The Villain Professor's Second Chance

The village of Briarhollow was cloaked in an unsettling quiet. The air hung heavy with the scent of scorched wood and damp earth, the remnants of past horrors lingering like ghosts. The few villagers brave enough to venture outside watched from shadowed doorways, their eyes hollow with fear. Every step Kael took on the uneven dirt path felt like walking into a graveyard where the dead still whispered beneath the soil.

The village elder, a frail man with a back bent by age and burden, guided them through the ruined outskirts. His breath was ragged, his voice a soft rasp against the wind. "They come at night," he murmured, his fingers trembling as they pointed toward the remains of a barn. "Not animals. Not bandits. Something else."

Kael squinted through the mist, his gaze landing on deep claw marks gouged into the wooden beams. Not just scratches—gashes. He swallowed hard. "Liora?"

Liora knelt beside the marks, tracing a fingertip along the jagged edges. His expression remained unreadable, but the flicker in his sharp eyes spoke volumes. "Not natural," he muttered. "Look at the burn pattern along the grooves. Magic was used."

Kael's stomach tightened. He turned to the elder. "You said you've seen someone before the attacks?"

The elder nodded, his gaze drifting toward the charred fields beyond the village's edge. "A figure. Tall, thin. Stands at the edge of the fields at dusk, watching. Then the creatures come."

Liora's lips curled into a smirk, but there was no humor in it. "Sounds like we've got ourselves a puppet master."

A low voice interrupted them. "I saw him too."

Kael turned to see an older man leaning against a broken fence, his arm wrapped in a crude bandage. His face was lined with scars, his eyes clouded with exhaustion. The way he held himself, stiff yet battle-worn, told Kael he wasn't just some frightened villager—this man had fought before.

The hunter winced as he shifted, gripping the wooden beam of the ruined fence for support. "Barely got away last night."

Kael stepped closer, careful not to startle him. "Tell me everything."

The hunter exhaled slowly, his breath visible in the cool air. His fingers traced the frayed edge of his bandage absentmindedly, as if reliving the moment. "They move in the shadows. Not like wolves or bears. Too fast, too precise. Too smart." His voice dropped lower, thick with unease. "I shot one. Arrow went straight through it like mist. But the moment the figure disappeared, the creatures did too. Just… vanished."

Kael felt his pulse quicken. "Vanished?" he repeated, frowning. "Like they weren't real?"

The hunter's eyes flickered with something close to fear. "Like they were never really there to begin with."

Liora muttered a curse under his breath. "That's not natural."

The elder looked at Kael. "They've been appearing every night. At first, we thought it was just another roaming beast, but when the livestock started disappearing—when the land itself started to change—" He gestured at the scorched fields, at the claw marks raked deep into the wooden beams of homes and barns. "It's not just hunger driving these things. It's something else."

Kael turned to Liora, whose gaze was fixed on the darkened treeline beyond the village. His fingers drummed idly against the hilt of his dagger, his mind clearly working through the pieces.

"A summoner, then," Liora mused. "Or something worse."

The hunter shifted, lowering his voice. "He doesn't just summon them. He controls them. I saw it." His grip on the fence tightened. "The way they moved—it wasn't random. It was like a pack, but worse. They didn't just hunt. They followed orders."

Kael clenched his jaw. If that was true, then this wasn't just a matter of dealing with beasts. This was deliberate. Someone was pulling the strings.

The elder hesitated, his fingers twisting the fabric of his cloak. "You're going after him, aren't you?"

Kael nodded. "That's why we're here."

The elder's eyes darkened, his voice quiet but firm. "Then may the gods watch over you." Your next chapter is on My Virtual Library Empire

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The trees loomed taller the deeper they ventured into the woods, their skeletal branches tangled like claws reaching for the sky. The moon barely pierced through the canopy, its pale light struggling against the unnatural darkness clinging to the forest. The deeper they walked, the heavier the air became—thick with something unseen, pressing against their lungs like an invisible weight.

Kael swallowed against the unease creeping up his spine. He had felt something like this before, back in the mines. A faint hum, an unnatural presence that buzzed beneath his skin like the charge before a lightning strike. It made his fingers itch, his breath shallow. Every step forward felt like stepping into the maw of something waiting.

Liora came to an abrupt stop, holding up a hand. His body was taut, every muscle sharpened into a blade ready to strike. His sharp gaze flicked ahead, eyes narrowing in the gloom.

"We're close."

Kael followed his line of sight, and there it was.

Nestled between the twisted roots of dead trees stood an abandoned cabin, its walls warped and bloated with decay. The wooden planks had rotted away in places, leaving jagged holes that bled darkness. The roof sagged inward, its skeletal frame barely holding together, as if the structure itself recoiled from whatever taint seeped through the ground.

Kael's stomach churned. The land surrounding the cabin was worse.

Symbols had been carved deep into the earth, stretching out in a jagged, tangled web of arcane markings. Some were fresh, their edges still raw, while others had faded, their power lingering like ghosts trapped in the dirt. The same symbols they had seen in the mines. They pulsed faintly, whispering with residual magic, the glow sickly and uneven, like a dying ember refusing to go out.

Something had been performed here. Something still breathing beneath the surface.

Kael's fingers tightened around his dagger. "This is it."

A voice drifted from inside the cabin. Low, muttering—words twisting and curling through the rotted walls like smoke, barely coherent but laced with something fevered.

Kael's skin prickled.

Liora didn't hesitate. He moved first, silent as a shadow, his steps weightless even on the brittle leaves littering the ground. Kael followed, mirroring his careful movements, weaving between the carved runes with deliberate steps.

They reached the doorway. The wood was swollen with moisture, splintered and warped, the frame barely holding together. Through the jagged opening, Kael caught sight of the figure inside.

A gaunt man crouched over a ritual circle, the glyphs within it shifting like liquid fire. His bony fingers twitched, flipping through the pages of a tome so worn its spine had nearly disintegrated. Dark vials lay scattered around him, their contents thick and viscous, glowing with a sickly hue.

Kael could barely make out his face from this angle, but what he saw made his stomach twist. His skin was sallow, stretched too tightly over sharp cheekbones. His hair hung in limp, greasy strands, and his lips moved feverishly as he whispered to himself.

Not normal.

Not sane.

The energy in the room was suffocating, thick with corruption.

Kael exhaled slowly, trying to steady himself, but his grip on his dagger remained tight.

Then Liora spoke, his voice low and edged with something colder than steel.

"Seyrik." Liora said, voice low and edged with something colder than steel.

The figure stiffened. Slowly, he turned, revealing a face hollowed by sleepless nights and madness. His sunken eyes flickered with an unsettling light. "Who…?" His gaze snapped to Liora, recognition flashing across his face. "You."

Kael frowned. "You know him?"

Liora didn't look away from Seyrik. "We've met."

Kael didn't miss the shift in Liora's tone—no teasing, no amusement. It was cold. Calculated. The kind of voice that didn't leave room for questions. The kind that spoke of a past tangled in something ugly.

Seyrik's lips pulled into a twisted grin. His gaunt features stretched too wide, and the dark circles beneath his eyes made him look almost corpse-like. "They threw me away. Cast me out. Said my work was 'dangerous.'" His voice dripped with mockery, but his eyes burned with something unhinged. "But they don't understand. I've seen the truth. I've touched the veil. I can reshape the world."

Kael's hand found the hilt of his dagger, his grip tightening. "You're the one behind the attacks."

Seyrik blinked, as if the question confused him. Then, he let out a hollow, breathy laugh, shaking his head. "Attacks?" His voice was light, almost amused. "No, no, no. This is progress. Evolution. You see only the destruction, but that's because you're still trapped in the old way of thinking. I take what is weak and make it strong."

Kael's stomach twisted. He knew that kind of belief—when someone was so deep in their own delusions that they couldn't see the devastation they left in their wake.

Liora's expression remained impassive, but his posture shifted subtly, his weight balancing over the balls of his feet. "You're playing god with forces you don't understand."

Seyrik's grin snapped into something sharper, something ugly. His eyes twitched. "Don't understand?" His voice rose, crackling with barely contained emotion. "You still don't see? I have spent years in the darkness, peeling back the layers of reality, unshackling life from the chains of its limitations!" His breath came ragged now, his fingers twitching erratically. "They called me a heretic. A madman. But I have seen what lies beyond the veil, Liora! I have touched it! And I—" He broke off into a wheezing laugh, his whole body trembling with something like ecstasy.

Kael felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. The air around them had changed. It was thick. Heavy. A pulse of something unseen crackled through the walls of the cabin, like static before a storm.

Seyrik's eyes darted between them, his grin stretching impossibly wide. "You don't believe me," he whispered. "You think I'm just another deluded fool." He tilted his head, and the candlelight flickered across his sunken features, casting deep shadows in the hollows of his face. "That's fine."

Kael took a step back.

Seyrik didn't move, but something about him had shifted. His very presence felt different, like he was no longer entirely in the room with them.

"You want proof," he whispered. "Fine."