Dark Dragon: The Summoned Hero Is A Villain-Chapter 365: Who Are You?

Arlo felt it the moment the corruption entered him through Ramsay's grip on his arm.

It moved faster than anything Arlo had encountered, growing inside him like a tree starved of resources.

He tore himself free of the man's grip and landed back, his hands already working, reaching for the timeline and trying to pull the damage back to before it had existed.

His skill failed.

The corruption didn't reverse. Instead, it spread, moving through his body with the efficiency of something that had been designed specifically to resist exactly what he was trying to do.

It moved without his input, touching the organs as it passed and shutting them down ruthlessly.

He felt his legs first, the corruption eroding every nerve and muscle there, forcing him to his knees.

Then it moved through his body, his kidneys shutting down, then his intestines.

He looked up at Ramsay.

Ramsay laughed, the sound thick with blood from the ice still buried in his chest, wet and completely unhurried. "You're already done," he said. "Right from the moment I touched you."

Arlo's hands stopped responding to his instructions.

He tried again. Reached for the timeline, for the skill, for anything that had worked before and might work now.

Nothing answered.

The corruption reached his brain and Arlo Kael fell onto his face, dead before his body touched the floor.

Ramsay's laughter filled the corridor for a moment longer. Then it settled into something more satisfied as he reached for his own limits and released them.

He transformed into his hybrid form, unleashing his true aura, which spread out from him like a wave in all directions.

He exhaled in relief at not having to hide his true rank. SS-rank.

His shadow moved, reaching upwards and offering a dark cloak to him. He took it and wore it, and Lord Vine looked out through Ramsay's eyes.

From somewhere below came the sounds of his forces attacking the palace walls but he paid it no mind.

There was only one task remaining.

And so he began walking slowly down the corridor towards Cecilia's room.

***

Noah hovered above the capital and watched it happen.

The army materialized out of nowhere in the streets below, small pockets of people converging into a bigger whole.

They moved as if they'd been waiting in position, units forming and moving towards the palace in coordinated streams.

He tracked their progress from above, his eyes finding the details easily at this distance. He noted their formations, the spacing, and the points where they would hit the outer walls first.

He didn't move.

This wasn't his concern. It was Camelot's palace, and that meant Camelot's problem. After all, it was just a giant game of Camelot's people trying to take Camelot's throne.

He turned his attention inwards instead, reaching out with his senses, searching for a specific signature among the noise of the battle beginning below.

Cecilia.

He didn't know if she had woken up. He didn't know if whatever had been placed inside her mind had been released.

He tried to remember what had placed the block in her mind, but couldn't. It was as if that memory had been erased, and replaced with something else.

He turned his attention back to Cecilia, suspecting that she was somewhere in the palace, which was where Arlo would have taken her, which was where the fighting was now concentrated.

He stayed where he was.

The guilt was part of it. He didn't examine it directly but he was aware of its presence, the way you're aware of something in your peripheral vision that moves when you look at it straight on.

And beneath the guilt was something less comfortable to name, a hesitation that had nothing to do with tactics or risk assessment.

What if she hadn't woken up?

Below him, the hybrid transformations began, the auras of the attacking force expanding as they dropped the pretense of appearing human, and the palace guards held their line.

They were at a stalemate, until the guards began falling prey to their own comrades, other guards activating their hybrid transformations and attacking those beside them.

Then something else expanded.

Noah's pupils shrank.

He could feel the SS-rank aura rising from inside the palace, radiating violence. Whoever owned this aura wasn't there to protect. They were there to exterminate.

Noah dropped through the air immediately.

The palace roof received him poorly, the stone and timber coming apart as he descended through it, floor after floor giving way and sending rubble flying through the air around his passage until his feet found a corridor and he stopped.

A hooded figure stood before him, walking with an unhurried pace.

Noah tilted his head as he stared at the man. "And who are you?"

The figure stopped.

"Lord Vine," the man said.

Then he attacked.

Noah erected a wall of stone in front of himself, and Lord Vine smashed through it, the stone exploding in every direction, just in time to see Noah's fist already waiting on the other side.

The punch slammed into his face with the full weight of SSS-rank strength behind it, and Lord Vine was sent flying through the corridor.

But before he could travel far, Noah shifted the direction of gravity horizontally, increasing the pressure to the max.

Lord Vine's trajectory reversed, pulling him back towards Noah's next punch with the same force that had been carrying him away from it.

Lord Vine's hand came up and caught the punch.

Immediately, he sent his corruption, transferring it through contact, moving it from his palm into Noah's arm with the same merciless speed he'd used against Arlo.

Noah felt the corruption enter through his knuckles and continue down his arm, killing every tissue it passed.

He instantly recognized just how dangerous the energy sweeping through his body was, so he leapt back and severed his arm at the shoulder without hesitation.

The stump bubbled and new tissue pushed outwards, growing rapidly, until he had a new arm in place of the infected one.

Sitting on the floor between him and Lord Vine, his severed arm darkened, necrosis moving through it in seconds until there was nothing worth looking at.

Noah rolled his new shoulder and heard it crack.

"I guess I'll have to take you seriously."

Then he closed the distance.