Never Die Villain

"...."

Something about her father’s words silenced Anastasiya.

For years, Anastasiya had grown accustomed to being told the opposite.

One more lesson, one more hour of training, one more responsibility she was expected to shoulder because she was the future Grand Duchess, and whenever exhaustion finally caught up with her, there had always been someone waiting to remind her that a Belozersky could endure more.

Yet Valentin wasn’t asking her for more.

He stood with his back to her. Behind him, the elders and branch heads gradually spread throughout the corridor, while the knights reformed around them and prepared for another attack.

Anastasiya lowered her eyes.

"...Okay."

Two knights approached Anastasiya and helped her to her feet, and this time she didn’t resist when they began guiding her away. She made it several steps before looking back, just as Aleksei’s chains began rising again.

——Father...

The word came from Aleksei differently this time.

Anastasiya stopped, and so did Elder Karskin.

The distorted figure stood at the opposite end of the corridor, surrounded by chains that had suddenly gone still, and although the fury that had consumed Aleksei moments earlier had not disappeared, there was something disturbingly lucid about the way he looked at his father now.

Elder Karskin slowly raised his sword.

"Aleksei... how could this be..."

He moved quickly, intending to subjugate his own son.

The northerners had never been afforded the luxury of hesitating simply because the enemy standing before them shared their blood.

Their history was filled with fathers who had slain sons after corruption took them, siblings who had crossed swords when one betrayed the North, and entire branches that had been put down by their own relatives when necessity demanded it.

Elder Karskin was no different.

Then Aleksei spoke.

——Father... this is it...

Elder Karskin’s steps slowed.

——This is the power you’ve always wanted from me...!

"...."

"Karskin!"

Valentin’s warning echoed through the corridor.

Elder Karskin glanced back at Valentin, allowing his attention to leave Aleksei for only the briefest moment.

"Ah?"

———!

His entire world suddenly turned upside down.

He never had the chance to turn back.

Aleksei’s greatsword had already swept through his neck, sending his severed head tumbling through the air.

His body remained standing for another moment before finally beginning to collapse, but it never reached the floor.

Something black gushed out of Aleksei and surged toward the falling corpse.

Thick masses of ooze poured through the gaps in Elder Karskin’s armor before his body could even hit the floor, engulfing flesh, metal, and sword alike before surging outward toward the surrounding knights.

"Move!"

The warning came too late.

The ooze caught the nearest knight by the leg and dragged him toward Aleksei, swallowing him before the others could pull him free.

Another disappeared moments later, then another, their bodies sinking into the black mass as it climbed over Aleksei’s distorted frame and became part of him.

"Fall back!" An elder roared. "Everyone, get away from him!"

The Belozerskys immediately retreated, expecting Aleksei to pursue them the moment their formation broke apart, but strangely enough, he did nothing. He stood where his father had died, completely motionless as the black mass continued gathering around his feet.

Just like that. His father, Margrave Dmitri Aleksandrovich Karskin, was dead.

He had imagined his father’s death countless times, held onto it through every punishment, and used that promise as his reason to keep standing whenever his body begged him to stop.

Now, he had finally done it.

The promise had been fulfilled, but rather than bringing Aleksei’s Distortion to an end, Elder Karskin’s death seemed to trigger something deeper within it.

Crack——!

Aleksei’s enormous body convulsed as the chains wrapped around him suddenly pulled themselves taut, digging deeper into his distorted frame while the black mass climbed across his armor.

It seeped into every dent and fracture, swallowing the metal piece by piece until even the greatsword in his hand began sinking into the darkness, joining the bodies he had consumed moments earlier.

Anastasiya felt her stomach drop as she watched his form continue to change.

Whatever they had been fighting until now had not been Aleksei’s complete Distortion, and killing his father had apparently fulfilled whatever condition had been preventing it from progressing further.

——Mother is avenged.

Aleksei slowly raised his head as the darkness finished consuming what remained of his armor.

——Yarik is safe.

One after another, the chains surrounding him began rising from the floor, until dozens hovered behind his enormous figure.

——Hahahaha...!

Aleksei looked toward the people who remained in the corridor. His attention passed over the knights, the elders, Anastasiya, and finally Valentin before settling upon the crest of House Belozersky displayed across their clothes and armor.

They were all Belozerskys.

They were the family who, in Aleksei’s eyes, had known what was happening inside House Karskin and allowed it to continue.

Killing his father had been the first thing he wanted.

But it was never the last.

The chains behind Aleksei spread throughout the corridor as the newly transformed Distortion took its first step forward, and only then did the Belozerskys understand that Elder Karskin’s death had not satisfied him.

It had freed him.

Now, Aleksei intended to wipe out every last Belozersky.

In his eyes, their ignorance was simply another form of guilt.

Valentin took one step forward, and the other elders followed. Volnograd, Vysota, Morozsk, and the rest of the branch heads spread out alongside him, while the knights serving under their banners filled whatever openings remained between them, forming a wall between Aleksei and the rest of the family.

But there was something none of them knew.

Distortions followed their own rules, and Aleksei was no exception.

The impossible powers possessed by Distortions were never without reason, because each Distortion was shaped by the person who became it.

Aleksei’s power had a condition of its own.

It was meant for the Belozerskys.

More precisely, Aleksei’s power was at its strongest against those he recognized as belonging to the family. Blood relatives, knights who carried their banner, and those who lived proudly under the Belozersky name were all the same in the eyes of his Distortion.

Blood alone, however, was not enough.

What mattered was belonging.

Against those people, Aleksei’s Distortion became something specifically made to kill them. The condition was narrow, but in exchange, its power against the Belozerskys was overwhelming.

Valentin and the others knew none of this.

They believed they had surrounded Aleksei with some of the strongest swordsmen in the North.

In reality, they had gathered almost everyone the Distortion was designed to kill in one place.

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