I Am a Villain, So What?-Chapter 170: We aren’t alone

We stepped off the teleportation pad. The blinding white light faded, and the foul, suffocating stench of the swamp disappeared instantly.

We had arrived on Floor 20.

Alicia didn’t even look around. She immediately dropped to her knees, placed her hands on the solid dirt, and literally kissed the ground.

"Firm ground," she muttered, pressing her forehead against the grass. "Fresh air. No mud. No giant bugs. Thank the gods."

She took a deep, dramatic breath, looking like a shipwreck survivor who had finally washed ashore.

I looked at our surroundings. Floor 20 was a massive, dense jungle. Towering trees with trunks as wide as houses stretched up toward the artificial sky. The canopy was thick, filtering the sunlight into patches of green and gold on the forest floor. The air was humid and warm, but it was clean.

"Get up," I said, checking my equipment. "Before a centipede goes in your ear."

Alicia jumped up as if she had been shocked with electricity. She frantically patted her hair and ears, her eyes darting around wildly.

"Master, that is not funny!" she complained, glaring at me while aggressively dusting off her knees.

"I’m serious. Keep your guard up," I said, pulling the Reaver shotgun off my back and racking the slide. "This is a jungle floor. Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t here."

We started walking through the dense foliage. The environment was vastly different from the swamp below. The ground was covered in thick roots, wide ferns, and jagged rocks.

As we moved deeper into the zone, the flora became noticeably stranger. We passed bushes with leaves that pulsed slowly like breathing lungs. Thick green vines hung from the canopy, and I noticed they silently retracted upward whenever we got too close. The ambient noise of the jungle was loud—strange birds screeching and leaves rustling—but I couldn’t spot any normal animals. Everything here was heavily mutated by the Spire’s mana.

"Look at this," Alicia said, stepping off the makeshift dirt path we had been following.

She walked toward a particularly large tree standing alone in a clearing. Its bark was a pale, sickly white, and thick blue sap oozed from wide cracks in the wood. Large, bulbous fruits hung from the lower branches, glowing with a faint, rhythmic purple light.

"Don’t touch anything," I warned, keeping my distance. My Detection skill was picking up hundreds of faint mana signatures in the area, making it hard to pinpoint individual threats.

"I’m just looking," she said, leaning in closer to inspect the glowing fruit. "I’ve never seen a plant with an active mana core inside its fruit before. Do you think it’s edible?"

She reached a hand out, her fingers hovering just inches from the white bark.

Suddenly, the blue sap stopped dripping. The bark shifted.

Two massive, yellow eyes snapped open directly in the center of the trunk.

Alicia froze.

The tree let out a hollow, deafening wooden screech. In a fraction of a second, the thick, heavy branches hanging above her whipped downward like massive tentacles.

"Ah!" Alicia yelled, stumbling backward.

She wasn’t fast enough. Two thick branches wrapped tightly around her waist and violently hoisted her ten feet into the air.

I raised my shotgun, but I didn’t shoot immediately. Firing a high-explosive slug at point-blank range while she was tangled in the branches would catch her in the blast radius.

"Alicia! Burn it!" I shouted.

She didn’t panic for long. Being suspended in the air by a mutant tree was bad, but to her, it was infinitely better than being covered in swamp mud.

Alicia glared down at the trunk and snapped her fingers.

A concentrated blast of crimson fire erupted directly from her palms, entirely engulfing the branches holding her. Her Level 8 Fire Magic didn’t just singe the wood; it melted through the thick, mutated timber instantly.

The tree shrieked, dropping her.

Alicia landed nimbly on her feet. She immediately backed away, thrusting both hands forward and unleashing a continuous, pressurized torrent of flames directly at the center of the trunk.

"Die, you overgrown weed!" she yelled.

The tree thrashed wildly. Its remaining branches whipped blindly through the air as the intense fire consumed its white bark. The blue sap began to boil and explode like small firecrackers.

I didn’t just stand there and watch. I stepped to the side, getting a clear angle on the massive yellow eyes in the center of the burning trunk.

I aimed the Reaver and pulled the trigger.

BANG! An armor-piercing slug tore straight through the right eye, exploding deep inside the tree’s wooden core. The monster let out one final, cracking groan before it collapsed backward, entirely engulfed in Alicia’s fire.

We stood there for a moment, watching it burn down to ash.

"Are you okay?" I asked, lowering my weapon.

"I am fine," Alicia huffed, fixing her collar and brushing a singed leaf off her cloak. "But I take back what I said earlier. I hate this floor too."

****

We didn’t linger near the burning tree. The smoke and the screeching would only attract more predators.

"Everything on this floor either wants to eat us, grab us, or infect us," Alicia complained, stepping carefully over a patch of glowing moss. "I preferred the golems. At least they didn’t bleed sap."

"Stay sharp," I said, keeping my eyes on the canopy. "The deeper we go, the worse it gets."

The jungle grew denser. The artificial sunlight barely pierced the thick leaves overhead, casting the forest floor in heavy shadows. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of ozone.

My senses flared. A sudden, sharp rustle in the branches above broke the ambient noise of the jungle.

Something was tracking us. It was fast, moving silently between the massive trees.

"Above us," I warned.

A blur of green and brown dropped from the canopy directly toward me.

I didn’t reach for my shotgun. My body reacted entirely on its own. The physical upgrades I had purchased made the world around me feel sluggish. I stepped back, shifting my weight perfectly just as a massive beast slammed into the dirt where I had been standing.

It was a Thorn-Leopard. It was the size of a draft horse, its fur replaced by razor-sharp vines and thick, wooden armor plating. Its jaws snapped open, revealing rows of jagged, wooden teeth.

It lunged at my throat.

I didn’t retreat. I stepped into its guard, channeling raw mana into my right arm. The blue light flickered violently around my knuckles—my control was still jagged and unrefined, but the raw power was there.

I drove my fist straight into the leopard’s jaw.

Crack. The impact shattered its wooden teeth and snapped its head back. The sheer force of my punch lifted the heavy beast off its front paws, sending it crashing into the trunk of a nearby tree.

It didn’t die immediately. It thrashed wildly, swiping a massive paw at my chest. The thorn-covered claws tore through my coat and slashed my ribs.

I didn’t flinch. The pain registered for a fraction of a second before the Rune of Vitality in my chest hummed. A warm rush of energy flooded the wound, knitting the torn flesh and muscle back together instantly.

I stepped forward, grabbed the leopard by the thick vines around its neck, and slammed it face-first into the dirt. I raised my boot and brought it down hard on its skull.

The beast stopped moving.

"Master, behind you!" Alicia yelled.

Three more Thorn-Leopards dropped from the trees, surrounding us. They didn’t roar; they just bared their teeth and charged simultaneously.

Alicia didn’t wait for my order. She thrust her rapier forward.

A concentrated wall of crimson flames roared to life, forming a perfect semicircle around us. The intense heat instantly incinerated the closest leopard mid-leap. It hit the ground as a pile of burning ash.

The other two beasts skidded to a halt, their instincts screaming at them to avoid the fire.

"Don’t let them retreat," I said, pulling a combat knife from my belt.

"I wasn’t planning on it," Alicia replied coldly.

She snapped her fingers. The wall of fire didn’t just hold its ground; it surged forward like a tidal wave. The flames wrapped around the remaining two leopards, trapping them in a swirling vortex of heat. They shrieked as the fire melted their wooden armor and consumed them completely.

The jungle fell silent again, save for the crackling of burning underbrush.

I knelt down next to the leopard I had killed, using my knife to pry open its chest cavity. I dug through the thick vines and extracted a glowing, fist-sized green crystal. A high-grade mana core.

"Disgusting," Alicia muttered, watching me wipe the blood off the core and toss it into my pouch. "Are we going to do this for every single monster we find?"

"Yes," I said, standing up. "These cores are currency. We need them to upgrade our gear."

We pushed forward for another two hours. The combat was relentless. We fought swarms of Razor-Bats, a massive armored beetle that took three shotgun slugs to crack, and several more ambush predators.

I stuck to using my bare hands and my knife as much as possible, forcing my body to adapt to the physical stress. I took hits, got slashed, and was thrown into trees, but the Rune of Vitality kept me standing. My mana control was slowly getting sharper. The blue glow around my fists was becoming more stable with every punch.

Eventually, the thick trees began to part.

We stepped out of the dense foliage and into a massive, open clearing.

"Look at that," I muttered.

In the center of the clearing stood the ruins of an ancient, overgrown temple. Massive stone pillars wrapped in thick vines supported a crumbling roof. The stone steps leading up to the entrance were cracked and covered in glowing blue moss.

But it wasn’t the architecture that caught my attention.

Lying at the base of the temple steps were dozens of dead monsters. Thorn-Leopards, giant apes, and armored beetles were scattered across the grass, their bodies completely pulverized.

Someone—or something—had cleared this area recently. And with overwhelming force.

"Master," Alicia said, her voice tight. She raised her rapier, her eyes scanning the dark entrance of the temple. "Those corpses are fresh. The blood hasn’t dried yet."

I unholstered the Reaver and racked the slide.

"Stay close," I said. "We’re not the only ones hunting on this floor."