Hero Regresses with Villain System-Chapter 38: Leaving Ereshida

Adam and Varek both stared in bewilderment at the person who stopped them. Between the others, she was by far the least likely to be here right now. And yet...

"Aria?" Natalie asked, her voice low and trembling.

Somehow, their teacher had found them in this place. More than that, in a single instant she had stopped the 2 boys from fighting each other. Potentially, she stopped them from killing each other.

Looking at her face now, both of them knew that fact didn’t make her happy.

Glaring at the 2, she waved her baton in the air as she said, "I didn’t face that Kaiju by myself, find the temple by myself, and wade through this..." she paused for just a moment to stomp her feet in the goo, "shit just to find you 2 fighting each other!"

Her outburst done, she breathed heavily as sweat poured down her face. Turning around, Aria cast a quick glance at the trio to make sure they were ok. Nodding her head, she looked back at Varek and Adam.

Placing a hand on her hip as she waved her baton, she shook her head and said, "So... why are we fighting?"

Adam looked her dead in the eyes and said simply, "This bastard tried to kill me."

Varek shrugged and said, "I was trying to neutralize the enemy. She was going insane and threatened to kill everyone else. Just like the Headmasters say, sacrifice is fine if victory is assured."

With that, he walked past both of them without a care for anything and leaned against one of the dark edges.

Adam’s troubled gaze lingered on him for just a second, wondering how he could go from pure rage to calculative in just a second. Was he this used to deceit?

Also...

"How did you find us?" Adam asked, turning back to Aria.

Staring around the prison for a few seconds, Aria seemed to ignore Adam at first. Her gaze darted around the dark expanse, seemingly trying to find some small difference in the monotonous black.

Nodding to herself, she turned back to Adam and said, "I have quite a bit of experience with these kinds of places. I’m sorry I expected you guys to as well."

Then she turned to everyone else and spoke calmly yet authoritatively.

"Although I am sure the journey has been harsh, I’m happy to see that everyone is alive. I- I’m sorry that everything happened the way it did." The next words she spoke very slowly, her tear filled eyes looking directly at Evan. "I’m sorry that I got one of you killed. It is clear now that I was well over my head in bringing everyone here."

Closing her eyes for a second, Aria fell silent. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

The rest of the students were unable to remain silent, as they remembered the times before. They remembered Aria stepping up when Varek was trapped by that Kaiju. At that time, she had stepped forward and taken the brunt of the pain for everyone.

Even when Thea had died, she didn’t hesitate for a second to jump in and make sure nobody else died. Although her maturity could be called in question, her love for her students and their safety couldn’t be any more apparent.

Therefore, Evan shook his head as he whispered, "This is how the world is. It’s nasty, it’s dark, it’s painful. It’s a vast expanse of the dead. The few still living... if they want to survive, they need to band together and see the world as it is."

Closing his eyes, Evan shuddered for a second before continuing. "I wish Thea didn’t have to die for me to see that. However if what you said before was true, that there is some horrible apocalyptic event coming. If that’s the case... we can’t be coddled."

Opening his eyes, Evan cast a sullen smile towards Aria as he finished, "If it wasn’t for you, we would simply be dead right now. All of us... we would be dead people walking down a shrouded path."

Murmurs of approval spread through the other 2. Varek scoffed, though even he was visibly affected by Evan’s words to some extent.

Inwardly, Adam smiled at Shadow’s growth. It had taken far too much unnecessary bloodshed, but he knew that Evan would end up being an irreplaceable ally in the upcoming fight. All he had to do now was get stronger.

Turning back to Aria, everyone saw that their approval had moved the teacher. Due to her failure, she had expected nothing but ridicule.

That was a basic rule all Inheritors followed—be perfect or become extinct. Despite her prodigious abilities, Aria had shown herself to be anything but unique. She was an overly excited person that jumped into new situations far too haphazardly.

Sure, a sitting duck was sure to be killed by a guillotine. However, someone who ran straight into barbed wire wasn’t any better off.

Putting on her happy teacher face before she could get emotional, Aria said, "Anyway, we need to be headed back now. We were already gone for far too long."

...

Aria wasn’t kidding.

It hadn’t taken long for them to leave the temple once she showed up, as she somehow knew all the ways out.

Adam didn’t think about it too much, though he remembered what she had said. That she was familiar with those places. That fact lined up with earlier information as well, when she had told them about the warped planet Ereshida. She had said that they had Temples, Fallen Civilizations, and stuff like that.

What he was worried about was the person in front of him—a man wearing an oversized black shirt, cargo pants, and 5 layers of muscles. Based on the way even Aria, who was usually flamboyant, cowered in front of him, Adam figured he was one of these headmasters.

That meant he knew far more about the warped planets than even Aria. If that was the case, Adam needed that knowledge.

After just one Temple, he had gotten 10x stronger. Just thinking about that becoming a routine occurrence made Adam smile inside.