The Yellow-Haired Villain in Soaring Phoenix's Novels Also Desires Happiness

After passing through the narrow corridor, the space ahead suddenly opened up. A room filled with every kind of fabric and tailoring tool appeared before them.

It was quite large—larger even than many famous merchant boutiques.

An turned to look around. Magic stones had been embedded into the walls, extravagantly expensive for a place like this. Though the quality was not especially high, they were more than enough to brightly illuminate the entire room.

The moment they entered, the old woman quickly snuffed out the oil lamp in her hand. In a place like this, open flame was taboo.

“What colors does the young lady like?”

“Black. White.”

“Uh... but that gentleman earlier...”

“Young Master,” An corrected. “Master hasn’t retired yet.”

“Oh, right, Young Master, Young Master.”

The old woman forced a smile.

“But that young master specifically said not to use colors that are too stiff.”

“...Most of the clothes I wear are only black and white.”

The black robe she had used for disguise slipped away, revealing beneath it the dignified black-and-white nun’s habit accented with holy white.

In a sense, the outfit was rather similar to a maid uniform, which was why she wore it so naturally.

“What a pity. With your qualities, young lady, you should match beautifully with many colors.”

The old woman opened a wall cabinet. Inside were her finest fabrics, many of them even reserved for the royal family. If she had not once worked inside Saint Haze Palace and still retained a few connections, she never would have been able to obtain such precious materials.

But since this was a guest recommended by the mysterious Dark Emperor himself—and because her own enthusiasm had been stirred—even the most precious fabrics had to be brought out.

“How about this pale violet fabric as the main material? Of course, there would still be all kinds of decorative accents added later.”

The old woman took out a small sample swatch and held it against An’s body.

The more expensive the fabric, the simpler its raw color tended to be before tailoring. There would not even be unnecessary patterns on it.

Only in that way could the characteristics of the fabric itself truly be displayed, while also allowing the tailor’s own skill to fully shine through in the embellishments added afterward.

For example, this pale violet created a striking contrast against the girl’s skin. Combined with An’s already rare dignified temperament, the elegant color emphasized that quality even further.

“I... don’t like it.”

An instinctively rejected colors that were too eye-catching. To her, the best colors were those that allowed her to quietly and unobtrusively follow behind Young Master.

But the old woman had spent many years surviving in this district. She was sharp enough to already grasp An’s weak point after only a few minutes of conversation.

“You still have to choose carefully. This is your young master’s order, isn’t it?”

“...All right.”

Naturally, An had no way to resist Young Master’s orders.

She picked up the small piece of fabric and rubbed it lightly between her fingertips.

“Trosser silk?”

“Oh? The young lady recognizes it?”

“Madam owns a formal dress made from this fabric. The former head maid personally sewed it. I learned a little while watching nearby.”

“Since you understand it, that makes things easier. Then you should know how precious this material is.”

An nodded gently.

“But I still don’t really like this color. Please change it.”

“This red one?”

“Too flamboyant.”

“This goose-yellow one?”

“I’m not a child.”

“Then... let me look again.”

After being rejected over and over, most people—even Tyron himself, the Beast of Posis—would probably have provoked the old woman’s temper by now.

Yet she remained unusually patient.

Partly because of the client’s status, yes, but more importantly, the closer she looked, the more she realized that whether it was temperament, appearance, or figure, An was a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece.

A piece of raw jade that had never yet seen the light.

And what she wanted was to polish it and bring forth the brilliance it deserved.

Of course, the most important thing was whether the other party accepted it.

“How about this wine-red fabric? It’s also Trosser silk, but wine-red is much more restrained while still keeping its elegance.”

As a professional, even before the fabric was worn, the old woman had already vividly imagined how An would look in it.

Excellent.

“You would definitely suit it. This color matches you perfectly! Especially your eyes—it complements your eye color beautifully!”

The old woman sounded genuinely delighted.

This was by far the most satisfying color she had found so far.

“I...”

An still hesitated.

She had never worn such vivid colors before, nor had she ever imagined what such colors would look like on herself.

The usually capable and composed personal maid unexpectedly seemed somewhat at a loss at a moment like this.

“I want to ask Young Master.”

“Ask him, hurry and ask your young mas—hm? Speaking of which, where did your young master go?”

Only then did the old woman finally realize that only she and An remained in the room.

That young master from earlier... seemed not to have followed them inside.

“Young Master...”

An turned and looked back toward the direction they had come from.

“He said he was going to meet an old acquaintance. He told us to continue without worrying about him.”

...

...

“Brother, got a light?”

At the end of the street, Muen wandered casually into a secluded corner.

Several street thugs were playing cards there, occasionally bursting into vulgar laughter. The stakes were apparently quite stimulating—probably something like who would be paying for tonight’s visit to a prostitute.

So when Muen casually walked over asking for a light, everyone froze for a moment.

“Who the hell are you supposed to be?” the leading brute glared, clearly annoyed at having his conversation interrupted.

“Don’t be so cold. We’re both blond, aren’t we? What’s wrong with borrowing a light between fellow yellow-hairs?”

Muen pointed at his own blond hair, then at the other man’s obviously dyed hair, acting as familiar as though they were brothers from the same parents.

“Fuck your mother, you’re the yellow-hair! Your whole family’s yellow-haired! This is luxury gold! Cost me a whole thousand Aimier to dye it!” the brute roared.

“Luxury gold? That ugly?”

Muen blinked in surprise.

He genuinely had not been able to tell.

“You looking to die?!”

Feeling mocked, the brute immediately stood up and grabbed the spiked club beside him.

But before he could do anything, he saw the arrogant blond bastard take something out and casually flash it in front of his eyes.

“That’s...”

The brute instantly froze stiff.

Fortunately, he had not completely lost his mind. He hurriedly stopped the eager subordinates behind him.

“Lord Tyron’s emblem?”

“Good. Since you recognize it, things are easy. Unlike the old woman earlier, my own name probably wouldn’t work very well with people like you, so I had to borrow Tyron’s instead.”

Muen smiled.

“So... can I borrow a light now?”

“O-of course!”

The brute immediately lowered his head and handed over his small ignition device.

It was a mechanical creation very similar to a lighter from Muen’s previous world. Friction against a sparkstone created sparks that ignited oil-soaked tinder. Even the appearance was similar—small, square, with a scantily dressed busty beauty painted on the casing just like so many lighters from his old world.

Muen’s eyelid twitched.

For a moment, he suddenly did not want to touch it anymore.

But after glancing at the “tasteful” alternatives handed over by the more perceptive men—cute little girls, erotic imagery, furry beast-ear beauties...

...all right, busty beauty it was.

At least that one was normal and not criminal.

“Next, I’d like a little peace and quiet.”

With a sharp click, Muen struck the sparkstone. A flame mixed with orange-red and faint blue flickered to life.

“So could you help me... clear the area for a while?”

“O-of course!”

The brute did not even question him.

He immediately agreed, then led his underlings away.

Very quickly, an invisible force began spreading through the street. The surrounding flow of people visibly decreased, while the shops on both sides hurriedly shut their doors.

Before long, the once-crowded black market had become empty and silent, like a ghost market.

“Tyron’s control over this place runs deeper than I expected... Is this also because of what happened before?”

Muen raised a brow in surprise.

He wondered how large Tyron’s gang had already grown. Had he unified the entire western district’s underworld yet?

Still, that had nothing to do with him anymore.

If he personally involved himself in gang disputes now, it would honestly just be bullying.

Muen smiled, completely unconcerned by the “power” Tyron displayed. He wandered around casually for a bit, selected the most beautiful flower from a florist shop that had not yet fully closed, flamboyantly tucked it into the breast pocket of his clothes, slipped payment through the crack in the door, then returned to his original spot and continued playing with the lighter in his hand.

The flame burned steadily.

Yet Muen did not use it to light anything.

He did not smoke, after all.

So he merely watched the flame until—

The fire suddenly shook violently.

Crack.

Muen lowered his eyes.

One of his arms had begun twisting into an utterly grotesque shape.

As though invisible giant hands had seized both ends of it...

...and violently twisted.

Blood splattered. Flesh tore apart. Bones shattered.

The horrifying sight unfolded right before his eyes. The instantaneous agony was enough to make an ordinary person faint on the spot.

But Muen’s expression remained calm.

No—not merely calm.

The corner of his lips even curled into a smile filled with strange meaning.

“So... you finally came?”

The moment the words fell—

Black flames seeped from the gaps in his flesh, rapidly covering the twisted arm. And when the flames receded, the arm had already completely returned to normal.

As though the grotesque distortion from moments earlier had never existed.

“Hiss—”

Someone hidden in the darkness behind him sharply sucked in a breath.

Muen ignored it completely and casually tossed the lighter in his hand away.

The lighter illuminated the darkness as it flew through the air, the flame atop it somehow refusing to go out.

At last, it crossed quite a distance before landing in a hidden street corner.

“What the hell is that?”

Demon Child, who had been preparing to twist the second arm of the puppet in his hands, lowered his head blankly and stared at the lighter on the ground.

The busty beauty painted on the casing had already been deformed from the impact, yet the flame still burned steadily.

An ordinary lighter.

An ordinary flame.

Harmless enough that it could not even singe the corner of his clothes.

But suddenly—

The tiny flame violently flickered, as though someone had blown on it.

Yet instead of extinguishing, the tiny flame rapidly transformed from orange-yellow and pale blue into pure black.

“Not good!”

Demon Child’s face changed instantly.

At that moment, he finally realized that the lighter itself had merely been a distraction.

The truly lethal thing was the black flame that had somehow been infused into it beforehand.

“Ghoul!”

Caught completely unprepared, Demon Child had no chance whatsoever of escaping the black flame’s range. He could only instinctively scream.

Fortunately—

Since they had already obtained detailed intelligence, they had long been wary of Muen Campbell’s strange black flames and had prepared countermeasures in advance.

The instant Demon Child shouted, Ghoul had already lunged forward.

He slammed Demon Child aside, grabbed the lighter burning with black flame in one hand, and thrust the other directly into his own chest.

The black flames instantly expanded, rapidly swallowing Ghoul whole.

But in the final moment, a still-beating heart was thrown out.

Ghoul’s body was devoured completely by the black flames, yet the heart detached unharmed and dropped onto the ground.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The bloody heart beat with tremendous force, pumping huge amounts of blood from its arteries and staining the ground crimson.

Only a few seconds later, an equally blood-soaked figure crawled out from the blood, grabbed the oversized heart, opened his mouth, and swallowed it back down in a grotesque motion like a snake devouring prey whole.

“Fuck.”

The reborn Ghoul wiped the blood from his face, visibly irritated.

“We just started fighting and I already burned through one heart. What kind of bullshit is this?”

“He was already on guard.”

Demon Child shouted furiously:

“We should’ve come earlier! All this stalling just gave him time to prepare!”

“Shut up. Without preparation, you’d already be dead.”

A nauseating fishy stench spread through the entire street, as though the place had suddenly become an early-morning seafood market.

Wrapped in revealing white gauze, Donna twisted her hips as she emerged from the shadows.

“Quite surprising, Muen Campbell. Your reaction speed is even faster than I expected.”

Donna examined Muen carefully, greed and disgust alternating across her seemingly beautiful face.

She hated humans.

Yet after eating enough of them, she had oddly begun finding them flavorful in a different way.

Was this how humans felt about fermented herring?

And the one before her now...

...seemed to be some kind of collector’s edition fermented herring.

Worth tasting.

“No, no, no. The one who’s surprised should be me. It’s one thing that you survived the Judgment Archbishop personally hunting you down, but you actually still dared to come...”

Muen blinked, then suddenly understood.

“Oh... right.”

The timeline had restarted.

These people no longer remembered what had happened before.

No wonder.

For a moment, he had actually thought Donna’s octopus brain had finally snapped from being hunted too hard by the Judgment Archbishop.

“Sigh. I still have very important things to do right now, so if possible, could you surrender quietly and stop wasting my time? Maybe then I could even plead with the Judgment Archbishop and let you die a little more painlessly.”

Muen spread his hands helplessly.

“That should be my line.”

Donna licked her red lips.

“If you surrender obediently, I’ll treat you gently.”

“So arrogant...”

Muen sighed emotionally.

“This isn’t arrogance. It’s confidence.”

Donna raised her chin and looked down at him.

“Muen Campbell, that black flame is your greatest trump card, isn’t it? Although your sudden counterattack caught us slightly off guard, the moment you used your trump card from the beginning, you already lost every path to victory.”

“Oh? You’re that certain?”

“Of course.”

Donna sneered.

“This is the confidence excellent intelligence gives me!”

“...”

God damn it, intelligence and information again.

If your intelligence network is really that incredible, then what about the one who died stealing homes before? And the cat-loving guy? Did you know about them too?

“How nice.”

Thinking of that, Muen could not help gazing sorrowfully at the sky while praying to the Goddess:

“If only every villain in this world had intelligence work as outstanding as your Salvation Society.”

“...Hm?”

Muen’s reaction left Donna slightly puzzled.

Was he acting too calm?

But the confusion did not last long.

Because with Donna’s superhuman intellect, she quickly reached a conclusion:

Muen Campbell’s composure was most likely just forced bluffing.

In reality, he was probably panicking badly, merely trying to make them cautious and buy himself time.

“How laughable. That outdated trick of pretending confidence to scare people has long gone out of style!”

“Attack!”

Donna was always cautious in her actions, so she had no intention of giving Muen Campbell more time to talk.

The moment she confirmed he would not surrender, she immediately issued the order.

And the others had long been waiting to strike!

“You dared make a fool out of me—I’m going to snap every bone in your body!”

Demon Child attacked first once again.

He rapidly twisted the limbs of the puppet in his hands. His face turned pale as he paid an even greater price, but the speed of his twisting sharply increased.

In barely the blink of an eye, one arm and one leg were twisted apart in succession.

Crack. Crack.

The sickening sound of flesh tearing rang out.

One of Muen’s arms and one of his legs twisted and broke in response.

Although such injuries were not fatal to a warrior, whether he immediately regenerated using his monstrous recovery ability or dodged while dragging around a crippled body, it would undoubtedly slow his movements.

Simply put, against true powerhouses, the terrifying part of Demon Child’s strange ability was not its destructive power—

It was control.

At this level of battle, even the slightest opening could decide victory or defeat.

And so—

“Heh, I wonder what the heart of a duke’s son tastes like. I absolutely have to try it!”

“What a sin, what a sin... Why won’t Your Excellency surrender peacefully?”

Scarlet killing intent swept outward.

Immense magical power surged.

Almost simultaneously with Demon Child’s attack, Ghoul and Atel charged Muen Campbell from both sides.

Ghoul possessed terrifying close-combat ability. Once entangled by him, even a late-stage fifth-rank warrior could be worn down to death alive.

As for Atel’s gravity magic, it was even more horrifying. Aside from its long casting preparation, both its control and destructive force ranked among the best of its tier.

Of course, Donna still did not consider even that fully reliable.

After all, this was someone personally marked for death by the Holy Lord himself.

So besides those two—

“I don’t like bullying people with numbers, but orders are orders.”

At some unknown moment, faint mist had already enveloped the entire district.

But where would fog come from on a clear autumn afternoon?

So it was not fog at all.

It was poison.

Deadly toxin capable of paralyzing even magical beasts had silently filled the entire area. Within that poisonous mist, the smoky-eyed woman Shaman moved lightly, thrusting the thin sword in her hand toward Muen’s back like a venomous serpent.

Killing intent came from every direction.

Boom!

The ground throughout the entire district split apart violently.

Even before the attacks fully landed, the resulting shockwaves alone were enough to shake heaven and earth.

Donna’s deep, oceanlike pupils reflected the scene before her.

She watched Muen standing motionless, seemingly having abandoned resistance altogether. Yet she never relaxed her vigilance in the slightest. She merely waited for the others’ combined assault to weaken him before personally delivering the final strike—wrapping Muen Campbell in her beautiful entanglement until he lost all remaining ability to resist.

It would happen.

No matter how she looked at it, this ambush was flawless and airtight.

Thanks to their thorough intelligence gathering, the most troublesome thing about Muen Campbell—that black flame—had already been deliberately neutralized.

First cripple his mobility, then suppress him completely in the shortest time possible.

That was the perfect strategy Donna had envisioned.

She had simulated it countless times.

No matter how she ran the scenario, the outcome of this operation could only be one thing.

Victory.

An overwhelming victory.

“Regret it, Muen Campbell! Regret your arrogance and conceit!”

As the outcome she had foreseen approached reality, increasingly pungent slime began leaking uncontrollably from the roots of Donna’s thighs.

She longed for it.

Longed to wrap Muen Campbell’s entire body in her own sticky fluids...

“How tragic...”

Yet facing this hopeless encirclement, Muen responded only with a pitying sigh.

Dong.

An ancient, distant bell rang beside Donna’s ear.

“Hm?”

Donna’s consciousness instantly fell into a dazed state.

She could clearly feel a mysterious power spreading outward, yet she could neither identify its nature nor stop it.

The daze felt long.

As though an eternity had passed.

Yet it also felt short, because her senses told her it lasted only an instant.

But the scene before her suddenly changed.

Like an image projected by illusion magic that had abruptly had an extremely important section forcibly cut out.

One moment ago, Demon Child, Ghoul, Atel, and Shaman had all been attacking Muen Campbell together. Victory had been within reach.

The next moment—

Ghoul, Atel, and Shaman were coughing blood as they flew backward.

Demon Child remained focused on snapping the second leg of his puppet, but the instant he twisted it, one of his own legs suddenly twisted and shattered instead.

He screamed in agony.

Only then did he realize that at some unknown point...

...the puppet in his hands had turned to face himself.

Nothing had developed according to Donna’s predictions.

The attackers had suddenly been defeated and thrown back in miserable condition, while Muen Campbell—their target—still stood there smiling calmly and leisurely.

Even the corner of his clothing seemed not to have moved, let alone suffered injury.

“What... exactly happened?”

Donna could not stop herself from falling into confusion.

“Five seconds...”

Muen flexed and closed the fingers of both hands, carefully savoring the result that had exceeded even his own expectations.

“So against anyone below the Crowned level, I can already reach this degree now? With this much time, it feels like I could’ve even built your graves while I was at it.”

“You—!”

Donna exploded with rage instantly.

She still had not recovered from her confusion, nor understood how Muen Campbell had defeated those people.

But she understood one thing clearly.

Contempt.

Naked contempt.

A human had actually looked down on her?

No.

She absolutely could not accept that outcome!

“This must be some hidden protection your duke father left for you!”

Cracks split open across Donna’s pale skin as grotesque thick tentacles burst forth instantly.

“I refuse to believe you can use it again!”

“Heh. Even if I really can’t use it again, so what? At this point, you still haven’t even noticed something that obvious. Do you really think you can do anything to me?”

Muen chuckled softly.

“Noticed what?”

Donna froze again.

Muen shook his head, already no longer interested in explaining.

Instead, he suddenly took the flower from his chest pocket, held it up, and dropped to one knee.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Hm?”

Donna’s octopus-like head tilted sideways in growing confusion.

Was this bastard begging her for mercy?

“Nope.”

But the idea had only just formed before it was denied.

Because accompanied by a lazy response, a cool finger suddenly pressed lightly against her neck.

An overwhelming pressure descended instantly, making every one of her tentacles tremble uncontrollably.

“Could you move aside, ugly octopus?”

That gentle voice said softly:

“You’re blocking my adorable junior from giving me flowers.”