The Police Do a Better Job than Heroes - Chapter 42

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ The Police Do a Better Job Than Heroes

Chapter 42

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Life Is Like a Railroad Track (9)

[Three who covet the light. Two who hide in darkness. Seven who dismissed the truth. Multiply their sins by...]

Clack!

Kang Jin-ho threw open yet another steel door without even bothering to finish reading the riddle. Who knew what number this was by now. Today, in a villain hideout of all places, he'd learned a very important lesson.

People, it turned out, cared a lot less about other people's powers than you'd think.

The first time Kang Jin-ho solved a riddle in an instant and popped the door open, the rookie heroes had practically lost their minds. What kind of ability is that?

But by the third time, the fourth, the fifth, with Kang Jin-ho strolling forward and cracking steel doors like he was opening his own front door, the rookies' reactions cooled down bit by bit.

By now, when Kang Jin-ho opened a door, the response was more like, "Okay, let's hurry inside."

Between his reputation as the "genius officer" and the fact that he acted like it was nothing special, the heroes had gradually come around to thinking, huh, guess it really isn't a big deal.

After all, there was no such thing as a limit to what superpowers could do.

If teleportation existed, if people could shoot fire from their hands, then a power that let you think for a moment and land on the right answer to a puzzle wasn't exactly strange by comparison.

...Dig deep enough and it absolutely was a strange power. But most people didn't bother digging that deep into the logic of superpowers.

Unless you were a scientist who studied abilities professionally, or a 1-rank villain with an unusual fixation on him personally, everyone just nodded along whenever Kang Jin-ho said "this is how it is."

Clack.

"Let's go."

"Yes."

They pushed forward through yet another steel door, and then, at some point...

"Huh?"

"Trace-nim?"

Kang Jin-ho ran into a group of familiar faces at an intersection in the corridor.

"Jin-ho-ssi?"

They were the main force's heroes, the ones who'd set out to blast a straight path through. But it wasn't the whole main force, either. Aside from Trace and a handful of A-ranks, the rest were nowhere in sight.

"Why are you here..."

Trace's eyes widened for a second, then she nodded as if she'd figured something out.

"So you got trapped too, Jin-ho-ssi."

"Could you explain exactly what happened?"

"This place. It's not a normal underground base, it's built like a kind of maze."

Trace wiped the sweat from her forehead, looking worn out, and kept talking.

"The space itself is warped. If you move without thinking, you just end up circling back to where you started. To get out, you have to pass through steel doors with riddles written on them."

"Hmm."

"We tried forcing a path through with raw power, but it's a fairly strong ability. The backlash scattered the main force everywhere. We've been trying to regroup, but... want to join us, Jin-ho-ssi? Ah, hold on a second."

Trace grabbed her crackling radio and started exchanging words with another scattered part of the main force.

"...?"

While the rookie heroes who'd been trailing after Kang Jin-ho wondered why Trace hadn't just opened the steel doors herself, Kang Jin-ho listened to the whole story and started running numbers in his head.

There's no time.

It wasn't that he doubted the heroes. But if they kept advancing by solving every riddle the proper way, the process would inevitably drag on.

The biggest problem was the hideout's true owner. The 1-rank villain, coming back.

In open ground, maybe it'd be manageable, but facing that thing head-on in a cramped indoor space, especially underground, would be suicide.

From what he remembered, the villain had maybe two hours left before arriving here after hearing the distress call. If they didn't rescue Silver Knife and get out before then, everyone here would end up trapped like rats in a barrel, likely slaughtered to the last one.

If Eun-yeong were here, he might be able to gamble on getting lucky. But there was no room for that now. This wasn't a situation where he could afford to hang back, read the room, and take his time exploring.

Could this be cleaned up afterward? Probably.

Was this a situation he had to step into himself? If Kang Jin-ho didn't act, the odds of a major disaster were high.

Eun-yeong? Not here.

"Come this way, for now."

"Wh, what are you planning? I trust you, Jin-ho-ssi, but this is a villain hideout!"

"I know."

He'd made up his mind.

"Something just flashed in my head, that's all."

Time to go all in, no more holding back.

Deep inside the villain hideout. In the darkest room at the very center. A man in a robe pulled low, the kind a wizard might wear, tapped his fingers against a desk. Tap, tap, tap.

"..."

Behind him, a middle-aged figure sat bound, head hanging low. The veteran hero who'd recently been swapped out and replaced. Silver Knife.

The CCTV feeds had long since gone dark thanks to the heroes' abilities, but the man wasn't worried. He had a subordinate who could borrow the eyes of rats and insects to keep tabs on the situation.

"Going according to plan."

After getting a status report from his subordinate, the man let out a slick little laugh.

Those brute-force heroes smashing through everything probably had no idea, but superpowers absolutely had something called efficiency.

Ether, the source of superpowers, was a force that interfered with the world. To interfere with the world, to twist its laws, an ability user burned ether.

Here's the problem, though. What happens when a power is too strong, and the body's own ether alone can't sustain its use?

There's no effect without a cause. A prophet's lifespan shortens when they glimpse the future. Someone wielding an unusually powerful ability can't move for a day or two after using it. All because ether alone can't cover the cost.

So is there really no way to handle a strong ability besides putting the body through strain?

There is. Exactly one way.

"Conditions."

When a superpower has conditions attached.

Marionette's ability was a good example: mind control that only activated after ten seconds of contact with the target, followed by the trigger phrase. Demanding, troublesome constraints, but in exchange, once triggered, it could brainwash even someone far above the user's own rank.

The man's case was the same. His ability warped space to make people lose their way. A "maze" ability.

"The heroes can't find their way."

"Excellent."

A maze ability ranked among the easiest kinds of power to smash through with brute force. Normally, the A-rank heroes who'd infiltrated this place would have broken the maze in a few punches, and the man would have been found out.

But he'd attached a condition to his power. Solve the riddle, open the steel door, and you could escape the maze easily, in exchange the maze's overall defenses got cranked up much higher.

Of course, the heroes weren't fools either. The information-type ability users had put their heads together, analyzed the riddle patterns, and were cracking the steel doors open one by one.

But the man had never expected to trap them here forever anyway. Elite members of the Hero Association had apparently shown up, and the hideout's forces alone could only hold out for so long.

What mattered was burning time.

First, buying time for the combat personnel currently squaring off against Magic Muscle outside to make it back.

And once those combat personnel started using the terrain and the maze to run hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, even the sharpest heroes wouldn't be able to move carelessly.

If he could just drag this out another hour or two, it'd be about time for the Master to return. The moment that person arrived, every rat that had wandered into this hideout would be wiped out to the last one.

Pain. Despair. Maybe an ending worse than death. Would the Master perhaps grant him Magic Muscle's body as a reward? That massive pectoral muscle was worth studying.

"Kh-heh-heh-heh..."

The man licked his lips, imagining the faces of heroes who'd given up all hope, when...

Click.

"Wh, what?"

The room's door suddenly swung open, and light from the corridor spilled into the darkness.

His eyes had adjusted to the dark room, and the sudden brightness made him wince and screw up his face.

"Hmm... this looks like the right place."

Not that the man's discomfort mattered to the stranger. Someone in a suit poked his head inside, gave the room a quick once-over, flicked on his phone flashlight to check the bound Silver Knife, and gave a single nod.

"Yep, found him."

And then.

Clack!

He simply closed the door again and left.

Static crackle. "Yeah, you heard right. Found Silver Knife-nim. Where are you right now? Oh, if you're there, just go straight first, and then..."

After the door shut, the voice muttering into the radio slowly faded into the distance. A moment later, an awkward silence crept in.

"..."

The villain giving orders and the subordinate acting as his assistant both fell silent.

"...?"

Even the real Silver Knife, still bound, couldn't quite process what had just happened.

This was a villain hideout. And this room was its very heart, the most heavily guarded, most tightly secured part of the whole place.

"...What was that?"