Never Die Villain

Over the past month, Distortion cases had become increasingly common, and each new report seemed stranger than the last.

There was the case of a widowed mother in the eastern territories who had transformed into an enormous fish-like creature covered in blue scales, while strands of hair floated around her head as though she were submerged underwater.

She could swim freely through the air, passing through walls and ceilings as though they were nothing more than the surface of a pond, while her mansion had transformed alongside her into something resembling an enormous glass fishbowl.

Anyone who entered the estate found themselves submerged, despite there being no actual water.

Those who remained inside for too long eventually began drowning in perfectly breathable air, coughing up water until their lungs filled completely, while the mother continued swimming from room to room searching for the children who had already drowned years ago.

Then there was a butcher in the southern provinces.

His Distortion swallowed his entire shop and turned it into a living slaughterhouse, with the walls becoming warm flesh and hooks growing from the ceiling like teeth.

The butcher himself had become a towering creature wrapped in an apron sewn directly into his skin, and every person who entered his shop was assigned a weight and price that appeared above their heads.

The heavier their guilt, the more valuable their meat became.

Another incident occurred inside a monastery after one of its priests Distorted during morning prayer.

By sunset, the monastery’s bell tower had grown hundreds of meters into the sky, while the priest himself had fused with the enormous bell hanging at its peak, his ribs forming the bronze shell and his spine serving as its clapper.

Whenever the bell rang, everyone who heard it was compelled to confess.

According to reports, people were confessing things they hadn’t even known about themselves, and even began tearing out their own tongues in desperation to make themselves stop talking.

The Imperial authorities eventually destroyed the bell tower.

Perhaps the strangest report came from a small village in the west, where an elderly clockmaker Distorted after spending decades waiting for his son to return from war.

Every clock in the village stopped at exactly six seventeen in the evening, and from that moment onward, nobody inside the village could progress beyond the final hour before sunset.

People could walk, speak, eat, and sleep.

But evening never came.

The clockmaker himself had become a thin mechanical figure several meters tall, wandering from house to house and turning the hands of every clock backward whenever they approached six seventeen.

Whenever someone attempted to leave the village, they would find themselves walking back into it from the opposite direction, regardless of which road they took.

When the suppression team finally reached the clockmaker, they discovered why.

His son had promised to return home before nightfall.

So night was no longer permitted to arrive.

There were dozens of incidents like these, each one strange enough that Ilya had stopped trying to understand Distortions through ordinary logic.

The problem was that for the fourth time in his life, Ilya was facing yet again another Distortion.

And he already knew what came next.

"Fuck."

Ilya immediately ran.

He threw the door open and stumbled into the corridor, ignoring the pain radiating from his wounds as he forced his body forward.

There was no sword at his waist, and nearly every person capable of dealing with a Distortion was gathered on the other side of the mansion.

"A Distortion!"

Nevertheless, his voice echoed through the empty corridor, loud enough that anyone still remaining in this wing of the mansion should have heard him.

"We have a Distortion! Everyone, get out of the estate!"

There were still servants inside the building, after all, and unlike the knights and nobles currently gathered for the banquet, most of them wouldn’t stand a chance if they crossed paths with Aleksei.

Ilya had no idea how far the Distortion would spread once it fully manifested, which meant getting everyone as far away as possible took priority over figuring out what the hell had happened to his cousin.

Then the mansion shook.

Rumble——!

"Uh...?"

Ilya nearly lost his footing as the floor rumbled, forcing him to catch himself against the wall before his momentum carried him straight into the opposite side of the corridor.

"Shit..."

He pushed himself away from the wall and started running again.

Due to the narrow nature of the hallways, however, it was difficult to take advantage of Niflheim’s frozen ground.

From Ilya’s perspective, practically every surface touched by Niflheim had become a sheet of ice he could skate across, but there was little point in building speed when a single mistake would send him crashing shoulder-first into a wall.

Moreover, he couldn’t see clearly.

"Haa..."

So he ran, all while trying to maintain his balance.

Another tremor passed through the estate as he rounded the next corner. Ilya caught sight of two maids standing farther down the corridor, both frozen in confusion as they looked around for the source of the tremors.

"Don’t just stand there!"

They turned toward him.

"Young Lord?"

"Get outside!" Ilya shouted, waving them toward the nearest staircase without slowing down. "There’s a Distortion in the western wing. Find everyone you pass and take them with you, and don’t come back inside until the knights say it’s clear!"

"A-A Distortion?"

"Go!"

That finally got them moving.

The maids hurried toward the staircase while Ilya continued in the opposite direction, intending to reach the banquet hall before Aleksei’s transformation progressed any further.

If he could get Valentin, Anastasiya, or even a handful of the senior knights involved, then whatever came next would become considerably less suicidal.

Rumble——!

The entire corridor shook.

"What now?!"

Ilya caught himself against the wall again, only this time, the shaking didn’t stop.

A deep groaning noise traveled through the mansion as though the building itself were being subjected to some enormous weight, and cracks began spreading across the walls around him.

The ceiling sagged for several seconds before settling again, only for another section farther ahead to bend downward as though something invisible had been placed on top of it.

Ilya stared.

"...Weight?"

The word had barely left his mouth when something slammed into the floor somewhere behind him.

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