WeTried Translations

Translator: Goku

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Villain Perfect for Leveling Up

Chapter 020

──────

20. Forgotten Heart Resonance (4)

《 Checkpoint designated ▶ Underground Prison 》

Not long after we started moving, a window indicating the checkpoint had changed appeared.

I had been agonizing over what to do if I died, but thankfully, a great deal of that worry was lifted.

As I walked through the suffocating prison, where the stale air was completely unventilated, I was able to enter the inmate housing area.

“Dean…. Didn’t you say there were skeletons here?”

Carmen, who was leading, turned around and asked lightly.

Indeed, as she said, there were no groups of skeletons in the underground prison.

There were humans inside the iron bars, but they were merely dying, emaciated to skin and bones.

“…That’s because the ruin hasn’t arrived yet.”

The reason no groups of skeletons were roaming was simple.

Because the ruin hadn’t yet come to the world.

Perhaps the true identity of those many groups of skeletons was the prisoners inside the jail.

They were still alive, but after the ruin arrived, they would become undead, unable to die and wandering the prison.

At that moment, someone from beyond the iron bars reached out and grabbed Carmen’s arm, stopping her.

“…Please. …Let me out.”

The sorrowful voice of someone whose throat was severely parched echoed in my ears.

“….”

She looked at the person gripping her forearm with a sympathetic gaze. She seemed to be contemplating whether to rescue him.

“…! What are you doing right now?!”

I instantly severed the hand of the prisoner holding Carmen’s arm with Freud’s Fang.

Carmen, startled by the sudden flash of the blade, flared up at me in anger.

“Kuk-heheuk…. Heh-heh-heh-heh!!”

“…?!”

But her anger didn’t last long.

“Come here! Instead of that parasitic pretty boy, I’ll make you feel even better!”

Because the prisoner, whose arm had been severed, had taken off his mask and begun to taunt, cackling maniacally.

That appearance was not of the prisoner who, until just now, had been dying and begging for mercy.

A madman.

It was the madness of one who deserved to be confined in the underground prison.

Thump-thump-!!

Not long after, the prisoner’s maniacal laughter spread to other iron bars, creating a commotion like a wildfire.

Every one of them was taunting Carmen and uttering unspeakable insults.

At the loudly echoing voices directed at her, Carmen, uncharacteristically flustered, stepped back until her back met my chest.

“….”

My expression gradually distorted at the loudly echoing noise.

“Dean…?”

By the time Carmen belatedly noticed the subtle killing intent emanating from behind her, I was feeding blood to Freud’s Fang.

“Stop, Dean! No!”

She tried to hastily restrain me, having read my emotions, but the massacre had already begun.

The blade flew accurately at the prisoners who had been running their mouths, cutting off their lives.

Soon, a quiet yet chilling atmosphere settled over the noisy prison.

“Please…. Stop it….”

As I moved to kill the last remaining prisoner, she grabbed my hand and earnestly pleaded.

“Isn’t this enough….”

The prisoner, who had been taunting us from inside the iron bars, was trembling and chuckling.

He seemed to feel a sense of depravity at the fact that Carmen was defending him.

And that gaze, scanning her body as if taunting her.

My anger surged at that fearless behavior, despite having massacred many as a warning.

I thought I was no different from those imprisoned in the jail.

But I wasn’t someone who routinely thought of crossing lines, like them.

“…You, you! You’re just like us!”

The trembling prisoner, perhaps feeling a sense of kinship in my eyes, shouted excitedly.

“You’re just wearing a mask to sleep with a woman, aren’t you?!”

“No, Dean…! He’s provoking you!”

I wanted to swing Freud’s Fang, in its whip-sword form, and cut off that guy’s tongue, but Carmen absolutely didn’t want me to do that.

“You’re no different from us! You just haven’t been caught yet… Keu-heok!”

Unable to bear the provocation of the guy who wouldn’t stop running his mouth, I finally shot out the blade, as if ejecting it, and it pierced his neck.

The guy, whose neck was pierced through, chuckled as the blade embedded itself.

Even as the blade plunged deeper and blood gushed, he showed no sign of pain.

He soon died, his eyes open, as the paralyzing venom spread.

As the time limit expired and the whip-sword reverted to its dagger form, Carmen met my gaze.

Her eyes held both anger and disappointment simultaneously.

“Why…. Why couldn’t you hold back….”

They were people who didn’t need to be killed.

I wasn’t unaware of that fact.

They were just trash, confined within iron bars, whose sole purpose was to taunt others. They were destined to rot and die in prison their entire lives.

But they crossed a line they shouldn’t have, and met their end prematurely.

“They cursed you.”

“….”

“They looked at you with lecherous eyes.”

As I explained the reason to Carmen, she grabbed me by the collar.

“Who are you? Who are you to worry about me?!”

“….”

I didn’t bother to find a reason to refute her.

Because I knew better than anyone that I didn’t have the right to.

“They were people who would have rotted in prison even if left alone.”

“They are people who can be killed without consequence.”

“That’s…!”

Carmen was speechless.

Because in my eyes, which had massacred the prisoners, she found herself reflected instead of guilt.

“I don’t need your concern. …Don’t you think it’s disgusting?”

“I do.”

“I told you I don’t like it, so why do you keep…! You know, don’t you?!”

“You won’t understand even if I tell you.”

“You’re saying that again! That I won’t understand even if you tell me?!”

Towards me, who had ostentatiously chosen only the worst options, she seemed to feel betrayed.

Hadn’t she wanted me, this existence, to be a murderer?

I had only acted as she wished.

But why did Carmen believe she could find light in an existence like me?

“It was you, Carmen, who didn’t believe in me.”

I straightened my disheveled clothes, replied softly, and then walked past her.

“You…. You really are….”

At my action of nonchalantly ignoring the situation, Carmen gritted her teeth, her eyes reddening.

Then, resolved that things couldn’t go on like this, she approached my side as I headed for the engine room and strongly gripped the hand holding Freud’s Fang.

“…Let go of this.”

As if to ensure I couldn’t commit another massacre, she wouldn’t let go of my hand.

Even when told to let go, Carmen completely ignored me, as if I didn't exist.

If it was just a clash of opinions, she seemed intent on sticking to her own stubbornness.

In the end, there was nothing I could do to resist in this situation, so I averted my gaze and looked for the way.

….

Without skeletons carrying torches, finding the location of the engine room wasn't easy.

As often as I got lost, I frequently passed by the iron bars where prisoners were confined.

Each time, I heard lewd comments or taunts directed at Carmen, and whenever killing intent surged and I moved to kill, her grip tightened.

…Ultimately, I had no choice but to destroy all five engine rooms without killing a single prisoner.

Rumble-!

Once all the engine rooms were destroyed, vibrations and noise echoed from the center of the underground prison.

Moving towards the source of the noise, a colossal stone tower had appeared, just as I remembered.

On the walls of the stone tower, there were five levers of varying lengths.

3 2 1 4 5.

As I pulled the levers in the exact correct order, the wall of the stone tower descended, revealing stairs.

“Now, let go of my hand.”

“….”

“I said, let… go.”

I told her to let go, as there would be no more encounters with prisoners once we descended into the Abyss, but Carmen moved without a reply.

Pulled by her strong force, I descended the stairs with her, unable to resist.

….

The space descending the stairs felt no darkness at all, despite having no light source.

A space where the concepts of light and darkness themselves seemed lost, where common sense was denied.

As I stepped onto the endlessly straight stairs, I became confused whether we were descending or ascending.

The stairs, where I couldn't tell if an hour or a minute had passed, seemed to go on forever.

“….”

“….”

When the two of us came to our senses.

We were stranded in a vast, empty wasteland with nothing else around.

There was no awareness that the stairs had ended.

I had simply been walking endlessly, and when I came to my senses, I had arrived in an unknown space.

…The Abyss.

I had, at some point, arrived at the special prison where Fist King Theodore was confined.

But looking around, the figure Carmen was searching for was nowhere to be seen.

Just as I was wondering if we had arrived too early and was about to look for a shortcut out.

“…It’s dangerous!”

Carmen’s eyes glowed crimson, and as if she had perceived something with clairvoyance, she forcefully pushed me away.

Thud-!!

Pushed from my spot, she was struck by a colossal incoming object and rolled several times across the floor.

“….”

Startled for a moment by the sudden situation.

I broke out in a cold sweat due to the overwhelming presence that had appeared before my eyes.

A massive body, truly deserving to be called a giant.

Restraints with iron balls were attached to its limbs.

Its reddish eyes, with only the instincts of a beast remaining, looked down at me with arrogance.

《 You have encountered the Boss ‘Fist King Theodore’. 》

Desperado Reunion’s Challenge Hidden Boss.

And…. Carmen’s missing father.

“Fa…ther….”

Carmen, who was lying down, held her broken arm and called out to the father she had desperately searched for.

With animalistic intuition, she vaguely understood her father’s condition and shed a single tear from the corner of her eye.

Fist King Theodore, confined for a long time within the Abyss created by the Abyss, had become a monster who had completely lost his humanity.

Even though he was alive, …he was not alive.

At the cruel reality that brutally crushed hope.

She crumbled, becoming a child, not an adult.

“Abandon me and run away….”

Carmen, engulfed in despair, gritted her teeth and told me to run away, even though I was unrelated to her, to save me.

“No.”

The answer I conveyed to her was a refusal.

At my incomprehensible action, Carmen’s eyes widened, and she was uncharacteristically flustered.

Erasing the fear that made me want to run away immediately, I aimed Freud’s Fang at Fist King Theodore.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried