Transmigrated as the Villain: I Will Destroy Fate

Chapter 167: Revenge Is Best Served Cold [1]

The pillar of light had faded, but its residue still hung in the air. White-gold particles drifted around the clearing like ash. The ground was torn apart, scorched in a wide circle, and several trees had been cut cleanly through, as if something impossibly sharp had passed through them.

Seraphina stood near the center of the damage.

She was injured, but not as badly as Ronan expected. Her uniform was torn, a line of blood ran down one side of her face, and one arm hung stiffly at her side, but she was conscious. More importantly, her mana was still stable. Strained, but stable.

"Seraphina."

She turned.

The moment she saw him, her expression changed.

Shock first.

Then horror.

Her eyes dropped to his arms.

Ronan knew what he looked like. His forearms were still mostly flayed. The exposed, reinforced bones were visible beneath strips of burned tissue, and every movement pulled against half-healed muscle. He could move them only because he had been forcing mana through the damage, and he was running low.

Seraphina started toward him immediately.

"Can you heal my arms?" Ronan cut past her before she could ask anything else.

Her words caught in her throat. She looked from his face back to his arms, her own injuries forgotten.

"...Not fully."

He knew that already. Damage this severe, especially with the flesh burned away by demonic energy, was not something a student could fix cleanly in the middle of a battlefield. He only needed enough.

"Prioritize nerve endings, muscle response, basic function," he told her, his voice flat. "The rest can wait. Can you do that?"

"I... yes."

Seraphina still looked unsettled, but she listened. She knelt, and a warm, gentle light gathered in her palms, far softer than the explosive pillar that had saved her life minutes earlier. She pressed her hands near his forearms without touching the ruined flesh and began casting.

Her healing magic was far worse than the Academy healers. Less refined, but also less overwhelming. It moved carefully through the ruined tissue, knitting what could be knit and reconnecting what still had the ability to be salvaged. The pain sharpened first, a grinding spike that went all the way to his shoulders, then dulled. Sensation in his arms returned as severed nerves sparked and reconnected. He tightened his jaw but let nothing show on his face.

It did not look much better.

His arms were still grotesque, most of the skin remained gone. Burned meat clung to bone. The wounds were still open in too many places.

But function returned.

His fingers twitched without needing mana reinforcement. His wrists moved. The constant drain he had been using just to keep his hands responsive finally eased, and a current of unfamiliar energy pushed back against the bone-deep exhaustion underneath it.

Ronan exhaled slowly. That was enough.

"Thank you." He flexed his fingers once, confirming the range of motion. The pain was still there, but it was more distant now. Manageable. His body felt lighter, his thoughts clearer, his movement less like dragging broken machinery through mud.

Then his gaze shifted.

There was a body beside Seraphina.

Brutas Pollundini.

Ronan paused.

For a moment, he felt a deep sense of confusion. Brutas should not be here. Not dead beside Seraphina. Not in the middle of a battlefield caused by Mesmer. He had not had time to think about Brutas. He would not get it now, either. There were more immediate variables, and the corpse could wait its turn in line.

Ronan forced himself to focus. "What happened?"

Seraphina’s expression tightened. She looked toward Brutas’s body, and something flickered across her face. Discomfort. Shock. Maybe guilt.

"He attacked me," she said.

"Attacked you? A princess?" Ronan questioned it immediately.

Brutas attacking Seraphina made no sense on the surface. He had reason to hate Ronan, maybe. Reason to resent humiliation. Reason to act recklessly. But Seraphina was royalty. Attacking her, unprovoked, in front of witnesses, was political suicide even for someone as arrogant as Brutas.

"He appeared suddenly," Seraphina continued, her voice strained. "No warning. At first... I was winning. He’s strong, but it was manageable. Then he crushed some kind of stone in his hand. After that..." Her voice trailed off. "His mana surged. His body strengthened. His expression..." She shook her head. "It was empty, berserk. Unstable. He nearly killed me."

Ronan’s eyes moved briefly to the fading white-gold residue around the clearing. He understood what had saved her. Her mother’s artifact. The same one from the original story – a last-resort protection that activated only when Seraphina’s life was in genuine, immediate danger. A single-use, unrepeatable failsafe.

It was unfortunate that Seraphina had to use it here. Had Brutas been that much of a threat?

She spoke of some stone... he didn’t recognize it. Something new in this timeline perhaps?

He did not speak his thoughts. It was not information she needed from him, and there was no benefit in explaining a stranger’s knowledge of her family’s secrets.

"Why would he attack you at all?" Elara asked, still standing behind him.

"Betrayal," Ronan said. "Or something close enough. The demons must have approached him."

As he said it, the pieces began arranging themselves in his mind.

Mesmer. It was probably Mesmer who had pushed Brutas toward the duel in the first place.

But why?

The duel had been public, messy, and politically inconvenient. If Mesmer wanted Ronan dead, there were better, quieter methods.

Then he found the answer.

Mesmer was curious.

He had likely not expected the duel to solve anything. He wanted to watch. He wanted information. Ronan’s Soul Attack, his resilience, his tactics, his response under pressure, all of it laid bare in a controlled, public setting where Mesmer could observe without lifting a finger.

Brutas was not a weapon at all. He was more of a probe.

And after Lilith failed, Mesmer simply reused the discarded piece. Waste nothing. Recycle every failure into the next attempt.

Efficient. Very Mesmer.

"Is he dead?" Ronan asked.

"Yes," Seraphina confirmed.

She tried to keep her composure, but her face tightened again. Her eyes flicked to the body, then away, unable to hold the sight for more than a second.

It was her first kill. Probably.

Ronan noticed the reaction and stored it away. There was no time to comfort her, and she would not appreciate comfort from him anyway. Not right now.

"We need to find the others," he said.

Seraphina looked up, still shaken. "Who?"

"Luca. Grace. Iris. Irene. Aura. Jason..." Ronan kept listing names. "Any Class S students still alive and capable of fighting. We need allies."

This was no longer a selection exam. It was an invasion inside a broken battlefield, and the enemies were not just mutated humans anymore. Mesmer’s direct pieces were active. Bruce was likely after Luca. If Brutas had been turned, other students might be compromised as well. There was no way to know how deep the rot went.

Seraphina absorbed that quickly. She nodded. "Where are they?"

Ronan looked toward the center of the broken zone. "That’s where Luca will be."

Not because it was safe.

Because Luca always moved toward the largest problem. Grace knew that. Iris, if she was still with Grace, would be pulled along by necessity. Irene was likely moving toward Luca or toward the strongest concentration of enemies. Aura was harder to predict, but if she had sensed demonic energy on this scale, she would not stay idle. The center was the most likely convergence point.

Seraphina agreed, then she stopped. Her expression shifted as she remembered something.

"This isn’t over," she said. "I don’t think it is at least."

Ronan turned back to her. "Why?"

"He said something," she explained. "Before the end. He said there was someone else."

Ronan stilled. Someone else?

His thoughts moved fast. Lilith had been here. Bruce should be here. Nel was infiltrating the Academy or interfering with its systems from the inside, not wasting herself on a secondary battlefield.

Sending more of Mesmer’s actual pieces into the selection zone would be tactically sloppy. He needed the stronger allies to infiltrate the Academy.

Frey? No, he was in the Academy too likely.

So who? Another demon? Another converted student?

The answer came before he could finish sorting through the possibilities.

Bushes shifted at the edge of the clearing.

A figure walked through.

Tall. Muscular. Heavy armor, dark and well-worn, the kind built for a real war rather than a school exercise.

A massive longsword rested in one hand as if it weighed nothing.

Jason Vrell stepped into the clearing.

For a moment, no one moved.

Ronan looked at Jason, then at Brutas’s corpse, then back at Jason.

Something cold settled into his chest.

Jason Vrell.

Vrell.

The inter-class war settled into his mind. The moment when he ordered Aura to kill Jason Vrell’s brother.

Of course Mesmer would use him.

Brutas had not been the final weapon Mesmer sent.

He had only been the warning.