Apocalypse Villainess? Nah, I'm Nice

It was four days later when Lucian arrived in Southreach.

When The Guard saw his car, they showed no signs of welcome. Instead, their eyes were filled with suspicion.

Lucian saw this crystal clear.

He ground his teeth and sneered, then hopped out of the car and sat on the hood. “I’m the special envoy from Bloodfall United City!” he announced. “Go ask your City Lord if she’s going to receive me or not!”

After a short wait, the city gates opened. But it wasn’t Maisie Joyce who greeted him; it was Keith Preston.

Lucian hadn’t seen him in a while, and Keith Preston looked terribly haggard, with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks.

When he saw Lucian, his gaze was so fervent he looked as if he’d just seen his savior. “Lucian! Quick, get in! What took you so long? Ugh! The men below are clueless, please don’t take it to heart! This whole situation is a mess…”

Lucian was taken aback.

‘Hasn’t this old guy always been wary of me, always found me disagreeable?’

‘What’s gotten into him today?’

Keith Preston waved for the members of The Guard who had followed him out to turn back, then squeezed into the passenger seat of Lucian’s car and urged him to drive.

The corner of Lucian’s mouth twitched. He drove through the city gates, expertly heading toward the Citadel. He tried to hold his tongue, but finally, he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What happened to Maisie Joyce?”

Keith Preston hesitated, then sighed. “You’ll know when you see her. She’s… not doing well right now…”

Lucian froze, then pressed his lips into a tight line.

Southreach had been severely damaged during the recent Vortex disaster.

But a good deal of time had passed since then. Lucian had assumed the city would have returned to an orderly state—at least on the surface. To his surprise, while some houses had been rebuilt on the vast, empty plots of land, many people were still living in tents, disheveled and grimy. People sat or squatted by the roadside, clutching small bundles and staring at his car with vacant eyes, like soulless husks of their former selves.

Lucian’s face darkened. ‘What in the world is going on? Has it really been this long, and they still haven’t taken care of the citizens?!’

He was about to demand an explanation, but a thought to his own status made him close his mouth again.

Keith Preston knew exactly what Lucian was thinking, but offered no explanation, only an awkward, dry laugh.

Lucian let out a frustrated sigh and stopped glancing his way.

As he continued to observe on the way, the Citadel was ironically the one place where follow-up repairs seemed decent. But even that only extended to patching up the half-destroyed buildings; the empty plots of land remained bare.

Lucian felt that, from the looks of everything, Southreach had poured all of its Power since the Vortex disaster into trying to stop the formation of Bloodfall United City. Internal reconstruction and pacifying the citizens, on the other hand, had been utterly neglected!

The thought made his heart sink even further.

Following Keith Preston’s directions, he discovered that Maisie Joyce was no longer living in her original bedroom.

‘Ah, right. That room was half new, half old—it had obviously been destroyed.’

‘So she must be in one of the buildings in the back, then?’

But as they passed them, Keith Preston still didn’t stop.

‘Any further and we’ll be in a corner of the Citadel’s rear courtyard!’ Lucian’s hands silently clenched into fists. He had a very bad feeling about this.

‘As expected…’

The reality seemed even worse than he had imagined.

Lucian’s gaze was heavy as he stared at an entrance in the ground leading to a basement. “Keith Preston,” he said, his words slow and deliberate, “what is the meaning of this?”

Keith Preston gave a bitter, self-mocking smile. “I thought you all would have heard some news. It seems the spies in Southreach were cleaned out quite thoroughly this time…”

Something stirred in Lucian’s mind.

‘No, our agents from Southreach did report back. Just a few days ago.’

‘I’d meant to ask them about the situation, but they left very quickly. They must have only found a brief opportunity to pass on their intelligence.’

‘It’s just that they reported to Marcus Monroe.’

‘So I didn’t go asking questions.’

‘So that’s how it was…’

‘Marcus Monroe must have known something. That’s why he said what he did. It was all to get me to make this trip!’

A sudden, intense wave of irritation washed over him. He grabbed Keith Preston, shoved him toward the stairs leading down into the basement, and snarled, “Enough bullshit! Talk as we walk!”

Keith Preston sighed, turned, and started walking down.

His somber voice soon echoed through the tunnel. “I advised the City Lord to kill Leo Joyce before, but she didn’t listen. Things were already what they were, so why keep him alive? And what do you think happened? Shortly after the Vortex disaster, Leo Joyce mutated.”

“Mutated? From the Zombie Virus?”

“Probably. In any case, the situation at the time… everyone was terrified. He snapped through countless layers of chains. He actually smashed right through the thick prison door… After he escaped, he ran around like a madman, screaming ‘May, come back!’ His voice had become strange and twisted; it was bone-chilling to hear. He tore to shreds any living person he passed. The City Lord gathered a large number of people and finally cornered him. It was only then that we saw it—the mask on his face had fallen off, and that face… it wasn’t human anymore!”

“His eyes bulged like glass marbles, glowing with a blue light. His nose had become a blackish mass, and a fissure had split his upper lip into three parts. He was hunched over… he looked just like one of the Mutant Beasts from outside. The moment he saw me and the City Lord, he became extremely agitated and lunged at us, heedless of his own life. All those people couldn’t stop him. Seeing how critical the situation was, the City Lord used herself as bait, letting the others flank him from the sides. In the end, we finally managed to kill him!”

Lucian stopped in his tracks. His throat felt like it was suddenly clogged with a sponge, and his voice came out raspy. “And… how is she?”

Keith Preston didn’t answer directly. Instead, he tilted his head back, sniffled, and said, “Lucian, you weren’t there, so you might not understand, but at the time, we were all seeing red from the mutated Leo Joyce’s rampage. He was our former City Lord! Even though he wasn’t anymore, many people still respected him. He had led us to kill countless Zombies and saved so many lives! But while we all held him in that regard, he turned into… that. He tore apart his former comrades just like that, and… and he ate them… I don’t even know if he was conscious. The people he’d known the longest were the ones he was cruelest to—so cruel that all we could do was hate him! The truth is, he probably wanted to tear me apart most of all, but the City Lord pushed me away. She saved me. She saved everyone. But she herself…”

“She’s just inside. Go and see. It was what she herself requested. We… forget it, saying anything else would be dishonest. The truth is, we were scared, so we just went along with it…”

“Anyway, come back up after you’ve seen her. I’ll wait here.”

“I don’t have any other motive, it’s just… I just can’t face her…”

Lucian clenched his jaw, shoved Keith aside, and walked toward the heavy metal door alone.

When he used nearly all his strength to wrench the door open, he suddenly heard a soft, muffled voice from within.

“Is… that…? Don’t… don’t… come…”