Dark Dragon: The Summoned Hero Is A Villain-Chapter 359: A Final Goodbye To An Old Friendship

Noah turned.

Arlo walked in through the doorway with a measured pace, his expression blank.

Behind him, soldiers filed into the room in formation, spreading out to cover the available space, spell formations already live in their hands, the air crackling with the accumulated charge of a dozen different affinities.

"I didn't know we'd meet again this quic—"

Arlo stopped.

The words died somewhere between his mouth and the air. His eyes widened in shock as he stared at Noah, incredulity coloring his face.

"How." It wasn't even a question. It barely qualified as a word. "SS-rank."

His words caused a shift that moved through the soldiers like a current. Hands that had been steady developed a faint instability and eyes moved between Arlo and Noah and back again, recalculating.

They immediately realized it. They were in a whole lot of trouble.

Noah smiled. "You should have ambushed me, Arlo. Attacked me before I knew you were here. Though that would be pretty hard, but it's the effort that counts, right?"

He looked around the room at the assembled soldiers, then back. "Instead you walked in and announced yourself. And now you've signed their warrants."

Arlo's jaw tightened. "It doesn't have to go this way. There's still a path out of this that doesn't end with more corpses."

His voice carried the particular strain of someone who believes what they're saying and knows it won't land.

"Surrender. Come back. High Magus Edric would be willing to bring you in again. You'd have resources, protection, a direction that—"

Noah laughed.

It came out genuine, full enough to fill the blood-soaked room, long enough that several of the soldiers exchanged uncertain glances.

"You're only offering that," Noah said, when the laughter had run its course, "because of what you just saw. Because of my new rank."

"If I'd walked into this building still at B-rank, you wouldn't be talking. You'd have put me down and written a report about it."

He let that sit for a moment. "The only thing that has ever mattered in this world or mine is power. I didn't have it, so I was a criminal. Now I do, so you're negotiating." He tilted his head slightly. "Tell me I'm wrong."

Arlo said nothing.

Noah looked at him more carefully, taking in Arlo's aura. It had changed since the infirmary. Considerably.

"A-rank," he said. "Congratulations. I can tell you put in a lot of work for that." He almost meant it too. "But you've led these people somewhere they shouldn't have followed you."

He raised his hand.

Arlo turned immediately. "Fire! Everything, now!"

They fired.

The portals opened faster than the spells traveled, mouths of distorted space materializing in the paths of each attack, swallowing them at the point of origin and redirecting their trajectories in the same motion.

The soldiers had a single moment to understand what was happening before their own spells returned to them and they fell, dead.

The room went quiet.

Noah was already moving through the silence, crossing the distance to Arlo before the last body had finished falling.

Arlo's hands came up, ice beginning to form in a rapid defensive construction, the technique faster than it had been twenty days ago, but it was not fast enough.

The punch connected before the ice had time to materialize fully, driving into Arlo's chest with a force that had nothing to do with the rank difference being modest.

Arlo's chest caved in and he was sent flying, slamming into the wall and sending a cloud of debris into the air.

Arlo landed on his feet, the injury already reversing in time till it was in the same state it had been ten seconds ago, but Noah's hand was already closing around his head.

Noah slammed his head on the floor the same way Daisy had done to him. His grip maintained a constant pressure as he grind Arlo's face into the floor, letting it make his point for him.

"The gap between us is too large, Arlo." Noah said, conversationally, his knee beside Arlo's ear. "If I wanted to kill you, you wouldn't survive a real attempt of mine. You know that now."

Arlo said nothing. His fingers pressed against the floor, trying to lift himself, but Noah's hand was locked in place.

"I'm going to let you go," Noah continued. "This is my final act to an old friend. A final goodbye to our friendship."

He released the pressure and straightened. "The next time I see you, I won't be so merciful."

He teleported to the street before Arlo had finished standing.

Outside, the road was completely empty in both directions, the chaos of earlier having cleared the place.

The afternoon sun shone down happily, and Noah looked up and down the street.

Then he picked a direction, put his hands in his pockets, and started walking, whistling a song as he left for the next destination in his crusade.

***

Two days had passed since Noah had started his crusade, and the body count had stopped feeling like a number worth tracking somewhere around the first thousand.

He'd moved through the capital the way a storm moved, without any announcements and without a particular preference for which direction came next, following the abyssal signatures wherever they concentrated and leaving corpses behind him.

Government troops had arrived at several of the sites after his slaughter, and he'd simply added them to the number of corpses. They'd stopped arriving after the first few attempts.

Now he sat at the bar in the slums with a drink in front of him and blood on every surface, the smell of copper hanging in the air.

The barman stood on the other side of the counter with both hands pressed flat against it, the trembling visible from the elbows down, refilling Noah's cup with the careful movements of someone who didn't want to spook the monster that was in front of him.

Noah chuckled at the sight, picked up his refilled cup, and drank.

The alcohol burned on the way down, which he appreciated. Beneath it, something else moved through his system, the poison subtle enough that a normal person would have felt nothing until they died.

His healing worked through it before it reached anything that mattered, dismantling it strand by strand.

"Good drink," he said. He considered. "The poison especially. Interesting choice of blend."

The barman's eyes went wide, his mouth opening around words that didn't make it out before fire descended upon him instantaneously, and then there was only ash settling gently against the counter where he had been standing.

A smile appeared on Noah's face as he felt the mana signatures appearing outside the bar.

He stood, setting the cup down.

"My visitors are here."