I Am a Villain, So What?

Chapter 204: Winterguard [6]

The smell of harsh, herbal antiseptics and stale blood was the first thing that registered in Lucien’s mind.

Then came the pain.

It wasn’t just a surface ache. It felt as though someone had poured molten lead directly into his veins and left it to harden. Every single muscle fiber, every bone, and every mana circuit in his body screamed in unified, blinding agony the moment he tried to take a breath.

Lucien suppressed a groan, forcing his heavy eyelids open.

A pale blue, translucent screen was hovering directly above his face, flashing with urgent warnings.

[Warning: Extreme Divine Force Backlash!]

[Your mortal vessel has suffered severe trauma from channeling a Primordial Artifact alongside the Rosary of the Weeping Saintess.]

[Mana Circuits are currently overheated. Passive healing from the Rune of Vitality is severely slowed.]

[Penalty: All physical stats reduced by 50% for 72 hours. Magic casting disabled for 24 hours.]

A three-day physical debuff and a complete magic lockout,

Lucien thought, his vision swimming as he stared at the ceiling. Considering I just altered the geography of the Northern Frontier and wiped out an apocalyptic horde in sixty seconds... I suppose that’s a fair price to pay. He slowly turned his head. He was lying in a narrow, cot-filled room that served as Winterguard’s high-priority medical ward.

Sitting in a wooden chair beside his bed, looking like a grim, immovable gargoyle, was Commander Viktor. Standing near the frosty window, arms crossed tightly over his chest, was Commander Arthur Whitmore.

The moment Lucien shifted the coarse woolen blankets, both veterans snapped their attention to him.

"You’re awake," Viktor rumbled, his voice rougher than usual. He leaned forward, his heavy armor clinking. "Don’t try to sit up. The healers said your internal mana pathways look like they were struck by lightning."

Lucien ignored the advice, gritting his teeth and forcing himself into a half-sitting position against the iron headboard. He wiped a lingering trace of dried blood from the corner of his mouth.

"How long was I out?" Lucien rasped. His throat felt like sandpaper.

"A full day and a half," Arthur answered, stepping away from the window. The Lord of Winterguard looked at the seventeen-year-old boy with an expression caught halfway between profound awe and terrifying suspicion. "The horde completely scattered. We haven’t seen a single monster approach the perimeter since you... did whatever it was you did."

"The wall?" Lucien asked hoarsely.

"Encased in glowing, impenetrable bedrock," Viktor answered, shaking his head slowly as if he still couldn’t believe it. "Princess Rumina and the engineers inspected it yesterday. They couldn’t even chip it with enchanted pickaxes. Whatever magic you unleashed, it didn’t just buy us thirty minutes. It stabilized the entire eastern flank for the foreseeable future."

Arthur stepped closer to the bed, his scarred face dead serious. "Which brings us to the obvious question, Cadet Ashborne. What the hell was that? I have commanded this fortress for a decade, and I have never seen magic of that magnitude from anyone short of the Pope or the Emperor himself. You summoned holy bedrock and incinerated an entire horde with a wave of your hand."

Lucien kept his face perfectly neutral, despite the searing pain in his chest. He had rehearsed this lie in his mind the moment he decided to use the artifacts. He absolutely could not afford to let them know he possessed a Primordial Crown or a Supreme Relic.

"It was a relic I acquired from the Aethelgard Ruins in the Iron-Sand Desert," Lucien lied smoothly, his voice flat. "It was a highly unstable, single-use artifact designed for siege defense. I fed all of my mana into it, and it reacted violently with the ambient mana of the frontier."

Viktor narrowed his eyes. "A single-use relic? You expect us to believe you just happened to have an apocalyptic weapon in your coat pocket?"

"If I had known it was going to do that

, or that it would nearly boil my organs alive, I wouldn’t have used it," Lucien replied, letting a hint of exhausted irritation bleed into his voice to sell the act. "I saw the wall was going to fall. I used the only trump card I had. It shattered into dust the moment I passed out."

Arthur and Viktor exchanged a long, heavy look. As seasoned commanders, they could smell a half-truth, but they had no physical evidence to contradict him. The boy’s hands had been empty when Viktor caught him, and searching the heir of the Ashborne family while he lay bleeding would have been a severe political offense.

Before either commander could press the interrogation further, the heavy wooden doors of the medical ward swung open.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

First Princess Rumina Aurelian stepped inside. She didn’t walk; she marched. Her deep crimson silk clung to her, a black fur cloak draped over her shoulders, and her signature steel-toed combat boots clicked sharply against the floorboards. Her metallic amber eyes swept the room with the predatory intensity of the Empire’s Head of Intelligence.

Stepping in right behind her was Princess Celestia. She stood tall, her posture immaculate, her ice-blue eyes locking onto me with the same complex mixture of rivalry and newfound respect she had shown ever since our duel at the Academy.

The Mad Princess and the Ice Prodigy, I thought, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of my neck. Why are they both here?

"Commanders," Rumina said, her raspy, rich voice cutting through the heavy air. "Leave us. I wish to speak with the hero of Winterguard privately."

"Your Highness," Arthur protested gently, bowing his head. "The boy just woke up. The healers explicitly said he shouldn’t be stressed—"

"I said, leave us, Lord Whitmore," Rumina repeated. She didn’t raise her voice, but the unyielding, lethal pressure behind it made the veteran commander flinch.

Arthur’s jaw tightened, but he bowed deeply. Viktor gave me one last, highly complicated look before following the Lord of Winterguard out the door. The heavy oak clicked shut, leaving me completely alone with the two royals.

For a long, suffocating moment, the room was silent.

Rumina slowly walked to the side of the bed. Celestia remained near the foot of the cot, observing me quietly. She knew better than anyone that I constantly hid my true strength, but even she looked mildly unnerved by the sheer scale of what had happened on the wall.

Rumina stared down at me. The amused, dangerous smirk she usually wore was firmly in place.

"A single-use relic from the Aethelgard Ruins," Rumina said quietly, her voice dripping with elegant, freezing skepticism. "Is that the official story we are going with, Cadet?"

I met her piercing gaze without flinching. "It is the truth, Your Highness."

"Ha. Haha." Rumina let out a rich, raspy laugh that carried absolutely no warmth. "If you say so. Then I suppose I must believe you."

Her expression, however, said the exact opposite. She looked at me the way a wolf looks at a particularly clever hare. As the Head of Imperial Intelligence, she had been hunting the ghosts of the fallen Holy Empire for months. She knew about the golden light in the slums. She knew about the unexplainable variables shifting the continent’s balance.

She leaned closer, resting her hands on the iron rail of the bed, her metallic eyes burning into mine.

"You hid your fangs quite well at the Academy, Cadet Lucien," Rumina murmured, letting the silence stretch before delivering the killing blow. "Or would you prefer I address you by the title my Intelligence network has been chasing? The Executioner?"