Chapter 28
“You could at least try to run harder. This is no fun at all.”
Victor clicked his tongue. The further they ran, the better the chase would be. What boring prey.
Killing time, he picked up two limp corpses and threw them into the carriage. It was only then, after the rampage, that he realized he’d been holding a woman in his arms the whole time.
‘Why are you clinging to me like a corpse? I totally forgot you were even there.’
Surprisingly, she wasn’t as annoying as he’d expected her to be.
He’d known who she was the moment they met.
Odette-something Albrecht.
She exuded the scent that only a Transcendent could possess, impossible to ignore.
‘What kind of simpering bastard was the priest who wrote the scriptures?’
He’d written about how meeting a purifier would feel like the world stopping, your chest swelling with emotion, bells of ecstasy ringing — all that poetic nonsense.
‘Wasn’t her body scent supposed to make even the noblest beasts drool and submit?’
Maybe he’d briefly caught a whiff of something appetizing at first… but that had to be a mistake.
Right now, the overwhelming artificial rose scent made his head throb — forget drooling, it was nauseating.
‘Why does she smell so fake? It’s revolting.’
Not that he felt sorry for the infamous villainess Odette. But seeing her silent despite being drenched in blood was… oddly unsettling.
Her pale complexion, those empty eyes staring blankly into space — it all added to the unease.
“Pretty lady, are you alright?”
He shook her thin frame, but there was no response. It was as if her soul had left her body and was wandering elsewhere.
“You’re cold… way too cold.”
…!
“Darling.” That one word ignited a spark in her teal eyes.
‘What the hell? What’s with this woman?’
Fear, resentment, guilt, regret — emotions too complex to define swirled in her gaze, possessing a force that overwhelmed.
‘Have we… been entangled before?’
Victor almost believed it.
But no — this was their first meeting. He was certain of that.
And the reason they hadn’t met until now was because Odette had consistently refused any contact with him — all because he came from the slums.
‘Ah, is that what this is? That complicated look because she’s being touched by some filthy slum rat?’
It would make sense.
Especially when he recalled the reply she’d sent back then, when he’d desperately requested purification.
“I have no intention of mingling with base creatures lower than insects. How dare a filthy, vulgar thief like you seek to meet me?”
Each word brimming with contempt. A tone soaked in arrogance and condescension.
‘Ha.’
Realizing that, he felt stupid for being caught off guard by her pale reaction earlier.
‘Not that I enjoy holding her either. My head’s killing me because of her awful smell.’
Victor stepped onto the roof of the carriage and leapt effortlessly onto a tall stone building nearby. On its rooftop, he carelessly laid Odette down.
“Take a break here. I’ll go punish those thugs who bothered you.”
With that, he jumped off the rooftop and charged after the coachmen, slashing wildly with his moonblade and licking his lips in anticipation.
The brutality of his chase was masked by his handsome face.
He tore through the necks of the fleeing men like they were paper, painting the streets with blood. Then, as if showing off his Transcendent strength, he kicked a severed head through the air, landing it cleanly through the window of the fleeing carriage, hundreds of meters away.
“Finishing blow!”
With a snap of his fingers, a massive explosion erupted from the carriage — a pillar of fire surged into the sky, blooming into a mushroom-shaped cloud above the city.
Victor ran his blood-drenched hand through his hair with satisfaction.
“There’s nothing like killing to break bad habits.”
Pyrokinesis. A power that controlled fire.
Though S-class users were forbidden from using their powers against humans, it didn’t matter.
No one in this city would dare report him, no matter what they saw.
Three minutes. That’s all it took.
“Our darling.”
Hearing that word in Victor’s voice felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. The fog of PTSD lifted, her consciousness finally clawing back to awareness.
‘What am I doing, stuck in old memories like this?’
To regain her senses, she clenched her fists so hard that her palms bled. Her trembling hands slowly steadied.
It was lucky Victor had left her alone. She needed time to recover from the shock and prepare for how to deal with him when he returned.
Victor was the most mentally unhinged male lead in <Crimson Salvation> — the one who cranked up the game’s psychological devastation to the max.
“An arsonist who ignites desire! Want a fiery yandere? We recommend the bed-obsessed, sadistic lunatic Victor ♡”
Or so the character guide claimed, but watching that column of fire rise into the sky made such copy feel utterly grotesque.
‘Igniting desire, my ass. That bastard is literally setting fires.’
She stared up at the smoke with a grim expression.
It was their first conversation in this life, but his hatred level toward her was probably already high. He must’ve exchanged letters with her father — whom she’d impersonated.
‘How do I keep this lunatic from hating me even more? What was the trick in the Victor route of the game?’
She wracked her brain.
‘He hated anything predictable. Even slightly cliché choices would instantly drop his affection.’
Especially during the first meeting — if you didn’t act unexpectedly, you couldn’t even access the Victor route. He craved unpredictability.
‘So I need to do what would be most unexpected to him — if he thinks I’m Odette.’
That decision was made just as Victor returned to the rooftop.
“Did you wait long, darling?”
With a lazy smile.
Victor had been abandoned at birth and raised by street bandits.
His large frame, strength surpassing adults, and pleasure-seeking nature made him stand out quickly in the gang. Soon, there wasn’t a soul in the underworld who didn’t know the name Victor.
At 13, a bounty was placed on his head. But after awakening as a Transcendent, even the police force that issued it began treating him like a king of the underworld.
Raised amid violence, he learned one truth:
“See? Law doesn’t make order. Fists do.”
After publicly murdering the coachmen, the festival-goers sensibly scattered and retreated home.
“Criminals are best reformed through greater crime. Dead ones don’t reoffend.”
Satisfied with the now-calm Red Globotnik Street, Victor grinned and turned his gaze.
“To you too, darling — don’t you agree?”
He looked toward the beauty slumped on the rooftop, reeking of artificial rose scent.
“……”
“You’re pretty bold. I knew you liked bad boys, but I didn’t think you wandered into places like this.”
He strode toward her, long legs carrying him quickly, and grabbed her chin to force her to look at him.
“With a face this pretty, you’ve got guts. Even the scummiest lowlifes don’t dare come this deep.”
Her delicate jawline was objectively beautiful, but it stirred no feelings in him.
‘The Crown Prince and Zion really exaggerated. Said her scent was so foul it could kill. It’s not that bad.’
Though the artificial rose was giving him a headache, he didn’t release her.
There was a certain thrill in having this haughty woman beneath him, forced to look up.
“I’m curious, darling. How does it feel to be saved by someone lower than an insect?”
The woman who had crushed him at his most desperate was now at his mercy.
‘She’ll throw off my dirty hand and recoil in horror, like the proud lady she is.’
She used to burn her gloves after reading his letters. Even the letter opener was discarded as filthy.
How fun it would be to see this proud woman unable to bear such humiliation — Victor imagined her reaction with glee, a grin spreading in his light green eyes.
“Darling, what are you saving those noble lips for? Answer me.”
He pressed his thumb firmly against her lips — just enough to humiliate.
‘I already know how you’ll react.’
Victor was confident. He knew the kind of depravity she would display.
Her scent clashed horribly with his powers. Even when her purification level was low, contact with her brought him intense pain.
On those nights, when he writhed in agony begging for death, he’d reread her cruel letter a thousand times.
Because it still carried the trace of a purifier. Even the smallest drop was a desperate salvation.
All of that was in the past now.
But it meant he’d come to understand her nature.
Just another aristocrat obsessed with bloodlines. Someone who couldn’t stand to be entangled with a commoner.
Someone who saw him — born in the slums — as something to loathe and detest.
The more he touched Odette, the more repulsed she would be.
He caressed her face as if to taunt her — waiting for her to recoil in horror.
And then—
