The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 689: The Elven Demon (3)

Mist webbed across the chamber like breath caught between teeth, rising in thin veils that clung to roots and ceiling alike. The thing that once called itself Vaerentis loomed at the far end, tall and fundamentally wrong. Flesh had abandoned him; in its place, a lattice of twisted bark and fused memory-skin shifted with every breath, dragging half-formed faces through the open air. Some flickered between expressions like broken marionettes—Clara's shy smile melting into Roth's crooked grin, then snapping into Vaelarien's sharp-eyed scowl. Each mask stayed for only a heartbeat before sliding away as though exhausted by its own existence.

The Soul-Core burned in his chest, visible through ribs splayed open like wooden prayer-gates. It pulsed in molten shades of gold and red, drawing sap and history from the Grove's living veins. Every exhalation seemed to rob the chamber of a little more color, blanching moss, dimming the bioluminescent fungi, draining every emerald leaf toward ashen gray. Even the air smelled thinner.

Sylvanna's breath stuttered at Draven's side. She tried to steady it, but the tremor riding her lungs sent a shiver down the shaft of her last frost arrow. The tip glimmered an icy blue, suspended in the gloom. She knew she would have exactly one true shot before her quiver lay empty.

Draven stood motionless, twin hilts already resting against his palms. He didn't have to look; his thumbs found the guards with unconscious familiarity. The blades spun once—an unhurried quarter circle of steel that checked balance, angle, readiness. Ritual complete, he let his arms still. In the hush, the faint scrape of metal sliding against calloused skin sounded indecently loud.

Vaerentis tipped his head as though admiring a curious insect. The movement rolled a ripple through the grafted bark of his neck; three faces blinked in unison before dissolving. "Dravis Granger," he purred, savoring each consonant. The voice grated, half music, half rust on stone. "What a small name for such vast potential."

Draven's gray eyes reflected the glow of that core—steady, unfazed. He offered no greeting. He never wasted breath on ceremony when war was moments away. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ

Vaerentis stepped forward. The grace of a ballroom dancer warped into the lurch of a corpse, joints bending past their rightful range, bark-skin creaking. "You feel it, don't you? The hitch inside time whenever your blades move too quickly. Meaning clings even to lies. But I can free you."

He raised a hand and memories surged over his knuckles: a child wobbling on first steps, an old general's salute, a scholar's ink-stained laughter. "Together we could prune every grievance, every scar. A garden of perfect silence."

Sylvanna's knuckles whitened. She knew temptation when she heard it—an offer to bury regrets so deep they'd never surface. Yet the idea chilled her more than any ghost.

Draven studied Vaerentis the way a surgeon studies diseased tissue—without pity, without disgust, only calculation. Beneath the words he heard the mathematics: trade freedom for oblivion, trade will for curated peace. Perfection through mutilation.

"The world doesn't need a gardener who poisons the roots," he said. The sentence emerged soft, almost conversational, and yet it struck the air like a gavel.

Vaerentis flinched. Something ancient and wounded flashed behind those shifting eyes, a child startled by rejection. The pause lasted no longer than a breath; then his mask cracked into rage. A roar tore free, rattling droplets from the ceiling like rain.

The Soul-Core flared. With a wet snap, tendrils of woven memory burst outward. Each one bore a face at its tip, lips moving in soundless pleas—Clara with eyes wide and arms reaching, Roth mid-laughter just before the world took him, Vaelarien screaming words too broken to understand.

Draven moved first. There was no flourish, only necessity. The left blade shot upward, intercepting Clara's image; the right sliced downward, catching Roth half-way through a grin. Steel kissed false skin, and both illusions ripped like silk in gale-wind. It wasn't speed alone that made the cuts lethal. It was precision. He didn't aim for faces, didn't waste time on sentiment—he aimed for the rune-fine seams binding each projection to reality, severing the small knots of power that made thought go solid.

Sylvanna exhaled and loosed her arrow. Cold radiated along the shaft, frosting her palm even before it left the string. The missile streaked past Draven's shoulder and bloomed into a fractal lily of ice mid-flight, petals shattering outward on contact with a tendril. The memory-strand froze in a breath, then cracked, collapsing into silent shards no heavier than dust.

Another lash snapped. Roth's voice chased it, raw and accusing: "You left me there."

Lie.

Draven pivoted, torso twisting just enough. Blade met lash mid-sentence; a whip-crack counterstroke parted its spine. The voice unraveled, syllables spiraling into ash that never reached the floor.

Vaerentis reeled, more faces boiling up to replace the fallen. A hundred now—maybe more—flickering in overlapping misery. The Grove's own roots convulsed, rising between Draven and the monster like living barricades. Gnarled trunks bent forward, trying to cage the swordsman, to shield their corrupter.

"Stupid," Draven murmured, and the single word was colder than Sylvanna's arrowhead.

Draven dropped low and angled his shoulders, sliding beneath a vine that snapped downward like a living snare. Mid-dodge, he changed grips—thumb along the spine of one blade, wrist rolling the other into a reverse hold. The instant his boots found purchase, he thrust upward. Steel punched into a swollen knot where two roots had fused around Vaerentis' corruption, sealing toxin to timber like scar tissue.

The chamber screamed. A tremor rattled the rib-thick trunks, carrying a noise halfway between splintering wood and an animal's howl. Bright sap spurted, hissing as it hit the cold air, and the vine that had tried to strangle him recoiled as if stung.

Sylvanna matched his momentum on the flank, her boots skimming slick bark, the bow never leaving full draw. She loosed twice in rapid answer. The first arrow found a phantom shaped like a weeping child and nailed it to the floorboards of memory; the image quivered, then burst into a haze of gray petals. The second shaft caught a twirling specter by the mid-spin—icy runes detonated on impact, shattering the ghost into fragments that flashed once and vanished.

Yet still the Grove fought, dredging up corpses of the past as though every dead leaf and lost tear could be weaponized.

Draven's dual blades kept pace, a metronome of surgical arcs. He carved at seams of magic where illusions tethered to root and air, feeling for the moment when thought densified into matter. Each contact produced a soft pop, like small bones breaking, and another stitched-together lie collapsed into sparks. The monster's supply of stolen lives was vast; Draven's ruthlessness proved vaster.

But Vaerentis was learning. Faces cycled faster across his bark-skin, and where one anchor fell, two more grew. Then the corruption shifted strategy.

The Grove screamed—a full-bodied bellow that rattled spores from the ceiling like spectral snow. Roots bulged, splitting at their seams. Within that rupture, three immense silhouettes hauled themselves upright, birthing from collective sorrow.

The first Titan lumbered forward: a hunch-backed mass of cloaked scholars fused spine to spine. They moved as one, shoulders rounded by centuries over scrolls. Ink bled from empty eye sockets, dripping into glyphs that burned themselves into the floor with every ponderous step. Mouths opened in silent recitations—sermons, calculations, half-finished theories yearning to be heard.

Behind it rose the second: an ironclad behemoth cobbled from fallen soldiers. Rusted helms jutted like scales across its torso; cracked shields formed kneecaps; broken blades protruded like ribs. Though its chests gaped hollow, invisible lungs still heaved, and smoke poured from the slit of a visor stuck where a heart should be. Each stride landed with the precision of a march called long after death.

The third Titan lagged, smaller but stranger. A child-shaped puzzle of limbs, too long here, too short there, stitched from hopes unborn. It dragged one crooked leg yet waded forward, palms raised as if asking why pain existed. Wet sobs rattled its throat, each breath exhaling the scent of wilted bouquets and unplayed lullabies.

Sylvanna sucked air through her teeth. "Tell me you've got pattern," she called, muscles taut.

Draven's reply was a glance—quick, silver, and merciless. His eyes flashed over each construct, weighing mass, noticing flickers in their frame where glyphs glimmered like exposed nerves.

"Scholar Titan: left collar," he said, voice flat. "Warrior: right knee. Child: back of throat."

That was all. A surgeon reciting incisions. Then he moved, locking the rhythm in his bones.

The scholar mass struck first, swinging an arm that fanned into a hundred translucent quills. Draven swayed left, letting the barrage rip the air where his chest had been, and slid beneath the Titan's drooping elbow. One blade rose in a hook, catching the shimmer of a rune glowing faintly beneath the patchwork collar.

Cut one—drawing the swing.

Before the ink-whips could reverse course, Draven pivoted on the ball of his front foot. Second blade arced short, intercepting their chant mid-gesture; the silent mouths convulsed, words dying as soon as they formed.

Cut two—silencing the chorus.