The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 724: Blight Beneath the Boughs (1)

Night's breath was cool against Vaelira's cheek, but every inhale still rasped hot, tasting of iron and wood-smoke. She pushed a shaky sigh through chapped lips and shifted her weight, letting the point of her leaf-steel sword bite a deeper notch into the mossy loam. The blade was steady; her knees were not.

A dull, arrhythmic chorus seeped through the fog—groans, coughs, the scrape of half-broken armor dragged over stone. Those sounds should have meant relief: proof that some of her warriors still lived. Instead they braided with the soft gurgle of dying throats, a counter-harmony that threatened to pull her under. She forced the noise to the fringe of her thoughts and focused on the shape of her own heartbeat. In-two-three, out-two-three—keep the rhythm, keep the command.

The mist thinned, unveiling what the night now claimed: bodies strewn in grotesque geometry, limbs bent like snapped branches, mouths frozen mid-cry. Crimson soaked the moss in island patches—bright where elf blood shimmered silver in moonlight, almost black where human lifeblood pooled and cooled. She counted instinctively, then stopped at twenty-seven. Numbers could wait; breathing could not.

"Search for survivors. Gather the wounded. Burn the corrupted bodies," she called, surprised to hear the order come out level. The command cut across the clearing like a clean blade, and her battered vanguard obeyed without hesitation. Silver-clad figures limped into motion, stepping over corpses with a reverence born of exhaustion, not indifference. A pair of elves hefted a comrade whose leg ended above the knee; another knelt beside a fallen human, fingers brushing the man's throat before shaking her head and moving on.

Vaelira's gaze passed over them—only a dozen left from the thirty-six who had charged in formation hours ago. Their polished helms were dented, etched with soot, starbursts of dried gore spattering once-shining cheek-plates. Yet they formed up in a protective crescent out of habit, spears angled outward toward the tree line. No orders needed. Discipline was marrow now.

The forest answered in its own language. Leaves quivered overhead without wind, a rustling hush that flowed from trunk to trunk. To someone untrained it might sound like breeze, but Vaelira felt the cadence—an old lullaby, a pulse in the roots. The woods were still alive, and they approved of her steadiness. She let that subtle approval seep through her boots and climb her spine, easing the twitch in her shoulders.

A sudden gust parted the remaining veil of fog as if sliced by an unseen scythe. Through the white curtain strode Sylvanna. Blood streaked one cheek like war-paint, and moonlight reflected off the damp strands of her copper hair. Raëdrithar padded beside her—thunder shaped into muscle and sinew, silver sparks dancing along his coat with every silent step. His antlers glowed faintly, painting erratic runes across the fog.

Sylvanna's eyes swept the carnage, pupils widening before narrowing to cold amber slits. "What happened?" The whisper floated, but the pitch lodged beneath Vaelira's ribs like a hook. The question demanded a reckoning.

Vaelira's mouth felt packed with ash. Words tumbled behind her teeth, images even worse, but only three syllables emerged. "Draven went hunting."

Sylvanna halted, shoulders stiffening under her leather-and-iron brigandine. "Again," she said, letting the word bleed disdain. Lightning winked along the rune set in her collarbone, flashing a pale glare across her jaw. "Hunting alone again. Of course he did."

"He's not a dog on a leash," Vaelira countered, voice flat yet edged. She kept her gaze fixed on a distant flame where two elves fed tainted remains into a pyre. "He hunts because he's the only one who can. And he doesn't leave survivors." That last sentence tasted like cold iron—bitter but necessary.

Sylvanna snorted, a brittle sound. "That's not hunting. That's execution."

Vaelira's grip tightened on her sword hilt until leather creaked. A sharp retort sparked on her tongue, but she swallowed it. Turning anger on Sylvanna would solve nothing. She drew a slow breath instead, letting the earthy aroma of damp moss calm her frayed nerves.

Fires crackled around them in small, controlled circles. Sticky smoke curled through the night, mingling with drifting mist. One pyre popped, flinging a shard of bark that clattered off Vaelira's greave. Sparks swam upward, vanishing into branches high above. For an instant she imagined those sparks as spirits freed—tiny motes escaping corruption. Little comforts mattered.

Raëdrithar rumbled, deep and resonant, the sound vibrating the very air. Sylvanna laid a calming palm on the guardian's shoulder but spoke through clenched teeth. "We can't keep doing this, Vaelira. Chasing the rot, bleeding lives just to stop it from spreading. This… this isn't a battle. It's a slaughter." fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

Vaelira turned at last. Her eyes stung, partly from smoke, partly from grief held too long. "And the alternative?" she asked, the question a knife sharper than her blade. "Leave it to fester? Wait until it consumes the heart-groves? Until the forest is nothing but a memory of whispers?"

"I'm not saying we stop. I'm saying he can't do it alone." Sylvanna's voice quivered, not with fear but with a taut frustration that buzzed in the air like an over-strung bow. "He thinks he can cut the rot out with his blades and his… his cold eyes." She flexed her right hand; blue sparks skipped across the grooves in her gauntlet, skating up her fingers until they crackled at the tips. "But that same cold will hollow him from the inside. You've seen it, Vaelira—every time he comes back, there's a little less warmth left to lose."

The princess stood motionless, the orange fire-light carving deep shadows beneath her eyes. Ash drifted across her pauldrons, tiny flakes settling into the ivy etchings like ghost-snow. When she finally turned, her gaze met Sylvanna's with the stillness of winter water. "Then go," she said, voice soft yet immovable. "Chase him. Pull him back if you believe he can be pulled."

Surprise flickered across Sylvanna's face—an unguarded heartbeat in which her shoulders sagged and her lips parted as if to protest. That openness vanished almost instantly, hardened beneath a mask of resolve. "You think I won't?" she breathed, narrowing her eyes until lightning reflected in the tiny pools of her pupils.

"I think," Vaelira whispered, taking one step closer, "you don't understand what he's fighting. Not just the blight that crawls through bark and bone…but the blight that settled in him long before he met us."

Sylvanna's reply stalled in her throat. She looked away, toward the pyres where corrupted bodies crackled, releasing greasy columns of smoke that wormed upward into the star-speckled sky. Sparks snapped, carried on eddies, each one dying before it reached the treetops. "Maybe I don't understand," she admitted, words barely louder than the hiss of sap in the flames. "But leaving him to that darkness can't be the answer."

For a heartbeat, silence stretched between them, thin as spun glass. All around, the battlefield murmured—healers whispering triage spells, wounded elves gasping through clenched teeth, the distant echo of a war-horn carried on a wind too tired to lift it. The heavy smell of blood mixed with wood-smoke and the cloying sweetness of crushed fern.

Vaelira broke the stillness first. She sheathed her sword in a slow, deliberate slide, the metal ringing against the scabbard's throat with a finality that cut deeper than any reprimand. "Raëdrithar. Track him."

The guardian's ears flicked forward, catching her tone. Massive shoulders tensed under storm-dappled fur; lightning licked between the prongs of his antlers in thin, restless filaments. He sucked in a single, searching breath—air whistling through nostrils wide enough to swallow a child's fist—and his amber eye brightened with recognition. Without waiting for further command, he lunged into motion, the earth shaking beneath each thunderous stride. Grass wilted under the static dancing along his paws.

Sylvanna gave Vaelira one last look—an unspoken promise and a plea welded into a single flick of her gaze. Then she sprinted after Raëdrithar, boots splashing through shallow puddles of muddy, blood-tinged water. Each footfall kicked droplets into the air where residual electricity caught them, turning them into momentary sparks before they fell dead again. In three breaths, woman and beast vanished into the swirling grey.

Left behind, Vaelira felt the sudden quiet punch a hole in her chest. The battlefield seemed larger without Sylvanna's storm-glow—colder, despite the fires. She tipped her head back and let her eyes trace the ragged cut of clouds across the moon. For a moment her lids fluttered—exhaustion inviting sleep even as duty screamed to stay awake.

A low, hitching cough snapped her focus downward. Two of her soldiers approached, carrying a wounded comrade between them. The injured elf's armor was peeled open by a diagonal gash, the edges of the metal curling like petals around raw flesh. His breathing rattled, every inhalation bubbling red at the corner of his mouth.

"Commander," one carrier murmured, voice cracking.

"Shallow breaths," Vaelira instructed, dropping to one knee. She pressed two fingers to the wounded elf's neck, feeling for the fluttering beat beneath his skin. Too rapid, too weak. "Get him to the healers. Straight away." Her tone left no room for debate. She placed a palm over the soldier's sternum, whispered a fragment of an old nursery prayer, and felt a faint surge of wind-mana slip from her skin into his lungs. The rattling eased—slightly, but enough to buy minutes. "Go," she repeated.