The Villain Bought the Female Lead - Ch. 93
[Helion! Helion! Helion…!]
Right in front of Helion, a menacing archbishop, wielding a massive scythe, crashed into him repeatedly, pushing forward.
Fortunately, Helion used his yellow-tinted aura as a shield to block the attacks, but it was clear that he was struggling to hold his ground.
On the way here, Vargan had told him something.
—Lord Helion, besides Frikkanrisk, there’s another one. Please take care of that one.
Was the archbishop Ami that opponent?
This was either a fated encounter or inevitable destiny.
Helion faced the joy of confronting the one who took his arm.
“It’s been 15 years.”
[You have no idea how much I’ve missed you. I was starving, craving to taste the rest of your body…! Every other taste felt like garbage, and it was hell!]
But now, it ended.
Let him savor that well-aged delicacy on his tongue!
“You haven’t changed at all since those days.”
He recalled the time 15 years ago when he had just become a hero. The Ami back then and the Ami now seemed no different in appearance and personality.
For Helion, 15 years had been more than enough time for change.
“This isn’t the right place for us to continue our reunion. Let’s move.”
Helion deflected the scythe with a reflective reaction from his aura, which he had been using as a shield.
Then, he stomped the ground with such force that the dust momentarily rose, and he quickly moved out of the way.
In an instant, he was gone.
Ami, with a long grin, gave chase.
[Kya-ha-ha! Good. A little push and pull makes the flavor all the more savory!]
As Helion dashed through the city skies, using rooftops as steppingstones, he sensed Ami pursuing him.
With a silent glance, he looked back at the remaining Vargan and flew away.
Meanwhile, Frikkanrisk, witnessing this, exclaimed.
“Wait, Ami, I…!”
She tried to follow them but felt the grip of a giant holding her.
Though it wasn’t clearly visible, she could feel its power when she exerted her strength.
It was the partially summoned hand of an ogre.
“Frikkanrisk, if you leave too, I’ll be left alone in this graveyard. I’m scared of ghosts, so why don’t you keep me company?”
Vargan said with a smirk.
Frikkanrisk glared at him, her eyes cold. The air around them began to freeze with icy particles.
“I have no time to waste with the likes of you.”
She unleashed the cold mana within her body.
With a cracking sound, like wet cloth freezing, the green skin surrounding her began to turn into ice.
She needed to act on her revenge.
To kill her first target, Ami.
“I don’t know who you are, but if you keep interfering with me, I won’t let it slide.”
She was serious.
She was already sick of the human race.
Aside from her husband, Aintern, she would like to execute all humans by beheading.
A species that always lied.
A weak race, easily swayed and quick to deceive.
A tribe where betrayal was routine!
That was her current perception of humanity.
“In that case, there’s nothing I can do. I wouldn’t want my familiar to get hurt, after all.”
Vargan shrugged his shoulders and canceled the partial summoning. He acted before she could break the familiar’s hand.
As soon as Frikkanrisk was fully freed from its control, she moved.
“Die.”
She used her hand, imbued with cold mana like something summoned from hell, as a blade and stabbed.
She planned to quickly kill him and chase after the two who had left.
However, the blue hand blade met a shadowy barrier.
The hand blade she thrust out was stopped just before it could decapitate Vargan by a shadowy familiar that extended forth.
“You’re more troublesome than I expected.”
As one of the Twelve Divine Beasts who commanded monsters, she could tell easily.
The familiars, or rather, the monsters contracted with this man were no ordinary creatures.
Even this one she was currently facing would require considerable effort and power to physically destroy.
‘I miscalculated.’
It was taking longer than she expected to kill him.
Using any more mana here would surely attract more heroes….
As if he had heard her thoughts, Vargan smiled and spoke.
He called her by name.
“Iris.”
Not by her Divine Beast title, but by her true name.
“… what did you say?”
She thought she had misheard. No one except Aintern knew her true name.
“Now you finally show interest in me, Iris.”
His tone had changed to one of contempt.
After calling her by her true name, he now wore an unpleasant smile, fully revealing his true nature.
“….”
Frikkanrisk tried to hide her surprise.
When he repeated her name, she realized she hadn’t misheard.
His smooth words slipped in like a snake.
“I have no intention of hurting you.”
His words were as sweet as if imbued with magic.
Like a gentle scent rising, like a snake eyeing its prey.
Carefully and calmly, that smoke wrapped around her. The more it did, the more it opened up the wounds in the woman’s heart, and the smoke seeped into those gaps.
“I’ll help you with your revenge.”
***
The two who had distanced themselves from Dortmund continued their battle in a wide-open space.
Helion unleashed a relentless assault, giving no room for a break.
It was continuous, making one doubt whether he was even breathing.
The basic elements intertwined, creating new forms.
What was once mere fire became boiling magma, and the wave he conjured crackled with high-voltage currents, transforming into a typhoon that engulfed Ami.
If such techniques were unleashed within Dortmund, that area would have been laid to waste by now.
Ami’s movements were incredibly fast.
Despite Helion’s relentless attacks, he had only sustained minor injuries, deflecting most of the blows.
Helion’s aggressive onslaught and Ami’s scythe strikes were of such a high caliber that anyone witnessing the battle would be left in awe.
Ami could feel it.
How much stronger he had become over the past 15 years.
How extraordinary the growth rate of humans was.
For now, their battle seemed evenly matched.
In fact, the wounds they had inflicted on each other and the mana they had expended were about the same.
However, there was a clear difference.
‘It’s getting harder to breathe.’
Ami was currently in a situation where he couldn’t show his full power.
Even though he wanted to return to his original form through <Liberation>, this required a bit of <time> and <extreme concentration>.
A definite gap of 0.5 to 1 second was needed.
The reason Helion was pressing so hard was obvious without even having to see it: to prevent Ami from having the time and capacity to release his power.
Ami was also trying to create an opening by continuously firing magic blasts or launching sword strikes, but Helion easily blocked them and counterattacked.
It would have been better to release it from the start…!
Did he underestimate him too much?
No, it was more like he got so fixated on the sight of a delicious meal he hadn’t seen in a long time that he didn’t assess the situation properly.
Come to think of it, Zagan also met a similar fate and died. He should have been more careful…!
[Our prey humans have become much stronger than expected?]
Ami spoke as he aimed his scythe at Helion’s face.
There was still a long smile on his face, but the feeling was a bit different from before.
Helion noticed this.
“Indeed. Seeing you, Ami, made me realize it clearly.”
He read the change and added a sardonic smirk to his expressionless face.
“Now it’s my turn to hunt you.”
Blood vessels appeared around Ami’s eyes as he faced this sneer.
They were so blood-red that it seemed like he might devour him at any moment.
[You’re getting cocky just because I was being nice?]
Boom⎯⎯!
A massive wave of energy erupted from Ami.
It was a fierce force that seemed to swallow everything around it, and indeed, Helion furrowed his brows as he was slowly pushed back.
Despite this, Helion didn’t stop his attack on Ami.
He summoned a large holy sword in midair and launched it like a bow.
As the sword, imbued with brilliant light, passed through.
The stormy atmosphere became a calm sea.
The raging mana quietly settled down.
At the end of the path of the sword of light was Ami.
Ami glared with bloodshot eyes as blood vessels burst out.
Crunch⎯
He grabbed the blade with his bare hands and snapped it.
[I don’t like this form because it’s so ambiguous.]
A form that his younger sister, Zagan, who hated learning to an extreme and found everything bothersome, had not mastered.
A form that required a certain level of mastery.
[Helion.… you provoked me too much, so I ended up showing you.]
The appearance of Ami, who had looked like an ordinary boy, was gone.
Replacing him was a warrior clad in purple armor.
Ami’s skin had hardened to the extreme, making it look like he was wearing full-body armor. It was a thin, tight layer adhered to his skin.
His feet were twisted into bizarre shapes, and a long tail had sprouted.
<Incomplete Liberation>
Although the liberation wasn’t perfect, it allowed him to use a certain amount of power. It was a mode used only in emergencies.
Ami’s lips curled up to his ears.
He was ready to feast.
From now on, not only would he use his Judgment Weapon, but he would also <consume> the souls of all living things that came into contact with his body.
Ami stuck out his long tongue and licked his lips.
Ami’s stamina was restored beyond its original state, and his mana and power were incomparable to before.
[Can you still say what you said a moment ago?]
To Ami’s question.
“If that’s all it is, I think I can handle it on my own.”
Helion answered nonchalantly.
He wasn’t showing arrogance or bluffing.
He only spoke the truth, and his desire was for a favorable outcome.
[Kya-ha-ha-ha! Alright, let’s see. Will my head fly off first, or will you rot away first?]
Ami took a stance to charge.
Like a beast crouching on the ground.
He raised the scythe that had been absorbed into his body and had become a part of his tail.
As Helion watched this, he sensed something far off, at the cemetery in the center of Dortmund.
“It’s become a big problem now. That’s why Student Vargan excluded the others… I need to finish this quickly and go.”
He unleashed his full power.
“I need to find out why he did something so outrageous, what kind of future he’s trying to show me.”
The air vibrated once more.
This was partly due to the intense mana generated by the two beings.
⎯⎯⎯⎯!!
In the distance.
A fully grown dragon revealed itself from the cemetery in Dortmund.
The sacred beast Frikkanrisk let out a mighty roar to assert its presence and was flying through the sky of the city towards the snow-covered mountains.
***
The impact was felt even at the Dortmund branch church.
“What… what is happening here…?!”
The hooded man was in a panic.
He couldn’t help it.
“Why is Frikkanrisk…? Could it be. Did Ami make it like this?”
Even though they made a deal, that guy was a mentally unstable person who served as an archbishop of the Goddess Church. Could it be that he had gone crazy, ignoring their agreement and running wild?
“No, no… there’s no way. She has her offspring here, so there’s no way she’d just flee. There’s no way…!”
He knew well how much Frikkanrisk cherished her offspring. There was no way she would just flee like that. Why… and it wasn’t even the time they had originally set!
‘Did someone interfere?’
The hooded man quickly started turning his eyes and mind, trying to recall memories.
He knew that Helion’s team was in Dortmund carrying out the mission to hunt Frikkanrisk.
After all, he was the one who played the biggest role in guiding them there.
He had worked tirelessly to shift the blame onto her for the villages destroyed by Archbishop Ami, so that a mission would be issued not to <persuade> her, but to <hunt> her.
So, could it be that a member of Helion’s team caused this?
… but surely the mission was to hunt her.
Seeing Frikkanrisk spread her wings and fly without any restrictions, it seemed like there was no one hindering her.
As he pondered.
He was suddenly gripped with fear as he sensed two more massive sources of mana outside the city.
He had already felt their presence before Frikkanrisk roared, but now their intensity was even more overwhelming.
One was human.
The other was ominous, as if it wasn’t human.
‘Ami? It seems like Ami… but why is he there…?’
Just as he began to wonder.
The two sources of mana clashed several times, intertwined, and then.
Before long, the non-human presence rapidly fled, as if trying to escape for its life.
“This, this is….”
As the man’s hood fell, his face was revealed.
A hero who specialized in commanding familiars. A veteran of Dortmund.
Craine’s usually dark and gloomy voice was now tinged with bewilderment.