, dark apartment unit.

He lay amidst the dust and rubble, his vision swimming.

The entity drifted through the hole in the wall, looming over him like a storm cloud before a limb reached down, winding into Taro’s hair, and hoisted his limp body up until they were eye-to-eye.

He groaned, the taste of his own blood thick in his mouth.

“I will ask one final time,” the entity whispered through its thousand mouths. “Do you want my power? Or do you wish to be digested in the dark?”

Taro glared at the creature, a bloody, defiant grin touching his lips as he gathered the remaining moisture in his mouth and spat a glob of blood directly into the center of the entity’s main eye.

“As if…! Who… would ever want… such disgusting… cowardly power!?”

The entity didn’t react with anger. Instead, it tilted its head, its numerous mouths twitching in genuine confusion. “Why do you refuse? I offer you the end of your insignificance! With my power, the world is your toy! You can have the girls who ignored you! You can break the men who looked down on you! Why choose to remain weak and pathetic ?”

“Why?” Taro struggled against the grip, his voice a raspy growl. “Because that’s… nothing more… than a delusion.”

For Taro, of he accepted this power, every mile he had jogged, every drop of sweat he had shed, every stat point he had earned through grinding would be rendered meaningless.

He might have the girls, he might have the revenge, and he might even become a so-called king, but then what? At the end of the day, he would still be the same pathetic loser he always was, just wearing a disgusting, evil mask.

Why did Taro accept those system tasks? Why did he work so hard to grind those stat points? Isn’t it so that he can be a better version of himself, and can proudly raise his head?

“Delusion?” The entity’s voice rumbled. “Perhaps. But you know, a king in a delusion is still a king, yet you choose to die as a peasant in reality.”

“Heh,” Taro chuckled, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. “That’s just… taking the easy way… out. And as a gamer… I’ve always hated… those people… the most.”

Grinding was in his blood. He was the kind of player who would spend a hundred hours in a starting zone just to be one level higher.

And although it’s not something to brag about, he was the kind of man who can ignore his friend in distress to keep on grinding.

He was the guy who hated pay-to-win whales with a passion that bordered on the religious.

That was why, despite everything, he hated Kageyama Seijirou with every fiber of his being, because he was the personification of something he hated the most.

A man born with a legendary loot drop, standing at the finish line while everyone else was at the start.

Even now, even while thinking of Kageyama as his goal, a benchmark to what a man is, Taro hated that effortless superiority of his.

“How useless. A martyr for a pride you don’t even possess.” The entity sighed, a sound like a leaking gas pipe, and threw him carelessly to the side.

Taro hit the floor, rolling through the dust, coughing up blood as he forced himself to his hands and knees, then to his feet.

His legs felt like jelly, and his lungs burned with every breath, but he stood up and wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his bruised hand.

The entity’s countless mouths opened, their long, black tongues lolling out. “I grow tired of your noise. I will devour you and move on to find a host with more… flexible morals.”

At that moment, a wave of terrifying, cold aura blasted through the room.

Instantly, Taro felt his knees buckle as the sheer presence of the thing was like a physical weight, a suffocating pressure that screamed at every cell in his body to give up.

’What…what is…this!?’

He was terrified.

His body shook uncontrollably.

His eyes were wide, fixed on the approaching darkness.

Sweat poured down his face, mixing with the blood and grime as he gasped for air.

And as he stared at the thing approaching him, he knew, with a certainty that felt like ice in his veins, that he was about to die.

’Ah… I’m… I’m really, going to die…’

Pathetic.

Just then, that familiar, arrogant voice echoed in his mind; it was not the System, but the memory of the man who looked down on the world with effortless disdain.

Taro froze.

Then, slowly, he began to shake—not with fear, but with a sudden, hysterical laugh before he raised his hands and slapped his own cheeks hard, the sting jolting his brain back into focus.

“That’s right,” he muttered, his voice finding new strength. “How pathetic.”

He looked at the entity, dark, eldritch-like creature beyond understanding, “There’s only one of you. And there’s one of me. That’s called a fair fight, what is there to fear?”

He thought of Seijirou.

He thought of that bored, untouchable expression he seem to always wear when facing an opponent.

He couldn’t help but think, ’If it were him…What would he do? What would he say in this situation?’

Taro stood tall, his silhouette framed by the moonlight streaming through the hole in the wall as he stared at the entity.

’Right…if it were him, then surely—’

He raised his hand and extended his middle finger toward the creature, a wide, arrogant grin spreading across his face—a grin that was a perfect mirror of the man he hated and admired most.

“Hey, you overblown smoke cloud,” Taro sneered, his voice dripping with Seijirou’s signature condescension. “You talk a big game for a parasite that can only live by sticking to a host. If you think I’m going to let some second-rate hallucination tell me how to live my life, you’ve got another thing coming. Now sit down and shut up, I’ll make sure to slowly teach you where you belong.”