Chapter 14: The Stakes are your life (1)

“Ugh, what is this!”
“Please, just spare my life!”

In the VIP room of the hotel, where Ji Sehwa and the mid-level executives from the financial sector were meeting, I,

Irua, and the villain subordinates successfully ambushed the place in secret.

“You bastards! Do you know who I am?!”

Ji Sehwa, her anger rising to the top of her head, rushed toward Irua. I stepped in front of her.

There was no need to transform. With basic combat skills, I easily subdued her.
I had taught Sehwa those skills, so I could predict her movements even with my eyes closed.

“Ugh! You bastard! I’ll kill you!”

I taped Sehwa’s mouth shut and cuffed her hands and feet with special restraints.

The situation was under control. The guards were all down, and the guests were tied up. Communication devices

were confiscated. Since this was a VIP room, the soundproofing was perfect. Even the sound of suppressed gunfire

wouldn’t leak out.

There were seven guests. Five middle-aged men and two women. All of them were greedy pigs.

“Ugh, ugh… Vengeance… Dark Matter…”

One of the guests recognized us.

“Dark Matter? Isn’t that the villain organization that attacked Silver Mirror?”

“Do you have business with Blue Sabel?”

“Why… why are we included in this? Please, let us go.”

Irua stood in front of them.

“Let’s see… Kim Youngheon, 62 years old, director of Aenggaellan Securities. You’re the bastard who designed the trench structure during the subprime crisis, right?”

“Ugh, ugh?”

“That time, many loans went bad, and people lost their homes and committed suicide. 120,000 people became unemployed, and there were 4,000 suicides, right?”

“Th-That’s in the past! The person responsible is serving time…”

“You cut off the tail, right? You’re still living well, though?”

“I… I only did legal work!”

“That was illegal at the time, and it’s still illegal overseas, right?”

“Law is never made until there’s a problem!”

“Ha ha. So, there’s no guilt? How much did you suck out? Was it tasty, drinking until the hardworking citizens turned into corpses? Were you planning on doing the same thing with Blue now?”

“000”

“All seven of you here. You’re all the same. Birds of a feather, huh? Ugh, it stinks. Hey, you trash. Even if you only eat pig feed for the rest of your lives, you still smell better than you do.”

The guests fell silent. Irua sneered at them.

“Do you think you can get away with this? If anyone notices something strange outside, my security will rush in.”

One of the guests, in a panicked voice, spoke up.

“Heh heh. Do you think they’ll notice? Aren’t their guards useless? Right, Illusion sister?”

“Hmm~ If they can tell the difference between my clones, they should be able to reward me all night in bed.”

With a seductive voice, the villain with a captivating figure was ‘Illusion.’ She was an A-class villain and one of my subordinates.

“Hahaha! What a great party!”
“This is so much fun! Hahaha!”

The guests were clinking their wine glasses on the balcony.

“What… what’s going on?”

That’s Illusion’s ability. She can create illusions and clones.

Although they’re holographic and don’t have substance, they are so finely crafted that you can’t distinguish them

unless you’re very close.

“This is a hotel! The CCTV must have recorded our entry, someone must have seen us!”

“Heh heh. Don’t worry. We hacked everything long ago.”

Irua grinned.

As she said, a villain who was manipulating real-time data was ‘Deep Dive,’ an S-class villain. He has the ability to materialize internet data and handle it as objects. To put it simply, he’s a genius hacker.

He was a capable villain, so I wanted to recruit him. After seeing the Silver Mirror raid by Vengeance, he was impressed, and it worked out well. Now, he’s assisting with the operation from our hideout.

When we infiltrated the previous party of Choi Min-seo, Irua’s help was invaluable. It wasn’t difficult to infiltrate; the real challenge was finding Deep Dive.

“In this space, only you and us know we’re here. No one will come to help you. Do you understand?”

The guests’ faces turned ashen.

“Is money your goal? How much do you want?”

“Money? Haha! I don’t need that.”

Irua laughed in a coquettish manner.

“Yeah, your stinky corpses are the last thing I need. I’m here to play a game with Blue Sabel. You just need to help the game run smoothly, and maybe you’ll make it out alive.”

“Ga… game?”

At those words, Ji Sehwa’s body twitched. I set up Sehwa and the guests with my subordinates. I had someone prepare her body earlier and tied her to a cross. Once the lid was placed, a perfect coffin was complete.

Only her face and hands stuck out from the coffin. I peeled the duct tape off her mouth.

“You little b*tch! I’ll rip your eyes out and shove them up your *ss!”

“Really, you have no class. Blue, if we don’t play the game, I’ll kill you for real.”

“Shut the fck up, btch!”

“Ugh, really. I keep my promises. Just like how I let Silver’s crew live as promised after killing only the crew

members? Let me make you a promise too. The rules of the game will be followed strictly, and I won’t use any other

violence. Once the game is over, we’ll leave. How about it?”

“Are you crazy? Do you really get off on toying with people like this?”

“Yes.”

I brought my face closer to Ji Sehwa’s, smiling.

“It’s fun. So much fun, I’m losing my mind. Playing with heroes is the best. By the way, Blue, I’d like to introduce

Yellow and Green to you, too. You wanna make an introduction?”

“F*cking pleasure addict. You’re insane, your brain’s rotted. You should just burst a vein and die.”

“Ha ha. Let me explain the rules of the game.”

My subordinates and I brought out another coffin identical to the one Ji Sehwa was in. A cross-shaped coffin, facing Ji Sehwa.

“All we need is Ji Sehwa and six guests. But wait, there’s seven of you. Let’s see… you.”

“Yes, yes?”

I pointed at one of the women.

“You’re not needed, so leave.”

“04—?”

“Leave. Go home.”

“Re… really?”

“Yes, really. Get out of here. But if you tell anyone what happened here before the job is done, you know what will happen, right?”

“Y-yes!”

The woman hurriedly left the room. Her crime was relatively minor, so I had told Irwa to let her go first.

Of course, she won’t be able to go home. This VIP room has a double structure, so she’ll be waiting in the lobby. They won’t know, but that’s what will happen.

The remaining six guests, all men, watch the woman leave, envy in their eyes.

“I told you, I keep my promises. If you help with the game, one of you will be let go like that.”

“Is that really true?”

“Of course.”

Irwa turned back to Ji Sehwa.

“Do you see the coffin? It’s the same shape as the other one. Do you see the holes?”

“Holes?”

“Yes. There are six holes. Two for the arms, two for the legs, one for the belly, and one for the chest. We’ll be stabbing something into each hole.”

“You crazy b*tch! You’re just gonna kill me!”

“Think about it. Why do you think there are two coffins?”

Ji Sehwa bared his teeth, looking like he had figured something out.

“Six…?”

“Right. Not all of them are for you to get stabbed. You might get stabbed depending on how the game goes. The game

will have six rounds. One guest will go into the coffin each round. For each round, we’ll announce which body part

and method to use. Then, you can negotiate with the guests.”

“Negotiate?”

Irwa chuckled quietly.

“Yes, deciding who gets stabbed.”

The guests began murmuring among themselves.

“There’s no way negotiations are going to work! Who would volunteer to get stabbed?!”

Ji Sehwa yelled. She was absolutely right.

“Exactly. So, you’ll have to negotiate using your specialty.”

“What?”

“Money.”

Irwa snapped her fingers. I brought a small box in front of her.

“Guests, listen up. Inside this box is the full amount of ‘cash’ that Blue Sabel had.”

“Ca… cash?”

“Yes. Bills, coins, and even ‘chips’ from her wallet.”

The chips were like memory cards that stored money digitally. In this world, carrying large amounts of cash was inconvenient, so this was a common storage method.

That’s why illegal transactions and money laundering were much more common among villains.

“You thieves! What’s the big deal that you’d steal it so fast?!”

“Shh. You probably shouldn’t ask how much it is. This is the negotiation material.”

“What?”

“One round is 5 minutes. During that time, the guest and Blue must write down the amount in the notebook. The higher amount wins. The one with the lower amount will get stabbed.”

“So we just write a big number, right?”

“Did you not understand? Blue, you’ll have to pay us the actual amount you have in cash. You can’t write down more than what you have. On the other hand, if the guest writes down more than your cash, they lose.”

“So you’re saying…”

“If Blue Sabel writes down 1 won, and we write down 10 billion, even though we wrote a bigger amount, we lose because it exceeds her actual cash?”

“And the arms and legs get stabbed with skewers… Ugh.”

The guests seemed to catch on right away.

“We don’t even know how much Blue Sabel has, how can we win?”

“Hey, hold on! Why are you already thinking about winning?”

Ji Sehwa growled.

“I’m the Dragon King! I just got discharged yesterday! I’m supposed to fight the Galactic Empire, and you’re thinking

of injuring me again? It’s just limbs! Even if I get stabbed, I won’t die! After all I’ve done to protect you, you should

sacrifice this much!”

“That, that’s a valid point, but…”

“First, we need to find out the total amount. Whoever goes first can start by writing 1 million won. If it exceeds the total amount, we can make guesses on the range…”

“And what if we get stabbed?”

“Will the amounts we write be revealed at the end of the round?”

The guests desperately started thinking. Irwa grinned and nodded.

“Yes. You won’t believe that we tampered with the results, right? We’ll show the papers with both their amounts written down.”

As expected, things were going as planned. By turning them against each other, they didn’t even realize we were the

true enemies responsible for this situation. All they thought about was winning and surviving.

The temptation to survive was that strong.

“You ungrateful little b*stards!!”

Ji Sehwa cursed.

I understand your feelings, Sehwa, but honestly, you’re not the one to be saying that.

“Shall we begin?”

Irwa declared leisurely.