Chapter 342 – Part 2 – The Identity of the Black Mask

Confusion came to Song Chi-hyeon’s mind upon learning the identity of the black mask.

‘N-no way. It was Choi Seong-min? N-no. That can’t be. I must be mistaking him for someone else……’

He doubted his own eyes, but no matter how he looked, the person before him looked exactly like Choi Seong-min.

‘Right, it must be someone who just resembles him. The world is so vast……’

“Great Hero.”

However, such thoughts vanished completely as soon as he heard the voice.

Even if the face was similar, there couldn’t be someone with the same voice too.

“Choi Seong-min! You really are Choi Seong-min?”

“That’s correct, Great Hero.”

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean? Are you saying that even after knowing the identity of the person you were fighting with just now?”

Choi Seong-min’s eyes changed instantly.

He pointed his dagger with murderous eyes unlike any he’d shown before.

“I came here to kill you.”

“What……?”

The subordinate he trusted more than anyone was pointing a dagger at him.

And he was saying he came to kill him.

It was such an unimaginable ending that Song Chi-hyeon couldn’t close his mouth for a while.

“Still can’t believe it? Even though I took off my mask and revealed my identity?”

“Th-that can’t be…… This is a dream.”

“Now you’re escaping reality? Then I should help you wake up from reality.”

Choi Seong-min approached closer and raised his dagger.

Stab-!

“Keuhaak!”

The dagger was embedded in Song Chi-hyeon’s knee.

“Now you won’t be able to get up and walk.”

“Y-you bastard……!”

Venom rose in Song Chi-hyeon’s eyes.

“Now you seem to believe it. Then I don’t need to use honorifics anymore either.”

Choi Seong-min grinned and put his mask back on.

Song Chi-hyeon was in a state where he had lost so much blood that it wouldn’t be strange if he died at any moment.

If he died without wearing the mask, he wouldn’t be able to replicate that guy’s appearance. That would be troublesome.

“Why! Why did you betray me?”

Song Chi-hyeon screamed.

He had been betrayed by the subordinate he trusted more than anyone.

It was impossible for him to accept.

“At least let me know the reason before I die. When was it from? When did you decide to betray me?”

“From the beginning.”

Song Chi-hyeon was shocked by those words.

“What? From the beginning? You mean when I visited your house to recruit you?”

“No. That wasn’t the first time we met, was it?”

Song Chi-hyeon was shocked once again as he recalled his first meeting with Choi Seong-min.

“D-don’t tell me?”

“That’s right. The day you disguised yourself as an investigator and investigated me and Do Eun-jeong. I decided to betray you from that day.”

“……”

Song Chi-hyeon couldn’t continue speaking due to absurdity.

“From that time? How? I wore a mask and hid my identity, so how did you know it was me……”

“That’s not all I know.”

“What?”

Song Chi-hyeon looked at Choi Seong-min.

He heard a voice in his head.

-I also knew about your trait. The trait of reading thoughts like now. Right?

Song Chi-hyeon’s eyes couldn’t get any wider.

“H-how did you……”

-Do you know how hard it was to pretend to be loyal and deceive you all this time? It was killing me to hide even my inner thoughts.

“……”

The shock Song Chi-hyeon received was beyond imagination.

“Everything…… everything was a lie……”

Choi Seong-min knew not only his identity but also his trait.

And from the beginning, he had been hiding his true feelings and acting like a loyal subordinate with the intention of betraying him.

The greater the trust, the greater the shock of betrayal.

“……Who.”

“What?”

“……Who ordered it?”

Song Chi-hyeon didn’t think Choi Seong-min had planned this alone.

He believed there must be someone behind who ordered the assassination.

“Who…… who ordered you to kill me? Don’t tell me……”

There was someone he could guess.

“Kwak Min-cheol, that bastard. He knew my trait and also knew I was doing investigator activities!”

The puzzle pieces fit together.

If it was Kwak Min-cheol, he would want to kill him, so it must have been his order.

“So you planted this guy next to me to assassinate me when the opportunity arose! I didn’t even know there was a spy right beside me, damn! I was being played by Kwak Min-cheol’s scheme from the beginning!”

“Stop your delusions there. Do you think I would attach myself to trash like Kwak Min-cheol?”

“Then? Who is it? Who is the mastermind who ordered you to assassinate me!”

Choi Seong-min pointed to the sky with his index finger.

“Someone from above did order it.”

“So who!”

“That is……”

Slice-!

Choi Seong-min’s dagger drew a red line.

“You’ll find out when you meet them directly.”

Splat-

Song Chi-hyeon’s head fell into the pool of blood.

[You have killed Hunter Song Chi-hyeon.]

[You have stolen the trait ‘Thought Reading.’]

[You have stolen 17 pieces of equipment.]

[You have stolen 30 Magic Stones.]

[You have stolen 1 collectible.]

[You have stolen 9 consumables.]

[You have stolen 1 possession.]

[Synchronization Rate 14.5%]

A message appeared when he killed Song Chi-hyeon.

The message didn’t stop there.

[You have assassinated the designated target.]

[Invincibility effect is maintained for the duration.]

[Remaining time: 4 minutes 46 seconds]

About 5 minutes had passed since the VIP Assassination duration.

It meant it only took 5 minutes to subdue and kill Song Chi-hyeon.

[You killed the target while wearing the Doppelganger’s Mask.]

[You have replicated the appearance of the killed target.]

[You can transform anytime by saying the target’s name while wearing the mask.]

Now he could freely transform into Song Chi-hyeon’s appearance.

He decided to try using it right away.

‘Song Chi-hyeon.’

When he said the name of the target to transform into, black energy flowed from the eye sockets of the mask.

The energy soon came down to his toes and covered his entire body.

Squirm squirm-

It transformed Choi Seong-min’s body.

Into Song Chi-hyeon’s appearance without a single discrepancy.

“Did I really change?”

When he tested his voice, it was definitely Song Chi-hyeon.

Soon, Choi Seong-min smiled satisfactorily upon seeing his face reflected in the mirror.

In the mirror was the face of the man he had killed instead of the mask.

‘I’ll check the traits and items later……’

Choi Seong-min looked around with Song Chi-hyeon’s face.

‘First, I need to deal with this mess.’

Team Crush’s office was in disarray with blood and corpses.

Choi Seong-min sighed softly as he checked the rolling heads.

‘Everyone except Do Eun-jeong is dead……’

Bang Tae-man, Sim Seong-jin, Eom Jeong-sik.

Faces that had been lively just two weeks ago were killed for the reason of having seen Yang Jo-young.

‘I feel somewhat sorry. If I hadn’t visited Team Crush that day and called Yang Jo-young, this wouldn’t have happened……’

But it was unavoidable.

It wasn’t a situation where he could refuse the Great Hero’s orders.

Moreover, he never imagined it would lead to such an ending.

‘Still…… I’m glad I could save at least one person.’

Do Eun-jeong almost became a victim too, but he assassinated Song Chi-hyeon in time.

‘Though it was too open to call it an assassination……’

Thanks to weakening him with poison beforehand, he was able to gain the upper hand even in a frontal confrontation.

Choi Seong-min’s gaze turned to Do Eun-jeong.

It seemed it would take some time for her to wake up from her deep sleep.

‘She probably didn’t hear my face or voice.’

Since he was wearing the Doppelganger’s mask, she couldn’t have seen his face, and since he knocked her unconscious before speaking, she couldn’t have heard his voice either.

‘What’s concerning is that she might have seen my dagger during the fight……’

Since a dagger that glows red isn’t common, she might suspect that the masked man was Choi Seong-min.

Swoosh-

Choi Seong-min drew his dagger and approached Do Eun-jeong.

He raised the dagger above her sleeping head.

‘It wouldn’t be good if it became known that I killed Song Chi-hyeon.’

If he wanted clean aftermath, he should kill Do Eun-jeong here.

‘She’s a member of a criminal organization, so it’s not like I’m killing an innocent person.’

He tried to rationalize it that way, but Choi Seong-min’s dagger didn’t fall easily.

He knew that if he killed Do Eun-jeong for such a reason, he would be no different from Song Chi-hyeon.

And.

‘If I kill her like this, there’s no point in saving her, right?’

Tssss-

Choi Seong-min deactivated his dagger and turned away from her.

‘It’s not certain yet whether she recognized the dagger. I’ll have to meet her separately later and interrogate her. I have the thought-reading trait now……’

The office was full of blood, but there wasn’t much to clean up.

‘First, I don’t need to touch the team members’ corpses. I can just have subordinates clean them up.’

Since he could now act as Song Chi-hyeon, he could have subordinates cover up the incident.

‘The problem is Song Chi-hyeon’s corpse. This absolutely must not be discovered.’

Of course, it would be revealed that he died when the rankings were checked in a month.

‘If I want to live as Song Chi-hyeon until then, I need to hide the corpse so it can’t be found.’

Choi Seong-min’s eyes flashed toward Song Chi-hyeon’s corpse.

* * *

“Mmm……”

As soon as Do Eun-jeong woke up, she unconsciously rubbed the back of her neck.

Her neck felt stiff for some reason.

She blinked with a hazy mind and soon turned her gaze.

“Ah!”

She jumped up upon seeing her surroundings.

She had been sleeping in a secluded alley.

‘Wh-why am I here?’

She had definitely gone to work at Team Crush’s office as usual……

‘C-corpses! I saw the seniors’ corpses……!’

She definitely saw them.

The severed heads of team members including Bang Tae-man.

And the face of the hooded culprit.

‘S-Song Chi-hyeon. It was Song Chi-hyeon!’

Though it was covered by a hood, she could tell because she saw him up close.

‘Seeing how he mentioned junior Seong-min’s name, it’s definitely him. It’s definitely Great Hero Song Chi-hyeon.’

Song Chi-hyeon had killed the team members.

He had also tried to kill her.

She didn’t know the reason.

What was important was that he had tried to kill her, and in the end……

‘I’m alive? Me……?’

What mattered was that she had survived the crisis.

‘Ah! Come to think of it……’

Do Eun-jeong belatedly remembered.

That a third party had intervened at the moment of crisis and the two had engaged in fierce combat.

‘I remember. I remember everything……’

Memories that had been covered by fear surfaced.

‘It was definitely a man wearing a black mask.’

The build was definitely male, but the face was unrecognizable.

‘He seemed to be an assassin or something, using some kind of red dagger……’

She hadn’t witnessed the battle in detail.

She had been trembling with fear.

Moreover, they were fighting so frantically that it was hard to follow with her eyes, so she didn’t remember clearly.

‘What I remember is that a masked assassin appeared and saved me. And…… that person overwhelmed Song Chi-hyeon to the point of making him near death.’

The scene she saw before fainting was Song Chi-hyeon on his knees.

The sight of him screaming from dagger wounds and spilling blood on the floor was clearly remembered even in the chaos.

‘I don’t remember after that, but the outcome was already decided. The man in the black mask won. Song Chi-hyeon……!’

It must have been that person who safely brought her to the alley.

‘I don’t know who it was, but they killed a Great Hero. This is a major incident.’

She had no intention of defending the Great Hero.

She thought he deserved to die since he had tried to kill her.

‘The members’ bodies…… are they still there?’

She still trembled thinking about her colleagues’ deaths.

But she couldn’t help but check.

Do Eun-jeong left the alley.

Looking at the location, it wasn’t far from the office.

‘It might be dangerous, but……’

To understand the situation, Do Eun-jeong visited Team Crush’s office again.

In case any bodies remained, she intended to report and have them handled.

But.

“Huh?”

The office was clean without a single bloodstain, let alone bodies.

So much so that she wondered if she had dreamed it all.