I Became the Cute One in the Problem-Solving Team

---

Victor, with his masculine appearance and statue-like muscles.

A celebrity so popular that counting down the ranks of fixers is quicker from the top.

In the bounty hunting industry, he’s a double-number fixer with a success rate close to 90 percent—reliable and stable.

In the past, he earned fame as a ‘wizard killer’ by taking down numerous mages and shifting the tide of battles.

But now, he’s just a man in a damp bathrobe, suddenly treated as a pervert.

Victor forced a smile to ease the throbbing pain in his forehead as he thought.

‘That magic just now… If I get hit a few more times, my head will crack like a watermelon. Can one really cast something like that without a chant? What an outrageous monster.’

He couldn’t help but marvel at the ghost’s power beyond his imagination.

Even in his current state, hastily throwing on just a robe after washing up and armed with nothing but a borrowed harpoon gun from his assistant, he was a superhuman made stronger than any ordinary human—a being that could shrug off bullet wounds and lift cars with sheer arm strength.

But even he felt the threat of the magic being fired off without any incantation?

Considering the potential he would display if he had a strong bodyguard to cover him, it felt a shame to be stuck in such a backwater world without making a mark.

“I really like you, ghost! Are we showing off our skills? Alright, from now on… I’m going all-out to take you down!”

With a whoosh!

Victor’s impressive muscles bulged as he unleashed his strength.

It was a force akin to that of a bull.

Naturally, because he was wearing a sheer bathrobe, the ghost felt repulsed.

Whether he knew that or not, he just laughed merrily and rushed forward.

‘Thank goodness the warning signs for attacks are easy to read! A terribly monotonous pattern considering the strong power. That’s a fundamental flaw of wizards.’

Swoosh!

Victor nimbly dodged incoming attacks while studying the ghost’s patterns.

As he tried to close the distance, the ghost quickly retreated while attacking.

This meant it wasn’t a stationary turret-style wizard; he was anticipating movements and preparing spells along their paths.

The time it took shockwaves to travel from the warning signs to delivery was a minimum of 0.3 seconds.

While he could intentionally delay this gap, he couldn’t shorten it any further.

At the start and end of movement, speeds were physically impossible.

The ghost relied heavily on magic for most of its movements; its actual physical abilities were on the weaker side.

‘…I can see it. Three moves ahead, checkmate!’

Victor calculated all the cards he held against those the ghost had played.

And after accounting for every possibility, he pinpointed the shortest route to victory over the ghost.

If the ghost didn’t pull out something new here that it hadn’t revealed until now…

Only three more actions were needed for victory to be determined.

With the power to lead to victory, accounting for all potential variables the opponent could show, this was why Victor was famous as a wizard killer.

“…”

First move.

The ghost kicked off the ground and climbed the building’s exterior to the rooftop.

Victor nearly simultaneously hooked his harpoon gun onto the wall and followed to reach the roof.

Second move.

The ghost landed on the rooftop, backing against some device and looking at Victor.

Victor, also on the rooftop, shot forward like a freight train aimed squarely at the ghost.

Third move.

The ghost showed no movement, with only seven steps left between them when Victor was sure of his victory.

Suddenly, a fierce wind swept between the two.

The white ghost’s form darted quickly toward Victor.

*

Telekinesis was a useful ability in many ways.

But sadly, it wasn’t a perfect ability without any flaws.

First, it had a thick manipulation range, akin to working with mittens, making precise tasks difficult.

And due to requiring quite a bit of focus, the number of objects that could be manipulated at once maxed out at two or three.

Now, the decisive point that made things most difficult for me was that moving objects with telekinesis wasn’t very fast.

At least, when using telekinesis to grab and throw objects, I could somewhat mitigate that flaw.

However, that meant it was like throwing a baseball from my hand, completely beyond my control.

Considering that, against that ridiculous pervert dodging my telekinetic flicks with sheer reflex speed, it was quite hard to do anything purely with telekinesis.

The speed of telekinesis itself was sluggish, and if I forfeited control to gain speed, there was no way that pervert wouldn’t dodge simple movements.

‘So I needed this. A way to gain speed while maintaining telekinesis!’

Whoosh!

A wind burst forth as if pushing from my small back.

It was a fierce wind of about 40 km/h, strong enough to knock me over if I wasn’t cautious.

The source of the wind was none other than the building’s ventilation system.

This area was densely packed with buildings that could be described as a jungle gym.

The ventilation system, essential for high-rise buildings, had no choice but to be on the roof to save space.

And the larger and more complex the building, the stronger the airflow from the ventilation system.

I twisted the structure inside the ventilation system with telekinesis to direct the wind toward the blonde pervert and me.

The result was this fierce wind striking both the pervert and me at once.

Of course, this wind alone wouldn’t even make the blonde pervert flinch.

I could stand against it without telekinesis if I braced myself.

So, it couldn’t have a significant effect on that monster.

‘But this should have enough of an effect!’

I swiftly stepped back from the rushing blonde pervert.

Throwing away the white cloth I was wearing, I directed it forward.

The light cloth flew at a speed similar to that of the wind.

In other words, the blonde pervert naturally would have to face the rapidly approaching white fabric!

‘Quick! He responded in that short moment!’

Yet was he that formidable?

In that brief moment, the man seemed to realize I wasn’t behind the quickly flying white cloth and showed signs of shifting his movement.

It wasn’t just simple reflex speed; it was an absurd level of instant judgment.

However, I had already trusted in his abilities, allowing me to respond to that pervert’s unimaginable reaction speed.

‘But the cloth is still within my telekinesis range!’

The cloth soaring in the wind traced an impossible trajectory.

With added telekinesis boosting its movement, it changed wildly.

Indeed, was this unexpected?

The cloth successfully covered the man’s face, and I used telekinesis to complexly wrap it around him to prevent easy removal.

This should be almost it.

Finally, I pulled out the last item I had prepared from my pocket and carelessly scattered it in the air.

‘How did that pervert manage to deduce my location? No matter how I think about it, only two possibilities come to mind.’

The scattered objects were banknotes.

Money I had nicked today.

Enough to last at least two days.

If some method hid a tracker, it could only be either the cloth or the cash.

But not knowing which was real, I boldly decided to abandon all my earnings for the day.

If I had to choose between a few pennies of cash or a comfortable life without risk, the latter would undoubtedly be worth several times more.

‘Take this, Man of Many Colors!’

The shredded banknotes flew at incredible speed through the wind.

Adding telekinesis to them, these pieces of cash hurtled toward the blonde pervert like razor blades.

“Woooah!”

The blonde pervert, whose face was now covered by the cloth, seemed to sense something was off.

As he began to tear off the cloth over his eyes, he quickly went into a defensive stance, covering his vital points.

Of course, I had no intention of striking his vital points, so I was grateful for his posture that unwittingly revealed his target completely.

Swoosh!

Dozens of pieces of banknotes fluttered past the pervert’s body.

And before he could regain his stance, I swiftly filled a tightly packed mass of telekinesis against his chest.

Even a monstrous man would find it hard to resist being pushed from a position where he lost balance.

The blonde pervert was sent tumbling off the rooftop below.

It was a lightning-fast series of attacks that occurred in merely seconds.

‘Done! Time to escape!’

This was the best I could do now.

Struggling against the dizziness that arose from pushing my concentration to the limits, I hurriedly moved to leave before anyone spotted me.

I even put on a goblin mask I had bought some time ago, but without a cloth covering my body, I felt incredibly vulnerable, almost as if I were in the nude.

Fortunately, whether the cash truly was a means of tracking or if the pervert who fell had lost the opportunity to pursue me.

After the man fell, the sense of someone following disappeared entirely.

Just to be safe, I wandered around the area for about two hours.

Before dawn’s light, exhausted, I wearily returned to my hideout.

‘Stealing… I need to rest for a while….’

Truly a tiresome day that felt like it might instill some trauma regarding perverts.

*

Thud!

Victor perfectly landed on a trash heap filled with garbage after falling from the rooftop.

He quickly tore away the cloth wrapped around his face and got up in a hurry.

‘Five seconds of loss. If I rush now, I could still catch up. I already know the ghost’s escape patterns and preferred directions. I should find him immediately…!’

Victor kept his extreme focus and made the best judgment he could.

This moment, where he had finally peeled off that cloth, could be the only opportunity to uncover the ghost’s true identity.

Bursting from the trash heap, Victor suddenly felt something missing from his body.

Especially, the emptiness between his legs where nothing seemed to hold….

“Was that final empty attack aimed at my clothes?”

Victor shook off any lingering fondness for the bathrobe becoming increasingly revealing.

With his arms resting on his waist, he quickly surveyed the surroundings.

But no matter how much he looked around, he saw nothing that would serve as clothing.

The half-split cloth of the ghost could barely cover his private parts, but if he wandered around like this and got caught by someone, he’d likely be socially dead.

The double-number fixer gallivanting around naked at midnight?

No matter how he rolled that around in his head, it would make for headline news.

“Hahaha! If I keep wandering like this, I’ll be caught by the police! I admit defeat! That ridiculous ghost!”

Victor humbly acknowledged his defeat.

He likely wouldn’t have faced this issue had he been wearing his usual carbon fiber suit with an arc glaive.

But donning a bathrobe was purely a decision made to avoid being pressed for time.

Both the ghost and Victor had fought with all their might in the situation given.

It only turned out that the ghost came up with a strategy one step more creative than his.

There was no room for excuses, nor did he want to offer any.

The midnight chase was a complete victory for the ghost.

He savored the refreshing sensation of losing for the first time in a while.

“But if I’m not mistaken, what I saw underneath the ghost is….”

As he closed his eyes, slowly reconstructing the battle against the ghost in his mind, something suddenly nagged at him.

It was the moment the ghost had tossed aside that cloth.

In that fleeting moment, what he saw beyond the cloth was undoubtedly a child’s form.

“Could it be… the darkness of the city?”

Victor’s expression grew serious.

He slowly lifted his head to gaze at the dark night sky, lost in deep thought.