This is crazy. I almost uttered a swear word without realizing it. I calmed down and confirmed the address on the nameplate.

[44 at Gray Parrot-B04]

It’s definitely my house, but why is he here? It would be impossible for anyone else to tell that the good-looking man sleeping in front of the door was someone from Carnot, a criminal hotspot. Hiding my bewilderment, I lean down to examine his condition.

The streets of Jeanie are narrow, and the smell of blood fills my nose. His whole body is covered in blood, but I doubt all of it is his. I really don’t want to, but I use my powers to check his body, releasing a translucent white thread from my fingertips which penetrates the man, scanning over his body. Although the injury is severe, I don’t think he’ll die immediately. I rise again after looking at his face. It appears so gentle, like an angel, that it’s almost impossible to believe he was the king of the dark world. Turning away, I look around quietly, and fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any rats in the area.

Ugh.

I lift my foot and push the man’s body next door. The beautiful woman living there is the good lady who can help him to be the main character.

So in a nutshell……

You’re at the wrong house, Villain.

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x. x x x x. x x x x xx x x x x x x x x x x x x. x x x c x. x x x. x x x. x x x. f d shjdj j i h dy h j j jj j h gg h j jg gg hx d. g s .d. x f d c. v d. d f f. d c. g f. d g f. s h g d z. c g. d d d g g. g g d f. g h g. d f g g h. r a a. d g h j j. r s f g h g s s d f g. g g d. s d g. g g f. rr. f r r f f f. f f g t f f d r. r t g j. j r. w s g h. u r s vf h. t e f h. r e g g s x. x x x x x x x. x x. x x x x x. x x x x x x x x. c x x. x x. x x x x x. x x x x xx xx x x xx x xx x x x x x x x x. x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x. x x x x x

I was 10 years old when I first realized my past life. There are some areas where it is unclear to say that I’m 10 years old, but for convenience, I might as well think so. And to explain it, I have to talk first about an event that was a big turning point in my life. That day, I got caught pickpocketing and was being beaten with fire.

Thwack! Bam!

“Did you think today was your big day? How dare you pickpocket me because there’s no one else to rob?”

That day was really an unlucky day. I thought the man with the smell of money was a merchant or tourist who went astray on the road, but I was completely wrong. It’s not like I was an officer of a new criminal organization that just received this area. It was a mistake that I didn’t know that the face was unfamiliar and was the bottom person. Moreover, it was a mistake to think that a man was so stupid and easy. The moment I reached out to the back of the man’s clothes, I was soon ****** to the floor with my hands behind my back.

“I’m felt something dirty touch me!”

“Hey, I don’t have time, just do it in moderation.”

There was a colleague at the side who tried to stop him with a lukewarm attitude, but it didn’t help much.

“No, I’m sorry… Aah!”

The man pushed me into an alley and hurled a random kick at me. There were many abandoned children here in the slums. And there were also adults who gathered the children together and gave them sleeping bags and snacks, which provided food. For a good-looking kid, they occasionally gave away cheap junk food such as candy made with sugar water. I was living there hiding my gender and pretending to be a boy because I didn’t get accepted in the crowd. It was possible because I was still young and had my hair cut thickly and had my face covered with a big stick(?), and my gender was not yet revealed.

Thwack!

“Ptoo(spitting)…! Bitch irritates me.”

The man spit sideways as he looked down at me with merciless eyes. I was famous among the children in the crowd, but I was so unlucky that day. I got caught pickpocketing and got beaten up several times when I first started. But this was the first time it was so severe.

The guy next to him clicked his tongue as if he were in a hurry, but that was the end. They left me alone in the alley. I thought it was a good thing that it was over. If it had been worse, I might have died. I got up to go back to the group, but I could only move a few steps and passed out. And when I opened my eyes again, I was being sold to a human trafficking ring.

*********

Where I live, slavery was not illegal. Of course, it was forbidden to kidnap and sell random people on the streets, but I was from the slums without parents. So even if I was gone, there was nobody to find me. Even the group I belonged to would not have tried to find me. It was not uncommon for people to go missing one day in the slums. I was like that, and while I was lying on the alley, I was sold as a slave by passerbys.

“This time, 50 people that are healthy.”

“Oh, come on. I’ll pick one for you this time.”

Lucky or bad. I was sold right away on the day I was handed over to the top of the slaves. It was a suspicious person who bought me, wearing black clothes from head to toe. From the sound of his voice, it seemed like he was a man of considerable age. When I heard the slave trader groaning, it seemed that this wasn’t the first time he’d taken many slaves at once. This time, I was taken to a cart with other slaves, and after a full two-day journey, I arrived at the destination.

“What, are you dying? Besides, it’s only blood, right?”

I was sick in the cart and was found only then. The aftereffects of being beaten in the alley seemed to have been unknown, as he did not check on each slave’s status when he bought them.

“Ha, you son of a bitch. I’ve been so good to you last time, and you’re selling me something I can’t even eat?”

The man frowned irritably. The man who took off his hat and revealed his face looked older than I thought. He looked at me disapprovingly and soon clicked his tongue.

“Tsk. I can’t do that.”

It was too much to go back to the top of the slaves now, so I just decided not to return myself but to go inside. But it might have been better to be abandoned or killed that day. Because I arrived at the Institute of Bioscience, which is notorious even in the criminal city of Carnot.

*********

“Is it all this time?”

I was immediately put in the lab. There was a strange smell, and there were depressing cries everywhere.

“It’s similar so far. I don’t think this would work for you anyway?”

The woman there replied sourly to the man’s voice. Then her eyes turned to me hanging from the man’s side.

“But who’s that little kid? Have you been deceived again this time?”

“Who is the messenger?! I picked this young man on purpose.”

It must have hurt his pride to let them know that he was swindled by a slave dealer. The man pretended to be serious as if it was his intention to bring me in.

“Put ‘it’ in his body.”

“Really… Are you serious?”

“I’ve only been trying on an adult body, so I’ll change the method this time.”

The woman seemed reluctant at first, but at the end of the day, at the man’s command, she took me to a bed. My eyes were blurred at that time because I was boiling with a high fever. The sound of two men exchanging talks over me was fading away. So I couldn’t remember what happened to me right after that. But they tied my wrists and ankles to the bed and stabbed me in the neck with a sharp needle. I could feel something penetrating into my neck that I couldn’t identify. After that, I passed out, feeling a terrible pain like my whole body was being smashed. And I dreamed for days of a group of black spiders eating me. Then the pain slowly receded and the reason which had been forgotten, finally came back.

I remembered my previous life’s memories.

Just as water poured out of a broken jar, memories of the past that had been buried suddenly popped up. I am not an orphan of simple blood circulation as it is now, but I remember the sweet days with my family. The daily leisurely life of lying in bed while hugging a dog in my arms and reading a book that I borrowed from my younger brother. After the college exam, I had a chat with my friends until late at night. And then late one night, on my way home, I was pushed by a drunk person and fell to the street. It was a bright and glittering light that swallowed me right up after that. This time, I wandered through countless days in my memory, whether it was a dream or a fantasy.

“It was successful……!”

Then one day, the voice of a man full of joy woke me up.

“It succeeded…! The ‘absorption’ was finally a success!”

This was the very same voice I heard right before I fell unconscious after getting injected with something strange.

I pried my still heavy eyelids apart and blinked my unfocused eyes a few times.

My vision was completely white.

At first, I thought I was trapped inside a white room. But soon, I realized that that wasn’t the case. I stared at the entanglement of lines laid out diagonally before my eyes. They were very thin threads.

Dozens, hundreds…no, it was more than that. A countless number of densely woven threads were wrapped around my body like a cocoon.

“This is surprising. I didn’t think it could bear it…”

“Looks like we should have experimented with young organisms sooner…”

“As expected of our Doctor!”

“Right? It’s really amazing that he could think of something like this!”

Whether it was the voices flowing into my ears or the smell coiling around my nose, I could sense them clearer than before. My five senses seemed to have somehow gotten better than before.

Riip!

I used my hands to tear apart the white wall before me. But it seemed that wherever I was, was not the empty bed that I had last fallen asleep on. The moment I tore open the cocoon of threads and leaned my body out, something gave out from under my feet. I was pulled down by gravity and fell to the floor in one swoop.

Swish!

However, something above me supported me so I was able to land safely on the floor. Instantly, the people around me who were chattering excitedly, simultaneously held their breath.

“Ooh, you’ve woken up!”

Only the man who had brought me here warmly greeted me, with a wide smile on his face.

“How do you feel? Does anywhere hurt?”

I looked around without giving a reply. The same white threads that had been wrapped my body were spread out everywhere like a spiderweb. It was a thread from the ceiling that had supported me a little while ago when I fell down.

I lowered my head again and long black threads swept across the floor. To my surprise, it was my hair. My hair color used to be sort-of faded pale gold. But when I slept and woke up, it had turned to color as black as soot, like it had been dyed. Which is why I didn’t think it was my hair at first. Moreover, before I fell asleep, my hair had clearly been so short that it didn’t reach my ear so I couldn’t figure out how or when it had grown so long.

I felt suspicious and looked down at my body. A piece of cloth, seemingly more accurate to call a sack, was on my body. I somehow felt slightly taller and my body seemed to have developed a bit more.

I lifted my hands to take a look at them, and my hands which had been filled with all sorts of scars, was fair and smooth like it was carved out of white jade. It wasn’t just my hands. All the skin I could see, the parts not covered by the piece of cloth, was like that. When I thought about it, it wasn’t just my hearing and smell that had become cleared, my vision seemed to have improved dramatically and my body was shockingly light.

It was definitely strange but oddly enough, I didn’t feel much interest in the changes that had happened to me at the time.

I felt calm to an unnatural degree. After I finish my short observation, I lifted my head. And I met several gazes that were watching me. In the midst of that, I opened my mouth and said:

“I’m hungry.”

The hunger I felt was like I had been starved for who-know-how-many days.

“Right, right! It has been a long time since you’ve had proper nutrition so you must be hungry!”

The man responded dramatically when he heard what I said and ordered the other people around to hurry:

“What are you standing there for? Hurry and get something for Arachne to eat!”

The man that brought me here said he was the doctor of bio-experiments at the research institute. He gave me the name ‘Arachne’ and cared for me unlike the first time we met. Of course, this caring was merely caring for a test subject. I heard that I was apparently the first successful outcome of this experiment.

The thing that they injected in me was a mysterious fragment found in the ruins, and I was told that these fragments had a strange power in them. Due to this, they were studying whether it was possible to the fragments to be absorbed by humans. And the first success in that area was none other than me.

Later on, I found out that there was a gap of three years between the day I first arrived at the research institute, and the day I woke up.

It seemed that even while I was unconscious, their research had continued to persist. When I thought about it, I remembered that while I was dreaming, I sometimes felt a writhing pain all over my body. I had lasted longer than they thought, unlike other test subjects that had quickly died once they were injected with the fragment, so they began to bring in young children to experiment on. Even after I woke up, the researchers excitedly focused more on experimenting with children.

However, the final result was that I was the only test subject that had absorbed the fragment’s power and was able to open their eyes, unscathed. The people at the research institute racked their brains, trying to figure out that had gone wrong. And so, they took me and began to carry out all sorts of tests on me.

Another 3 years passed since then. That was how long I was trapped there, undergoing all kinds of experiments.

In that interval, the researchers’ capability came through, and the children who had succeeded in the experiment became four, including me.

The power I absorbed from the fragment had nothing to do with attacking or killing, so even after I obtained power that I didn’t have before, I could not escape from the research institute on my own.

Meanwhile, the doctor’s greed gradually grew, and I had to absorb more grinded fragments time and time again in repeated experiments. Same went for the other children. Still, it was rewarding and the strength in my body grew stronger and stronger, and I was able to use the abilities I gained in finer detail.

Of course, there was also a child that was unable to endure and died.

While I became good at being able to use the fragment’s power to destroy things unlike at first, the researchers also grew secretly vigilant against me and began talking about moving me somewhere to isolate me.

I sensed that the day for me to escape was approaching.

Boom..!

And then one day, ‘that man’ appeared.

***

BOOM!

A thunderous, deafening roar resounded through the air. At the same time, an exterior wall of the building crumbled down in a heap.

“What is this, all of sudden?!”

“What’s going on?”

Everyone inside the research institute was flustered by the sudden situation.

Crunch.

A man dressed in black soon walked from the cloud of dust.

No…

It would not be unreasonable to call him a boy instead of a youth because strangely, he looked to be in his late teens, with some childish looks still left over.

“…Ah, I hate the smell of filth on my clothes.”

A lazy and bored voice that didn’t suit this situation, filled my ears.

“It’s a nest of maggots, no wonder it smells disgusting.”

The man was stunningly beautiful. The scenery behind the man was definitely the dust falling due to collapse of building’s wall but, strangely enough, there was optical illusion of a halo shining behind him. Even though he came out from a pit of dust, his flawless golden hair sparkled enchantingly, reflecting light like a piece of broken glass and the eyes nestled below that hair shone vivid and cold, like the surface of a clear, frozen lake.

It was a gorgeous face seeping with gentleness and serenity and its features were so harmoniously balanced that if I was told it was a piece of art that an artist molded step by step, I would believe it. He had a flawless, sacred beauty that gave me the impression that he was standing in an immaculate cathedral instead of the blood-soaked research institute. It was to the extent that red bloodstains splattered here and there on his body was invisible to my eyes.

“You—You’re…”

The doctor’s eyes bulged as if he recognized the man.

Seeing that, a smile with a hint of dissatisfaction appeared on the man’s face. The voice that came out of his mouth right after was as sweet as honey, but the contents were vicious.

“I believe I’ve told you not to get that X-like look on your face. It makes me want to bash your face in, but you really don’t listen.”

Everyone around was shaken by this situation but the man was the only one relaxed.

For some reason, the doctor looked horrified and began speaking gibberish.

“Has this change in generations already started? No but still, why are you here…How… Don’t tell me you…?”

The man narrowed his eyes as if the doctor’s response was unbecoming and his mouth distorted in a sneer.

“Looks like you didn’t know what was going on outside while you buried yourself like a maggot in shit?”

There was obvious ridicule on his lips.

“Then again, I don’t think you knew I’d deal with those pests.”

Even the clear arrogance on his beautiful face suited him awfully well.

“Besides that…”

Those beady eyes left the doctor and took a glance around in the next moment.

“What is this now? Did you maggots hatch eggs in the meantime?”

His sharp gaze swept over the test subjects in the room and he soon asked with cold touch on his lips.

“Why the stack of so many brats? It’s nauseating.”

I didn’t notice it before, but the man seemed in a very ferocious mood.

Finally, he stated.

“From today day henceforth, this lab is closed.”