I Am a Villain, So What?-Chapter 194: Departure
"The rules are simple, Lucien," Darius’s voice boomed effortlessly over the howling wind, silencing the entire courtyard. "I will not use my full strength. I will not even use half. You have five minutes. If you can land a single, solid blow on me, you have my permission to ride North. If you cannot, or if you yield, you will stay in this Keep until you return to the Academy."
"Understood," I said, dropping into a low combat stance.
Darius didn’t move. He just looked at me with his lone eye. "Begin."
BANG!
I didn’t hesitate. I aimed the Reaver and fired a kinetic slug directly at his chest, instantly triggering my spatial footwork to close the distance behind the projectile.
Flash!
Darius didn’t even step back. He simply swung the heavy wooden greatsword with a flick of his wrist. A condensed wave of dense, icy aura exploded from the wood, slicing my compressed kinetic slug completely in half mid-air.
I reappeared on his left flank, driving my combat knife toward his ribs.
CLANG.
My steel blade struck an invisible, solid wall of Platinum-Rank aura an inch from his tunic. The recoil numbed my entire arm.
Before I could blink, Darius pivoted. The wooden greatsword swung around with the speed and force of a runaway train.
My [Sixth Sense] screamed. I threw myself backward, raising the reinforced barrel of the shotgun to block.
CRACK!
The wooden blade slammed into the shotgun. The sheer kinetic force of the blow shattered my guard instantly. I was launched backward like a ragdoll, flying twenty feet through the air before slamming brutally into the frozen earth.
"Ugh...!"
I coughed, tasting copper. The impact felt like I had been hit by a battering ram. Three of my ribs were definitely cracked, and my forearms screamed in agony.
The spectating knights winced, a few turning their heads. They expected the fight to end right there. They expected the Young Master to curl up in the snow, crying and begging for the medics.
Instead, a faint, emerald-green light pulsed beneath my shirt.
The ancient Rune of Vitality etched into my chest flared to life. The passive healing kicked in immediately, forcibly knitting my fractured ribs back together and soothing the torn muscle fibers. It was a miraculous recovery, but the rune didn’t numb the nervous system. The phantom pain of the impact still burned blindingly hot in my brain.
I gritted my teeth, spat a mouthful of blood into the snow, and forced myself back to my feet.
Darius’s lone eye widened slightly. The murmuring in the crowd completely vanished, replaced by a stunned, dead silence.
"Again," I gasped, racking the pump of the shotgun.
I charged.
For the next four minutes, the courtyard became a spectacle of overwhelming destruction. Darius stood like an unmovable mountain, casually unleashing localized shockwaves of aura that tore up the frozen ground.
I used every trick in my arsenal. I spammed Flash to teleport out of fatal strikes. I fired kinetic rounds to create dust screens of pulverized snow. I relied entirely on the precognition of my [Sixth Sense] to dodge blows that would have otherwise liquefied my organs.
SMASH!
Darius’s wooden sword clipped my shoulder. My collarbone snapped.
I hit the dirt, the Rune of Vitality instantly burning hot to repair the bone. The pain was agonizing, but I didn’t scream. I rolled out of a follow-up strike, sprang to my feet, and threw a handful of explosive powder from my pouch directly into his line of sight.
BOOM!
The smoke briefly obscured him.
"Cheap tricks won’t bridge the gap of absolute power, Lucien!" Darius rumbled from within the smoke, stepping forward and swinging his greatsword in a massive horizontal arc to clear the blast.
I know. I didn’t try to dodge the clearing swing.
As the massive wooden blade swung toward my midsection, I stepped into the attack.
I threw my shotgun in front of me to absorb the brunt of the hit. The wooden sword smashed into the weapon, shattering the stock and driving the metal violently into my stomach.
The air was blasted from my lungs. My vision flashed white with pain as internal bleeding started and instantly began healing.
But Darius’s swing had fully extended. He was, for a fraction of a microsecond, overcommitted.
Using the horrific momentum of his own strike, I twisted my body, reached over his wooden blade, and slashed downward with my combat knife.
Schwing.
The tip of my steel blade sliced cleanly through his heavy wolf-fur mantle, leaving a distinct, three-inch cut across the thick leather of his shoulder guard.
Darius froze.
I collapsed onto my knees in the snow, clutching my stomach, gasping desperately for air as the Rune of Vitality worked overtime to keep me conscious.
The training courtyard was so silent you could hear the snowflakes hitting the ground. Hundreds of seasoned knights stared at the torn leather on their Lord’s shoulder, their jaws practically unhinged in absolute shock.
Darius Ashborne looked down at the cut on his mantle.
He slowly lowered his wooden practice sword. He looked at me, kneeling in the snow, battered, bleeding, but completely unbroken.
"Time is up," Darius announced, his deep voice carrying a strange, resonant warmth.
He reached down, grabbed me by the back of my collar, and effortlessly hauled me to my feet. He didn’t brush the snow off me. He just looked me dead in the eye, the heavy presence of the Lord of the North fully acknowledging the warrior standing in front of him.
"Pack heavy winter gear," Darius commanded, a fierce, proud grin finally breaking across his scarred face. "You leave for Winterguard tomorrow morning."
****
The next morning, the grand gates of the Ashborne Keep were open, and the carriage was already waiting in the snow.
My mother, Countess Lyriana, stood by the carriage door, her eyes red and puffy from crying. She was still trying to persuade me to stay, her hands gripping my heavy winter coat.
"You don’t have to do this, Lucien," she sniffled, wrapping another thick scarf around my neck. "You can just stay here. We can tell your father you changed your mind." 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖
"I can’t do that, Mother," I smiled gently, wiping a tear from her cheek. "I have to go."
She let out a shaky sigh, pulling me into one last tight hug. "Remember that Mom is always cheering for you. Come back safe, Lucien. In one piece."
"I will. I promise."
I stepped back and looked at Count Darius. The Lord of the North stood tall, his heavy fur mantle catching the morning wind. He didn’t offer a hug or a tearful goodbye. He just looked at me with his lone, scarred eye, the fierce approval from yesterday’s spar still lingering in his gaze.
"Don’t die," Darius said simply.
"I won’t," I nodded.
I turned and climbed into the reinforced carriage. As the doors clicked shut, the horses immediately set off, taking me further north, straight into the heart of the frozen frontier.
*****
"We’re here, Young Master."
I opened my eyes at the sound of the driver’s muffled voice through the cabin window.
The moment I stepped out of the carriage onto the frozen earth, the driver violently cracked his whip. The carriage turned around and sped away back south without so much as a goodbye. I guess my father had strictly instructed him to drop me off and leave immediately, or perhaps the driver was just terrified of spending even an extra minute in this place.
"...It’s freezing."
The Ashborne Keep had been cold, but the air here felt entirely different. It felt like invisible, frozen needles were flying around, piercing right through the thick layers of my winter coat.
The absolute temperature difference between the Keep and here wasn’t actually that massive, but the sheer desolation made it feel worse. There was only one road leading up to where I stood; everything else was an endless, frozen wasteland.
Looming directly in front of me, filling my entire field of vision, was the legendary outer wall of Winterguard.
Winterguard’s situation was completely unique in the Empire, and so its architecture had developed in a brutal, pragmatic way. A massive, heavily reinforced outer wall surrounded the entire settlement. Inside, it was separated into distinct zones.
There was a massive, incredibly sturdy circular building that dominated the skyline—the Winterguard Prison. Since this fortress used death-row prisoners as the primary meat shields to block monster invasions, the prison was the most reinforced structure in the region.
Next to it were the military barracks, and further back, protected by inner walls, was the civilian area where merchants, blacksmiths, and logistics workers lived. From above, it would look like a giant bullseye divided into three brutal sectors.
Standing before those gates, I realized I was in for a life not so different from the condemned soldiers inside. Though, arriving as the heir to the Ashborne family, I might be treated a bit differently.
"Alright. Let’s go."
