I Am a Villain, So What?

Chapter 244: The Vanguard Breaks

The central courtyard of the Imperial Academy had transformed into a slaughterhouse.

There was a fundamental difference between a duel and a war. The Academy taught its cadets how to bow, how to measure their footwork, and how to cast spells with honor.

The Valemont veterans didn’t care about honor. They cared about body counts.

A fourth-year swordmaster, a top-ranking cadet in his class, drew his rapier. He dropped into a perfect, textbook dueling stance, his blade glowing with wind mana. He locked eyes with an approaching operative in dark armor.

The cadet lunged, aiming a flawless thrust.

The veteran didn’t even try to parry. He simply stepped off the center line, grabbed the cadet’s extended wrist, and snapped it over his knee. As the cadet screamed and dropped his rapier, a second operative stepped out from the blind spot behind him and drove a short-sword through the back of his neck.

The cadet hit the ground, dead before he even understood what had happened.

It was happening everywhere. The students were completely uncoordinated. Panic spread like a virus. Cadets bumped into each other, their spells misfiring into the darkness. Unarmed scholars from the alchemy and history departments were trampled by their own classmates trying to flee toward the locked iron gates.

"Form a line!" Kael’s voice roared over the absolute chaos.

The Golden Boy couldn’t just cut his way out. It wasn’t in his nature. Seeing his fellow students being butchered in the dark triggered his righteous instincts. He broke Lucien’s tight diamond formation, rushing forward to intercept a squad of veterans cornering a group of terrified underclassmen.

"Kael, wait!" Elisha shouted, but she immediately followed him, pulling an arrow back to provide covering fire.

Bordon groaned, hoisting his massive tower shield and charging after them to protect their flanks. Mariella ran close behind Bordon, her staff glowing with a desperate healing aura.

Lucien stopped. He didn’t chase them.

He stood in the shadows near a shattered exhibition stall, his Shadow-Weave Suit blending perfectly into the pitch-black environment. Ariana stood right beside him, her hands still glowing with volatile alchemical catalysts.

"He’s playing the hero," Ariana whispered, her violet eyes tracking Kael’s glowing sword. "He is going to get them surrounded."

"He is buying us time," Lucien corrected coldly. "Let him draw the aggro."

Kael’s golden Sovereign Aura flared like a beacon in the dark courtyard. It worked. The panicked, surviving students naturally gravitated toward the light. Dozens of bleeding, terrified cadets rallied behind Kael, Bordon, Elisha, and Mariella.

They managed to form a rough defensive perimeter near the central fountain.

"Shields to the front!" Kael commanded, parrying a heavy strike from a veteran and kicking the man backward. "Mages, staggered casting! Do not waste your mana all at once!"

For a brief, fleeting moment, it looked like the Golden Generation was going to hold the line. Bordon’s tower shield absorbed the brunt of the physical charges. Elisha’s arrows kept the operatives from closing the gap. Mariella patched up the bleeding cadets in the center.

But they weren’t fighting mindless dungeon beasts.

The Valemont veterans adapted instantly. The Knight Commander’s lieutenants whistled sharp, short commands in the dark.

The operatives stopped charging Kael’s glowing sword. They completely withdrew into the shadows, vanishing from the perimeter’s line of sight.

"Where did they go?" a second-year cadet panicked, his hands shaking as he held a weak fire spell.

"Hold your ground!" Kael ordered, his eyes darting frantically across the dark courtyard. "Don’t break formation!"

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

A volley of heavy, steel-tipped crossbow bolts erupted from the darkness above. The veterans had scaled the abandoned exhibition tents and the low walls of the faculty buildings.

The bolts didn’t target Bordon’s massive shield. They rained down in a perfectly coordinated parabolic arc, dropping directly into the center of the student formation.

Three cadets dropped instantly, arrows buried in their shoulders and chests. Mariella screamed as a bolt grazed her arm, breaking her healing spell.

"Suppressive fire!" Bordon yelled, angling his shield upward to cover Mariella, completely exposing his legs.

An operative stepped out from the shadows near the ground and threw a jagged, dark-mana-infused bola. The weighted chains wrapped violently around Bordon’s ankles, locking his heavy armor in place.

Before Kael could cut the chains, two alchemical smoke bombs landed directly at his feet.

They detonated with a hiss. It wasn’t regular smoke. It was a dense, choking, dark-mana suppression cloud. The golden light of Kael’s sword flickered and dimmed as the corrupted mana violently choked the ambient energy in the air.

The students in the perimeter started coughing violently, their spells sputtering out.

"They are breaking the vanguard," Lucien muttered, watching the tactical collapse from fifty yards away. "Military pack tactics. Suppress the heavy hitters, isolate the healers, and bleed the perimeter dry."

"Should I use an explosive catalyst?" Ariana asked, pulling a glowing red vial from her pouch.

"No. Too much collateral damage with the students packed together," Lucien said, his thumb flicking the hammer of the Lumeveil Enforcer.

Just beyond the pitch-black dome, the Capital of the Aurelian Empire was entirely asleep.

The cobblestone streets of the upper districts were quiet. The massive iron gates of the city walls were closed for the night. A few Imperial Guards leaned against their halberds on the battlements, yawning and passing a flask of cheap wine back and forth to stay warm.

They looked out over the sprawling city, seeing nothing but the peaceful, flickering lights of street lamps.

The demonic barrier covering the Academy was pitch-black. Against the dark, moonless night sky, the dome was completely camouflaged. It absorbed light rather than reflecting it. To the rest of the Capital, it simply looked like the Academy had turned its lights off for the night.

No alarms rang in the garrison. No distress flares lit up the sky. The elite Platinum Knights were resting in their barracks.

No one knew the Academy had been sealed off. No one knew the Golden Generation was currently being slaughtered.

The reinforcements would take hours to realize something was wrong, let alone mobilize.

The students were entirely on their own.

Back inside the cage, the defensive perimeter was collapsing.

Kael coughed up blood as the dark smoke filled his lungs. He swung his longsword wildly, forcing two veterans back, but a third slipped under his guard and sliced a deep gash across his thigh.

Kael stumbled to one knee.

"Kael!" Elisha screamed. She tried to pull her bowstring, but her fingers were slick with blood from a minor shrapnel wound. The arrow slipped, firing harmlessly into the dirt.

The Valemont operatives moved in for the execution. Six veterans stepped out of the smoke simultaneously, their dark-mana-coated blades raised to slaughter the kneeling Golden Boy and the exposed healer behind him.

They didn’t get the chance.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Three deafening gunshots cracked through the courtyard in a fraction of a second.

The three operatives leading the charge didn’t even have time to swing. Their heads snapped back in perfect unison, hyper-compressed ethereal bullets punching cleanly through their visors. They hit the ground instantly, dead before their knees touched the cobblestones.

The remaining three operatives froze, their tactical momentum completely shattered.

They looked toward the darkness.

Lucien Ashborne stepped out of the shadows.

The Shadow-Weave Suit absorbed the faint light, making him look like a phantom. The Lumeveil Enforcer in his right hand was smoking, the barrel leveled perfectly at the remaining veterans.

"You fight like soldiers," Lucien’s voice cut through the noise of the courtyard. It wasn’t a shout, but the cold, absolute authority in his tone made the veterans hesitate. "But you die just like anyone else."

The operative on the left raised his crossbow, aiming straight for Lucien’s chest.

Lucien didn’t even flinch.

BANG.

The bullet tore straight down the barrel of the crossbow, shattering the weapon and taking the operative’s hand completely off. The man screamed, dropping to his knees.

"Get up, Kael," Lucien ordered, walking forward without breaking his stride. "Your heroic stand is over. If you stay in this courtyard, you will all die."

Kael gritted his teeth, using his sword as a crutch to force himself back to his feet. "We can’t just leave them, Lucien!"

"I am not telling you to leave them," Lucien said coldly, his eyes locking onto the last two standing operatives. They were slowly backing away, realizing they were completely outmatched in a ranged firefight. "I am telling you to move them to a chokepoint. The central faculty building. The doors are reinforced steel."

"The doors are locked with high-tier magical wards!" Bordon yelled, still trying to free his legs from the bola chains.

"I don’t care about the wards," Lucien said.

He raised the Enforcer and executed the last two operatives with two precise, effortless shots to the chest. He didn’t even break his stride as he marched past the bleeding students and walked straight up to the heavy steel doors of the faculty building.

The doors hummed with a glowing, intricate web of defensive runes. A magical barrier designed to withstand siege magic.

Lucien pressed the barrel of the Lumeveil Enforcer directly against the center of the runic lock. He channeled a massive surge of his own mana directly into the mythic firearm. The ivory grip glowed white-hot.

BANG.

The armor-piercing round detonated point-blank. The kinetic force violently shattered the runic array. The magical backlash blew the heavy steel doors entirely off their hinges, sending them crashing into the marble lobby inside.

He lowered the smoking gun and looked back at the stunned protagonist party.

"Bordon, break those chains. Elisha, grab Kael’s arm. Ariana, drop a smoke screen," Lucien ordered with ruthless efficiency. "We are moving. Anyone who doesn’t keep up gets left behind."

Ariana immediately smashed a dark gray alchemical vial against the cobblestones. A thick, non-toxic fog rapidly expanded, blanketing their escape route.

The surviving students didn’t hesitate. Driven by sheer terror and the terrifying competence of the Executioner, they scrambled toward the breached faculty building.

Lucien kept his back to the doors, his revolver drawn, acting as the absolute, lethal rearguard as the Vanguard finally broke their stand and retreated into the dark.