Chapter 247: Reverse City 5
"Quiet."
A single soft word of warning.
It was enough to silence the two heroes, 'Heavy Pistol' and 'Light Spear,' who had been loudly chattering away however they pleased.
The aura that had suddenly enveloped Baek Woohyun compelled them into silence.
On the surface, nothing about him had visibly changed, yet looking at him sent chills crawling down one's spine and cold sweat trickling down one's back.
It was the feeling of sothing inexpressibly terrifying watching them with bared fangs.
Anyone with a faint heart would have stepped back without even realizing it.
'What, is it so kind of skill?'
'Doesn't feel like it.'
Heavy Pistol and Light Spear, veterans with long personal broadcast careers who had played virtually every virtual reality ga imaginable, could tell this wasn't the effect of any skill.
The pressure they were feeling was purely the aura generated by the person himself. Which was precisely why their hands and feet had gone rigid.
It ant that even without the system's assistance, he was capable of this in actual reality too.
Furthermore, Baek Woohyun was currently in a state of having de-aged to roughly his mid-to-late teens in order to make it clear that he'd been injured in his battle with hero 'Star Rain.'
aning his fra was comparatively slender and less imposing than as an adult. The sa words and actions tend to carry a different feel depending on one's appearance.
And yet silencing two people with a single word like this was almost uncanny.
"If you turn around and leave now, I won't give chase."
―Go···
―Last chance lol
―Just leave while he's being nice about it?
―RUN~
"···D, don't make laugh!"
Rather than being cowed by Baek Woohyun's generous offer, Heavy Pistol seed to have drawn courage from it as she cried out.
One amusing thing was that her speech, which had clearly been informal a mont ago, had sowhere along the way shifted to formal.
Even with that act, it was plain to see she was frightened.
"We know you're weakened right now!"
"Just go back. Open parenthesis please close parenthesis!"
―Oh?
―That's actually··· convincing!
―She's saying the parentheses out loud lolol
―Go back (please) lolololol
"···Hmm."
Listening to Heavy Pistol and Light Spear's rebuttal, Baek Woohyun tilted his head to one side. His narrowed eyes glead a clear ash-gray.
As soone who uses the 'Superhuman' build, he is essentially invincible, and so Jeong Nayeon had requested that he use a different build in 'Reverse City.'
Thus his current build was his sub-build, 'Telekinesis,' and the precursor to drawing out that supernatural ability likewise carried the color ash-gray.
"It's true that my injuries prevent from fighting at full strength, however─"
Hooooo─
"" ···!""
A desolate wind swept through the alleyway, brushing past Heavy Pistol and Light Spear.
They were struck by a powerful premonition that sothing had gone very wrong.
There was no other reason their instincts would be ringing such alarms, as if screaming.
"─I'm not at the point where I need to retreat against the two of you."
"Wha?!"
"We─!"
―They're done lol
―Why'd they have to poke the final boss lolololol
―Revival costs are pretty brutal if I recall, what are they gonna do
―Seriously why start out as debtors by picking a fight with the final boss lol
"Shh."
""Mm, mmmph?!""
Baek Woohyun raised his index finger to his lips once more, forcibly silencing Heavy Pistol and Light Spear before they could say another word.
This isn't simply a figurative expression. It was exactly as described. The Telekinesis he had manifested stopped their mouths, preventing them from uttering anything further.
A perfect suppression of movent. The fact that he had utterly dominated a portion of their faces close to a vital point made the gap between him and the two of them unmistakably clear.
It also served as proof that his declaration of "I won't lose to you even injured (rough translation)" had been no exaggeration whatsoever.
"That's enough. One chance is plenty, isn't it?"
Crunch─
―One-shot kill lolololol
―Should've taken the chance when you had it tsk tsk
―Go stare at a wall and reflect during the revival wait ti
―Info) This is Reverse City's first death
A chilling sound rang out, and that was the end of it.
Heavy Pistol and Light Spear, 'torn out of the space itself' in that back alley, vanished without leaving so much as a drop of blood.
The resistance they had been about to mount after confirming Baek Woohyun's attitude of refusing further dialogue was utterly aningless. Naturally, since activating their supernatural abilities had been impossible.
They would now revive beneath the Hero Association after a set amount of ti had passed.
Since 'Reverse City' is designed to impose an enormous cost upon death and revival, they would have to scramble about for so ti paying that off.
The future of their 'Reverse City' endeavor, beginning as debtors, looked rather bleak. Still, the silver lining was that a reasonably entertaining scene had been captured for their broadcasts.
"···Let's go."
'Anonymous Viewer 62' donated 10,000 won!
[Yes, let's.]
Having disposed of the two intruders, Baek Woohyun turned and walked on. The building where the ownerless authority lay dormant, as Isaac had inford him, was much further back.
Fortunately, the building in question was empty and its door left open─likely because Isaac had seen to it in advance─making entry extrely easy.
From there, descending to the basent via the single staircase, not a single obstacle impeded him. Just as it had been over the nine previous visits.
Upon arriving at his destination, he swept his gaze around the area and located a 'shimr' in a corner of the basent. A shimr perceivable only to him, given that he was working alongside Isaac.
This was the entrance Isaac had created, set so that other broadcasters connected to 'Reverse City' could neither identify it nor lay a hand on it.
The entrance leading to the back side of the virtual reality 'Reverse Planet'─the space where the abandoned ownerless authority lay dormant.
Hummm─
"······."
After one strange tremor swept through his body,
Baek Woohyun found himself setting foot in a space where everything was bizarrely distorted.
A space where neither sky nor ground nor anything else existed, with only streams of code whose aning was unclear flowing through it like the Milky Way.
According to Isaac's explanation, even this was a fabrication crafted to be easier for Baek Woohyun to perceive.
He'd said that originally it was nothing more than an incomprehensible mass of code.
Coming from a human composed entirely of code, the words carried a certain convincing weight.
'Anonymous Viewer 62' donated 10,000 won!
[This way.]
After pressing through the flowing streams of code for a short while─whether 'pressing through' was even the right expression to use here was uncertain─
Baek Woohyun discovered a perfectly spherical orb radiating a mysterious light. The streams of code surrounding it were being drawn into the orb as though converging upon a single point.
The orb, which was the ownerless authority of 'Reverse Planet' given form, was truly of a mystical nature. Had it not been the tenth ti he was seeing it, even he would have marveled.
'Anonymous Viewer 62' donated 10,000 won!
[Just a mont─ There. Now all that's needed is ti.]
"Good."
Once enough ti passed and the code Isaac had embedded activated inside the orb to seize the authority, Baek Woohyun would be able to retrieve the orb from this location.
And once he handed the orb he had secured over to Isaac along with the 'Reverse City' private server, without Deus detecting it, everything would be finished.
However, the ti required for that was roughly a month. Concealing the authority within 'Reverse City' itself had required advanced calculation and taken two days.
This was why the duration of 'Reverse City' was close to two months. The period needed for recovering the authority alone was one month and twenty days.
"Haaaaah···."
'Anonymous Viewer 62' donated 10,000 won!
[You've done well!]
Having erged from the space made of streams of code, Baek Woohyun exhaled. As if trying to expel the peculiar sensation filling his body, at length.
Entering and exiting a place originally not permitted to humans was a thoroughly botherso affair even for him. That remained the case even with Isaac's assistance.
While inside the back side of the virtual reality, one felt at any mont as though one's own existence might be decomposed into streams of code and dissolve between them.
Even so, he had now embedded Isaac's code into all ten authorities, so there would be no need to enter there again for so ti.
Going forward, all that was needed was to prove that 'Reverse City' was simply a private server prepared for content purposes, so that Deus wouldn't catch wind of the plan.
In short, it ant he needed to make his mark as 'The End,' the association leader of the Villain Association within 'Reverse City.'
―Jeong Nayeon: What are you up to right now?
"···?"
―Baek Woohyun: Nothing
―Jeong Nayeon: Then can The End deploy right now?
Had she sohow sensed that resolve?
Out of nowhere ca a ssage from Jeong Nayeon saying that Villain Association Leader 'The End' needed to make a move.
This despite the fact that Baek Woohyun had earlier established that for the balance of forces, he should not act in the early stages of 'Reverse City,' and had even prepared the settings and appearance for that purpose.
He tilted his head and asked.
―Baek Woohyun: I thought I wasn't supposed to step in early
―Jeong Nayeon: Yeah that was the plan
―Jeong Nayeon: But a problem ca up
―Baek Woohyun: ?
The incident had originated with the Villain Association's first gathering.
After Baek Woohyun had completed his role and exited, Rutty-Nyang and Chae had gathered all the broadcasters affiliated with the Villain Alliance who were present and began planning a bank robbery.
Among them were quite a few who had previously taken on criminal roles on other private servers─so-called 'experienced newcors'─and so the plan progressed steadily.
Whether 'steadily' was the right word to attach to a cri was debatable, but in any case, it ant things had proceeded properly.
"Jackpot!"
"Yee-haw!"
"Initial capital acquisition successful!"
―Hell yeah lolololol
―But why isn't anyone coming to stop them?
―At this rate they could rob other banks too
―Hit another one ㄱ?
"Another bank too?!"
"What's there to stop us! Let's go!"
The heroes who had still been receiving explanations at the Hero Association, along with the forces of justice as a whole, had failed to respond properly to a bank robbery launched as a group right from the very start.
Who would have predicted that instead of scattering around to rob ATMs or convenience stores at best, they would suddenly pull off a bank robbery en masse?
Since the Villain Alliance had co out as a group, the Hero Association needed to respond as a group in turn, but they hadn't managed that, so the outco was predictable.
Heroes who arrived at the scene one or two at a ti were easily defeated by the villains, and the scale of the bank robbery incident swelled monstrously before anyone could react.
"Hero Association! Assemble!"
""Assemble!""
―Only now?
―They've got numbers though
―Heroes outnumber villains since villains have the advantage
―As tradition dictates, ganging up on villains is the right of heroes!
That said, the Hero Association wasn't simply taking it lying down.
Centering around the prominent broadcasters, they made an assemble declaration, exercised restraint against going off alone, and resolved to all gather together to stop the Villain Association's bank robbery.
As so viewer in the chat had noted, the heroes' numbers exceeded the villains', so even excluding those who had died in the first and second waves, the heroes had more than enough bodies.
All the more so given that so of those who had died first had already revived and rejoined.
──That was Jeong Nayeon's account of the situation.
From Day 1 of 'Reverse City,' the Hero Association VS Villain Alliance were going to clash in a massive showdown.
Truly, a developnt no one had anticipated.
―Jeong Nayeon: So the fight has blown up enormously right now
―Jeong Nayeon: We absolutely have to get involved too
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