Level 4 Human in a Ruined World

[Translator - Night]

[Proofreader - Gun]

Chapter 360: Between Good Karma and Bad Karma (1)

-Huff.

-Huh…?

The sudden action by Yeongwoo made the members of Squad 023 flinch in unison.

Then, one of them cautiously spoke.

-Yeongwoo…?

Aldo, the second son of the Shelbir royal family, hesitantly called Yeongwoo's name.

-Could it be… Yeongwoo?

It finally dawned on him.

The only person in their squad with an overwhelming amount of negative karma, rumored to have come from Earth, was none other than Jeong Yeongwoo.

“Yeah, damn it! I’m the most evil person in this room!”

As Yeongwoo introduced himself, he brandished his demonic sword Bastard at everyone in the room.

The other three squad members pressed themselves against the walls, their eyes wide with shock.

-Yo… Yeongwoo, was it? Let’s calm down for now.

Amana, the Guardian of Sacred Planet Patrol, spoke in a trembling voice, her beak slightly quivering.

Yeongwoo’s face, already brimming with anger, twisted further, now fully resembling a villain.

“Do I look like I can calm down right now? All three squadmates I’m about to head into battle with are saints! This is ridiculous!”

It was a problematic situation no matter how you looked at it.

Judging by the attitudes of the other three squad members and their “overwhelming” positive karma levels, it was clear they had no aptitude for the battlefield.

Sure, on their home planets, being virtuous might have earned them the status of sages, but on a battlefield, they were utterly useless.

‘These guys must have been the biggest rejects out of the 200 squads. Normally, they would’ve been scattered among teams as deadweight. But because of my insane negative karma, they’re all lumped together with me.’

Still, wasn’t this his own karma coming back to bite him?

If he hadn’t accumulated so much negative karma, he wouldn’t have been assigned to a squad like this in the first place.

“Ha…”

And it wasn’t like he could beat them up just because they were too virtuous.

Yeongwoo felt an overwhelming sense of despair.

“I have to fight with these people in the promotion grounds?”

Yeongwoo muttered in frustration, prompting Amana to speak up in a slightly irritated tone.

-You’re being exceedingly rude.

“What did you just say?”

Already enraged, Yeongwoo pointed Bastard at Amana, but she swung the hammer in her hand to deflect the blade.

Clang!

-Do you even understand why we’re here? Everyone in this room is a planetary guardian. We’re more than capable of protecting ourselves.

Amana’s brilliant plumage shook violently as she spoke, causing Aldo to nervously coil himself even tighter.

At that moment, Yeongwoo’s expression changed.

“Exactly, Amana! This is it!”

He suddenly approached Amana with a strange glint in his eye, excitement bubbling over.

-W-What?

“Just do what you did just now in the promotion grounds! As soon as you see an enemy, bash their heads in with your hammer!”

Amana’s expression twisted in alarm, and she frantically waved her hands.

-W-What are you talking about? Our patrols…

Amana’s stiff plumage suddenly drooped.

-We follow a non-lethal doctrine.

Non-lethal.

A principle of refraining from taking lives.

To someone like Yeongwoo, preparing for the chaos of the promotion grounds, there was no scarier phrase.

“What the hell?! Then why are you even here?!”

Outraged, Yeongwoo tried to grab Amana by the collar, but a nearby golem, panicking, intervened and stood between them.

-P-Please, calm down!

Even in this chaos, the golem’s voice was filled with such kindness that it only made Yeongwoo even more furious.

“Don’t tell me you’re all non-lethal too, huh?”

Eyes blazing, Yeongwoo shot a glare at the other two squadmates.

The golem hesitated, glancing at Aldo as if to defer the question.

Aldo, too, stammered.

-We… We are advocates of peace…

“Oh, for crying out loud!”

Yeongwoo nearly threw his demonic sword Bastard to the ground in frustration but barely stopped himself in time.

He couldn’t risk damaging the national treasure bestowed upon him by the chairman.

Instead, he considered throwing the item in his left hand—a sacred artifact of the Red Foot Brothers—but hesitated again.

“What are you going to do in the promotion grounds, huh? Wave your hands at enemies swinging swords and tell them to stop?”

Yeongwoo’s exasperation prompted Amana to rise to her feet.

-It’s possible to subdue an opponent without taking their life.

“No, that depends on the opponent!”

Yeongwoo clutched his forehead in frustration.

Still, there was some credibility to Amana’s words.

Her earlier swing with the hammer had been impressively strong.

But the other two…

“Seriously, Prince Aldo. If you’re not willing to kill or even beat someone up, how did you manage to obtain planetary guardian status?”

Reaching this stage of planetary evaluation meant that, at some point, internal conflict or even war had occurred on their planet.

Yet…

-Um…

There were exceptions.

-Our planet applied for the promotion evaluation to secure additional development areas for producing more relief supplies.

“…What?”

Yeongwoo couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“What do you mean, relief supplies?”

-Doatel is one of the interstellar relief centers. The more we help neighboring planets, the higher our planet’s rank rises.

“You’re kidding, right?”

As someone who thrived in the business of violence, Yeongwoo couldn’t even fathom such a concept.

A part of the universe was apparently dedicated to good deeds and altruism.

“Listen, sir… If you keep living like that, one day you’re going to run into someone like me, and they’ll clean you out completely.”

Yeongwoo’s voice carried genuine concern, prompting Aldo to smile for the first time since arriving.

His face formed a perfect oval as he replied.

-But you haven’t cleaned me out yet, Yeongwoo.

“You…!”

Yeongwoo swallowed the curse that instinctively rose to his lips.

Even a villain with a towering 170 million negative karma couldn’t bring himself to insult someone radiating such pure-hearted goodness.

“Anyway… Since we’re already here, we need to pass the second promotion evaluation, right? More importantly, we need to survive.”

He stopped short of adding, so you can continue your relief work, finding the words too cringeworthy.

-Yes. For the sake of Doatel, we must survive. My older brother is unwell, so I’m the most likely successor.

“Unbelievable…”

A life story more absurd than anything he’d imagined.

‘But does caramel’s poor health mean it’s so runny it just drips everywhere?’

Yeongwooo scanned the waiting room again, wondering if this might all be some elaborate prank.

Meanwhile, Aldo, the second son of the Shelbir royal family from the planet Doatel, spoke in a tone befitting a solemn sage.

[Translator - Night]

[Proofreader - Gun]

-It’s true that I was a bit surprised by your karmic debt of 200 million, Yeongwooo. But didn’t you ultimately manage to restore balance?

According to the earlier briefing, the karmic debt of the current 023 Group had almost reached zero.

In other words, it was thanks to Yeongwooo, burdened with an enormous karmic debt, that people with immense karmic merits were all gathered in this group.

Chances were that the highest karmic debtor and the greatest karmic benefactors among the promotion candidates were all in this group.

-I see this as another of the system’s preparations. It’s an inevitability dictated by karma. And perhaps, it’s also a chance for you, Yeongwooo, to earn some karmic merit.

Swoosh.

Aldo spread his arms as if to warmly welcome Yeongwooo.

Now that he thought about it, Aldo hadn’t carried any weapons from the beginning.

‘This guy came here planning to freeload from the start.’

Though Yeongwooo was deeply cynical, he couldn’t entirely dismiss part of what Aldo had said.

Hadn’t Lemu once said this?

「According to the law of causality, all events in the universe possess inherent rationality and tend to form patterns based on karma.」

All things are governed by cause and effect, so the deeds of the past inevitably influence the present, creating tendencies over time...

Put simply, the reason why a group with near-zero karmic debt had both Yeongwooo, with his massive karmic debt, and three extraterrestrials with immense karmic merit in the same room was that it was an inevitable consequence of these laws.

The problem was—

‘Other groups probably have a reasonable mix of villains and virtuous individuals, so they won’t have much trouble reaching a consensus. But this group? It’s made up of the absolute extremes.’

How could pacifists and executionists possibly agree on anything?

This was a disaster of a group, born from the very workings of the universe.

“So, what now? Are we all going to the promotion hall for a group suicide?”

Yeongwooo gripped the hilt of Bastard tightly as he spoke.

“No way! I can’t do that. I’m going to survive, go back, get my parents married, extort some wedding gifts, and take ownership of a ship!”

Yeongwooo’s every word dripped with greed.

At this, the golem, who had earlier stood to separate Yeongwooo from Amana, cautiously spoke up.

-Well... technically, we only need to make it into the top five somehow, right?

Yeongwooo pointed his weapon at the golem and roared like fire erupting.

“Hey, Golem! What’s your name?”

-Ta... T-Taru, from Pigot...

“Okay, Taru. As the villain here, it’ll only make me look worse if I lose my temper with you, so I’d rather not. But!”

Whoosh!

Unable to hold back, Yeongwooo thrust Bastard in Taru’s face.

“How the hell are three of you—Caramel the Giver, Owl the Pacifist, and Taru the Polite Golem—going to make it into the top 10%, huh?”

-……

-……

-Umm…

As the three extraterrestrials failed to give any response, Yeongwooo let out a deep sigh.

“Don’t you people believe in having a plan?”

Of course, they weren’t people.

“Sigh.”

Yeongwooo gazed at the three dejected extraterrestrials as if they were utterly pathetic.

“I don’t know about you, but my planet is under constant invasion from powerful forces. And tomorrow, I need to pay off a debt of 1.2 billion. So forgive me if I’m a bit short on patience.”

Click!

Yeongwooo sheathed Bastard at his waist, and Amana looked at him in shock.

-What are you plotting this time?

It seemed that Amana’s distrust of Earthlings was already starting to take root.

“What do you mean? It’s obvious we won’t get much out of this team, so we’ll just have to loot the others.”

As Yeongwooo said this, he turned his gaze upward to the hovering Vito.

“How long until we’re deployed to the promotion hall?”

Immediately, the floor of the waiting room turned transparent, revealing a distant island far below.

“Are you kidding me?”

They had been floating above some planet this whole time.

—Deployment to the promotion hall will occur in 12 seconds.

“What?”

—In approximately 11 seconds, the waiting room will be dropped as a whole, and you can adjust your drop zone using the displayed device.

At that moment, a holographic map appeared in the center of the group of four.

It was identical to the promotion hall map they had seen earlier, with one difference:

Beep, beep, beep, beep!

Numbers from 1 to 50 began to light up sequentially on the map.

“This…”

The format and interface were all too familiar.

Yeongwooo instantly realized what this was.

The drop zones of the 50 groups were being marked in real time.

‘Damn it, this is just like that game.’

The moment Yeongwooo thought he understood the test’s format, he drew his sword again.

Shwing!

“Top 10%? No. I have to be first. There must be special rewards for being at the top.”

Yeongwooo licked his lips greedily, and Amana recoiled in horror.

Meanwhile, Vito announced the test’s imminent start.

—Five seconds until the waiting room is dropped.

Click!

Outside the walls of the waiting room, the sound of locks disengaging echoed.

Aldo grabbed onto the bench tightly, and Taru hurriedly returned to his seat and sat down.

As for Yeongwooo—

“Everyone, there’s a reason villains exist in this universe.”

With a maniacal grin, he pointed to the zone with the most numbers on the map.

Tap!

[023]

The number 023 was added to the densely packed central-west region of the promotion hall.

“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have made this choice.”

-Are you insane? That area’s swarming with other groups!

Seeing the drop zone selected for Team 023, Amana’s face twisted with fear, and Yeongwooo delivered his line as if he had been waiting for this moment.

“Pacifism? Sure, I respect it. But shouldn’t you respect me as well?”

-...?

“I’m a performance-based guy. If necessary, I’ll take care of three times the work.”

-...No, that’s not—

As Amana groaned in near despair, the waiting room of the doomed Team 023 began its descent.

[Translator - Night]

[Proofreader - Gun]