Path of the Demonic Villain

Lower District in the Imperial Capital.

Tenement Quarters...

——

By now, the rain had stopped and only the damp chill and the pervasive green fog remained.

Unlike the Central District which was quiet at this hour, with not that many people moving about, the Lower District seemed to operate on a different clock. In some narrow alleyways between the sprawling housing blocks, people could be seen tagging the soot-stained brick walls with graffiti, while others crouched around oil-drum fires, huddled together under the low-hanging clotheslines.

Since the fog wasn’t particularly harmful to their health, many didn’t care and just loitered about.

Miss Vi turned around, out of pure habit, to see if anyone was following her. When she noticed no one was, she continued toward the tenement block.

After reaching the rusted iron gate at the entrance, she slipped through and hurried up the narrow exterior stairwell to the third floor, finally reaching the door at the end of the corridor. It was locked, of course, so she did the first thing that came to mind. She leaned back, kicked the door hard with her foot, and it burst open to reveal the dark, messy interior of the detective’s room.

Reaching blindly, she fumbled along the wall until her fingers caught the brass key of a gas lamp and turned it, filling the room with a small golden glow.

Alvar’s apartment was small and crammed, with yellowed newspapers and open case files scattered across the floor. A wooden desk sat cluttered with ink bottles, empty tea mugs, and stacks of scribbled notes. Clothes were tossed haphazardly over a chair, and an iron bed was pushed against the far wall under a grimy window, looking like it hadn’t been made in weeks.

It was clear the detective spent almost all his time working right out of this room.

Without wasting any time, Vi walked over and began tearing the room apart, desperately searching for what Alvar had left behind.

She flipped over stacks of yellowed case files, swept her hands across the cluttered wooden desk, and dumped out drawers onto the floorboards. She checked under the thin mattress, ran her fingers along the dusty baseboards, and even pried at loose bricks near the wall lamp, but found nothing particularly useful. Just endless notes on petty crimes and cold leads.

After some time, she collapsed against the side of the desk, and her breathing came in hitches as frustration and exhaustion caught up to her.

Her eyes scanned the mess on the floor until they landed on a particular floorboard near the corner of the desk that looked like it had been pried open recently. Without much thought, she raised a hand and a small knife appeared in it. Wedging the blade deep into the gap, she pried up the loose board and set it aside, revealing a compartment with a leather-bound notebook tucked alongside a sealed wax envelope.

Her eyes widened a bit in grim relief as she picked up the book and began flipping frantically through the handwritten pages, skimming through the entries.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, there was someone currently floating outside the window of this apartment.

It was Dante with a sullen look in his eyes.

He reached into his pocket and rubbed the crystal on the muffler to activate it. The sound around him became muted and he planned to use it as a silencer.

Once that was done, he reached into the holster, took out the pistol, and racked the slide back with a muffled click to chamber a round.

Then, he raised his arm and aimed at the silhouette behind the foggy glass. The moment his finger touched the trigger, it was as if the gun was moving his hand slightly and almost imperceptibly until it locked onto her head.

Dante then closed his purple eyes and muttered in a low voice, "Glory to the Goddess..."

He opened his red eyes and without hesitation, he pulled the trigger thrice in succession.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

***

Vi was still going through the pages when her evasive senses, granted to her by her rogue class, pricked.

She immediately snapped her gaze to the window, and out of instinct moved to the side. Just then, the glass shattered into a spray of rain-slicked shards, collapsing inward as the bullets tore through the window and straight toward where she had been.

By the time she hit the floor and rolled up near the bed, her left ear had been split by a grazing shot, leaving a searing trail of blood down her neck.

Vi groaned and winced as pain flared through her head, but she forced it down, shoving the notebook into her cloak with her left hand. She slammed her palms together, and as her hands pulled apart, two long daggers like slivers of dark steel materialized in her grip.

At the same time, since she was wearing a necklace with a blue mana-gem, she quickly muttered a few words, and her form vanished into the shadows.

’Could they have already discovered that I escaped? How?’ Her mind raced for answers, but there was no time to think.

Just then, a figure in a black hooded cloak zoomed in through the window on a hoverboard with their gun raised and barrel pointed directly at her.

’They can see me?!’ Vi panicked as she saw the figure’s finger tighten around the trigger.

Bang!

The bullet tore through the air where her head had been, but Vi rolled away to the side and the round embedded itself deep into the wall behind her.

However, despite being fast, Vi was surprised that she had not been able to fully evade the shot, seeing as the lead tip had grazed her cheek, slicing through flesh and sending a spray of crimson across her face.

At this moment, she could tell that she was in life-threatening danger!

With a tight expression, she began to act on instinct. The moment she came up from her roll, she lunged, and before the figure could pull the trigger again, she swiped her blade in an arc. The figure tried to move back, but he couldn’t match her speed, and her blade severed his arm at the elbow, spraying fresh blood as the gun tumbled to the floor still gripped in his severed fingers.

Without wasting any time, she swiped her right hand to take off his head, but then, the figure was suddenly faster than he had been a second ago.

He arched backwards and only managed to dodge the blade by a hair’s breadth. The blade nicked his chin, soaking the kerchief masking his face with blood. However, Vi didn’t slow down and kicked him in the crotch with full force, sending him flying back out through the shattered window frame, and crashing onto the slick roof tiles opposite the alleyway.

Vi then decided to use this time to recover and flee. However, just then her senses prickled and she snapped her gaze down to where the figure’s hand with the gun lay, or more specifically at the blood on the ground.

Just then, slim poles with sharp tips erupted from the pool of blood, shooting upward from multiple angles like a starburst of scarlet spikes. They impaled her thighs, tore through her abdomen, drove deep into her shoulder, and one nearly pierced her head. But just then, her form faded like smoke, appearing crouched some meters away from the erupting array of blood spears.

She was now breathing heavily. However, before she could even catch her breath, the spears thinned and melted into whip-like chains tipped with barbed points. In the next second, they all lunged at her from every direction.

Vi gripped the hilts of both weapons tight and crossed the dark steel blades before her chest.

"Shadow-Cleave!"

Wisps of black smoke began to bleed from the edges of her daggers, then like a dervish of dark steel, she began slashing through the incoming tide of blood chains.

While she was doing that, a figure began to rise from the blood, but this figure was made entirely of blood and looked like a young boy. He picked up the gun from the severed hand and aimed at Vi’s heart.

She had just finished severing the last writhing chain, when she caught sight of the boy. At that moment, the figure made of blood pulled the trigger.

Vi tried to dodge, and even though she twisted her frame with desperate speed, the bullet shattered her collarbone and tore through her shoulder, barely missing her heart. She gritted her teeth through the pain and swung her right hand, throwing the blade at the figure. It flew through the air in a black blur and burst through the figure’s head, causing him to crumble into a lifeless splash of blood.

’I need to get out of here,’ Vi thought through a haze of blinding agony. Her thoughts were foggy and her head was spinning. Not to mention, she was in a world of pain.

She turned and began to stumble toward the door.