I'm in Love with the Villainess!

Valtor laughed at my mention of the mythical creature. To him, it must have sounded like a stupid question. What self-respecting mercenary of a god wouldn’t know of a being that could only be born from pure sin?

"A False Hydra? Why bring up something like that now?"

He tilted his head, his movements frantic and snappy, the signals from his brain still struggling under the sheer weight of the domain.

"Trying to scare me with it? Unfortunately for you, that’s useless. I know for a fact that even someone like you couldn’t weaponize something like that against the Church or me."

"Arden... what are you talking about?"

Marcellus struggled to remain upright, spitting up blood from the sheer pressure. Compared to the two of us, he was still the weakest one here, and while he wasn’t completely overwhelmed like the backup inquisitors...

He still wasn’t all that powerful.

"Fuck... I don’t care anymore. Just get this over with."

Marcellus let out a strangled laugh as he fell to his knees, driving his fist into the ground to keep himself from collapsing completely.

"I won’t take long, don’t worry."

I replied, placing my hands on Valtor’s forehead and forcing him to look me straight in the eye. But to make sure my threat fully landed,

[Command Hydra]

I forced the False Hydra to reveal itself for a brief second, its four and a half heads smiling and bleeding beside me, its neck connected to my spine as it stared at Valtor with sinful hunger.

"I-Impossible... h-how did you...?"

"Tell me, will you still stay so composed after having your entire existence forgotten?"

I smiled. Sure, he might seem like he wasn’t afraid of death, but someone as proud as him would surely recoil at the thought of being meaningless, of being nothing. All his efforts, all his work under Elion, erased in an instant.

"Y-You devilspawn—"

I cut him off as I gripped his jaw, only a hair’s breadth away from crushing it under my hand.

"Your plans, now."

Maybe he had information worth more than the previous high inquisitor Evelina had killed. And that maybe was doing a lot of work—that was the only reason I didn’t kill him on the spot.

"F-Fuck off..."

He really had to do this the hard way, huh?

I sighed.

Torture wasn’t something I was against, obviously.

But in situations like this, it was going to be annoyingly messy and inefficient. But sometimes—sometimes—it was the only language people like Valtor understood.

Guess being subjected to pressure equal to that of the ocean’s floor wasn’t enough for him. Some people really are masochists...

"Marcellus," I said, not looking away from the High Inquisitor’s bloodshot eyes. "How much do you need him alive?"

A pause. Then, Marcellus’s strained voice: "...Enough to talk. Not enough to walk."

"Good enough for me."

[Dark Manipulation]

I didn’t bother with anything elaborate. No constructs, no weapons, no theatrics. Just a single thread of shadow, thin as a spider’s silk, sliding into Valtor’s ear and coiling around the nerves beneath his skin.

He screamed.

It wasn’t a proud sound. It wasn’t the defiant cry of a martyr or the stoic grunt of a hardened soldier. It was raw, animal, desperate—the kind of scream that came from somewhere deeper than willpower.

"What... what is this...?" he choked out, his body convulsing against the restraints of my domain.

"The difference between us," I said quietly. "You use light to burn. I use darkness to feel. Every nerve. Every synapse. Every fragile little thread that makes you you. And right now..."

I twisted the thread.

He seized, foam flecking his lips.

"...I’m touching all of them."

Valtor’s body went rigid, then limp. For a moment, I thought he’d passed out—but no. His eyes were still open, still aware, still feeling every single thing I was doing to him.

"Tell me," I said again.

"I... can’t..."

"You can. You won’t. There’s a difference."

I loosened the thread slightly, just enough to let him breathe without screaming. His chest heaved, sucking in air like a drowning man breaking the surface.

"The inner district," I pressed. "What is the church planning?"

Valtor’s lips moved. No sound came out.

"Last chance."

"Purge..." he finally rasped. "The church is planning a purge."

Behind me, Marcellus went still. Even the pressure of my domain couldn’t mask the shift in his breathing.

"A purge of who?" I asked.

"Everyone."

Valtor laughed, a broken, ugly sound. "The inner district... the outer district... the entire continent... all of it. Everyone who isn’t pure. Everyone who consorts with anything other than light. Everyone who might one day raise a hand against Elion’s light."

"That’s tens of millions of people," Marcellus said, his voice hollow.

"Yes."

"When?"

"I don’t..."

I twisted the thread again. Not hard. Just enough.

"SOON!" Valtor shrieked. "Soon! When the celestial alignment happens! Three weeks! Three weeks from now!"

The celestial alignment. Once every fifty years, when the planes drifted close enough that magic ran wild and divine intervention became... plausible. I’d read about it. Never thought anyone would actually use it as a deadline for mass murder.

[Photographic Memory]

Well I did...

But definitely not this soon...

So this wasn’t just any inquisitorial scheme after all—it was something far bigger, something that had been accelerated well ahead of schedule.

I’d been careless...

"Who’s leading it?" I asked.

"The High Council. The Grand Priest. The Grand Cleric herself."

"Where?"

"The Solar Cathedral. They’ll gather there. Perform the Rite of Unbinding. And then..."

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.

I released the thread entirely, pulling it back from his ear. Valtor slumped forward, catching himself on his hands, shaking uncontrollably.

"And where does this Jayden fellow fall into things...?"

"J-Jayden...?"

Valtor struggled, his pupils trembling as he still recoiled from my torture.

"H-He’s... he’s the only thing keeping the celestial alignment stable. He needed to die."

"And right now, he’s alive..."

"C-Correct."

"I’m satisfied. How about you?"

I turned to Marcellus, who was struggling to even shake his head at me.

"Partially... I still have more questions, but what he just said is more important right now. I suppose it isn’t too far-fetched to ask you and Evelina to stop it with me?"

"We’ll die anyway if we don’t stop it. Obviously, I’m helping you."