Chapter 77
─Rustle!!
Maybe he’d been watching me through the hole and realized I’d caught on, because hurried footsteps sounded from the next room!
“You son of a bitch!!!”
Was he trying to run?! If I let him bolt downstairs, he’d play dumb and claim he knew nothing when I questioned him!!
─Crash!
How dare he try to peek at Fran naked!!!!!!! Blood rushed to my head, and I dashed out of the room wearing only my shoes, bare-chested!!
“Fran!! Get dressed and wait here!!”
“Nord?!”
Without even waiting for her answer, I chased that peeping bastard!!
The innkeeper’s head vanished down the stairs!! I let out a roar like a train whistle!!!
“Freeze right there, you fucking creep!!!!!!!!”
I dashed without even tying my shoelaces!! When I reached the stairs, the innkeeper hurriedly ran toward the living room!! In my rage, I didn’t even step onto the stairs—I leaped!!
“I can fly!!!!”
─CRACK!!
Maybe it was because I’d jumped from the top of the stairs to the very bottom? The floor gave way the moment I landed at the bottom. One of my arms smashed through the floor and sank into it!!!
“Motherfucker!!!!”
What a shitty-ass inn!! How shoddily had they built this place for the floor to get fucked up from a single jump landing?!
─Tat-tat-tat!!
Shock, fury, and irritation cost me about three seconds. Taking advantage of that opening, the innkeeper—or rather, the fucking voyeur creep—ran into the kitchen!
“I’m not letting you get away, you bastard!!”
I pulled my foot free and ran for the kitchen. I heard the sound of something wooden fitting together.
─Scritch-scritch!
─Clack-clack!
Was this bastard taking a knife off the shelf or something? I’d come out bare-handed, so I activated Beast Regression and kicked open the kitchen door.
─Crash!
There was no one in the kitchen. That voyeur bastard had vanished without a trace!
I checked in case he was hiding behind the door, waiting to sucker-punch me, but there was nowhere in the kitchen he could hide!!
“All right, you son of a bitch!! Let’s play hide-and-seek!!! I’m it!!!!!”
Fuming, I bounced around and searched the kitchen.
That fucking peeping bastard!! Come to think of it, he’d brought firewood while Fran was bathing, too!! He must’ve drilled a hole in the bathhouse and tried to peep while pretending to stoke the fire──Aaaah!!!!!
“Grrrrrrrr──!!!”
My rage was so overwhelming I became a one-man Vibrating Beast, trembling from head to toe. Let’s name this new technique of mine, <Trembling Touch>.
Anyway, the peeping bastard was the problem right now. The question was, where had he gone?
As the old saying goes, did he shoot up into the sky or sink into the earth? The voyeur bastard probably hadn’t awakened the power to pass through matter and gone back to peep on Fran, so he must have sunk into the ground.
There was a door in the kitchen, but I hadn’t heard it open. That fucker hadn’t escaped outside!!
And the sound of wooden planks I’d heard before coming in here!
The inn floor that had shattered to shit just because I jumped on it!
All of these things were clues pointing to the answer!!!
“The truth is always one!!!!!”
To find the decisive final clue, I brought out my secret weapon!
─Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!!
“Kyeeeeeeeeeeeet!!!!!”
That secret weapon was an ultra-fast tap dance, stomping all over the kitchen!!
It was the kind of lunacy you’d expect from the second-ranked student getting up at three in the morning to dance and annoy the top-ranked student living downstairs!!!
─Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!!!
At the end of all that effort, I found the answer I’d been searching for. The floorboards that sounded especially hollow! They made a cheerful sound, like when you smack some empty-headed bastard upside the head!
“There you are, you son of a bitch!!!!!”
I sat down on the floor and slid the floorboard back and forth like crazy.
─Scritch-scritch!!
The board slid to the side, revealing the space beneath. Just as I’d thought, this inn had a basement!
There was a ladder in the basement that I could use to climb down. But I had not the slightest intention of touching a ladder that piece of shit had pawed at!!!
I brought my arms together and jumped into the hole!!
“Vector Landing!!”
─KABOOM!!
I landed in a hero pose. The innkeeper, who’d been cowering down there, collapsed as if an earthquake had struck at my CG-worthy entrance!
“Hyaaaaaaaaaagh!!!”
“Found you!!! Now you’re it!!!!!!”
I charged and slapped the bastard across the face with my bare hand.
─SMACK!!
“Kyaah!!”
The voyeur bastard got smacked by a mana-tempered palm, and one of his molars went flying out of his mouth to go on a journey of self-discovery. I swung my hand and caught the tooth in midair.
“Hey!! Your tooth fell out!!! Here, I’ll give it back!!!”
I shoved the sturdy, blood-soaked molar into the voyeur bastard’s nostril. I’d pushed it in nice and deep, so they’d never have to part again!
“Hrk, cough! P-please, spare me!!”
The voyeur said, blood pouring from his nose and mouth.
Hearing that made my anger rise even higher. This was a situation where he should be begging me to kill him, yet this bastard was begging me to spare him!
“You fucking piece of shit!!! You tried to peek at our Fran naked, and you have the nerve to say that shit to me!!!”
“N-no! I didn’t see anything! She was covered by the blanket, so I couldn’t see a thing!!!”
“And you’re proud of that, you bastard!!!!!”
He’d attempted sexual assault, and now he was asking me, the victim’s boyfriend, to let him off? What was he whining about not having seen anything, as if failing to commit a crime were something to brag about?
“You only failed because you quit halfway through?! I stopped you, so of course you failed, you voyeuristic bastard!!!”
My furious fist flew out and smashed into the bastard’s collarbone.
“Aaaaaaagh!!!”
─Thud! Thud!
I stomped on the bastard writhing in pain, panting heavily.
What did “attempt” mean?
Not the chakra mass with a tail, but “attempt” in the legal sense!
In a crime, an attempt meant “trying to commit the wrongdoing but failing”!
As a twenty-first-century Korean, I hated that term!
Whenever I saw criminals’ sentences reduced because they’d failed while committing a crime and were charged with “attempted such-and-such,” it made my blood boil!!
How unfair must the victims feel!! A murderous robber breaks into their house and swings a knife, so they fight back with a golf club, and then the bastard gets out of prison after ten years because he didn’t actually kill anyone and was only convicted of attempted murder!!
It was a paradox where resisting to stay alive ended up benefiting the bastard who’d tried to kill you!!
That was the flaw of Korean attempted-crime law!!
These would-be murderers clearly swung their knives intending to kill someone, so why the hell couldn’t they be charged with murder!
They were just such fucking idiots that they failed to kill, when the victims would’ve died unjustly otherwise!
If they get a reduced sentence because they didn’t actually commit the crime, then bastards who actually put it into action and failed shouldn’t get a lighter sentence!!
This bastard was the same!!
I’d noticed and covered Fran’s body, thank goodness. If I hadn’t realized until the end, this bastard would’ve spent all day staring at Fran naked!
He’d have saved her whole body to the HDD in his skull and jerked off to the memory whenever he got bored!!!
“And that kind of piece of shit is asking me to spare him?!?!?!”
I grabbed the voyeur’s wrist and pressed it against the wall. Then I punched his hand, completely shattering the bones in it!
─CRUNCH!!
“Aghghghghghghghgh!!!”
The son of a bitch rolled on the floor, tongue twisted in pain! But instead of easing my stress, it only made me angrier!
I couldn’t go all out in case I killed him with one hit!
So in the end, I had to throw punches with restrained strength, like close friends playfully punching each other!
“You fucking bastard!! What do we do now!!! We’re gonna start getting attached to each other!!!!”
The frustration and stress made me headbang on the spot!! This asshole deserved to get beaten with a real punch, the way a boxer pummels a punching bag or a guitarist smashes his guitar!!
‘Should I just activate Beast Regression and kill him?’
I was so pissed that the thought even crossed my mind.
It was a damn tempting choice, but I couldn’t. Cleaning up afterward would be a pain, and more importantly, this voyeur bastard didn’t deserve the peaceful rest of death!!
As I agonized over it, a good idea came to me.
“Oh, right! That’ll do!”
I snapped my fingers. I’d thought of the perfect punishment for this bastard.
“Hey, come over here.”
“Y-yes, sir!!”
The voyeur bastard obediently moved when I instilled a little morality in him. I was quite pleased with what I saw. Maybe my heartfelt guidance was starting to turn him into a proper human being?
“Hey. This is a food storage room, right?”
“Yes, sir!! It’s a secret pantry built to keep the food from being stolen!!”
“Bullshit. You built it to hide when you got caught peeking at your guests getting frisky.”
“Yes, sir!! You got it exactly right!!!”
“Why the hell are you answering so proudly, you son of a bitch?”
His answer made my blood boil, so I slapped him across the face again.
─SMACK!!
“Guh!”
A slap from someone with strength beyond human limits probably hurt more than a hook from most professional boxers.
No, but why’s this bastard’s skin so messed up, yet the impact feels so good against my palm? Was he born to get his ass kicked?
“Anyway, this is being used as a food storage room now, right? So if you stay in here, no one else will be able to find you, right?”
“Y-yes?”
The voyeur bastard gasped as if he’d caught on. Damn, he’d figured it out already! Even among idiots, humans really were better than Hobgoblins!
“That’s right!! I’ll tie up your arms and legs and leave you here!!”
I was so happy the explanation seemed like it’d be quick. Let’s skip the long, tedious explanation and get straight to the point.
“I’m going back to Sargadis to report what you’ve been up to to the guards. If they hear what you did and decide it’s a serious crime, they’ll come arrest you. If that happens, you’ll get out of here alive. If not, you die!”
Whether the guy lived or died depended on how society judged his crimes!
It wasn’t my job to judge criminals. If I killed this bastard on a whim and got arrested by the guards for bringing in a suspect, I’d lose a promotion quest for free!
So what should I do in a situation like this?
The answer! Leave it to the professionals!!
‘As expected, I’m a genius.’
I was extremely pleased with my decision. It was a brilliant judgment, almost on par with Solomon’s.
While patting myself on the back, I broke the ladder made of wood and rope.
“Still, that won’t change your perverted tastes, so I’ll give you a medicinal treatment, too.”
─CRACK!
The wood was sturdy enough to support a person’s weight, like a chair leg. I tapped the ladder-turned-club against my palm and declared solemnly,
“──Historically speaking, this was medicine.”
“Eeeek!!!!”
Faced with the elixir (physical) I held out, the voyeur bastard went pale and crawled on all fours, banging his head against the floor.
“P-please spare me!! I beg you, spare me!! I told you already!! I didn’t see anything today!!”
“You’re lying again, you bastard. You saw me naked. Now that I think of it, you’re just a gay son of a bitch.”
Therefore, my actions could be considered the legitimate rights of a victim of voyeurism.
“Avan──Strash!!!”
“Agaaaagh!!!!!!!!!!”
My disposable ladder-club smashed mercilessly into the voyeur bastard’s balls.
─CRACK!
─SNAP!
The sturdy ladder leg broke in half, and the voyeur fainted foaming at the mouth from pain beyond imagination. In other words, physical castration.
“I’ve cut something worthless again.”
I tossed the ladder I’d been holding aside. I tied the unconscious voyeur’s arms and legs with rope and set a container of water beside him.
─Thunk.
This should keep him going for at least a few days.
Even if the bastard woke up and screamed for help, it’d be pointless. This storage room had fucking amazing soundproofing, so the other residents wouldn’t even know where the innkeeper had disappeared to.
“Heh. I did another good deed today.”
When I got back, I’d report that there was a criminal in Perfort Village. I’d shown courage by subduing a dangerous criminal, so maybe the guards would give me a reward.