A Villain's Survival Guide

"Don’t be too surprised. I knew this day would come. The moment I saw you survive death, I knew I’d have to learn something similar if I ever wanted to kill you."

Lucius’s expression was smug as he said it, wiping the blood from his face.

Leomaris watched, dumbstruck. There was a hole in Lucius’s chest. Where his heart should have been. How was he still on his feet?

He’d never known Lucius to have any ability that could bring him back from death. But everything before him said otherwise.

Did Undo work in a way he wasn’t familiar with?

"I do not know why, but you appear to be remarkably knowledgeable about my abilities, as though you understand what to expect from them and how they may be utilised."

Lucius assumed his stance.

"It doesn’t matter. I’m going to show you things you’ve never seen before by killing you. Even death won’t stop me."

Leomaris’s teeth clenched. This was bad.

He was beginning to regret not taking his head off the moment he’d stabbed his heart. If Lucius had abilities he didn’t know about or had started using the ones he knew in ways he wasn’t familiar with, this was going to be a different fight entirely.

Still, he couldn’t afford to die here.

Most of his abilities were useless against him now. Even concealing his actions, making them complex and difficult to read, was off the table. Ever since their duel at the academy, it had never worked on Lucius again. The only thing Conceal could still do for him was mask his presence entirely.

He had to face this head-on.

Lucius closed in the blink of an eye, his strike already heading for the wound, but Leomaris caught it. The counter came, and Leomaris blocked that as well, driving his head straight into Lucius’s nose.

Leomaris snatched the stick and drove it back toward his heart. Lucius barely avoided it and answered with a powerful kick to the head. Leomaris blocked it all the same. The force sent him into the ground regardless.

Leomaris was on his feet in an instant, already dashing toward Lucius with a stick the size of a sword in hand. There was no time to catch his breath, but the moment he was within range, he performed the Mercy of Death sword arts.

Lucius’s eyes went wide. Countless cuts had opened all over his body, and he hadn’t seen Leomaris move once.

Leomaris seized the confusion, leaping for height and driving a powerful kick at him. But Lucius still managed to act, snatching him by the leg and sending him crashing into the debris below.

Leomaris coughed up blood. He didn’t like where this was going at all. He could see Lucius’s wounds healing slowly, the hole in his chest included. Worse still, he himself had started bleeding internally.

He got to his feet once again.

’Come on, Leo.’ He thought.

He had no intention of letting Lucius heal himself completely. While he kept him in a heated exchange, his mind ran through the countless hymns of Le Mythe des Quatre and the forbidden knowledge at his disposal. He needed something that could end Lucius completely.

So long as Undo was running, Boundless Adaptation was off the table. Leomaris wanted to keep him busy, busy enough that the healing couldn’t move fast enough to matter.

Each time Lucius sent him crashing, he came back with equal determination. If not stronger.

And soon enough, he clocked it. Lucius wanted revenge, sure, but above all else was his desire for change, to feel again.

That contradiction was all he needed.

He took the strike and used it, propelling himself back and putting considerable distance between them. He took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. Lucius attempted to move, but the moment Leomaris spoke, his body froze in place.

"O Myrasol, Many-Faced Radiance,

Let no soul be lost in shadow;

Where confusion takes root,

Let your golden light endure."

He spoke so quietly that the words were barely audible. But no one needed to hear him. The presence of the false entity, Myrasol, the Many-Faced Radiance, was enough.

A circle of flame began forming above him like a scorching halo. The moment it did, he moved fast, throwing Conceal over it entirely, trying to mask its presence before anyone could clock it.

The circle of flame began to darken, like ash closing in, but before it could complete itself, a child conjured from flames dropped through, as though they’d accidentally walked through a portal.

The child moved toward Lucius in small, careful steps, its body shifting from flames to ash as it went.

Something was strange; every three steps, it grew a little taller, and soon it stood fully grown, grotesquely shifting between male and female.

Halfway through the transformation, Myrasol’s body turned completely dark, and just like that, Lucius’s confusion was gone.

"What did you do? You actually think any more tricks are going to save you?"

Lucius tried to move. He went straight to his knees instead, clutching his head, terror written all over his face.

Leomaris understood at once. Lucius couldn’t see Myrasol, his rank was too low for that. What had brought him to a halt was her presence alone, and the moment the concealment dropped, he stopped feeling it.

A soft smile tugged at his lips. "You should have moved, Lucius. You stand in the presence of the false entity, Myrasol, the Many-Faced Radiance — a myth of madness itself. Even I am plagued by nightmares from nothing more than the burden of her forbidden knowledge."

Myrasol’s body had gone through countless transformations by the time it reached Lucius. Now it looked like an elderly man and woman, both, while looking like something else entirely at the same time.

Myrasol’s hand found his chest. A beam of flame tore through it completely, erasing everything in its path.

Then it embraced Lucius. And slowly, it was gone, the circle of flame above Leomaris fading with it.

Watching the stupor settle across Lucius’s eyes, Leomaris closed in. This time, he had every intention of taking his head off.

"I don’t know what Myrasol showed you, but the fact that you cried tells me you saw something you wish you hadn’t."

Myrasol was born from the myth of the thousand masks. Many believed the Firstlight Goddess had countless faces, and that trying to picture what she truly looked like always ended in madness. As a false entity, Myrasol only pushed a fraction of those thousand faces onto those who moved within her presence.

Leomaris grabbed Lucius by the head and watched the life drain out of him.

Through the forbidden knowledge, he’d glimpsed a fraction of Myrasol’s faces. He wondered what she’d shown him, because Lucius’s once blue eyes looked dead, a dark, hollow blue in their place.

And yet, despite everything, as though these were words he’d always meant to say, even beyond death, he mumbled something.

"I. Will. Come. For. You."

Leomaris didn’t care. He snapped Lucius’s neck and ripped his head from his shoulders with a brutality that left nothing to the imagination.

Relief coursed through him as he tilted his head back. One of his biggest threats, and finally, he was gone.

The sun was slowly dipping toward the horizon when a loud applause broke out to his left. His head snapped toward it immediately.

His skin crawled at the sight. Before he could process what was happening, he heard footsteps behind him.

Barely a second later, he heard the chilling and breathtaking sound of a gunshot—

BANG.