The Return Of The Exiled Villain

The first cyclone left his hand with a sound like tearing cloth.

WHOOOSH!

Gray stepped off the line and let it eat a market stall instead. Wood, cloth, and a tray of bottled souls exploded into the alley.

The crowd made the noise Cael wanted.

”Stand still!” Cael snapped.

”...Don’t feel like it.”

The second cyclone came lower, raking the street at knee height.

Gray hopped the rim of it, landed on a broken crate, and felt the wind try to drag him back in.

Against a tired Peak Saint, it should have been enough to bully someone. Against Gray it was simply... annoying.

He dropped off the crate, walked through the leftover spin of air, and slapped Cael’s wrist aside before the third cyclone could finish forming.

SMACK!

The gathered energy burst in Cael’s own palm and scorched the embroidered cuff.

Cael stared at the burn as if the coat had betrayed him.

”You dare ruin House Veyth’s!”

Gray hit him in the stomach.

THUD!

”UJrghhk!!!”

Cael folded, coughed, and still had enough pride to send a knee up.

Gray turned his hip into it, took the glance on the same side the princess had already ruined, and shoved Cael into the wall.

The crest on the collar scraped stone.

A woman in the crowd laughed once and then covered her mouth. That laugh did more damage than the shove.

Cael’s face went ugly.

”Do not look at me like that!”

He stopped playing with wind.

The next attack was a spear of condensed Demonic Energy, directly aimed at Gray’s throat.

That one had intent.

Gray’s [Spirit Eyes] caught the line of it, and he still had to tilt his head because Cael, for all his noise, was still a realm above him on paper.

The spear kissed the air where his neck had been and punched a hole through the lantern behind him.

GLASS.

TINK!

[He is not exactly weak... but well. His battle experience... is just close to none.]

’Sloppy with backing,’ Gray answered inwardly, because he had already felt the other three auras at the mouth of the alley.

They had not stepped in yet, but from their auras alone, they were obviously some kind of bodyguards for this kid.

Seemingly noticing this, Cael wiped his mouth and smiled with blood on his teeth.

”You felt them?”

”I felt them before you spoke.”

”Then you should have knelt instead of dodging!”

Fwip!

Gray drew the rapier.

The street changed shape around that sound. People who had been watching for entertainment started backing toward shops.

Swoosh!

Cael flung both hands forward.

The cyclones returned, this time braided together into a wider cone.

Gray cut the first braid, let the second spin past his coat, and used Swap only when the third collapsed inward and tried to take his legs.

”[✧Swap✧]”

He appeared at Cael’s left shoulder and laid the rapier flat against the young demon’s neck, not cutting, just there.

”Leave.”

Cael’s answer was a burst of house arts from a ring on his finger. A barrier snapped up between throat and steel, bright with old inscriptions.

The rapier scraped it and did not pass.

’What the fuck?’

The ring flared again and shoved Gray back two steps. Cael used the space to shout a name that was clearly not a technique.

”Now!”

The alley mouth closed.

Three protectors stepped in as if the street had been theirs the whole time. The first was a tall woman with a glaive and an aura that sat firmly above the Monarch Realm.

The second was a heavy-set man whose presence felt like a wall.

The third wore no visible weapon, and the aura he was radiating was powerful, yet... it seemingly hid her power. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

Gray’s smile faded a little.

[Ah... There it is.]

’House Veyth did not send a jealous boy alone. They sent a jealous boy with a leash.’

The woman spoke first.

”Young Master. Step back.”

”I can take him!”

”You could not take a lantern.” Her eyes stayed on Gray.

”Incubus. You put hands on House Veyth’s interest. That ends here.”

Gray rolled his sore shoulder.

”She is not an interest for me, though... She is a person who bought me steak.”

The heavy man did not care for the distinction.

He stomped once, and the street tiles between them lifted.

A shockwave ran down the alley, strong enough to knock the remaining watchers off their feet.

BOOOOM!

Gray slid back, boots cutting sparks, and had to plant the rapier into the stone to keep from going into the wall.

Cael, behind them, found his courage again.

”Break his legs! I want him crawling out of the city!”

The quiet one moved.

Fwip!

A thin black needle of mana appeared between two fingers and vanished. Gray’s Spirit Eyes screamed late.

He twisted, and the needle still opened a line across his cheek, shallow and burning with a paralytic tinge.

He Nullified it before it spread.

[- 220 Soul Points]

The quiet man’s eyes narrowed, just slightly.

”He erased it.”

”Then stop playing,” the woman said.

She came with the glaive.

The first sweep was wide enough to take a cart in half.

Gray ducked it, cut at her knee, and found a house barrier there too, thinner than Cael’s ring but cleaner.

His blade sparked and slid. She used the slide, turned the shaft, and smashed the butt into his already damaged ribs.

CRACK!

Air left him.

THUMP!

He hit a shuttered door hard enough to leave a shape in the wood.

Cael laughed.

”Yes! That is what a stray deserves!”

”Pftu!”

Gray spat blood, stood, and stopped treating this like a single opponent.

The heavy man came next, both palms out, trying to pin him to the door with raw gravity-like pressure.

Seeing this, Gray dropped his weight, slipped the pin by moving toward the force instead of away, and slashed the man’s forearm.

The coat split.

The skin did not.

’Reinforced body... fuck.’

[Move! The quiet one is lining another needle!]

Gray knew.

He Swap-marked a hanging shop sign down the street and vanished as the second needle kissed the door where his neck had been.

”[✧Swap✧]”

He appeared under the sign, already running out.

The woman was faster than a Late Sovereign had any right to be in a narrow street.

The glaive came down the lane after him like a thrown gate.

Gray turned the corner into a side passage of crates and drying banners, heard the glaive eat the corner stone, and kept moving.

Cael’s voice followed, clearly furious.

”He is running! After him! Do not let an incubus make House Veyth look like!”

”Young Master, stay behind us,” the heavy man growled.

They did not listen to each other well.

That was the only opening Gray had.

He cut through a laundry line, kicked a stack of empty soul-cages into the passage, and used the noise to hide a second Swap onto a balcony rail two buildings over.

”[✧Swap✧]”

Fwoop!

Gray jumped down into a lower market lane.

A cyclone tore the balcony apart behind him.

WHOOOSH!

CRASH!

Splinters and tile rained into the street.

Demons screamed and scattered.

Cael had caught up enough to start throwing techniques again, each one bigger than the last, each one announcing exactly where he was.

”Face me!”

Gray did, for three seconds.

He let Cael see him, let the young master commit a wide blast down the lane, then stepped into a butcher’s doorway and let the blast eat hanging meat and bone hooks instead.

The woman arrived in the doorway’s frame a breath later, glaive already reversing for a thrust.

Gray caught the shaft with his off-hand, burned his palm doing it, and headbutted the space beside her visor so she would flinch rather than drop.

He was not going to win that grip as he only needed her point off-line.

He kicked a barrel of dark brine into her shins and ran again.

[You are not winning this in the street...]

’I noticed.’

[One of them is cutting the next alley off.]

Gray felt it too, and so, he changed direction toward the old drainage channel that ran under the market, a black cut in the stone that smelled of rust and old Demonic Energy.

The quiet one was already there.

A needle came from the dark without a body attached to it.

Gray slashed, missed the needle, and nullified the second one that had been hiding behind the first.

[- 310 Soul Points]

The third was not a needle.

It was a net.

Fine threads of dark mana dropped from the channel mouth and tried to sew his limbs to his sides.

Gray tore two threads with the rapier, burned a third off with a thin scrape of Thunder Claw he did not fully unleash, and still felt the fourth wrap his ankle.

The heavy man arrived from the other end of the channel like a moving gate.

”End it.”

Gray dropped, rolled under the first palm strike, and cut upward.

The rapier found coat, then a plate, then nothing that mattered. A boot caught his hip and sent him sliding through filthy water.

SPLASH!

He came up on one knee, coughing, and saw Cael standing on the channel rim above them, lit by a broken lantern, looking down as if this were already a story he would tell at court.

”Hold him. I will take his horns.”

[Gray.]

’I know.’

The woman dropped into the channel behind him.

Gray marked the broken lantern above Cael’s head.

He also marked a loose grate further down the channel, where the water disappeared under the next district.

The quiet man’s fingers twitched.

Gray moved first, and directly threw his rapier at the lantern.

The blade smashed the light, and for a blink the channel went darker than the protectors wanted.

In that blink, Gray Swap-marked the grate and vanished from the net’s remaining threads.

”[✧Swap✧]”

He hit the grate with his shoulder, tore it inward, and let the current take him into the narrower dark.

Stone scraped his back, and water filled his mouth.

Behind him, the glaive struck the place he had been and rang against the channel wall like a bell.

”He disappeared again!” the woman shouted.

”After him!” Cael screamed.

”He is only Saint Realm! He cannot escape from us!”

The heavy man’s voice cut over him.

”The tunnels split. If we chase blind, we lose the Young Master’s position.”

That hesitation was all Gray needed.

He crawled, then ran, then forced his battered body through a second grate that opened into a service alley behind a row of closed wine shops.

He did not stop to breathe until he had two more corners and a stacked wall of empty casks between him and the channel.

His rapier was gone.

His coat was worse than gone.

The cut on his cheek still burned where the first needle had kissed him.

Gray leaned against the casks and listened.

Distant shouting.

Cael’s voice, high and ruined by embarrassment.

[They will search the lower market... the House Veyth cannot let a scene like that end with you walking away clean.]

’Then I do not walk away clean. I disappear.’

Gray pressed a hand to his ribs, felt the grind the princess had started and the protector had finished, and started moving again, through back paths toward a part of Vhar’Zul that did not care about crests.

He did not head for the Red Horn Inn.

That would be the first door they kicked.

[You could have killed the boy.]

’And then I would be fighting the house, not the boy. This is me leaving before that kid’s plot armor grows a fourth body.’

[Plot armor...?]

’Nothing...’

Gray sighed.