Transmigrated as the Villain: I Will Destroy Fate

Chapter 163: Who are you? [2]

Ronan stared down at Lilith’s body, his gaze lingering on the ruin of her neck for a moment longer than he should have. The fire had cauterized the wound instantly. Far too cleanly.

A decapitated body should be a fountain, a messy explosion of red that painted the forest floor. This was neat. Surgical. There was blood, but far less than there should have been.

He crouched, ignoring the screaming protest from his own battered body, and prodded the exposed stump of her neck with two fingers. The texture was wrong. It felt uniform, like butcher’s meat that was never part of a living thing. There was no complex layering of sinew, muscle, and vein.

It was just... flesh. Constructed.

The thought entered in his mind with absolute certainty. He remembered a small passage from the novel, a minor Chapter about Mesmer’s inner circle. Mesmer had offered one of them a body since they’d sacrificed theirs to something unknown. Mesmer had the ability to do this. Souls extracted and bound to flesh golems, custom-grown vessels designed for specific tasks. Disposable. It was never revealed who was the one with the fake bodies, but this confirmed it.

This wasn’t Lilith. Not the real her. This was just a shell, a doll sent to play a game, and her real self was tucked away somewhere safe, ready to be decanted into a new body.

She would be back. Not this exact face, maybe, but she would be back.

And she’ll focus her interest on me, Ronan thought, annoyed.

He kept the thought locked away to himself.

Behind him, Elara finally snapped. The adrenaline bled out of her, leaving a shaking, hollowed-out wreck in its place.

"What the hell just happened?"

The words were a ragged gasp, her breath hitching uncontrollably.

Blood and soot streaked her face, and her gauntlets, once glowing with barely-contained power, were now just dim, heavy metal.

She took a staggering step toward him, her voice rising with each question.

"Mira... her body was moving. That voice wasn’t hers. What was that thing? And the barrier – it just broke! Why are there demons here?"

She wasn’t asking for answers. She was vomiting up the questions, her mind spiralling through the impossibilities of the last hour.

She reached him, grabbing his shoulder with a trembling hand, forcing him to face her. Her eyes were a wild cacophony of panic and anger.

"What are you? Who are you? What do you know that I don’t?"

Then she gasped.

Her grip loosened, her fingers recoiling as if burned.

For the first time, she seemed to truly see his forearms.

The flesh was gone, burned away in long, horrific strips. Reinforced bone, black and skeletal, lay exposed. Smoke still curled from the wounds. His fingers twitched, held together by sheer will and flickering mana.

"Your... your arms..." She covered her mouth, her anger shattering into pure horror. She stammered, unable to form a word, unable to look away.

Ronan straightened, but he didn’t turn.

His gaze was already scanning the treeline, his mind filled with cold calculation.

Mana reserves at twelve percent. Soul pathway damaged, aching. Arms functional but compromised. I need mana to function them. He ran through all the information in his head. The fight with Lilith had taken approximately six minutes. Six minutes that Mesmer, or Bruce, had been free to operate elsewhere. Six minutes for Luca to die. The quest was still active. No failure notification. There was a chance, then. But it was just that – a chance – and it dwindled with every wasted second.

His own state was a liability. He was in no condition to fight anyone, let alone Bruce.

Elara was still talking, her voice more insistent now, her grip tightening on his shoulder again despite what she’d just seen. He caught fragments. Secrets. Lies. Mira. A bunch of other words that he didn’t bother to listen to.

He wasn’t tuning her out to be cruel, she was simply no longer the most urgent variable. He glanced at her, a quick assessment of her state. No critical injuries. She could move under her own power.

That’s good. I need allies that can help me, my soul is damaged and my body is in no condition to fight. I need to find allies on the way to Luca.

"This isn’t over," he said, his voice flat. It was a half-truth. "You can ask all the questions you want, provided we both leave this forest alive."

Elara caught the deflection instantly. The panic in her eyes receded, replaced by something colder, sharper. An anger that was no longer about the demons. It was about him.

"I just killed someone," she said, her voice dropping, dangerously quiet. "At least, I think I did. And you won’t even do me the decency of looking at me while I ask you what it all meant."

He started walking. Not toward her. Toward the centre of the forest. Where Luca would be.

"We need to move," he said, not turning back, ignoring the pained look on her face. "Luca might still be alive. Everything else has to wait."

It was not a request.

For a moment, Elara didn’t move. He could feel her stillness behind him, a pocket of furious, wounded pride caught between her rage and the practical understanding that being left alone in this nightmare was a death sentence, and that there was something bigger at play going on.

But it was obvious she didn’t like it.

A few seconds later, he heard her footsteps, quick and hurried, catching up to him. She fell into step beside him, her jaw clenched, her eyes locked forward. She was a leader in her mind, and a leader did not abandon a classmate, even if she hated the person telling her to do it.

"This conversation isn’t over, you bastard."

He didn’t respond.

"Can you at least tell me why we’re looking for Luca?"

Silence.

His mind was already elsewhere, running through contingencies.

What would he find when they reached the protagonist? Was Bruce still there? Had the Academy already fallen? The flesh golem meant Mesmer was closer, his operations more sophisticated than anyone at Luminara realised. Elara’s fear and fury were a buzzing noise in the periphery of his thoughts, acknowledged but not prioritized. A problem to manage later. If there was a later.

And that meant Luca had to survive.

His pace quickened.