THE PERFECT VILLAIN: Another chance with a system
Chapter 40: How Foolish.

Chapter 40: How Foolish.

~two days ago~

A guard walked down the hall of a dungeon until he reached a small cell with a steel bar door. Inside, a young woman sat on an old wooden bench, her ginger hair catching a slant of sunlight from the window above. She stared at the floor, lost in thought.

"You’re free to leave." The guard swung the door open and stepped aside.

"Huh?" She lifted her head, confusion washing over her face.

"You’re free to go. All charges have been dropped," the guard repeated, a note of impatience creeping in.

She rose from the bench and stepped out of the cell. He shut the door behind her and started down the hallway, and she fell into step behind him.

"Excuse me, sir," she asked before she could stop herself. "Why am I being released?"

He stopped at the main door leading outside, hand resting on the handle. "The village of Velroth’s been destroyed. The hero Amira is nowhere to be found — word is she’s responsible for what happened there. We can’t charge you on anything if all the evidence is gone. And we can’t take her account seriously either, not if she’s capable of wiping out an entire village. So you’re free to go."

She stared at him, letting the words sink in, her face draining of color. "The—the village. It’s... gone?"

"Sadly, yes," the guard replied.

She asked nothing more, stepping out of the ward like a shadow of herself. She’d been locked up barely three days — how had everything fallen apart so fast?

She bit her lip, something twisting inside her. Nothing about this felt right. As she stepped into the sunlight, her gaze drifted upward — the sun hung bright and clear. And yet all she felt was cold.

---

She wandered into the streets, unable to accept that Amira could have destroyed her village. It was the village Amira had saved once, the place she’d poured everything into. The idea of her destroying it and vanishing didn’t add up at all.

She drifted through the streets for hours, lost in thought, until something caught her eye she hadn’t expected — the hero’s carriage.

Before she could react, the carriage rolled off, revealing a figure she recognized instantly. Niel, standing a few feet away. She ducked out of sight at once, watching him from a corner.

If the village had truly been destroyed, how had he survived? She’d had her fair share of run-ins with something wearing her boyfriend’s face. That thought alone stirred something dark in her chest. Deep down, she knew Amira was innocent, and the real monster stood right in front of her. If he’d stepped out of a hero’s carriage, he had another scheme already in motion.

Niel started moving, and she trailed after him, keeping her distance until he shrank small against the street and slipped into a motel. She waited a few more hours, and when he didn’t emerge, she concluded he was staying there.

---

The morning sun hadn’t fully risen when she returned to the street and took up the same distant post. She’d slept rough that night, with nothing to her name except rage.

She waited hours before he finally stepped out, then followed at a distance so wide he vanished from sight within a block. She searched street after street, turning up nothing.

Hunger had begun to gnaw at her — the last thing she’d eaten was a prison meal the morning before. She wandered into a nearby restaurant and asked if she could work in exchange for food. The owner studied her for a long moment; something in him softened at the sight of her tired, hollow eyes, and he gave her a chance.

"Alright, get to work," he said, waving her into the kitchen. She proved capable enough.

Moments later, he handed her a meal, and she tore into it at the table like she hadn’t eaten in days — which drew a few stares before she caught herself and slowed down.

Not long after, the door opened, and Niel walked in. He took a seat across the room, back to her, and she froze. He was right there.

He ordered a meal, and she watched closely as he ate it, reading the satisfaction in his face. She stayed still until he finished and left. Only then did she get up and return to the kitchen.

She approached the owner again and told him she was a skilled cook, that she could handle the cooking too — on top of the cleaning and dishes — in exchange for a place to stay and food.

He agreed to test her with a small portion, and she used her unique skill on it. Everyone who tasted it wanted more, and by the end of the night he’d put her fully in charge of the kitchen, pay included. It turned out to be the highest-selling day the shop had ever had.

At closing, he offered her a small room in a secluded corner of the building — just a bed, a chair, and a table. It wasn’t much, but it would do.

---

The next day she kept up the same routine, weaving her skill into every dish, hoping Niel would return. By nightfall, hope had nearly run out.

As she began closing up, the last customer of the night walked in. Niel.

Hope and rage surged through her chest at once. This was it. This was the moment she’d been waiting for.

He ordered the same meal as before, and they served him the one she’d prepared earlier that day.

He finished and stepped out into the quiet street. She wrapped up quickly since he’d been the last customer, then slipped a knife and a heavy chain from the kitchen before following.

She trailed him through the shadows, watching him drift along, lost in his own thoughts. This was her moment. She activated Perfect Portion, twisting the pleasant meal in his stomach into a potent sedative — the poison she’d used back in the village had done nothing to him, so this time she tried something different.

The skill worked as long as food she’d made remained in someone’s system.

Only after he dropped to his knees did she step out of the shadows, a smile spreading across her face as he collapsed.

---

~the present~

Vael opened his eyes in a dark room, unable to place his surroundings. The only light came from the moon and two flickering candles on a table across the room.

It was bare — just a bed, a chair, and a table.

He tried to move and found his right wrist bound to a window fitted with a thick iron rod. "Where am I?" he muttered, reaching for the chain with his other hand — only to find that arm gone entirely. His face drained white. "What the—"

A voice rose from a dark corner. "You’re awake."

A girl stepped into the light, ginger hair catching the candle glow — a face he’d know anywhere.

"Luna?" His voice came out smaller than he wanted.

"Hello, Niel. Or should I even call you that?" Her voice stayed calm. Too calm.

She crossed toward him with that same unreadable smile, stopping a few feet short.

Vael instinctively thrust his severed arm toward her, trying to summon Lambadack’s unique skill and split her in two — nothing happened. Only blood spilled from the stump.

Claire, why isn’t my skill working?

Silence answered him, same as before. His breath caught. Why did his system always fail him at the worst possible moment? This made three times now, and he’d forgotten to ask after the first.

"What are you trying to do? Attack me?" She let out a mocking laugh. "You still think you’re the one in control here, don’t you?"

Panic began to claw at him. He’d let his guard down, certain she was locked away somewhere. All he could think was how she’d gotten free — and how she’d found him.

She stepped toward the table and picked up a butcher’s knife, then closed the distance toward him.

"You see, I wanted to use my most lethal trick — poison — to watch you suffer until you died. But I already tried that once, and you survived it. So I switched methods. Sedative. I considered paralysis too, but this worked well enough, so—"

She stopped a few feet away, dragging a finger along the flat of the blade, a small smile curling her lips as she studied him.

"Since poison won’t kill you, I figured I’d try a blade instead. Wasn’t sure it would work, but I’m guessing your body burned through its mana fighting off the sedative, which left you weak enough to cut."

Her gaze settled on him, detached, almost clinical. Nothing about her matched the delicate girl he’d once believed her to be. It was obvious now — she hadn’t changed at all. She’d always been exactly this. Just a monster with better priorities.

She tapped the flat of the blade twice against her palm. "I’m guessing your body treats anything that would shut it down as poison — though unlike an ordinary poison, it has to work overtime against something like that."

She stepped closer, gaze never wavering. "Honestly, I’m impressed. I estimated three hours under sedation. You woke up in thirty minutes. That’s quite the skill you’ve got." She let the words settle. "Before you die, I need two answers. What are you? And what happened to Niel?"

"You won’t get anything from me," Vael replied. He knew he was buying time — she wouldn’t kill him without her answers — but he couldn’t stall forever. He needed a way out, fast. She only smiled.

"Then I’ll cut you apart, piece by piece, until you talk."

Without warning, she swung for his foot. Pure instinct summoned a shield before conscious thought caught up.

The blade struck the shield with a sharp crack, and shock flickered across both their faces. In that instant, he realized — his abilities still worked, so long as they weren’t aimed directly at a person or target.

The thought led him straight to Teleportation. Without hesitation, he activated it, and the world lurched — he reappeared in the woods atop a cliff, Warstone visible in the distance.

For a moment, the panic sat, and then his body visibly shook from the situation he had just escaped. relief and exhaustion crashed over him at once. He staggered to the nearest tree and collapsed against it, breath slowing, blood dripping steadily from his mouth and the stump of his arm.

He could feel himself slipping. Not the way he had before, when his mana ran dry — something different. Something he couldn’t quite name.

Am I dying? Is this really the end?

Vael let out a faint, broken laugh. He’d died once already at human hands. And now, it seemed, he was going to die by them again. Does it ever end?

He sank further into the tree, murmuring to himself.

"In the end, I lost twice. I told myself this was the path to perfect villainy. But the truth is, I let revenge blind me. I should have been more careful." He paused, another laugh escaping him, longer this time, fainter.

"How foolish."

The words barely rose above a whisper as the light slowly drained from his eyes, leaving only dark behind it.