Never Die Villain

"...Mother, I have to go."

Ilya couldn’t explain it, but an ominous feeling had been growing inside him ever since he left the palace.

"What exactly are you planning to do in that condition?"

Mariya tightened the arm supporting him as soon as she noticed him trying to turn around.

"You can barely walk properly, Ilya, and your wounds have already opened again. Going back inside now would be reckless even for you."

"Mother, please. Just trust me."

"Ilya. All I’ve ever done is trust you, so this time, you need to trust me as well. We’re getting you treated, and whatever is happening inside will be handled by your father and the others, okay?"

"Mother..."

Ilya tried to pull away, only to discover that Mariya’s grip did not budge in the slightest. He tried again with considerably more effort, and when her fingers merely tightened around his arm, he suddenly remembered something he had somehow managed to overlook after years of knowing her primarily as his mother.

Mariya had married into House Belozersky.

Before becoming the Grand Duchess, she had been a knight herself, and a frighteningly talented one at that.

A woman did not simply marry into the main family of the Belozerskys without possessing considerable standing of her own, and although Mariya had long since stopped carrying a sword, apparently none of that strength had disappeared with it.

Ilya glanced back toward the palace, where the distant sounds of fighting had begun again, and something about it made his stomach turn.

He had no logical reason to believe Valentin and the assembled elders couldn’t handle Aleksei, especially when practically every powerful member of the family had gone inside together, yet that only made the feeling worse.

"Mother."

"No."

"I haven’t even said anything."

"You were going to ask me to let you go."

"...Yes."

"And my answer is still no."

Ilya sighed, then suddenly allowed his weight to sag against her. Mariya adjusted her grip to catch him.

That was enough.

A burst of cold wind blew between them.

"Wha—Ilya!"

The blizzard pushed Mariya backward just enough for Ilya to slip free, and before she could grab him again, ice formed below his boot. He immediately propelled himself toward the palace, nearly losing his balance from the pain shooting through his wounds but stubbornly refusing to slow down.

"Ilya!"

"Sorry, Mother."

"Come back here!"

"I’ll be back."

Mariya took several steps after him before stopping, watching as her son rushed toward the palace.

For a moment, she just stood there with one hand still raised, seemingly unable to decide whether she should chase after him herself or remain with the family members who had been ordered to stay outside.

"Ah, what do I do...?"

Mariya slowly covered her face with both hands.

"...He’s running off again without me."

Mariya chuckled to herself.

"What do I do, Diane?"

* * *

When Ilya arrived at the scene, it was a disaster.

Aleksei had grown considerably since Ilya last saw him, and more ominously, the strength he had displayed while chasing Ilya through the palace seemed almost laughable compared to his current state.

His distorted body had become larger and darker, with thick black matter covering what remained of his armor while countless chains surrounded him, moving independently as they occupied nearly every corner of the ruined hall.

In all seriousness, what was Ilya even doing here?

He hadn’t been capable of suppressing Aleksei before, when the Distortion had been weaker and entirely focused on chasing him, much less now.

His body was already battered from Anastasiya’s exhibition match, his wounds had reopened, and simply rushing back here had left him breathing harder than he wanted to admit.

But seeing the battle before him, already locked in a stalemate...

"...."

Knights were scattered throughout the ruined hall, and injuries had already thinned their formation considerably.

Blood stained the floor, several men were being dragged away from the fighting by their comrades, and even those who remained standing looked as though another direct hit would put them down for good.

The family heads, however, were still standing.

Valentin remained at the front with his sword drawn, while Volnograd, Vysota, Morozsk, and the other elders held their positions around Aleksei.

They had managed to keep the Distortion contained between them, but the ruined hall and the injured knights behind their formation made it painfully obvious that contained was the most generous word Ilya could use for the situation.

More importantly, they weren’t advancing.

Neither was Aleksei.

The elders maintained enough pressure to prevent him from freely slaughtering the injured knights, while Aleksei’s chains made approaching him nearly suicidal.

Whenever someone attempted to close the distance, several chains immediately shifted toward them, and whenever Aleksei tried to break through their formation, one of the elders intercepted him before he could reach those behind them.

Nobody could move.

Nobody could finish it.

Something was wrong.

The difference was simply too great. He had fought, or rather, fled from Aleksei only minutes ago, so there was no mistaking how dramatically the Distortion’s power had increased in such a short amount of time.

Then Ilya noticed someone missing.

"...Elder Karskin?"

No answer came.

His eyes moved across the destroyed hall until they settled on the place where Aleksei’s father had made his last stand.

There was no body, but the blood across the floor and the expressions of those nearby told Ilya enough.

Elder Karskin was dead.

Ilya looked back at Aleksei.

"Oh..."

It was obvious now.

The increased size, the change in his body, the sheer difference in power, and the fact that some of the strongest swordsmen in the North were struggling merely to contain him all pointed toward the same conclusion.

This wasn’t the Red-Labeled Distortion Ilya had escaped from earlier.

Somewhere between then and now, Aleksei had crossed another threshold.

"Black..."

Ilya swallowed.

"A Black-Labeled Distortion..."

It was the same classification assigned to the Distortion that had wiped the Rabelle District from the map, turning the entire area into the site of an outright massacre.

Mount Serebryany had been another, where dozens of students had been slaughtered alongside their professors, and even Siegfried, the protagonist himself, had died before an innumerable number of professors finally managed to suppress the creature.

Those were the kinds of disasters that earned the color black.

Yet here, only seven men stood between Aleksei and everyone else.

Valentin and the six elders had surrounded the Distortion from every direction, and despite everything Ilya knew about Black-Labeled cases, not one of them had suffered any serious injury.

Whenever a chain came for one of them, another intercepted it, and whenever Aleksei attempted to force his way through their formation, seven swords moved together to drive him back.

It spoke volumes about the strength of the Belozerskys.

These were the men who had spent decades holding back the horrors that emerged from the far North, and for the first time, Ilya understood just how ridiculous the family he had been born into truly was.

A calamity that would have required an entire force elsewhere was being contained by seven men inside a ruined hall.

And yet... Ilya couldn’t shake the feeling that they were going to lose.

There was no evidence for it. Aleksei was the one being suppressed, the seven men surrounding him were still standing, and more reinforcements were already gathering outside the hall, yet every instinct screamed at Ilya that something about this battle was fundamentally wrong.

"...!"

At that moment, someone placed a hand on his shoulder.

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