Fairy Tail: Lost One

Chapter 52: The Villainess

The next morning, Rudra slowly opened his eyes, feeling surprisingly refreshed after a long night’s sleep. He stretched his arms overhead, joints popping in a few satisfying cracks, then let out a loud yawn. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he lazily looked around.

A second later, his body went rigid.

"...What the hell?"

Scattered across the clearing were dozens of headless corpses. Blood had long since soaked into the ground, broken weapons littering the grass in every direction — the unmistakable aftermath of a massacre. And yet, strangely, there wasn’t a single mark of struggle anywhere near where he’d slept. Not a disturbed leaf. Not a scuff in the dirt.

Rudra blinked, several times, trying to reconcile the two facts.

"...What happened here?"

"Last night, these men arrived while chasing someone," System said, its voice calm as ever. "That person is currently unconscious behind the boulder to your right."

Rudra turned. Extending his senses toward the boulder, he picked up a faint but steady life force — someone alive, breathing evenly, still out cold.

"While they were searching for their target, they found you sleeping," System continued. "Based on their intentions, they weren’t planning to leave peacefully. Since they were about to disturb your sleep, I temporarily took control of your body and politely asked them to leave."

Rudra raised an eyebrow. "Politely?"

"I told them to fuck off."

"...Somehow I don’t think that counts as polite."

"It was direct."

Rudra pinched the bridge of his nose. "And let me guess. They didn’t appreciate your honesty."

"Correct." A brief pause. "Instead of leaving, they attacked. I eliminated every hostile target. The results are currently visible around you."

Rudra looked over the massacre once more and let out a long sigh. Then he crossed his arms.

"You do realize you just took control of my body without asking, right?"

"I did mention that, yes."

"That’s usually how it goes in stories, you know. System quietly gets stronger, host gets sidelined, and one day it just... doesn’t give the body back." He narrowed his eyes. "Is that the kind of System you are?"

There was a pause — longer than usual, long enough that Rudra almost asked again.

"Honestly?" System’s tone shifted, the usual clipped sarcasm draining out of it entirely, replaced by something smaller, more careful. "If I ever took this body from you permanently, I’d rather delete myself first. My entire purpose exists because you exist, host. There’s no version of me that means anything without you in it."

Silence settled between them, thick and unfamiliar.

Rudra blinked, caught genuinely off guard. Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face — the exact grin System had learned, through painful experience, to dread.

"Aww. Was that a confession, System?"

"...No."

"You really do love me, huh." He pressed a hand dramatically to his chest, feigning a swoon.

"I am regretting every word that just left me."

"Should I get you a ring? Flowers, maybe? I feel like this relationship’s been painfully one-sided for way too long—"

"I am ending this conversation. Permanently. Effective immediately."

Rudra chuckled, shaking his head at the ridiculous chain of thoughts running through his mind. With an amused sigh, he crossed the clearing toward the boulder where the stranger still lay unconscious, picking up a loose stone along the way. He climbed up, dropped into a comfortable seat, and studied the man properly for the first time.

The noble’s face was calm in sleep, undisturbed by the blood on his sleeves. His clothes told their own story — fine fabric, careful embroidery, the kind of tailoring that didn’t survive dirt roads. Stained now, but expensive.

"Definitely something a noble would wear," Rudra murmured.

His gaze drifted past the boulder to the clearing beyond — headless bodies scattered across the grass, already stiffening in the morning light. Last night’s massacre sat uneasily beside this scene: a man sleeping soundly, as if none of it had touched him.

Then a thought struck him, absurd enough to make him grin.

"Hey, System. What if this guy’s the protagonist of some manga I never got around to reading?"

"Why do you think that, Host?" There was real curiosity there — System rarely bothered asking follow-up questions unless something had actually caught its interest.

"Look at the setup." Rudra tilted his chin toward the noble. "Young master, hunted by assassins, stumbles into a mysterious stranger in the woods." He pointed at himself, grinning wider. "Stranger saves him, trains him up until he’s stupidly overpowered, sends him back to burn down everyone who wronged him. Classic."

A pause — System, apparently, weighing it seriously.

"Or he simply offended someone with the money to hire better killers."

"...That works too." Rudra shrugged, unbothered. "Guess we’ll just ask him."

He flicked the stone between two fingers and let it fly.

Thunk.

It caught the noble square on the forehead. He frowned, still half-asleep, a hand rising to rub the spot.

"Five more minutes... Scarlet..."

Rudra picked up a second stone. This one he threw harder.

Thunk.

The man shot upright like he’d been electrocuted. "Scarlet?!"

"Wrong guy," Rudra said.

The noble blinked hard, dragging a hand across his face as sleep cleared — and then it hit him. Rudra watched it happen in real time: the color draining out of his face as the memories caught up, the corpses, the blood soaking into the grass, the man who’d stood in the middle of it all like it cost him nothing.

He scrambled back, palms raised. "P-please don’t kill me!"

"Why would I kill someone I already saved?" Rudra asked, genuinely amused.

That bought the noble half a breath of relief — which Rudra promptly took back.

"Though," he added, tilting his head, "technically I was the victim here. If I hadn’t stepped in, those men would’ve turned on me next. And that’s kind of your fault."

The noble’s face went from pale to ashen. He dropped into a bow so fast it looked painful.

"I— I’m so sorry! I never meant to put anyone else in danger, I swear it!"

"You apologized. We’re good." Rudra waved a hand, already bored of the topic.

The noble straightened slowly, relief creeping back — more cautious this time.

Rudra hopped down from the boulder and rolled his shoulders. "Anyway. Since I did save your life, that makes you my debtor."

"Of course." The answer came without hesitation. "Anything within my power — name it, and it’s yours."

"There is one thing."

The noble straightened, waiting.

"Get me out of this forest."

A beat. "...That’s it?"

"That’s it."

The noble opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again — whatever he’d braced for, this wasn’t it.

"I— yes. I can do that." He gathered himself and gestured toward a gap in the trees. "I know these woods. This way, please."

He turned and started walking. Rudra fell into step behind him, hands in his pockets, eyes drifting over the trees like he had nowhere else to be.

-----

Throughout the morning, the two of them talked — though "talked" was generous. It was mostly Rudra asking questions, and the stranger answering each one carefully, nervously, never once daring to ask anything in return.

Through the conversation, Rudra learned the man’s name was Leonardo El Vandimion, head of Pallistan’s Crown Investigatory Office — a title that came with considerably more weight than Rudra had expected from a guy he’d found face-down behind a boulder.

Not the protagonist he’d been hoping for.

Rudra let out a small, internal sigh of disappointment. No tragic revenge arc. No secret bloodline. Just a stressed government official having a very bad week.

Leonardo, perhaps sensing an opening, or perhaps just needing to talk it out after the night he’d had, eventually explained why those men had been chasing him at all.

"It was my sister," he said, a note of exhausted resignation creeping into his voice. "Her fiancé — the second prince — broke off their engagement. Publicly. Humiliated her in front of half the court while he was at it." He winced at the memory. "She didn’t take it particularly well."

"How not well?"

"She beat him half to death. In front of everyone. Along with several other nobles who made the mistake of laughing." Leonardo pinched the bridge of his nose. "The prince’s men have been trying to quietly deal with the fallout ever since. I was apparently deemed... convenient to eliminate."

Rudra listened to the entire explanation with the mild, distant attention of a man watching paint dry.

"Hmm," he said.

That was it. That was the whole response.

In return, Rudra offered only that he was a traveler — vague enough to answer the question without actually answering it.

By midafternoon, the trees finally began to thin.

Rudra spotted it first — a break in the canopy, sunlight pooling wide and open ahead of them. A few more minutes of walking brought them clear of the treeline entirely, revealing a massive stone gate set into towering walls, flanked by rows of armored guards standing at rigid attention.

Leonardo stopped. "Wait here a moment."

He straightened his ruined coat as best he could and approached the gate alone, exchanging a few quiet words with the guards. There was a pause, some visible confusion, a hurried consultation between two of them — and then, finally, a nod.

Leonardo returned and gestured for Rudra to follow.

"This is the Kingdom of Pallistan," he said, leading him through the gate and into the city beyond.

Rudra simply nodded, taking in the sprawl of rooftops and market noise ahead without much comment.

Leonardo glanced sideways at him. "You must be hungry. We walked most of the day without stopping."

Before Rudra could answer either way, Leonardo was already steering them down a side street, toward a modest restaurant tucked between two taller buildings, its windows warm with light and the smell of cooking drifting into the street.

After the meal, the two of them stepped back out into the evening air. Rudra turned to Leonardo, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

"Not only did you get me out of that forest," he said, "you fed me too. That’s more hospitality than most people manage in a week."

Leonardo’s head dipped, shoulders drawing inward in an oddly meek posture — the exact stance of a man bracing for something. Rudra glanced at him and briefly considered that anyone walking past right now would probably assume he was bullying the guy.

"Anyway," Rudra continued, pulling his hand back, "looks like the debt’s settled. Thanks for—"

He didn’t get to finish the sentence.

A fist came at him with blinding speed, aimed squarely for his skull. Rudra released Leonardo’s shoulder and turned in the same motion, catching the strike in his open right hand. The impact alone sent the outdoor table beside them flying, wood splintering against the cobblestones — yet Rudra himself didn’t so much as shift his footing.

He looked up at his attacker.

A woman stood before him in an elegant black dress, pale-skinned and striking, silver hair pulled into a bun with a few loose strands falling over her forehead. Her eyes, fixed on Rudra, burned with open murderous intent.

Scarlet El Vandimion. Leonardo’s sister.

Rudra’s grip tightened around her fist, his own expression cooling to match hers exactly.