Chapter 149
“Street Robber?”
As I spat out what I remembered, the man groaned from where he had fallen on his ass and shouted.
“I’d prefer it if you called me a philanthropist working on a Charity Project for local community Development, you know?”
Yeah, it was definitely him.
The memory of him shoving a Super-Vibration Dagger in my face while spouting bullshit about “cooperating for local community Development” came rushing back.
Thanks to the Troublemaker Detective’s help, I managed to get out of it without being robbed, but it was a nerve-wracking experience. I almost got stripped of everything I had.
Wait, now that I think about it, I’m pissed off.
What right did he have to show up in front of me again with a gun? As I listened to him talk, he even made it sound like this was all my fault.
This was taking audacity to a whole new level.
I was the one who should be angry here!
“Hah!”
“Ack!”
When I deliberately stomped my foot and shouted loudly, the robber scrambled backward on his hands and feet from where he’d fallen, crawling away like a scared rat.
Watching that pathetic Display gave me a strange feeling.
Just a short while ago, I was almost extorted by an ordinary robber like him, but now I could easily toy with him.
Is this how it feels to run into a mob you struggled against during your low-level days in a game?
As I considered the Original Source of This World as I remembered it, it was an Interesting thought.
Maybe I have been slowly leveling up all this time.
As I was having those thoughts, Tap-tap-tap - I heard the sound of running from somewhere. At first, the footsteps were just ordinary, but they grew louder and heavier.
The Street Robber, who had been thoroughly bested by me, leaped to his feet in shock.
“O-oh god. Already? I thought I lost him… damn it!”
After spouting that nonsense, he suddenly bolted without looking back. His speed was so incredible that I didn’t even think about chasing him.
“Wow, he’s fast.”
I smacked my lips in admiration.
I should have handed a criminal bastard like him straight over to the City police.
It was a shame, but I was just as reluctant to deal with the DCPD anyway. This might actually be for the best.
There was a one-in-a-million chance he might come to his senses and live a new life then.
'Looks like he’s paying for his crimes well enough without my help anyway.'
Seeing him run for his life at the mere sound of unidentified footsteps, as he assumed it was a pursuer, gave me a good idea of how he had been living lately.
I also had a rough idea of why he claimed he “suffered because of me.” He wouldn’t have brought up the Memory Device for nothing.
It seemed that Street Robber had encountered a similar kind of 'danger' to what I had. Thanks to that, the burden on my end might have lessened.
Wait, maybe I should be thanking him?
I chuckled and listened to the growing sound of footsteps.
I felt bad for the paranoid Street Robber, but these weren’t the sounds of an unidentified pursuer looking for him.
It was obvious to whom these footsteps belonged.
Thud, thud, thud - CRASH!
The wall collapsed with a deafening noise. The Hero in the black Dragon Suit leaped out from the smoke, leaving a human-shaped hole behind.
[Receive the Black Dragon’s Flames, you wicked villain!]
However, contrary to his boisterous entrance, there was no one there.
Only the Cold remains of the broken gun the Street Robber had dropped were left behind.
[What is this? I definitely heard a gunshot. The Origin was right around here.]
His voice, previously full of excitement, cooled into deep disappointment.
It seemed he had wandered off quite far while the robber and I were scuffling, only to rush all the way back after hearing the gunshot.
Unintentionally, I ended up making the Dark Hero run around on a wild goose chase.
I scratched my head and said.
“Well… did your competent Sidekick take care of it already?”
[…]
A brief silence flowed before his Jaw Dropped.
[What?!]
* * *
Up until I started explaining, Dark Dragon had been crestfallen.
A gunshot in a dark alley! A Street robber threatening an innocent Citizen!
He seemed incredibly disappointed to have missed out so anticlimactically on the monumental first incident of his Hero Activities.
But that was only at first; his spirit gradually began to revive. It started after I told him that I had let the Street Robber I’d caught slip away.
[Unbelievable! You can’t do that. Who knows how that villain you let go might torment innocent citizens again? As expected, you still have much to learn! You’ll have to take a lesson from this Black Flame Dragon. Bwahahaha!]
“Ah, yes…”
[A weak heart is absolutely forbidden. To face the criminals who prowl the darkness, we too must embrace the dark. If the same situation arises again, you must never Hesitate!]
He was acting so obnoxiously arrogant that I almost snapped at him, asking why someone who prided himself on having not an ounce of hesitation had arrived so late, but I held it in.
He’d probably sulk if I did. One way or another, satisfying Dark Dragon was my top priority for putting an end to these sudden, exhausting Superhero activities that I never asked for.
What I needed right now wasn’t a sharp Rebellious Spirit, but the outstanding flattery skills to play the perfect sycophant and only say what he wanted to hear.
“Thank you for the excellent advice. We shouldn’t just stand here. Let’s get moving quickly, shall we? Even at this very moment, wicked criminals must be secretly maneuvering through the city’s underworld.”
[Exactly! You’ve finally awakened to the spirit of a Dark Hero. Now that’s what I call my Sidekick. Let’s go!]
When I casually picked out the kind of cringeworthy vocabulary he’d like, he was absolutely thrilled and dashed off with a whoosh.
Seeing him clear the alley with a single Leap left me speechless.
I was going to suffer trying to keep up with that.
“Haa…”
Hero, villain, or whatever, I just wanted this to end quickly so I could wash my feet and go to sleep.
It was a desperate Wish, but as always, it didn’t come true.
* * *
The monorail silently pierced through the city center. The purplish dawn light shone sharply against my eyes. I had been nodding off before jolting awake.
Checking my Cyberwatch, I saw it was already 6 AM. Looking to my side, I saw our Mr. Dark Hero was also sleeping soundly, drooling inside his black Dragon Helmet.
I gave a little wave to an elderly passenger in the opposite seat who was staring at us as if looking at some bizarre spectacle, then grumbled to myself.
“I told him we should call it quits early. This isn’t fishing. What does he mean 'we’ll get a bite if we wait a little longer'?”
We had given up and were on our way home.
What Dark Dragon had overlooked was that, no matter how much this city had developed to blur the lines between day and night, the floating population wasn’t that large during the early dawn hours.
It was hard enough to find people walking around in the first place, let Alone crime scenes or villains.
We spent the whole time coming up empty-handed, going all the way down to the lower neighborhood before taking the monorail back to Asian Town.
I was dead tired.
It would have been one thing if we had just walked around quietly, but whenever he thought something was Suspicious, he poked around everywhere, wasting Physical Strength chasing blindly after an ordinary person he mistook for a villain… Hero work really wasn’t for just anyone.
“Why did he have to suddenly get so obsessed with this!”
A sudden surge of annoyance made me rap my knuckles against the head of the Dragon Suit. Of course, the only result was that my hand hurt.
As I was blowing on the back of my hand and absentmindedly looking out the window,
“What in the…”
I saw something strange.
A Skyscraper is soaring as if to Pierce the edge of the sky, with a grand yet somewhat ominously splitting spire and a conspicuously glowing LED exterior.
In front of it, some scientist was staging a sit-in protest.
Amidst the fiercely blowing wind and the flickering lights of the sidewalk, a middle-aged man in a stained lab coat was shouting something in a heated frenzy.
What is a mad scientist? It might be hard to define precisely, but that scientist was a perfect specimen.
With sparsely thinning hair fluttering in the wind, a loosened tie, and fierce eyes flashing behind safety goggles,
he didn’t look particularly dangerous on the surface, but his menacing aura, palpable even from a distance, was pressuring the high-rise building’s security guards.
At a glance, the scientist was protesting, and the building guards were Aiming pistols and stun batons, threatening him not to come any closer…
If I had some popcorn, I would have eaten it while watching. Finding it an exciting spectacle, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. That was when it happened.
Whoosh - !
Suddenly, the scientist pulled something from his coat and threw it!
With a pop, a thick fog spread out. The panicked guards fired their guns. At the sound of the gunshots, which rang out clearly even from a distance, I blinked blankly.
“W-what?”
Throwing smoke bombs, Shooting guns… Is this level of violence an everyday occurrence for protests in Dusk City? That didn’t seem right, no matter how I looked at it.
Sensing that the situation was far from ordinary, I was debating whether I should wake Dark Dragon.
The smoke spread outward, reaching the guards defending the gate. They must have undergone the Air Filtration Procedure, yet the moment the Suspicious cloudy smoke touched them, they convulsed and collapsed.
No matter how I looked at it, this was a real incident. Flustered, I tapped Dark Dragon’s shoulder to wake him up.
“…!”
It was a bizarre sight that I could only see because I was looking down from the rail above.
Within the smoke, the guards were rising to their feet once again. However, their forms were far from normal.