I Am a Villain, So What?-Chapter 178: Desert Wraiths

"Who’s there?!" Elisha shouted, instantly drawing her red compound bow and nocking an arrow.

The Wraiths snapped their heads toward her.

Before Elisha could release her bowstring, the lead Wraith plunged its skeletal hand directly into the generator’s core.

BOOOM!

The mana generator exploded in a shower of blue sparks and shrapnel.

[Warning! Main power grid offline! Perimeter wards failing!]

The mechanical alarm blared across the camp. The bright mana lights flickered and died instantly, plunging the entire military installation into absolute darkness.

Voices erupted across the camp in panic.

"What’s happening?!" "I heard an explosion near the center!" "Grab your weapons! Perimeter breach!"

The heavy clouds above blocked the moons. The darkness was suffocating.

Elisha ducked instinctively as a sharp blade of compressed shadow sliced through the air exactly where her head had just been.

"There are monsters inside the camp!" Elisha screamed, trying to warn the scrambling guards.

"Where?! I can’t see anything!"

"I’ll cast a light!" a mage from the border guard yelled. A bright sphere of illumination flared to life above his staff.

It was a fatal mistake.

The sudden light acted like a beacon. Three Wraiths instantly swarmed the mage. He let out a dying scream as they tore through his armor, extinguishing the light as quickly as it had appeared.

The brief, horrific glimpse of the Wraiths plunging their hands into the guard sent a wave of panic through the awakening cadets and soldiers. They began stumbling in the dark, colliding with each other and swinging their weapons blindly.

Elisha scrambled backward, her breath ragged. Normally, physical exertion wouldn’t wind her, but the sheer terror of fighting a blind battle pushed her heart rate to its limit.

She tripped over a severed tent wire.

She hit the dirt hard. Her red bow slipped from her grasp, clattering away into the dark.

No!

She groped blindly in the sand, entirely defenseless. A heavy, freezing presence loomed over her.

It couldn’t end like this. She hadn’t gotten stronger. She hadn’t redeemed her failure from the Vance incident. She had to survive.

She braced herself for the fatal strike.

BANG!

A blinding flash of fire illuminated the dark.

In that split second, Elisha saw the ghastly Wraith standing directly over her, its shadowy blade raised to strike. Then, the back of its skull blew out.

A perfectly aimed bullet had pierced straight through its forehead.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Three more deafening gunshots rang out in rapid succession. The muzzle flashes strobed like lightning, illuminating the man walking calmly through the chaos.

*****

[Lucien’s Perspective]

I lowered the smoking barrel of my Winchester.

Even with the camp plunged into total darkness, my [Sixth Sense] painted a perfectly clear picture of the battlefield in my mind. The Wraiths’ malicious intent stuck out like glowing beacons in the pitch-black night.

I walked over to where Elisha was sitting frozen in the sand.

"Excuse me," I said, slinging the rifle over my shoulder and drawing the Reaver shotgun with my right hand.

"Huh? Yes?" Elisha stammered, still completely dazed.

I didn’t have time to wait for her to recover her wits. I reached down, wrapped my left arm tightly around her waist, and hoisted her off the ground.

"Eek—!"

"I know you hate contact with me, but stay perfectly still," I ordered.

Holding the heavy shotgun in one hand and carrying Elisha securely against my side with the other, I sprinted through the chaotic camp.

Was he always this physically strong?! I could practically feel her shock as she blushed furiously, but I ignored it. She had lost her weapon and was dead weight right now. Leaving her behind meant losing a core member of the Protagonist’s party, and I wasn’t going to let the storyline derail over a simple night ambush.

I aimed the Reaver one-handed.

BOOM!

The massive muzzle flash tore through the pitch-black camp. The armor-piercing buckshot shredded two Wraiths that were about to ambush a group of blinded guards.

I kept moving. Every time I pulled the trigger, the explosive flash of the shotgun temporarily lit up the camp, revealing the horrific battlefield like a series of still paintings.

To the others, I looked like a madman shooting blindly into the void. To me, it was simple math. I tracked the killing intent, aimed, and fired.

The darkness wasn’t an obstacle for me. It was my cover.

****

I kicked open the heavy iron door of the camp’s main supply warehouse. It was the sturdiest structure in the outpost, heavily reinforced to withstand sandstorms.

I stepped inside and set Elisha down on her feet.

Even in the pitch-black darkness, my Sixth Sense picked up her rapidly rising body heat and erratic heartbeat. She was completely flustered from being carried like a sack of grain, but thankfully, she kept her mouth shut.

I walked straight to the secure lockers where the club’s luggage had been stored. I found my tactical backpack, unzipped the side pocket, and pulled out a specialized 12-gauge illumination shell Merle had crafted.

"Let’s go," I said, stepping back out into the freezing, chaotic night.

"Oh, uh, right," Elisha stammered, hurriedly grabbing her own backpack and following me out.

The camp was still in absolute turmoil. The guards were swinging blindly, and the Wraiths were tearing through their ranks in the dark.

I loaded the illumination shell into the chamber of the Reaver shotgun and pointed the barrel straight up into the pitch-black sky.

"Cadet Lucien? What are you—"

BANG!

A streak of concentrated white fire shot upward. For a second, it looked like a weak, fizzling spark against the heavy clouds. But once it reached maximum altitude, the shell detonated.

The compressed mana unfolded into a massive, blinding orb of sustained light. It hung in the sky like a miniature sun, completely illuminating the camp.

"Light!" "I can see them!"

The Wraiths shrieked. Their shadowy rags smoked and hissed under the harsh, artificial daylight, entirely stripping away their stealth advantage.

The sounds of clashing steel and magic, which had been uncoordinated until now, unified. The counterattack began.

"Cadet Lucien, you’re..." Elisha started, her eyes wide as she looked at the floating flare.

"No time to chat. We need to clear them out," I said, racking the shotgun.

I charged back into the fray, Elisha right behind me. The darkness was gone, but the guards were still struggling.

"They won’t die!" a vanguard knight shouted, blocking a shadowy blade. "We cut off their arms and legs, and the shadows just reform!"

I stepped past the knight, raised my shotgun, and pulled the trigger. The armor-piercing buckshot blew the Wraith’s head completely off its shoulders. Its body instantly dissolved into a pile of harmless, black sand.

"Desert Wraiths have a physical core in the center of their skulls," I shouted over the noise, projecting my voice so the entire camp could hear. "Aim strictly for the forehead! If you can’t pierce it, blow the head apart entirely!"

"The forehead! Got it!"

With the darkness banished and their fatal weakness exposed, the tide turned in seconds. The border guards and cadets adjusted their aim. The remaining Wraiths were systematically slaughtered.

Soon, the last Wraith crumbled to sand.

"Phew... we won." "Gods, I thought we were dead."

The camp erupted in exhausted cheers. Guards slumped against the sandbags, and the cadets celebrated their survival. Elisha let out a long breath, a bright, relieved smile breaking across her face. We had protected the camp.

She turned to look at me, her pride clearly warring with her gratitude. I could tell she was finally realizing how many times I had pulled her or her friends out of the fire.

She took a deep breath, steeling her noble pride, and walked up to me.

"Hey, Lucien. Thanks for saving me earlier..."

"Shh," I hushed her, raising a hand.

Elisha glared at me, her gratitude instantly evaporating. ’Oh, right. You don’t want to talk to me? Fine, I was a fool for trying to apologize!’ her expression clearly read.

But I wasn’t trying to be rude. My Sixth Sense was picking up something alarming.

I looked past her, toward the ruined generator. Commander Sophie and Valerius were frantically doing a headcount among the survivors.

"Damn it! We’re missing three guards!" Sophie cursed loudly.

"We’re missing a cadet too!" Valerius yelled.

Missing people.

The Wraith attack wasn’t just a slaughter; it was a coordinated distraction. The main force kept the camp occupied while a splinter group dragged victims out into the desert.

I didn’t waste a second. I sprinted toward the stables, grabbed the reins of my camel, and swung into the saddle.

"Wait! I’m coming too!"

Elisha gathered mana into her legs and leaped, landing securely on the back of the saddle right behind me.

"Get off. You’re a nuisance in the dark," I ordered.

"Just go! I’ll help somehow!" she argued stubbornly, gripping my coat.

I didn’t have time to argue. I snapped the reins, and the camel surged forward.

"Wait! Cadet Elisha! Cadet Lucien! Where are you going?!" Valerius shouted desperately from the edge of the camp.

I ignored him. We breached the perimeter and plunged back into the pitch-black desert.

"Hey, Lucien. Where exactly are we going?" Elisha asked over the rushing wind. "I can’t see a thing out here."

I didn’t answer. I focused entirely on my Sixth Sense, tracking the faint, lingering malice of the Wraiths dragging their prey through the sand.

We crossed two large dunes. The malicious signatures suddenly spiked in intensity. They had stopped moving.

I drew my Winchester rifle with one hand. I didn’t bother aiming down the sights. I fired three rapid shots into the absolute darkness ahead.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"What are you shooting at?!" Elisha yelled.

A moment later, the camel crested the final dune.

Lying in the trough of the sandhill were the four missing people—three guards and one cadet. They were unconscious, but alive. Scattered around them were three fresh piles of black sand, the remains of the Wraiths I had just sniped in the dark.

"You found them!" Elisha gasped.

She didn’t wait for the camel to fully stop. She jumped off the saddle and rushed toward the unconscious group.

"Hey! Are you okay?! Wake up!" she yelled, dropping to her knees beside the nearest guard.

My Sixth Sense flared violently. A massive, hidden mana signature suddenly spiked directly beneath her feet. It wasn’t a Wraith. It was a trap.

"Elisha! Stop moving!" I roared.

"What? Why—Eek!"

The ground beneath Elisha gave way instantly. She fell backward as the seemingly solid sand collapsed into a swirling, violent vortex. It was an unnatural sinkhole, pulling everything—Elisha, the guards, and the cadet—down into the dark depths of the desert.

A Desert Quicksand trap. And they were sinking fast.