I Am a Villain, So What?

Two minutes earlier, outside the Academy walls, the Capital’s elite were failing.

The pitch-black dome covering the campus absorbed everything they threw at it. Duke Darian Solmere stood at the vanguard, his Platinum-Rank lightning crawling violently across the barrier’s surface without breaking through. Beside him, Marquis Lancelot Raven, commander of the Capital’s War-Mage Corps, directed a coordinated barrage from fifty Imperial battle-mages.

Flame, compressed wind, and concentrated gravity pounded the dark glass. The barrier simply rippled, drinking the kinetic energy and distributing it across its vast surface.

Darian swung his crackling broadsword, carving a deep fissure into the dome. A second later, dark mana surged into the wound, sealing it seamlessly. The Duke stepped back, his breathing ragged, his eyes fixed on the impenetrable wall separating him from his daughter.

"The structural integrity is cyclical," a voice said over the roar of the mages.

Darian turned.

By the time the nearest Imperial Knight noticed him, the stranger had already walked through the cordon. Several hands moved toward sword hilts, but no one stepped into his path.

He didn’t wear Imperial colors. He carried no sword, no staff, and no shield.

"Every attack you land feeds the anchor points," the man said, pulling a heavy, long-barreled revolver from his weathered trench coat. "Order a cease-fire. You are reinforcing it."

Darian tightened his grip on his sword. "Who are you?"

The man ignored the Duke. He raised the revolver, his eyes tracking invisible lines across the curved surface of the dome.

The Executioner had returned to the Capital while following the Infernus names Lucien had given him. Then Divine Judgement ignited beneath the black dome.

He had known the Rosary’s holy presence for more than a century. Its power was unmistakable.

"Cease fire!" Lancelot Raven ordered, stepping forward. He didn’t know the stranger, but he recognized the terrifying, condensed density of the aura wrapping around the man’s weapon.

The war-mages dropped their staffs. The bombardment stopped.

The Executioner fired.

The bullet skipped across the curved surface of the dome. It struck the barrier once, twice, then a third time without losing speed. Each impact landed precisely where several streams of dark mana converged to reinforce the dome.

White fractures raced between the damaged points, spider-webbing across the entire sky.

The Executioner adjusted his aim and fired again.

The bullet struck the failing barrier and abruptly changed direction in mid-air, ricocheting through the web of fractures. The round raced through the web of cracks, striking the remaining anchor points in rapid succession.

The dome broke apart into millions of black mana fragments. They dissolved into smoke before reaching the ground, exposing the ruined Academy to the night sky.

Through the falling smoke, the stranger saw the center of the courtyard. He saw the fifty-meter crater, the fading holy light, and the twenty-meter Calamity holding a black sphere of pure annihilation above its head.

The spell was a fraction of a second away from detonating and wiping the Academy off the map.

The Executioner raised his revolver immediately. Raw force would only make the unstable spell more dangerous. He aimed high, reading the distortion surrounding the black sphere.

He fired his third shot.

Silver-white Divine Force wrapped around the bullet as it left the barrel. The round immediately bent its trajectory, curving in a sharp, impossible arc over the ruined courtyard. It curved past the Demon Lord’s right hand and entered through a tiny gap in the unstable outer shell.

The Divine Bullet struck the center of the black sphere.

It did not overpower the spell. It knocked the compressed dark mana out of balance.

The annihilation sphere collapsed inward, then violently vented upward.

A column of black and purple energy erupted into the sky, tearing through the clouds high above the Capital. The main blast cleared the Academy, though the resulting shockwave still knocked the Imperial Knights off their feet.

The Executioner lowered his revolver and walked forward through the falling ash.

He stepped over the pulverized gates and descended into the ruined courtyard. His boots crunched against the broken cobblestones. His gaze swept across the battlefield once.

He saw the mangled combat instructor buried in the alchemy building. He saw the bloodied cadets huddled behind a shattered bedrock barricade. He saw the girl with cracked spectacles struggling to crawl toward Lucien beneath the Demon Lord’s gravity.

Then he looked at the center of the crater.

He saw the half-destroyed Calamity abandon its failed annihilation spell. Its exposed core pulled fresh dark mana through the open rift, beginning to rebuild the missing arm and torso. And he saw the boy in the ruined Shadow-Weave Suit kneeling before it, bleeding from his eyes and ears, clutching the Rosary of the Weeping Saintess.

The Executioner stopped near the edge of the crater, thirty meters from the Demon Lord.

The twenty-meter entity paused its regeneration. The abyssal red eyes behind its dark visor locked onto the man in the trench coat. Its abyssal gaze ignored the Imperial forces gathering at the perimeter and fixed entirely on him.

The black core inside the Demon Lord pulsed violently. That same holy aura had hunted its kind during the wars that destroyed the old Empire. It remembered the twin revolvers.

For the first time since tearing its way into the mortal plane, the Calamity spoke. Its voice sounded like massive stones grinding together deep underground.

"Executioner."

The First Gun Master drew his second revolver from his shoulder holster.

"You remember me," the Executioner said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "That saves time."

In the center of the smoking crater, Lucien planted his free palm against the broken stone. His muscles screamed in protest as he forced one boot beneath himself, then the other. He rose unsteadily, keeping the Enforcer clenched in his blood-slick hand.

His magic was locked. His circuits were shredded. His lungs felt like they were filled with wet sand. But the Demon Lord was still tethered to the rift, and the quest was not complete.

Lucien opened his inventory.

A single crystal cartridge materialized between his blood-slick fingers—the reusable First-Order Divine Bullet Samantha had returned to him. He had carried it for months, saving it for an enemy that ordinary ammunition could not kill.

The Enforcer’s Phantom Cylinder could no longer create an ethereal round without mana. But it was still a revolver. It could accept physical ammunition.

Lucien forced the cylinder open. His trembling fingers nearly dropped the cartridge before he pushed it into the empty chamber.

Click.

He snapped the cylinder shut.

The Executioner watched the crystal cartridge disappear into the Enforcer’s cylinder.

"You saved that bullet?"

Lucien raised the Enforcer, his blood-slick hand trembling as he aligned the iron sights with the Demon Lord’s regenerating core.

"One is enough."

The Demon Lord’s missing left shoulder and arm snapped back into existence, forged from raw, twisting shadows. The dark tendrils connecting its core to the rift pulsed furiously, anchoring its rebuilt vessel to the mortal plane.

The Calamity let out a deafening roar and charged them.