The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

Features perfectly identical to mine.

But it was nothing like looking in a mirror.

Cool, settled eyes. The heavy presence of an Awakened, impossible to hide.

Only the eyes had changed — and the entire feel of the presence pouring off him was on another level entirely.

…Somehow he looks a hell of a lot cooler than the real thing.

"What? When'd you get back?"

The offhand, flat delivery told me at once who was inside.

"Cha Yul?"

Instead of answering my dazed call, Cha Yul pulled out the pocket watch and checked the time.

"No time to talk. Have to get out there."

At the word "fight," worry hit before anything else.

"Already? At least let me get you more artifacts—!"

"Don't bother worrying."

He cut me off, firm, and walked slowly toward me.

Inside he was just a ten-year-old — but maybe it was that our eye levels now lined up exactly.

A weight of presence I'd never felt off him in that small body swept over me.

"I know you love us to death. I'm grateful for that."

"…"

"But you see us as nothing but endlessly fragile kids."

"Well… you are kids. If you were non-Awakened, you'd still be in kindergarten or elementary school."

Cha Yul shook his head, firm, at my pushback.

"That's the standard for non-Awakened. For Awakened, age means nothing. The only measure is how much strength you hold."

Exactly what Han Jewoon had said.

Is that really what the world of Awakened is like?

While I stood there dazed by a world I couldn't bring myself to understand, Cha Yul took another firm step closer.

"I'm not expecting you to change your mind overnight. But keep this one thing in mind. We're not kids who have to be protected anymore."

The quiet finality of it made my chest ache.

I should have been glad the kids had grown strong, but a strange loneliness came over me instead.

My lips moved, but no words came.

"So…"

Cha Yul walked past me — frozen there — and strode, step by measured step, toward the arena.

The iron gate slid open by degrees, and the ferocious cheering from the crowd outside began pouring in.

Just before he plunged into the light and the roar, his unbroken stride paused for the briefest moment.

When he turned his head halfway back, the boy's voice — nothing like the firm, cold one of a moment before — carried a strange note of anticipation.

"Watch closely today. See how much the kid you saved has grown."

"Haha… finally my turn, is it!"

The underground cage, moments before he went out.

Face flushed, the one-armed Fighter bounced lightly on his feet.

Anticipation and the buzz of the coming fight had the muscle of his remaining shoulder drawn taut and hot.

Lately in this Colosseum, one impossible thing after another had been happening.

Starting with the fact that Chae Junhyeok — a non-Awakened without a scrap of mana — was crushing his comrades one by one, overwhelmingly.

Even more shocking: every time he won, the jewel shackled into the loser's stomach was destroyed on the spot, and Chae Junhyeok personally took the freed man in and looked after him.

At first, no one had believed it.

There was no way a Chae Junhyeok who'd made a hobby of other people's suffering would show mercy.

But when the comrades let out earlier quietly came around and proved the truth, even the doubters had to give it up in the end.

Once things had reached that point, some even started throwing fights on purpose — but somehow catching on, on the fourth day Oh Taejin came down in person and lost his mind on them.

"Fight without going all-out and I'll drain every last drop of mana out of you on the spot!"

Under the murderous threat, the gladiators had to fight with everything they had.

But there was no need to bother throwing the fight anyway.

Even coming at him with all they had, the Chae Junhyeok in the arena was overwhelming enough to break the spirit.

In the face of that overpowering force and inexplicable mercy, the comrades were shaken — "Chae Junhyeok has changed," they said — and one by one, they passed through the arena and left the prison.

Now, left inside this hellish cage, were the Fighter himself and the blind Swordsman hyung he trusted and followed — just the two of them.

"Hyung, I want to get out there and fight already!"

The Fighter, who'd been throwing sharp shadow-punches into the air, clenched his fist tight.

"Whether that devil bastard's really turned over a new leaf or he's got something else cooking! I'll bang it out with him myself and find out."

At his hot-blooded younger brother's fighting spirit, the Swordsman — sitting cross-legged against the wall of the cell — slowly turned his head.

His eyes stayed shut tight, but from him came a piercing awareness — as though he saw straight through everything.

"Settle your heart first."

A quiet voice, weighted with heavy inner force, lay low in the cell.

"Rash competitive spirit only ends up as poison, eating into your own flesh."

Even at the earnest advice, the Fighter grinned, broad and boisterous.

"Aw, come on, hyung. I'm nominally an Awakened myself, I know that much! Don't worry! I'll come back with the win, hyung!"

[Gladiator Eleven! Get out here, now!!]

That was when a sharp shout came down like a thunderclap from beyond the bars.

"I'm off, hyung!"

The moment he stepped into the light-drenched arena, cheering fit to burst his eardrums exploded around him.

"Woaaaaaaaah—!!!!"

It was an overwhelming heat — nothing like anything even he had felt before, hardened as he was by countless brushes with death in this arena.

Ha! A regular convention of trash.

The stands were disgustingly packed — easily five times the usual crowd, tangled in so tight there wasn't a foot of space to step into.

And in those spectators' eyes flashed the peculiar inferiority a non-Awakened feels toward an Awakened, together with the dank pleasure they took whenever Chae Junhyeok stomped an Awakened into the ground.

[Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience! An unprecedented, one-of-a-kind legend in Icarus history! The true sovereign who's bent mana to his will in a non-Awakened body — His Imperial Majesty the Emperor's eleventh battle begins right now!!]

With the MC's crazed introduction, the iron gate on the opposite side opened.

"Emperor!! Emperor!! Emperor!!!"

Bathed in the crazed roar of the frenzied crowd, coat hem flapping, Chae Junhyeok stepped into view.

Chae Junhyeok…!

The instant he laid eyes on him from a distance, the Fighter's heart started pounding rough.

Something was definitely different.

The trash Chae Junhyeok who used to sneer nastily from up there was nowhere to be seen.

From the presence he threw off to the very league he was standing in — a completely different order.

Ha! Right! Definitely different!

A thrilled smile spread across the Fighter's mouth.

Back in his guild days, he'd been hailed as an ace even among B-ranks in his own right.

The pure fighting spirit and firm confidence of the days he'd run through Gates came boiling back up, hot.

"Here I come, Chae Junhyeok!!!"

With a beast's roar, he kicked off the sand and charged.

And thirty minutes later.

"Guh — hah…"

The Fighter was pitifully driven face-down in the sand, hacking out rough coughs streaked with clots of blood.

Beyond his blurring vision, Chae Junhyeok stood there throwing off a heat haze of savage red mana.

His coat hem was clean and pristine — not a speck of dust, not a drop of blood on it.

The gap was insane.

Even his ultimate technique, thrown at him with everything he had, was absorbed the moment it grazed the opponent's red aura — and returned intact, dozens of times over in destructive force.

Even if he'd held on longer than the others, it was a pitiful loss — hadn't even lasted an hour.

Ha… ha ha… truly… insanely strong…

If the arm he'd lost had been intact, would the outcome have been at least a little different?

No.

Both arms whole, or a whole mob rushing him at once — nothing could have beaten that overpowering force.

That was the very moment when, having realized this down to the bone, the Fighter's chest filled — not with defeat, but with deep awe.

"Aaaaagh!!!!"

A shrieking scream tore out from the VVIP terrace.

"No way…!!! This is bullshit!!!! How the hell can this one lose too?!"

It was Oh Taejin.

Facial muscles twisted grotesquely, he was throwing an insane fit — clutching, rough-handed, the strong-liquor bottle he'd been chugging like water since before the fight had even started.

The face flushed crimson from being marinated in alcohol and the swaying body laid it out plainly — just how thoroughly gone he was.

"Fuck, this can't be. Not this one… I can't let this one lose to that bastard Chae Junhyeok too!"

Panting through eyes wild with madness, he bellowed loud enough to rip the arena apart.

"Get out here!!!"

With a heavy grating of metal, the opposite iron gate opened.

The Fighter's eyes went wide at the sight of who stepped out.

"Hyu… hyung?"

It was the blind Swordsman, a scar running across his firmly shut eyes.

Oh Taejin, eyes shot with blood, snickered nastily.

"Hahaha! Junhyeok, told you to draft the contract properly! Nowhere in there does it say the fight has to be one-on-one, does it?"

Oh Taejin jabbed a finger at the Swordsman, screaming.

"Kill that bastard, now!!!"

But the Swordsman didn't so much as stir.

Oh Taejin's face twisted grotesquely, like a demon's.

"Fight, now!!! Cut off his head this instant, or I'll drain every drop of mana out of you and that fallen bastard!"

A threat verging on desperation.

Only then did the Swordsman slowly turn his head toward Chae Junhyeok.

"…To strike a foe already spent is not the way of the martial world, but…"

The Swordsman's sightless gaze passed briefly over the Fighter, driven face-down in the sand, coughing blood.

"The lives I bear aren't only my own… I have no choice."

Shhing—!

The moment the blade left the weathered scabbard.

Woom—!!!

An overwhelming pressure crashed down over the entire arena and exploded outward.

It was a completely different dimension from the fighting spirit the Fighter had been giving off moments ago.

Razor-sharp, heavy sword aura swept across the sand like a storm.

As Cha Yul watched him, his eyes flashed animal-sharp for a moment.

Sensing the instinctive threat, he dropped low and set himself for battle.

And in the very next instant.

Kwaang—!!!

The sand of the arena erupted upward, and the two silhouettes crashed together, savage.

Red mana and dark-blue sword aura tangled dizzyingly, shaking the Colosseum as if to tear it apart.

"Grrgh…!"

With a short groan, Cha Yul's feet gouged deep furrows in the sand as he was shoved back, hard.

"Th-the Emperor's being pushed back?!"

From all across the stands, sharp intakes of breath went up along with shrieks of shock.

"So that story about the blind Swordsman being the Colosseum's top ace — it was real!"

"There was talk that in all his earlier fights he'd been holding back and throwing them on purpose!"

"Of course! He's the only A-rank ever to end up in the Colosseum. Before he lost his eyes, he was the real deal — a monster gunning for Korea's top ten!"

At the unbelievable reversal, the crowd fell into a panicked buzz — but the two men on the sand had no spare thought for any of it.

Bang! Kwakakakang—!!!

Along with earsplitting crashes, the sand of the arena churned mercilessly.

Speeds no ordinary eye could hope to track.

Only the blinding flashes bursting out where savage red mana and dark-blue sword aura tangled in midair — crashing against each other like lightning — testified to the fierce exchange between the two.

Before this clash of forces on a different plane, no one in the Colosseum dared step in — they all held their breath.

In the midst of it, only Oh Taejin burst into crazed laughter.

"Grahaha! Yes! An A-rank really is different! Hahaha! Kill him! Slice off that arrogant Chae Junhyeok's neck already!"

Amid Oh Taejin's near-frenzied cursing, the taut standoff in the arena slowly began to tilt to one side.

Kaaang—!!

"…Your natural talent is second to none, but your real combat experience is sorely lacking."

At the Swordsman's sigh, Cha Yul clenched his teeth in stubborn defiance, hauled his red mana up rougher still, and threw himself at him savagely.

But every time the sword and the red mana met head-on, Cha Yul's feet gouged deep grooves in the sand as he was helplessly forced back.

The Swordsman's heavy, precise strikes doggedly split Cha Yul's defense apart, slowly closing in for the kill.

"Kkh…!"

Between the rough shockwaves, Cha Yul's stifled groan slipped through.

The red heat haze that had been raging fiercely was clearly dying down under the pressure of the blade.

In that instant.

"……!"

Cha Yul's balance, so fixed on defense, wavered — just barely.

The Swordsman didn't miss the split-second opening and surged in.

Woom—!

With the sound of air being ripped, the razor tip of the blade flew for the nape of Cha Yul's neck.

A fatal strike slotted perfectly into his blind angle — impossible to dodge — an instant from landing.

"No!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Along with someone's desperate scream, a blinding gold light cut in between the two of them.

Ching—!!!

Right after the skin-crawling shriek of clashing metal, a stifling silence fell over the entire Colosseum.

The crowd, Oh Taejin, the Swordsman, and the Fighter fallen on the sand.

Every pair of pupils in that place was shaking wildly.

And how could they not?

Right in front of the "Chae Junhyeok" who'd been fighting in a spray of blood — another Chae Junhyeok stood tall.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!