I'll Be Villain to Everyone! Except for my Cat...

Chapter 119: No Turning Back

"Don’t come any closer. There’s some strange activity starting up ahead... Do you see anything?"

That gave him pause. Everything in front of him looked exactly the same, with no changes at all. Just charred trees.

But when he looked more closely, he noticed small flashes of red light in the distance, between the black tree trunks. The suit’s visor and Paymax identified them as ordinary light.

"I’ll check it out," he replied, frowning slightly.

"Stay cloaked, and don’t ignore my voice if I call out to you."

He nodded, checked the nearest tall, thick tree for stability, and then activated the suit’s capabilities.

He felt a surge run through his legs, signaling an increase in strength, and pushed off the ground. His heart began to beat a little faster.

*Thud.* He dug his fingers into the charred trunk and hooked his other hand onto a branch.

Looking down, he realized he had jumped more than 4 meters. At that moment, he felt even more strongly that he felt himself slipping into that Ryskar skin.

Climbing in small leaps and clinging to the sparse, thick branches, he soon reached the top.

Soon he was looking down on most of the forest from above... and could also see what lay where the forest ended.

"Bro, it looks like hanging around that cat’s rubbing off on you..." Noir watched from afar as his invisible figure surveyed the area from the treetop.

"Sofien, send Noir the feed from my helmet. There’s something I don’t get... What the hell am I looking at?"

As he climbed higher, despite his rapid breathing, it became easier to breathe. For some reason, the thick atmosphere of dread was less intense here... But the sounds reaching him, on the contrary, grew louder.

"Zoom in... God."

Zooming in on the visor’s image, as if using binoculars, something truly unusual came into view.

Beyond the forest, arranged in several concentric circles from largest to smallest, were red torches. The radius of the largest circle was several hundred meters.

The circles led to what was in the center... It was something resembling a round pool several dozen meters across. Its surface was adorned with some kind of patterns, but he couldn’t make them out.

This pool was about half full. Of blood.

"...Is this the place where the ritual is supposed to take place?"

"Probably," Sofien replied. "Dude in the mask, keep a constant eye on the feed from Nobody’s helmet and stay alert. Your part is about to begin."

"Got it, boss," he replied, not sounding too thrilled.

Mr. Nobody lingered at the top of the tree for a little while longer. Some things seemed strange to him. For example, the blood in the pool was perfectly clean, with no floating limbs, bones, or anything like that.

"And where are all these creatures? Why isn’t there a single one here?"

"Because that’s our plan—to arrive a couple of hours before everything starts," Sofien replied.

"So the ritual hasn’t started yet?"

"No."

Despite her answer, he frowned. Even though everything within a kilometer seemed clear, something still bothered him...

"Bro, we should hurry..."

"Noir, you can hear those sounds better than I can, right? What do they sound like?"

"Sounds? Hmm..." Noir seemed to be thinking, trying to listen. "It sounds like... what was in the AVI? That’s it, it’s music."

"...Music." He finally understood what his suspicion had been hinting at.

The sounds playing in the distance reminded him of the pre-party warm-up before a disco. A bloody disco.

That thought sat wrong with him.

...

Finally, he had made it completely through the forest, and the red lights were already in front of him. Noir walked behind him, keeping a safe distance.

The feeling of dread and inexplicable fear seemed to have intensified to the limit.

In this tense moment, he had almost begun to forget that he was supposed to be watching Noir and figuring out if he was the hunter.

"...Yeah, that’s definitely music." He sighed. "Sofien, I’m cutting your feed. Noir—close your eyes until I call out. Don’t try anything. I’ll know."

"Is that really necessary?" Sofien muttered skeptically into his helmet.

"Come on, what I haven’t seen out there..."

"It’s mandatory, and you agreed to these terms when you hired me for this job."

"...In that case, don’t take too long," Sofien replied.

He nodded. Not daring to go further without it, he began forming a star shape with his hands at his chest and used the Guiding Star.

...

He was lucky the sky hadn’t clouded over, and the process went without interruption.

He asked the little star to show him what was going to happen here and how he could remain unnoticed... And what he saw horrified him.

After a while, entities dressed in costumes similar to the one Sofien wore would gather in all these circles. They also wore strange headdresses with something resembling three clown pom-poms. Only these things didn’t dangle; they had a distinct shape and sat firmly on their heads. He couldn’t make out the faces of these creatures.

The Fool Baals, in his vision, filled all the circles and began to dance, holding hands. There were many of them, perhaps more than a few dozen or even hundreds.

After finishing their dancing in groups, they took turns entering the pool. Those in the pool began to tear into one another, while the rest continued to dance.

Mr. Nobody was prepared for this, but he was still horrified.

After the vision ended, the little star showed him how he could calmly walk straight to the pool before all those creatures appeared.

That gave him a measure of confidence.

"Haah... Thanks." He sighed and thanked the little star floating in front of him.

She visibly ran out of steam, and her glow faded.

As usual, she leaned against his cheek... and then suddenly began flying in front of his face, pointing behind him.

"...Are you talking about that person behind me? Noir."

She twitched, mimicking a nod. It seemed she was hinting that something might be wrong with him.

What was remarkable was that he hadn’t seen him at all in the visions. Having already gained some understanding of this ability, he realized that the little star could only show him one path. Perhaps success was possible when Noir wasn’t around and couldn’t stop him?

In any case, it only gave his suspicions a reason to return.

"..." The little star dissolved in his chest, and the glow coming down on him from the sky vanished completely.

He let Sofien connect to his suit again and called out to Noir, keeping his hand on his revolver at the ready.

"...All clear. If we can get this done before those creatures show up, everything will go as planned," he reported.

Sofien gave the go-ahead and told them to start.

A couple of minutes later, Noir’s dark figure became visible in the woods behind him.

"Hey, so how’d it go, bro? Did you pull off your little secret act?" a voice asked from behind him.

He had his back to him, and the expression beneath his mask was rather grim.

Could it be? Was Noir really going to betray him? But why? What had he done to him?

With every step echoing behind him, the sense of dread intensified, sending his thoughts racing back and forth. In an atmosphere like this, it’s much easier to do something you’ll later regret.

Or maybe he was just overthinking it... He had to find out.

"Brother?" Noir had practically caught up to him, standing to his side.

"You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask. Why..." He barely glanced at him, about to ask... why he had no shadow. Against the backdrop of the torches, it should be even more visible. But at the last moment, he changed his mind and altered the question. "If Kuronuma can sense the Fool Baals, then are you capable of that too?"

N-no, consider it a privilege of the elder brothers. The Fool Baals could sense the Dirty Baals, but the Dirty Baals couldn’t sense them.

"I see, then..."

He faltered as his gaze fell downward. At that moment, he followed his own train of thought.

’Noir doesn’t have a shadow... Then what is that?’ Against the backdrop of the torches, a dark silhouette flickered across the floor. ’And why, when I looked back into the forest, did I clearly see his figure? H-he should be... invisible.’

"Nobody! Nobody, do you hear me?! I’m telling you, look at Noir right now—there was something strange on your camera!" Sofien’s voice had been shouting in his helmet for some time.

"..." With a sinking heart, he slowly turned his head.

"Brother?"

Noir’s innocent question rang out as he looked at the wide, toothy maw spread wide in a grin.

The Fool Baal was licking his lips, hanging off the back of the invisible Noir.