I Am a Villain, So What?

Lucien fell sideways against the white stone. The Imperial medic beside him caught his shoulder before his head could strike the ground hard enough to worsen the injury.

Rolling the boy carefully onto his back, the medic immediately checked his breathing. Blood was pooled around Lucien's mouth, eyes, and ears, and his Shadow-Weave Suit was soaked through in several places.

The medic tried another weak restoration pulse, nowhere near the strength he would normally use on someone this injured.

Lucien's body reacted violently. His back jerked against the stone, and the muscles in his neck seized. A faint line of mana tried to travel through one of his damaged pathways and immediately collapsed.

The medic abruptly cut the spell.

That reaction frightened the surrounding healers more than the bleeding. They knew how to stop bleeding. None of them knew what to do when healing magic itself made the damage worse.

Ariana reached them at that exact moment, with Duke Darian supporting most of her weight. She dropped beside Lucien and caught his blood-slick hand.

Darian told her to move because the healers needed room, but Ariana refused. She was too exhausted to shout. Her voice came out low and sharp as she demanded to know if Lucien was dying.

The medic did not lie. He stated that Lucien's heartbeat was holding and his flesh was already beginning to close some of the smaller wounds, but every attempt to move mana through his body caused another seizure.

Ariana's eyes snapped toward the fading glow around the medic's hands.

"Stop pushing more healing into him," she said. "You're forcing mana through damaged pathways."

Darian finally convinced her to release Lucien's hand just long enough for the medics to slide a reinforced stretcher underneath him. The Duke did not drag her away afterward, letting her remain beside the stretcher while they worked.

Kael lay only a short distance away. When a triage team tried to lift him, he turned his head just enough to see Lucien being tagged for immediate transport.

"Him first," Kael muttered.

A healer told him they were treating both.

Kael tried to argue that Lucien was worse, but his eyes rolled back and he finally lost consciousness before finishing the sentence.

Seeing Kael collapse, Mariella reflexively tried to rise. She got one foot underneath herself before the world violently tilted.

A senior healer caught her by the shoulders. Looking at the deep grayness around her eyes and the black blood dried around her mouth, the healer stopped her.

When Mariella insisted she could still heal, the medic asked how she expected to heal anybody after she had already started burning her own life force.

Mariella opened her mouth to argue again, then glanced at the black blood staining her uniform and slowly sat back down.

A few yards away, Bordon was still conscious despite the absolute wreckage of his knee. When a healer moved toward him, the heavy knight pointed at Elisha instead.

"Her hands come first," he ordered.

Elisha, sitting with her shredded fingers wrapped in blood-soaked cloth, glared at him.

"Your knee is facing the wrong direction, idiot," she told him.

Bordon looked down at his mangled leg. A beat passed.

"...Fair," he admitted.

The healer dealt with Bordon first while another began wrapping Elisha's hands individually so the damaged fingers would not heal crooked.

Celestia was placed onto a royal emergency stretcher nearby. Nobody tried to wake her; her breathing was stable enough that she could wait behind Lucien, Kael, and Samantha.

Ariana looked across the crowded triage area. Kael. Bordon. Elisha. Mariella. Celestia.

Her expression changed.

"Where's Alicia?" Ariana asked.

Nobody answered.

Ariana remembered the last place she had seen Alicia during the fight and pointed toward the crater wall. A surviving cadet confirmed that the Demon Lord had hit Alicia with the gravity shockwave and sent her flying into the stone.

Marquis Lancelot Raven immediately diverted an earth-mage rescue squad to the location.

They reached a point where the bedrock wall was visibly fractured inward, revealing a deep impact tunnel where Alicia had hit. Chunks of stone had collapsed behind her.

As the rescuers began clearing it carefully, Ariana tried to follow.

Darian stopped her. He didn't lecture her, simply stating that if Alicia was alive, she would need Ariana awake when they brought her out. That reality got Ariana to stay put.

The rescue took agonizing minutes. A knight removed one broken slab, then another. One of the earth mages suddenly called for everyone to stop, sensing a weak body inside the cavity.

They reached Alicia.

She was wedged deep inside the cracked bedrock where the impact had driven her. Her combat clothes were torn, one side of her body was badly bruised, and several burns from her own earlier Level 9 fire remained across her skin.

Blood had dried beneath her nose and around one ear, but she had a pulse. The impact tunnel had not collapsed completely around her body.

When they pulled her free, her hands were empty.

The healer checking her initially assumed she was simply a high-level fire mage whose mana had completely bottomed out. The healer was about to move on when he noticed the dark residue still clinging faintly to Alicia's mana channels. Victims used directly in blood rituals required a different examination.

He pulled a sealed diagnostic crystal from the emergency case and pressed it near her wrist, checking whether the ritual had contaminated or altered her blood.

The crystal flashed once.

Then the entire core turned gold.

The healer stared at it. He looked at Alicia, checked the crystal again, and immediately closed the diagnostic case.

"Seal this reading," he quietly told his assistant. "Imperial review only."

Ariana noticed the strange reaction but was too concerned about Alicia's survival to press him. Alicia was placed on a stretcher, and as the rescuers carried her past, Ariana touched her wrist for a moment to confirm she was alive.

Ariana tried to stand again and her knees immediately folded. Darian caught her under the arms before she hit the ground.

"I'm fine," she muttered.

"You can lie to him when he wakes up," Darian said. "Not to me."

A shout rose from the ruined alchemy wing.

"We found the instructor! Get another stretcher over here!"

Samantha was already visible beneath the collapsed façade, but several enormous sections of wall were pinning her lower body and one shoulder. Her left arm was mangled, and her breathing was shallow enough that rescuers initially could not tell if she was still alive.

Several frantic students wanted the earth mages to simply lift everything at once. The senior rescuer refused, knowing one wrong movement could drop the remaining masonry directly onto Samantha.

They removed the rubble gradually. From the triage area, Bordon stopped arguing with his healer. Elisha forgot about the bandages being wound around her fingers. Even Mariella went completely still.

They watched the rescuers work.

Finally, the last heavy slab came away.

For a terrifying moment, Samantha did not move. Then, she took one rough breath.

Elisha visibly relaxed. Mariella lowered her head. Tears slipped down her dusty cheeks as the healers lifted Samantha onto the stretcher. The medics immediately stabilized her and moved her toward the transports, leaving her trapped greatsword under the building as evidence for later.

With Samantha finally pulled free, the frantic shouting around the crater began to change. Fewer voices were calling for healers now. More were calling for investigators.

Lancelot's gaze moved slowly across the ruined courtyard. His jaw tightened.

"Nobody touches anything that isn't necessary for rescue," he ordered. "Weapons, bodies, ritual fragments—leave them exactly where they are."

The Enforcer was still near where Lucien had collapsed. A knight reached for it but hesitated, as several older officers had just watched Lucien fight beside the First Gun Master. Lancelot ordered it placed into a sealed evidence case. The Primordial Earth Crown was also located and sealed separately.

When an investigator attached to the Imperial forces suggested removing the Rosary from Lucien as evidence, Darian immediately refused. He simply stated that Lucien was still fighting for his life, and nobody was stripping an unknown holy relic off his body until a healer said doing so was safe.

The investigator looked toward Lancelot, who sided with Darian.

"Document it where it is," Lancelot ordered. Several recording crystals captured the Rosary in place before the medics moved Lucien.

Rescuers began carrying the dead from the damaged faculty side. Covered stretchers came out one after another while the living were loaded onto medical transports going the opposite direction.

Eventually, a rescue captain emerged from the worst section of the faculty collapse with another covered body.

The Academy crest was still visible beneath the blood on the cadet's torn uniform. He looked young, ordinary, and painfully familiar—the kind of face everyone had passed a hundred times in corridors without ever learning the name.

The captain waited while another search spell was run through the section. Nothing.

"No more living signatures in this block," he quietly reported to Lancelot.

Then the covered stretcher was carried away.

Lucien's stretcher was loaded into the first military medical transport. Ariana was placed into a seat beside him despite Darian wanting her treated separately.

The senior healer who had been monitoring Lucien came away from the transport looking deeply unsettled.

"Will he live?" Darian asked.

The healer gave a careful answer. "His heart is stable. The wounds in his flesh are already beginning to close."

Darian waited.

The healer looked toward Lucien. "His mana pathways aren't."

Before Darian could ask what that meant, an Imperial communication crystal on Lancelot's belt activated behind them. A clipped voice reported that Princess Rumina was approaching the Academy with Imperial Intelligence authority.

Lancelot looked toward the ruined entrance. Healers were carrying wounded cadets out while parents, Academy staff, guards, and half a dozen officials were already trying to push their way in.

If even one cultist was still hiding among them, the disaster was not over.

"Close the gates," he ordered.