Chapter 1: Prologue

As darkness settled over the night, the city’s outskirts, beyond the heroes’ sight, were utterly silent.

Breaking through that quiet stillness, hurried footsteps could be heard.

The urgent footsteps grew faster with ragged breaths, and the cold sweat on his forehead revealed his desperation.

Run.

He must not be caught.

That was a terror not to be faced.

It was like an entity not to be encountered.

“Haa, haa…!”

How long had it been since he ran so breathlessly?

He didn’t care whether his overtaxed heart stopped first, or if the pursuer caught him first.

Because either way, the outcome was the same.

So, he ran without rest.

Passing flickering streetlights, he tried to escape ‘it’ by cutting through old buildings.

And then, he reached a construction site.

“How far are you going to chase me?!”

“Until I no longer need to chase.”

Here, there was a villain and an ordinary citizen.

The ordinary citizen happened to come to this dark area, and the villain came here chasing that citizen.

The first thing visible was eerie, lifeless red eyes.

A woman with a black mask, whose appearance resembled an urban legend, walked in with the moonlight at her back.

There was nowhere left to run, and his already overtaxed heart signaled that he could run no more.

All that remained was to face her head-on.

That was the only thing he could do.

Drrrlk-!

The sound of something like an iron club scraping the ground.

The woman held a long iron pipe in her hand.

An iron pipe stained with blood at its tip.

“Do you know that running is useless?”

‘What expression, I wonder, is the woman making as she says that?’

‘What could be the expression beneath her mask?’

The woman slowly approached, gradually removing her mask.

Hidden beneath the mask was a smile.

Under the faint moonlight, the woman’s smile was revealed.

“Ugh, Uwaaaah!!!”

At the same time, he began his final struggle.

Those red eyes and angelic smile plunged people into fear and terror.

He charged with a small knife, but the woman easily dodged, her expression filling with even more delight.

Thwack!

Finally, he collapsed with a thud!

It was likely because he had been struck hard on the head with a blunt object.

Red blood spread like paint on a canvas, and though he was still breathing, he could no longer maintain consciousness.

“Hoo…”

With a sigh, the woman looked down at the fallen figure.

“For a weak villain, you sure run well for no reason.”

The woman was an ordinary citizen.

She had merely gotten lost late at night and drifted into this area, then, on a whim, hunted down the villain who had coincidentally attacked her.

“Let’s see, C-rank villain Stalker… C-rank is pretty decent.”

Villains have bounties, so catching them yields a good amount of money.

“Maybe I’ll buy some chicken on the way home today.”

The place where she lived was Hero City.

It was a city where the most powerful heroes existed, in a world of superhumans known as ‘Awakened Ones’.