The Return Of The Exiled Villain

The Emperor dragged in a breath through his teeth. Blood ran from his nose down over his mouth. The crown still lay on the steps below him.

"Gloria…" he forced out.

"You are betraying the kingdom."

Gloria looked down at him as if he had said something dull.

"Betraying the kingdom?" She shrugged. "You did that the moment you decided to ally with another species."

The Emperor's eyes widened, then narrowed again, fury trying to climb back through the pain.

"You think the court will accept this? You think my master..."

"And before you say anything," Gloria cut in, "if you think I'm scared of that old man, you're dead wrong."

The hall stayed down.

'Old man?' Gray raised an eyebrow at her words.

His gaze moved from Gloria to the empty space behind the throne, then back again.

'Is she talking about her own grandfather?'

If she was, then the Emperor's last card was not the court, and it was not the elves.

It was the Peak Monarch who had once cleaned a Low Noble demon off this continent like dirt off a sleeve.

Gloria did not look worried.

That, more than the kick, made the Emperor's face twist.

"Tsk... you gave me no other choice!"

The Emperor's hand shook as it rose to his collar.

A thin necklace came free from inside his mantle.

The pendant was dull, almost ugly, the kind of thing no one in that hall would have looked at twice. He closed his fist around it.

"Then see for yourself," he rasped.

CRACK!

The pendant was crushed.

CREAAAAAAAAAAK!

Suddenly, the space around the dais directly cracked as a black seam opened first, then widened, pulling light inward.

The chandeliers flickered.

Wind that did not belong to the ballroom tore across the marble and flung loose napkins, broken glass, and drops of blood into the air.

Several collapsed nobles cried out as the floor itself seemed to tilt toward that wound in the world.

Then, a figure stepped through.

An old man came out holding a broom.

His back was slightly bent.

His hair was white and uneven, tied with a scrap of cloth that had seen better decades. The robe he wore might once have been gray.

Now it looked washed-out, patched at one sleeve, dusty at the hem.

The broom in his hand had a wooden shaft worn smooth by use and bristles that were no longer even.

He stepped onto the imperial dais as if he had been called from a courtyard, not from behind the laws of space.

He stopped, rolled one of his shoulders... then the other.

"Ah… these bones," he muttered.

"They crack louder every time someone pulls me out of a quiet afternoon."

He tapped the broom once against the marble, and the space behind him sealed shut as if it had never opened.

"Now then." His eyes were half-lidded, almost sleepy. "Who called this old man, and why? If it is about a broken fence again, I am going back."

No one answered him at first.

The hall was still pinned under leftover pressure.

The old man finally looked around.

He saw the blood first, the crown on the ground, then the elves, the vampires, the flattened court, and the girl in silver standing too still near the center.

"Oh…" he said.

"This is something unexpected."

His gaze kept moving.

It passed over everyone until... it finally stopped on Gray.

For less than a breath, the old man looked straight at him.

Then he looked away so fast it was almost clumsy.

Cold sweat beaded at his temple.

The broom in his hand tightened until the wood creaked. He stared at a pillar instead, as if the marble were suddenly the most interesting thing in the empire.

'…How could a mortal like him have such a dark aura?'

The thought hit him hard enough to make him swallow hard.

He had lived long enough to stand above Sovereigns.

Long enough to treat Low Noble demons as errands.

Long enough that most "geniuses" in a hall like this were children playing with borrowed fire. What sat on Gray was definitely... not 'borrowed fire'.

It was simply... wrong. Wrong in a way that didn't match a human face.

The old man swallowed inwardly and, without changing his sleepy expression much, put that black-haired youth on a list he rarely used.

Do not provoke.

The Emperor saw none of that, as he only saw the man he had called.

"Master!" the Emperor rasped again

. "She struck me. In front of the court. In front of our allies. If this is not treason, then what is?"

The old man's face changed as he turned towards her daughter.

The sleepiness on his face thinned, as his eyes now showed a small amount of rage.

'Loyalty... huh?' Gray raised an eyebrow.

He could easily see that it was the kind of loyalty that did not care whether the man on the floor had been wise tonight.

'If I'm not wrong, the old Emperor had pulled this man out of death once...'

That debt had been transferred, year after year, onto the throne itself. A foolish king was still the king. A granddaughter who kicked him in the face was still a traitor in that accounting.

"Gloria," he said.

The name came out flat.

"You put your foot on the Crown."

Gloria did not step back.

"I put my foot on a man who sold the realm to elves and corpses."

"That is not for you to decide." The old man lifted two fingers.

"I told your father the same thing when he was young. The kingdom survives because someone stands behind it even when it stinks..."

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Pressure dropped from him like a falling wall.

"I am that someone."

The remaining air in the hall flattened

Gloria stood in the middle of it and did not move.

Her gown did not stir, nor did her hair lift. The old man's pressure passed around her as if she were a stone in a river.

The old man's eyelids opened a little more.

"…Hoh."

He stopped using his empty hand.

The broom came up.

Up close, it still looked like a courtyard tool, as the wood itself was dull, and the bristles were uneven.

But just as mana ran through it, the disguise fell away.

The shaft darkened instantly.

THRUMM!

Faint monarch-level runes woke under the dust, so old they seemed embarrassed to be seen in a ballroom.

The air around the broom-head folded inward, sharp enough that the marble under it began to split before he even swung.

"Move," he told her.

Gloria did not.

He swept the broom sideways.

The strike should have thrown a average sovereign cultivator across the hall. It should have broken ribs, barriers, pride- all three.

Monarch-level force howled off the bristles and hit Gloria dead-on.

It stopped.

The blow simply failed to matter. Gloria's shoulder turned slighly, as if a servant had brushed past her at dinner.

That was all that happened to her.

The old man stared at her in shock.

The broom remained raised.

The runes on it were still lit.

His granddaughter was still standing in the same place, unharmed, unimpressed, looking at him the way she looked at students who had not understood the lesson.

"You…"

Disbelief cut through the loyalty on his face.

Gloria lowered her eyes to the broom, then back to him.

"I told the Emperor I was not afraid of you," she said.

"I did not say it to sound brave."

The old man's hand tightened on the monarch-level weapon that had just done nothing.

For the first time since he had stepped out of the cracked space, he looked less like a sleepy groundskeeper and more like a man realizing the child he had come to punish was no longer standing on the same ground as him.

Gray's eyes stayed on Gloria, then on the broom that had failed to move her.

'Jasmine. What is happening with her?'

There was a short pause in his mind, as if Jasmine had needed a second look.

[Gray… Gloria's power… is simply… higher. Her cultivation is at the Sovereign Realm, but her power is just… above the Monarch Realm. It seems that she isn't a mana cultivator… but a body cultivator instead.]

'Body cultivator…?'

Gray's eyes widened in pure shock.

In this continent, almost everyone climbed through mana.

Realms, cores, arts, weapons those were the language of strength.

A body cultivator at Gloria's level was not supposed to be standing in an academy, wearing a headmistress's face, kicking emperors down their own dais.

If Jasmine was right, then the old man's pressure had never been the problem.

Gloria's body itself had already walked past it.

'No wonder she wanted to find the body of a True Dragon... a True Dragon's heart and dragon's blood are the best resources for cultivation for a body cultivator.'

Gray suddenly got a little more interested in Gloria.

'A dual path cultivator, huh?'