Villain: Your Heroines Were Delicious

Chapter 208: Chapter 78

At this moment, the city was settling into a heavy, artificial silence that only comes after a catastrophe.

The smoke from the industrial district was still a faint smudge against the moon, but for Shirohara Retsu, the world remained a clinical, predictable stage.

She was walking through the dark, empty streets toward Nishimiya Private Hospital, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her pristine white lab coat.

Her pace was leisurely, almost rhythmic, as if she were taking a stroll through a quiet garden rather than a city reeling from a supernatural war.

Just then, she let out a faint, weary sigh.

Without breaking her stride, she closed her eyes and tilted her head slightly to the right, a move so subtle it looked accidental.

CRACK!

A violent whooshing sound, accompanied by the sharp, ozone-scented crackling of lightning, tore through the air exactly where her head had been a millisecond before.

The shockwave ruffled her hair, but her expression remained as static as a marble bust.

Opening her eyes, Retsu found herself staring into the furious, yellow gaze of Miyamura Hana.

The other woman’s spear, coated in dancing arcs of high-voltage electricity, was vibrating in the air just beside Retsu’s ear, having narrowly missed its mark.

If Retsu had not tilted her head just then, her skull would have been pierced through, her brain matter vaporized by the sheer intensity of the lightning.

“I told you not to appear in front of me for the time being, Hana. Do you really want me to kill you?” Retsu asked, her voice devoid of any heat, sounding like a doctor discussing a minor symptom.

Hana gritted her teeth, the spear in her hand trembling from the force of her grip. “You said he wouldn’t be harmed! You gave me your word that the situation was being monitored!”

“Is this what this is all about?” Retsu asked, finally turning her body to face her assailant. “Everything is under control. My calculations are never wrong. After this night, Seijirou has finally grown into a true warrior. He has seen the abyss and reached across it. That is a victory, not a tragedy.”

“He almost died!” Hana roared, her voice echoing off the closed storefronts. “He was pinned, bleeding out on a rooftop while you were probably watching from the shadows like a vulture!”

“He wouldn’t,” Retsu replied, her blue eyes turning as cold and deep as an Arctic trench. “I would never allow him to die. I would destroy this entire world first, reduce every city to ash and every soul to dust, rather than see him die. You should know my devotion by now.”

Instead of comfort, Hana’s rage just boiled over as she pulled back her spear with a jagged motion and took a sharp step forward, her hand reaching out to grab Retsu’s collar, wanting to shake some semblance of humanity into the woman.

But Retsu was faster, and in a movement that the human eye could barely track, she intercepted Hana’s hand with a single acupuncture needle.

The thin sliver of steel, reinforced with a needle-point of Ki, pierced through the center of Hana’s palm as blood bloomed instantly, like a bright scarlet stain on her skin.

“Don’t touch me casually,” Retsu warned, her voice dropping a few octaves.

Hana ignored the searing pain in her hand, simply letting the blood drip, her fury overriding her survival instinct, and proceeded to grab Retsu’s collar anyway, bunching the white fabric in her fist.

Then, without hesitation, she channeled her strength and lifted Retsu for more power and slammed Retsu down into the asphalt.

CRACK.

Deep fissures spider-webbed across the road under the impact, the sound of stone breaking echoing through the night.

Retsu lay there, her head resting against the cracked pavement, but she remained completely emotionless as she stared up into Hana’s yellow eyes with her own unblinking blue ones, her posture relaxed as if she were lying in a bed of silk.

“Do you really want to fight me here?” Retsu asked calmly. “Let me warn you. If we truly clash, half of this city would be reduced to ruins by dawn. And even then, I could stop your heart before you even ran out of Spirit Energy, but the collateral damage would be… messy. Though, I suppose I couldn’t really care less about the city, but do you?”

“I rely don’t believe you. Do you really care about Seijirou!?” Hana pointed the tip of her lightning-coated spear directly at Retsu’s throat, the sparks singeing the collar of the white coat. “Or is he just a project to you? A toy for your own amusement?”

“I already told you this. I care about him more than my own life,” Retsu answered immediately, the honesty in her voice more chilling than any lie.

“Then why are you doing this!? Why put him through that hell!?”

Retsu tilted her head against the asphalt, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. “I mentioned it, didn’t I? This is all for his growth. The moment he chose to walk into the world of the supernatural, he surrendered the right to be mediocre. He must be the best. He must be the predator, never the prey. I will be the one who raises him up to the top, even if I have to pave his path with the corpses of gods.”

In Retsu’s mind, the end always justified the means, no matter how cruel.

Her love was just that sharp and dangerous.

When she first taught Seijirou how to unlock his Ki, she hadn’t used the gentle, meditative methods of the orthodox schools.

Instead, she had used the fastest and most dangerous method known to the medical underworld—a technique where, if he had failed by even a hair’s breadth, he would have ended up crippled at best, or a mindless husk at worst.

After all, people normally search for their Origin first, using that spiritual anchor to stabilize the flow of Ki.

What Seijirou did under her tutelage was the reverse—forcing the energy out before the soul was ready.

And now, to ensure his resolve was unbreakable, she had pitted him against the Mister and his inner circle—some of the most depraved, sub-human filth in existence.

She wanted his heart to harden into a diamond, she wanted him to see that in the dark world they inhabited, hesitation was a death sentence.

And most importantly, she wanted him to learn to kill without a second thought.

In fact, even when Seijirou was still just a child, Retsu had already began putting Seijirou on trials and training him, grooming him into the perfect human like herself.

Of course, Retsu wouldn’t actually put Seijirou in a trial where he would truly perish. Or rather, in her supreme arrogance as the world’s greatest doctor, she believed that even if he were technically “dead,” she could absolutely bring him back to life with her needles and Ki.

He might end up paralyzed or crippled, but that was okay in her eyes. If he were broken, she would simply take care of him for the rest of his life, keeping him in a gilded cage where no one else could touch him.

“You’re a bitch,” Hana clicked her tongue, her disgust reaching its limit.

Then, instead of using her spear, she drove her free fist into Retsu’s face with everything she had.

THUD.

More cracks appeared on the road as Retsu’s head snapped back against the pavement.

When she turned her face back toward Hana, her nose was clearly broken, and a stream of blood was flowing down her lip.

Retsu stared at Hana, her gaze still devoid of anger, and she even simply raised a hand to her face, gripped her nose with a sickening crunch, and snapped the bone back into place.

She then wiped the blood away with the sleeve of her coat as if it were nothing more than a spilled drink.

“Are you done?” Retsu asked. “I still have to go to the hospital.”

Hana glared at her, her chest heaving, and finally took a few steps back, lowering her spear.

The sheer, inhuman stoicism of the woman was exhausting.

But at that moment, the air around Retsu shifted.

Before Hana could even register the movement, Retsu’s hand shot out, grabbing Hana’s heel.

Then, she pulled with a deceptive, serpentine strength, yanking Hana off her feet.

And as Hana fell, Retsu’s other hand moved like a blur, stabbing a Ki-reinforced acupuncture needle deep into the major nerve cluster of Hana’s thigh.

Hana gasped in a mixture of pain and surprise, her leg instantly going numb and useless.

She tried to attack, but before she could swing her spear or summon her lightning, Retsu had already glided off the ground and slithered behind Hana with a ghostly fluidity, wrapping her arm around Hana’s throat in a precise, professional chokehold.

Retsu leaned in, her lips inches from Hana’s ear.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Retsu whispered, her voice a terrifying, velvet hiss. “Do not casually approach me, and do not think your little sparks make you my equal. If you interfere with his education again, I will really kill you, you cheap imitation.”

She held the choke for just long enough to see the stars begin to dance in Hana’s eyes before releasing her and letting her slump to the ground, gasping for breath.

“Haaa~! Haaa~!” Hana took deep breaths, her eyes glaring at Retsu, “You, haa~, bitch!”

Retsu simply smiled, straightened her coat, adjusted her glasses, and resumed her leisurely walk toward the hospital.