THE PERFECT VILLAIN: Another chance with a system

Leonard gestured smoothly toward the palace floor plan resting on the dark mahogany table. "If you rely strictly on ordinary mortal builders, carving out a subterranean fortress capable of housing our entire operations will take months. But if we gather mages and laborers possessing high-tier Earth Manipulation, the entire complex can be hollowed out, reinforced, and sealed within a week."

Niel leaned back in his chair, reviewing the layout with a calculating gaze. "It makes complete sense. Since Dulthmune will fall to the flames anyway, sitting on the royal treasury is useless. Siphoning every last coin from the vaults to hire high-class earth mages fits the exact facade I gave Alistair—a panic-driven monarch sparing no expense for a war shelter."

Draken grunted in gruff agreement, while Lydia kept her eyes fixed on Leonard. Though the air between them was still stained with underlying suspicion, none of them could deny the terrifying efficiency of the shadow weaver’s strategy.

"Then the baseline is set," Niel declared, his voice cutting through the room. "We accelerate the construction immediately."

The following morning, Niel sat behind the grand oak desk in the royal study, fully maintaining the image of King Vance. Alistair stood before him, clutching a trembling stack of financial ledgers.

"Your Majesty!" Alistair gasped, looking at the royal warrant Niel had just signed. "You are authorizing the release of nearly eighty percent of the kingdom’s reserve gold to hire every mercenary earth-craftsman and guild mage in the southern territories?"

Niel slammed his hand down onto the desk, his stolen brown eyes flaring with harsh, unyielding authority. "Do you think gold will save our necks when Kelter’s siege engines reach our gates, Alistair? Every coin in that vault is useless if we are dead! This underground sanctuary is for the safety of our kingdom—and for us. Spare no expense. Gather every earth manipulator who can hold a staff, and have them work in shifts around the clock!"

Alistair quivered, completely overwhelmed by the King’s frantic insistence on survival. He bowed deeply, pressing the scroll to his chest. "I... I understand, Your Grace! It shall be done at once!"

The execution was ruthless. Within forty-eight hours, hundreds of earth mages, guild contractors, and heavily paid laborers poured into the subterranean levels beneath the palace’s eastern wing. Deep beneath the bedrock, the ground shuddered continuously as magical channels reshaped stone, raised smooth walls, and carved spatial dampening runes into the solid granite.

A week passed in a blur of dust, iron, and magic.

By the seventh day, the grand underground fortress was fully completed—a massive, labyrinthine complex of reinforced barracks, central war rooms, and hidden exits, all completely isolated from the surface world.

Yet, as Niel stood in the silent study on the eighth morning, a cold silence hung over the borders.

"Still no word from Duke Reginald?" Niel asked, looking out the grand window over the capital city.

Alistair shook his head nervously, adjusting his spectacles. "None, Sire. Our border couriers report that Kelter’s trade outposts have gone completely dark, but no official response to your tax refusal has arrived—"

The heavy double doors of the study burst open with a violent crash.

A royal guard stumbled into the room, his armor covered in mud and blood, his breath ragged. "Your Majesty! The border garrisons have collapsed! Kelter’s heavy vanguard crossed the eastern river at dawn—they didn’t send envoys, they brought an invading army! Their war legions are less than two leagues from the capital walls!"

Alistair went pale as paper, dropping his ledgers to the floor. "They... they launched a full invasion without warning?!"

Niel’s face hardened into a fierce, commanding sneer as he stepped around the desk, playing King Vance to absolute perfection. "Ring the alarm bells! Sound the call to arms! Lock down the city gates and prepare for war!"

Within minutes, warning horns blared across the capital of Dulthmune. The peaceful morning shattered into chaos. Panicked citizens flooded the cobblestone streets, fleeing toward the high inner walls of the royal castle.

Niel descended to the central palace courtyard, flanked by his high knights. Thousands of terrified commoners crowded around the iron gates, screaming for entry into the newly rumored underground shelters.

Niel mounted a raised stone platform, his voice amplified by wind mana so it echoed across the entire square.

"People of Dulthmune!" Niel roared, holding his drawn sword high. "The beasts of Kelter have come to burn our homes and slaughter our children! But we do not hide like rats while our soil is stained with blood! The underground vaults are reserved for after the line holds! Every man, woman, and youth capable of holding a blade, a spear, or a bow—pick up your weapons and march to the outer ramparts! Fight for your land!"

The desperate, manipulated crowd erupted into bloodthirsty, panic-driven cheers. Fueled by false hope and terrifying propaganda, thousands of untrained citizens, young men, and brave maidens rushed to arm themselves with rusty spears, iron pitchforks, and old hunting bows, streaming toward the outer city walls to form a last defensive line.

High above the falling city, four figures sat inside a dark, soundproofed room at the top of the highest palace spire, watching the carnage unfold through a massive arched window.

Niel, Lydia, Draken, and Leonard sat in cold, quiet comfort, sipping wine as they observed the utter destruction of Dulthmune below. None of them lifted a finger to intervene.

Outside, the sky turned gray with smoke.

Kelter’s warriors were brutal and precise. Mages lined the distant hills, launching burning boulders of pitch into the outer residential districts. The wooden rooftops of Dulthmune erupted into towering pillars of fire, sending screaming crowds scattering into trapped alleyways.

"Look at them scramble," Draken muttered, leaning his heavy chin on his fist as he watched the defensive lines crumble. "Throwing peasants against heavy armored knights. Vance’s army is getting slaughtered."

Below, the main gate of the outer city shuddered under the rhythmic, thunderous strikes of Kelter’s iron-headed battering ram. On the ramparts, commoners dropped hot oil and rocks, but Kelter’s battle-mages raised dense barriers of water and wind, neutralizing the crude defenses effortlessly.

With a deafening CRACK, the grand wooden gates of Dulthmune shattered inward.

"Breakthrough," Lydia noted impassively, her blue eyes reflecting the orange glow of the burning streets.

Thousands of Kelter’s heavy infantry—clad in dark iron armor and wielding broad axes—poured through the breached gates like a tidal wave of steel. The clash was an immediate massacre. The untrained citizens of Dulthmune stood no chance. Sword-lines met naked chest; spears snapped against heavy shields. The cobblestone streets turned into slick, red rivers as Kelter’s knights cut through the defenders without mercy.

By afternoon, the outer city had completely fallen.

Kelter’s forces swept through the commercial districts, slaughtering any who offered resistance and rounding up hundreds of crying women and young captives, chaining them together like livestock to be marched back across the border as war prizes.

By evening, the inner castle gates were breached. The royal guard was completely wiped out. Kelter’s supreme commander—a massive man in silver-and-crimson plate armor—marched into the blood-stained grand hall of Dulthmune, planting his bloodied broadsword into the marble floor before the vacant throne.

The Kingdom of Dulthmune had fallen.

Night settled over the ruined, smoking capital. The streets were dead quiet, save for the crackle of burning timber and the heavy footfalls of Kelter’s occupying patrols stationed throughout the central plaza.

In the middle of the ruined town square, surrounded by hundreds of stacked corpses and shattered banners, a pool of pitch-black darkness rippled across the blood-soaked cobblestones.

Out from the shadow stepped Leonard Freeman.

He uncrossed his arms, his dark cowl fluttering in the ash-filled wind as he stood calmly in the very center of the fallen kingdom.

A squad of a dozen heavily armed Kelter knights patrolling the plaza instantly spotted him. They drew their broadswords, their captain stepping forward with a harsh shout.

"Halt! Who goes there?!" the captain barked, leveling his sword at Leonard’s chest. "Identify yourself, civilian, or be executed where you stand! This city belongs to the Crown of Kelter now!"

Leonard didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t raise his hands. He simply lowered his cowl slightly, exposing a cold, sinister smirk that sent a sudden, unexplainable chill running down the spine of every knight present.

Leonard plunged his black-gloved hands deep into his pockets. He tapped his foot against the stone, unleashing his Unique Skill, Shadow.

A subterranean shockwave tore through the earth beneath the square. Instantly, every shadow across the entire city of Dulthmune detached itself from the walls, the corpses, and the ruined buildings. Millions of black, tendril-like threads erupted from the ground, surging skyward to form a massive, suffocating dome of pitch-black, toxic miasma that completely blotted out the moonlight.

The sky above Dulthmune turned into a swirling void of pure corruption. The air instantly turned freezing cold, carrying a foul, acidic stench that rotted the wood of nearby houses in seconds.

The Kelter knights stumbled back in absolute horror, coughing violently as the edges of their iron armor began to rust and pit under the sheer density of the shadowy miasma.

Leonard turned his dark, glowing eyes onto the trembling captain, his voice echoing across the silent, ruined capital with absolute, horrifying finality.

"Go tell your king..." Leonard whispered, his words carrying through the void like a sentence of death. "...this land is now off-limits."

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