The Villain's Story

“Ha… Ha… Ha…”

Victor let out a slow laugh, raising his blood stained hand and licking it clean. His entire body was covered with blood, All of it belonged to the repulsive piece of flesh beneath him, endlessly trying to break apart from the hell that had been cast upon it.

“How… does it feel, Dragon?”

He asked, as Alan began to regenerate once more. This time, Victor let the body regenerate, but pushed down on certain parts of Alan’s brain, the frontal lobe, to be precise.

“This is so fun… Tell me… What does it feel like? Ye Dragon, Greatest of the mighty Prime species? What does it feel like… to lose to a Vulgar Demon?

Ye who stand at the pillars we simply support, What… does it fucking feel like?”

There was no response, only an endless struggle of flesh, trying to get up.

Up.

Up.

Up.

The wriggling of a body that didn’t give up, The tenacity of a mind barely holding on, The might of a soul that had yet to give up. Was… fragile.

A punch to the head, not so powerful that it would pulverize it completely, but give it the most amount of pain.

A moment of silence, for it to regenerate… and then again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

“HAHA!”

A crazed laughter, as the executioner had all the fun he could have, ecstasy incomparable when he knew his prisoner was still alive, breathing, in the sense that he was still fighting.

The mind had not fallen yet.

“So this is the mind of a dragon…? Yet to fall, Even after all this?”

Another, this time all over the body, all to bring pain. Endless amount of pain. The body was… unrecognizable, even after all the desperate attempts to bring itself back.

Under this vile grip of blood, it could not. But it still tried, Alan, was still in that mass of flesh. Whether in the heart, or in the scattered brain. He was still there, teething with rage, and crying with pain.

There was still a boy trying to fight back.

Victor took a deep breath, as his very skin began to feast on Alan’s blood, all of it which was left on his body. With every drop he drank, with every drop he feasted upon, through his skin or through his mouth.

He felt drunk, he felt insane. He was going crazy with all the powerful blood. A stupor that was consuming his mind, driving him crazier and crazier. An ecstasy that caused him to lose his grip on reality.

He… looked like something else as he continued to feast.

He let the mass of flesh recuperate as he continued to stare at the sky, his face a mess of all emotions.

“Haa…”

He was out of breath, out of stamina, out of… energy, and his fragile grip on sanity was long, long gone. With every drop he drank, with every second of torture that passed… Victor grew into something else as well.

“Brother…”

But in one, swift motion, he grabbed Alan’s head and his thumbs plunged deep into the eye sockets. Alan needed only one more moment to see, but light was robbed of him with painful intensity.

The mouth, skinless, torn, and bloody with only gums, opened to let out a scream. But what scream could escape when the rest of the body was still a mass of flesh? The lungs had not yet come to be.

“I wish to see…”

Victor smiled, as his eyes began to grow a deep, deep red hue, a scarlet unlike anything before, filled with nothing but curiosity, and hints of malice.

“What is it…”

He spoke as if a child that was full, having eaten so much even speaking was a chore.

“What is the state of your mind… of your soul after all this?”

His thumbs plunged as deep as they could, his fingers tore through Alan’s skull once more, and then he cast magic.

To see what he had done, the damage he had dealt.

“How much… can a Dragon be broken?”

******

The veil of flesh had been broken, and the realm of the mind, and the soul, was before his eyes.

Every soul was special, every soul was unique… But Victor wondered.

What was the soul of a dragon like… What was their famed mind? The endless power of their mind that was famous across all the universe.

What was it like?

What was it like, the mind of a member of the prime species… and not just an ordinary one. But a prince, a prince of a house nearly no one knew anything about, but fear.

His feet were submerged, in an endless blue sea, stretching as far as the eye could see. It was deep, unfathomably slow, yet it held a sort of shape Victor could not perceive. A strange, shape, carved into this sea.

The water appeared as if it went up only to his ankles, but he knew he was much, much deeper, only, it didn’t take him.

He did not drown into the sea. So, he stopped looking and saw above.

An unfathomable cosmos, black as death between stars, yet alive with rivers of light that flowed like blood, a slow light that drifted like comets, fiery comets of all kinds of fire. Constellations burned in the distance, dancing in spirals of ethereal fog unlike any other.

“So this is it… strange for a frost dragon… Or are all dragons like that?”

It was a masterpiece, even Victor had to admit. Each star felt as if it had been placed by hand, the spiralling fog of light were like weaves holding something great together, giving substance to something unfathomable.

“Hmm…?”

Far in the distance, Victor saw something unusual, every soul usually had something special within, something unusual, yet that was beyond anything he could have expected.

He walked towards it, his path lit by the endless lights of glowing fire, silent stillness up above. As he got closer, he heard a sound, strange, in this vast space.

The sound of a blade grinding against a whetstone, steel of power unlike he had seen, or heard being sharpened.

Victor got closer, and saw a pagoda rise into the sky, it failed to reach the stars in any matter whatsoever, but it was still grand.

“…”

He looked at the man sitting in front of it, a meager sight when compared to the great pagoda that appeared to be made of obsidian.

The man spared not even a glance at him, merely focused on sharpening his blade. His lustrous black hair reflected the lights in the cosmos up above, a flowing silk robe adorned with golden and red thread.

In his hands, he held a black blade with no hilt, no scabbard, merely a piece of steel in the shape of a sword, one he sharpened endlessly.

Victor gazed at the man, curious. He had never entered the soul of a dragon before, so he was curious as to what he meant.

What meaning did this being have in this sole.

“Are you one of the protections her majesty Ariel granted upon her child?”

He didn’t approach, cautious of whatever spells would reside in the dragon’s soul. He was still an heir, who knows what Death placed in his soul for protection?

But nevertheless, having drank fountains of his blood, he was certain he was powerful. Perhaps he had reached the level of Epic, But he was still unaware.

His confidence was definitely epic.

“Ye, who reside in this domain, tell me who you are.”

No lies exist in the soul, everything will have a reaction. The ironclad law. If you have been spoken to, you must speak as well.

The man sharpening his sword looked up, and Victor saw eyes as red as his, but belonging to not a vampire but a human.

“Ma Cheon. And I am no protection of this place.”

“Then what are you?”

“A survivor, and a spectator.”

“Spectator?”

Victor turned his head, confused at the label.

“To what you have done outside. You are lucky, extremely lucky that you met me, and not anybody else here.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The man started to sharpen his blade once more, responding:

“You are lucky you met me, and not the Mask, or the sleeping beast, not to mention the countless falling stars scattered throughout, neither the blinding light.

You are lucky, the stars and the blinding light would have ended your very being had you come across them. They are probably approaching here.”

Victor smirked, spreading his hands like a victor and asking.

“And what of this Mask and Sleeping beast?”

The man in black did not respond, he merely went back to sharpening his sword.

Victor shrugged, asking him something else.

“What did you mean by spectator?”

While he didn’t care for the label of Survivor, he was curious as to what Spectator meant.

“I am aware of what transpired outside, and you should probably get back there soon.”

“Ha, I have achieved victory over this dragon. His body is, but a failed mess of flesh, and even if it does regenerate, I will overcome it once more.

This wriggling piece of flesh cannot overcome my control… not now with how much of it I have consumed.”

The man raised his head once more, and an energy started to cover his sword. For once, Victor saw emotion on his face, a small smirk.

‘Aura?’

Victor recognized that energy, that ferocious and mighty power.

His vision began to change, swirling around and around until he felt his head drop into the water below.

“You can cripple the mind.”

“What… the hell?”

His head had been severed from his body, cleanly, instantly. But that was alright, in the realm of the soul this injury was nothing.

“You can shatter the soul.”

“… What are you saying?”

“But you can never break the body.”

He was expelled from the space, the realm of the mind and the house of the soul. The familiar scenery of bloody skies and bloody, soiled ground welcomed him once more, but the most prominent was a blue flame running up his arms.

Victor looked down, finding his fingers separate from Alan’s body, pushed back by sheer force of mana. Two bright balls of fire, where the eyes would be looked at him, in the mess of the face that was still in the middle of regenerating, covered in blue fire.

“Tch.”

Victor punched once more, aiming to pulverize those fiery orbs, He wanted to go inside the realm once more… yet he found his punch connecting with the ground instead.

The muscles of the neck had been torn, just to avoid his strike… The fiery light in the place of his eyes locked onto him, looking at him from the bloody mess that was the face.

“Shit.”

He cursed, as the body began to rise.