Normal Person

On a lawn in an upscale neighborhood, a pure black Mystic Cat sat quietly on the ground.

Not far away, a three-story detached villa with a spacious yard was being consumed by raging flames.

Half an hour earlier.

Leon regretted shouting the moment he finished.

It was not that he regretted anything else. He had suddenly realized: Wesley did not seem to have died by his hand!

"Then aren't my Purification Points completely screwed?!"

This really was Leon's first time encountering something like this. After all, he had always handled things personally before, getting it done directly.

As for Wesley, strictly speaking, Bullseye really had killed him!

With that many holes in him, what normal person killed people like that?!

"Hmm, it seemed normal people generally didn't kill people at all!"

Now was not the time to check the system.

Who knew what was happening outside the door.

Leon might have been reckless, and his thought process might have been rather bizarre, but he was absolutely not brave. Quite the opposite—he cherished his life, bullied the weak and feared the strong, and was timid and afraid of trouble.

Why had he not dodged the bullets?

First, he knew he had absolutely no need to fear ordinary bullets. He had tested his equipment on that point.

That day, he had gone to a pet shop and bought a cute little rabbit. To test what that "Physical Defense" was all about, he had also rented a van, a grill, cumin, beer...

Later, he had not gotten to eat it. He had emptied an entire magazine and still had not gotten to eat it, and then Leon had fully come to believe in his theory of "four people stacked in front of him."

Second, with his current Agility, he simply could not dodge bullets!

Everything in movies was fake!

Nobody could hold two guns while maintaining both an insanely fast rate of fire and accuracy!

Nobody could suppress an assault rifle with a handgun!

Nobody could dodge bullets that were supposed to hit!

Of course, different people could not be judged by the same standard. Leon had once, in a state of extreme rage, performed a sliding tackle, lay on the ground, and angrily slept for an entire day!

In short, Leon knew that he had absolutely no need to dodge ordinary bullets.

What if he dodged frantically, leaped around in a classic monkey routine, and still took every bullet he was supposed to take? How embarrassing would that be?!

No need! No need at all!

But things were different now!

Wesley was dead. If the people outside had still been wary of hurting the hostage and did not dare use highly destructive weapons before, then after Bullseye accidentally killed the hostage, they would have no more reservations at all!

God knew what they might throw through that broken window!

What if it was some stinky tofu egg or something? No amount of Physical Defense could withstand that!

Right?

Besides...

Leon felt that, purely from a villain's perspective, turning everyone inside the house—living and dead alike—into mush seemed like the best choice right now!

That way, even if Wesley had not been killed by him, it would still count as him killing Wesley!

Do not ask why Leon could think about things from a villain's perspective!

The answer was rigor!

At a time like this, in order to avoid getting hit by flowering pineapples, flashing little pellets, fully automatic peanut feeders, crying candy, Big Ivan, and...

Big Ivan was going too far!

Leon decisively chose—to escape the house!

...Leon, now turned into a cat, had never expected this!!!

Incendiary bombs...

Were these really supposed to be things that appeared in superhero comics?!!

Actually, after considering all villains as a whole, Leon did not think much of any of them. He did not know whether it was plot necessity, setting necessity, or simply forced stupidity!

All villains liked to use guns, using all kinds of unconventional, bizarre methods and tools to deal with the superheroes who opposed them.

Just like in Conan comics, they insisted on committing crimes only when someone else was present!

He was actually doing it to find himself a scapegoat!

And the whole thing where they committed a crime but did not run, insisting on returning to the scene, was truly baffling.

Then when you asked them, oh... after committing the crime, they did not run but stayed at the scene because they wanted to create an alibi for themselves!

Clap! Clap! Clap! Applause! He absolutely had to fucking applaud!

Truly brilliant!

The simpler the criminal method, the harder it was to expose. Like throwing someone into a river, burying them underground, or setting them on fire—when it came to that, Leon...

Knew nothing! Hehehe.

He had only seen it online! Hehehe.

Back to those idiotic villains: the more straightforward comic villains practiced martial arts of every kind! They trained until their blades were vicious and their staffs hurt, then went off to get beaten senseless by the protagonist.

The more advanced ones used all kinds of technological methods and overwhelming advantages, only to get thrashed by the protagonist while flying through the sky and burrowing through the earth.

The even more advanced ones called it "manipulating people's hearts." Schemes and conspiracies.

In the end, they successfully helped the protagonist grow stronger.

Clap! Clap! Clap! Applause! He absolutely had to applaud!

Why make things so complicated? With that much time and scheming, would fire not do the job?

Fighting! Tough! Tougher!

Blades! Fast blades! Faster blades!

Explosions! Big explosions! Bigger explosions!

It was not like they were Exploding Bay!

Using fire directly was so much simpler!

Leon had truly compared and analyzed this. It was work he had done after arriving in this world: most heroes and villains could actually be dealt with using only gasoline and a lighter.

Setting aside things like Marvel physics and Ant-Man's mass, people like Hawkeye did not count. He was just an ordinary person.

Captain America could endure seventy years in a giant freezer and the pulling force of a helicopter, but he absolutely could not withstand a barrel of gasoline and a lighter.

Even someone as powerful as Iron Man could not have withstood it with his early generations of armor.

If directors had been allowed to use gasoline and incendiary bombs, Avengers would never have made it to four. Thor could endure it, but everyone else was carbon-based life. Endure what, my ass!

Maybe Leon still had that sense of superiority from being a higher-dimensional being deep down.

Ha! I know the plot! You got cheated on!

The person who cheated on you got cheated on too! Guess who it was!

Ha! It was you! (That really was the plot in the comics...)

Thoughts like these ultimately kept Leon from completely escaping his arrogance.

He had forgotten that this was a real world. Pleased with himself, he had thought he was smarter than everyone else, and then he was taught a lesson by the villains he looked down on.

Without question, if Leon had been overconfident just now and stayed in the house as he had before, preparing to stubbornly fight the stream of metal bullets he imagined, then by now...

He should have been cooked medium-well!

Well, actually, he would have been charcoal.

Damn! Fucking damn!

This time, Leon understood that the people he had been dealing with had been villains, after all!

He merely acted somewhat like a villain when doing things, but that was all. Look at them—they were the ones with the real stuff!

Even Bullseye, that guy who threw the Nail, had started using fire! Once this stuff got burning, did Physical Defense stop it, or did magic defense stop it?

Leon did not think his 20 points of Stamina would let him trade insults and recite dishes with villains inside a burning building.

"Luckily! Luckily, I worked so hard to smear my own name and build myself a persona as a lunatic!"

Under a tree not far from the fire, a black cat leaned against the trunk with his head in his paws, puffing away at a cigarette.

"Who would have thought I was actually a normal person!"

With a chuckle, the black cat stopped a passing calico cat. "Want a smoke, Flower Bro? Bro, don't go any farther. There's a fire over there. Cough!"

P.S. So, um, I broke the light socket at my grandpa's house. Does anyone know how to replace that thing without electrocuting myself?