Never Die Villain

Ilya turned and found Anastasiya standing beside him, looking worse than the last time he had seen her.

Bandages were wrapped around her abdomen and shoulder. Blood had already begun staining the bandages in several places, and judging from the glare she was giving him, being injured had done absolutely nothing to improve her mood.

"What the fuck are you doing here...?" she asked.

"What happened to you?"

"What happened to you?" Anastasiya immediately returned the question, her eyes moving over the bandages he had already bled through. "Last I checked, you threw yourself out of a fucking window."

"Last I checked, you weren’t wrapped like a mummy..."

"Whose fault do you think half of these injuries are?"

"Hm."

Anastasiya clicked her tongue, but before either of them could continue, another collision rang throughout the hall.

Both siblings turned at once, watching Valentin and the elders intercept another barrage of chains as Aleksei remained trapped in the center of their formation.

Ilya’s expression became serious.

"Anastasiya," he said. "Listen to me. Father and the elders... I don’t think they can hold him for much longer."

Anastasiya slowly looked toward him. "Do you understand how ridiculous that statement sounds?"

"I know, I know." Ilya raised a hand before she could continue. "I’m looking at the same thing you are."

"Then what exactly are you worried about?"

"That’s the problem... I don’t know..."

Anastasiya frowned.

Ilya kept his attention fixed on the battle, trying to identify whatever had been bothering him since the moment he arrived.

On the surface, everything favored the Belozerskys, and if this were any ordinary opponent, he would have already assumed that Aleksei’s defeat was merely a matter of time.

Ilya looked back toward Aleksei.

His father died.

And Aleksei became stronger.

Something about that progression bothered him.

"Did he say anything?"

"Plenty."

"Before he changed."

Anastasiya thought for a moment.

"He said his mother had been avenged and Yarik was safe. Why?"

"...."

A Distortion wasn’t merely a monster.

Helene had taught him that much.

Everything about the creature was tied to the person it had once been, from the world it created around itself to the strange rules governing its behavior.

If Aleksei’s transformation had progressed immediately after killing his father, then his father’s death hadn’t merely made him angrier.

"...Anastasiya."

"What?"

"What exactly was he saying when he attacked you?"

"He kept talking about the family."

"What about it?"

"That we knew. That we watched what happened and did nothing. He blamed us."

"...."

Ilya said nothing more, his eyes returning to the seven men surrounding Aleksei. Valentin and the elders were still holding their positions, swords drawn as the chains shifted around them.

Step——

Ilya stepped forward, clenching his fingers.

"What are you—"

"Ignis Muspell..."

Ilya brought his hands together. Mana surged around him, and before anyone could understand what he was attempting, the first ring of a magic circle appeared beneath Aleksei.

"Gjósa... Exsurge..."

The circle expanded with astonishing speed.

Another ring formed within the first, followed by a third, runic lines connecting them as the completed formation spread below Aleksei.

The sudden appearance of magic in the middle of their formation caught the attention of the family heads, several of whom glanced downward before their eyes followed the source of the spell toward Ilya.

"You..."

"Young Lord...?"

"What are you doing—"

Ilya ignored them.

"Eruptio!"

Boom——!

Fire erupted beneath Aleksei.

The explosion swallowed the center of the hall in an instant, forcing Valentin and the elders to abandon their positions as a towering sea of flames surged upward around the Distortion.

Heat rolled through the ruined palace, rattling what remained of the windows as the seven men landed farther away and turned toward Ilya with varying expressions of disbelief and anger.

But the anger didn’t last.

They had finally seen it for themselves.

The rumors had already circulated throughout the family, passed between servants, relatives, and elders who had heard strange stories coming from their spies within the Imperial Academy.

That Ilya Valentinovich Belozersky, the Grand Duke’s bastard, had walked the path of magic.

And now, surrounded by fire from a spell none of them had expected him to know, there was no longer any room to dismiss the rumors.

"...."

Beside him, Anastasiya’s mouth fell open, but Ilya paid her no heed as he rushed forward, the blizzard gathering around his feet before propelling him across the ruined hall.

He had barely crossed half the distance, however, when Valentin appeared directly in his path and forced him to stop.

"Get back, boy!"

Ilya ignored him.

He swept one hand aside, and the blizzard that existed only within his perception answered, gathering around Valentin before forcing him out of Ilya’s path.

The Grand Duke was pushed several meters to the side, and before the other heads could understand what Ilya intended to do, the same wind swept across them and drove them away from Aleksei as well.

"What the—?!"

"Young Lord!"

"Ilya!"

Their voices followed him, but Ilya didn’t stop.

For perhaps the first time in their lives, the heads of the northern families could only watch as Ilya Belozersky rushed toward an enemy they themselves had been struggling to contain.

The same boy they had mocked behind closed doors, dismissed as the disgrace of the main family, and watched fall from a prodigy into someone barely worth acknowledging was now charging alone toward a Black-Labeled Distortion.

———!

The chains surrounding the Distortion immediately changed direction, abandoning the elders they had been keeping at bay as one after another turned toward Ilya.

Dozens of them rose around Aleksei until their sharpened ends were pointed directly at the approaching figure.

——Ilya.

"Yeah."

Ilya kept moving.

——Ilya!

Aleksei recognized him.

"I heard you, goddamnit!"

A threat.

Ilya Valentinovich Belozersky was a Belozersky by blood and name, yet he was completely outside the conditions of Aleksei’s Distortion.

After all, its power had been born to slaughter those who belonged to the family, and Ilya had spent nearly his entire life being denied that very thing.

Shunned, humiliated, and treated as an embarrassment by his own kin, Ilya was the sole exception.

"Niflheim."

A Belozersky who had never been considered a Belozersky.

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