Third-Rate Villain Of Fantasy Novel-Chapter 31: Distant Memories [1]

Darkness.

The golden sun that once bathed the world in warmth and life had long since lost its brilliance. Its light had twisted into a dull, blood-red glow, hanging in the sky like a dying ember, no longer capable of illuminating the land below.

Now, the only light that resisted the encroaching void was the Light of Hope—a fragile radiance created by the four surviving Tower Lords, the last remnants of the seven towers that had already fallen. Their power stretched across the land like a thin veil, barely holding back the endless night.

– Eeeeeek!!

A piercing scream tore through the world.

It was not the cry of a human.

It was the sound of monsters from another world, creeping closer while hiding within the darkness. Their howls slithered through the air, gnawing at the hearts of those who heard them. Fear bloomed instinctively, uninvited, as despair followed close behind. In the pitch-black night, the only things visible were the ominous crimson glows of their eyes, floating like cursed stars.

They were coming.

The knights known as the Supreme—warriors who could only dream of victory when standing together—had gathered into a massive army. Their armored footsteps thundered across the land as they charged toward a single destination, driven by duty rather than hope.

That place was once known as Sarham.

In the distant past, it had been a golden land, flourishing endlessly under the name Kraus.

Wealth, power, and peace had once coexisted within its borders. Now, only ruins remained. The castle walls had collapsed, its turrets shattered, all torn apart by the invasion of foreign powers.

Every broken stone told the same silent story of loss and defeat.

No humans lived there anymore.

The land had been abandoned—claimed by monsters who roamed freely among the remains.

Their ferocious howls stirred violent dust storms as they rampaged through the ruins, as if determined to erase every last trace of humanity that had once called this place home.

The wind carried the stench of blood and decay.

The castle wall, already half-shattered by the relentless charge of monstrous bodies, finally gave way. It collapsed as easily as a sandcastle before the tide, stones breaking apart and tumbling down in a deafening roar.

The destruction did not stop there.

The brick roads that once stretched neatly through the city, the remnants of homes and towers, every trace left behind by Sarham’s former inhabitants—all of it crumbled. What had taken generations to build was reduced to dust, lifted into the air and carried away by the wind as if it had never existed.

By the time the chaos settled, Sarham had become a complete ruin.

Only one structure remained.

At the heart of the devastated city stood the lord’s castle, once the seat of the Kraus family. Its walls were scarred, its gates cracked, yet it still stood tall amid the emptiness, silent and isolated, as though waiting for its inevitable end.

The monsters seemed to understand this instinctively.

As if saving the most satisfying prey for last, they had destroyed everything else first. After leveling the city, they finally turned their attention toward the castle and began to advance, their heavy footsteps echoing across the ruins.

A creature that appeared to be their leader moved at the forefront of the group.

Its massive frame towered over the others, and one of its eyes was ruined by a deep, old wound that refused to heal. When it reached a certain distance from the castle, it halted. The surrounding monsters slowed as well, forming a loose ring around the fortress.

For a brief moment, the leader simply stared.

Its single, uninjured eye traced the outline of the castle walls, as though recalling something long forgotten. Then its facial muscles twisted unnaturally, skin stretching and twitching until the shape resembled a smile—an eerie, grotesque imitation of something human.

Slowly, the creature raised its head.

Above them all floated the black sun.

Once radiant, it now burned with a warped, dark light that seemed to swallow warmth instead of giving it. To humans, that light evoked instinctive revulsion, a deep-seated fear that crawled along the spine. But to the monsters, it was different.

To them, the black light was a blessing.

Bathing itself in the sun’s corrupted glow, the leader spread its arms wide, accepting the light with its entire body. Its scarred flesh glistened faintly, and its breathing grew heavy, almost reverent.

Then it lifted its snout toward the sky.

The order came not in words, but in a sound.

"—Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...!"

The roar tore through the air, louder and more thunderous than any cry the monsters had released before. It rolled across the ruins like a storm, shaking loose debris and sending clouds of dust spiraling upward.

Yet the sound ended as abruptly as it began.

A golden line was drawn across the stained black world.

It appeared without warning, thin and precise, cutting through the darkness as if the sky itself had been etched open.

The line passed cleanly through the leader’s neck, and in the next heartbeat, the world seemed to twist around it.

Space distorted, reality bending along that flawless stroke, dividing everything it touched into two—so cleanly that it felt as though it had always been meant to exist that way.

The leader’s head fell.

It struck the ground with a dull sound, rolling once before coming to a stop. In the place where it landed, a man stood quietly, unmoving.

His face was expressionless, his eyes calm, carrying neither triumph nor shock, as though the scene before him was nothing more than an expected outcome.

The sword in his hand shimmered faintly, a golden aura flowing along its blade, mirroring the color of his eyes. Without hesitation, he raised it and stepped forward, breaking into a run toward the remaining monsters.

For a brief moment, the battlefield fell into an unnatural stillness.

Perhaps because everything had happened in an instant, even the monsters that had plunged the land into chaos froze.

Their malformed faces twisted in confusion, their instincts struggling to catch up with what they had just witnessed. Yet fear never took root within them. Creatures born only to destroy knew nothing of retreat.

With guttural roars, they lunged at the man, claws scraping against the ground, mouths opened wide as they bared their teeth.

The outcome had already been decided.

The man moved.

His sword traced arcs of golden light through the air, each swing effortless, each strike exact.

Monsters were cleaved apart before they could even reach him, their bodies collapsing as if pulled apart by an unseen law rather than a blade.

The golden aura flared brighter with every motion, illuminating the dark world in brief, blinding flashes.

He did not slow.

He advanced steadily, stepping over falling corpses, his movements fluid and relentless. Wherever the sword passed, destruction followed.

The monsters, once hunters that ruled this land, were reduced to nothing more than prey, torn apart before they could understand what had gone wrong.

His figure cut through the battlefield like a force of nature. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

From afar, it looked as though a dragon had descended from the heavens.

The golden glow was its scales, the sword its claws, and the storm of blood and broken bodies its feeding ground. The monsters that once terrorized everything in their path now scattered, their numbers dwindling with every passing breath.

Here, they were no longer predators.

They were merely victims beneath the shadow of a single man, standing alone in a broken world, carving order into chaos with a blade of gold.