The Hero's Streaming Life with the Saintess-Chapter 60: Bastards Not Worth Purifying

I was so caught off guard that I couldn’t even speak.

He smiled faintly and wheeled himself forward to the table.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No, it’s just... back at the bar...”

Without a word, he casually rolled up the leg of his pants.

Where his legs should’ve been—there were prosthetics.

On both sides.

“Heh... Under the dim lights of the bar, they pass off pretty well, don’t they?”

I had no idea back then.

Probably because of the lighting, but now I could also tell he was quite a bit older.

“But... what are you doing here?”

He tilted his head back, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

With a soft sigh, he began to speak.

“Friend, do you remember what I told you at the bar?”

“You said you had a wife... and a five-year-old son.”

“Had.”

“...”

Esteban Rojas.

He had once been a corrupt politician, just another cog greased by cartel bribes.

But after his son was born, something changed.

He began collecting evidence against them—resisting little by little.

“I never imagined... that my own aide would be the informant.”

On his son’s fifth birthday, he was ambushed.

A day that should’ve been a celebration turned into a massacre.

He tapped his thigh, letting out a hollow laugh.

“And that’s how I ended up a cripple... Heh, maybe it was karma for all those bribes.”

His wife was subjected to unspeakable torture and rape by the cartel’s men, then thrown into the streets.

His child lay dead beside her—cold, lifeless.

“...”

What the hell do you say to someone who’s lost everything like that?

Even trying to offer comfort felt like it would only reopen his wounds.

“Sometimes I think... maybe it would’ve been easier if I had died back then too...”

Why the cartel let Esteban live, I didn’t know.

But he himself spoke with eerie calm.

“They probably needed a clown.”

“A clown?”

“Yeah... Someone to show the world what happens when you defy them.”

Without warning, he reached for the stainless steel cup on the table.

And began slamming it violently—against his own prosthetic leg.

─ CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Like he didn’t care if it shattered, he kept slamming it.

Once he’d cracked it enough, he shoved his fingers inside and started digging.

“When they took everything from me... this was the one thing I managed to keep.”

What he pulled out from the hollow prosthetic... was a USB.

He held it out toward me, gently swaying it in the air.

“There’s information on here you’ll definitely be satisfied with.”

I stood up, leaning forward naturally to take it from him.

But instead, he grabbed my collar and yanked me close.

I didn’t feel the urge to resist.

For some reason, I let him pull me in.

— Shrrk...

“Friend... Please... Don’t let anyone else become like me.”

“...”

“I couldn’t even get revenge. Hell, I couldn’t even put them on trial...”

I nodded and took the USB from him.

Looking him straight in the eyes, I said—

“I won’t be long.”

****

A silent bedroom.

The boss of the cartel lay flanked by two women, listening quietly as one of his men entered to report.

“...We estimate the damage to be this much.”

“So you knew he was destroying our properties... and just let it happen?”

“N-No, sir, it’s not that...!”

— BANG!

He blew the guy’s head off mid-sentence—no change in expression.

The women beside him flinched in terror, but tried to act unbothered.

“Fucking idiot...”

Calmly, the boss assessed the situation.

Getting tangled up with an S-Rank was a massive risk to the organization.

“Clean up this trash.”

Several men burst in through the door, hastily dragging out the body and scrubbing the blood from the floor.

‘Fucking low-level grunts...’

He’d already decapitated every one of them as punishment for dragging the organization into a mess with an S-Rank.

‘Song Hun, was it...?’

And yet, the boss didn’t see this as a crisis—he saw it as an opportunity.

He knew Song Hun wasn’t just strong.

He was a different breed of S-Rank.

But still... just a musclebound idiot who fought monsters.

‘This is my turf.’

Santiago Del Norte.

The man who absorbed most of the cartel’s factions and now ruled Mexico like a king.

His power? Brainwashing.

He could control anyone with a weaker mind than his own.

But he wasn’t just some thug with powers.

He understood it. Trained it. Mastered it.

‘I’ve deprived myself of senses. Endured pain. Fought in actual wars as a mercenary.’

He pushed his mind to its absolute limit, experimenting on himself with drugs to deepen his reach.

Eventually, he realized that his ability worked not only on A-Ranks... but even on S-Ranks.

‘Tch. If I weren’t wanted internationally...’

Unfortunately, he couldn’t leave Mexico.

And since the country lacked any S-Ranks besides himself and his right-hand men, his potential had been stifled.

If not for that, he would’ve already enslaved every Hunter and become king of the world.

‘But if I can make him mine...’

Santiago smiled darkly.

An S-Rank beyond S-Rank.

If he could turn Song Hun into his puppet... he could finally build a kingdom all his own.

‘There was definitely another S-Rank with him.’

A mysterious woman with striking blue hair.

She was known to be S-Rank too.

Thinking about the two Hunters who would soon join his collection, Santiago couldn’t help but grin.

‘Only a few know the locations of our real operations. And even they... would never dare speak.’

He briefly considered going in person, but shook his head.

Instead, he gave subtle orders for his men to “accidentally” leak the location.

He had planned to move this base soon anyway.

‘A twenty-something drunk on freshly awakened power...’

So what if he could kill monsters?

No matter how tough his body was, his mind had to still be soft.

He had already reviewed Song Hun’s entire background.

So little Gate experience, it made him question whether the guy was even a proper Hunter.

How mentally trained could someone like that really be?

‘Keh... An S-Rank for free.’

Santiago began preparing to clear out the base that would soon become a battlefield.

He looked coldly at the two women beside him.

As his hand touched their heads, blood began gushing from their eyes, noses, mouths, and ears. They collapsed.

‘Tch... Guns are easier, but they make such a mess.’

He stood up, opened the door, and stepped outside.

To the subordinates waiting for him, he gave one simple order:

“Burn all the documents.”

Then, after a beat—

“...And burn them too.”

To the right hand who had always stood loyally at his side, Santiago ordered the complete purge of the remaining staff.

They obeyed without hesitation, like machines—executing every cartel member on-site.

‘That guy’s probably only wrecking our visible businesses anyway.’

What Santiago didn’t know... was that someone had been collecting evidence.

Bit by bit.

Driven by vengeance.

****

He wiped his tears, then turned his wheelchair with a sigh of relief.

Just before leaving, he looked back at me.

“Take care of yourself out there.”

As he exited, the embassy staffer returned.

“You can use the laptop however you’d like...”

He turned the CCTV lenses in each corner of the room away, probably to give me privacy.

“...”

I opened the laptop and plugged in the USB.

Documents. Photos. Videos. Countless files.

Details of major cartel member residences, drug factories, slush fund warehouses.

Even accounting ledgers listing bribes taken by politicians in this country.

“...This is a cartel?”

Not to exaggerate, but their arsenal was practically on par with a small nation.

Guns, grenades, RPGs—standard.

But they even had tanks... and submarines.

“...Shit.”

Then, the videos.

The brutality was beyond human.

People smiling as they murdered others.

“...Hero, how could anyone do this...?”

“...”

Men. Women. It didn’t matter.

Even children weren’t spared.

“...”

Finally, I clicked on # Nоvеlight # the last folder.

“not over 19”

It had more videos than every other folder combined.

“...This...”

The cartel’s evil was well known—I had expected murder, extortion, drugs.

But this... this crossed every line imaginable.

“...They’re not even heretics. They’re demons.”

Lyla’s eyes turned cold.

I could feel the killing intent pouring off her.

“These ones... they aren’t even worth purifying.”

Her whole body trembled with rage.

“No matter how much you purify them, they’ll never be clean. What they need is judgment.”

Hearing her words, I thought the same thing.

That here in Mexico—

I might actually end up killing people.