Villain Hiring: Help! Author Wants Me Dead-Chapter 216: Death?

The streets were ruined.

Stone and dust cracked under my boots as the elders pressed down on me from every direction.

Their strikes came sharp and endless, weapons and fists tearing through the air like lightning.

I barely blocked the next one, my hands trembling under the weight of their combined mana.

Each breath I took burned like fire.

I couldn't even think anymore. The voice inside my head, the one that didn't belong to me...kept gnawing at the edges of my mind, whispering things I couldn't understand, things I didn't want to understand.

Every time I tried to focus on it, another attack came, forcing me back.

There was no time to think.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her.

Pixie.

Kneeling on the broken street, horns jagged and bleeding, her body shivering as though she was being torn apart from the inside.

And standing right beside her…was him.

Grandpa Venus.

His expression wasn't cold, nor kind. It was complicated, like even he didn't know whether to mourn her or kill her.

His black robe moved with the wind, his hands folded calmly, like all of this chaos meant nothing to him.

And that's when I knew.

He wasn't going to help us.

Not her.

Not me.

Not anyone.

That was always his way.

Sacrifice the few for the greater good.

He had ousted me and Grandma Sylvie from the house, stripped her mana core without hesitation, all because it was "necessary" in the first place.

That was who he was. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

And now, with Pixie kneeling there, still in the middle of awakening, and me drowning under the elders' attacks…he would do it again.

I gritted my teeth and forced myself back up against the weight of three more strikes. Sparks flew as my blade clashed against theirs.

But I couldn't let them win.

Because I knew exactly why they were ignoring her.

I had read about it a while back.

The awakening of a Kalki wasn't just a transformation; a second transition followed it. A painful, drawn-out phase where their body aligned with their Hollow blood, where their very soul reshaped itself, as to what exactly happened for the transition to be complete.

He did not know.

Only when that process ended would they leave behind a Hollow weapon upon death.

And that's what they were waiting for.

That's why every elder was focused on me.

Keeping me busy.

Bleeding me out.

All while waiting for Pixie to finish her transition, so they could harvest her Hollow.

Monsters.

Every one of them.

"Damn it!" I roared, swinging hard enough to send one of them stumbling back.

But two more filled the gap instantly, their spears cutting across the air toward my ribs.

I twisted, barely deflecting one, but the other grazed my arm as more blood spilled out of my body.

My situation was so dire that even the thought of talking to Damien to find a way out was only wishful thinking.

My vision blurred for a second.

The voice in my head laughed.

But I shut it out.

I had to.

Another elder jumped at me, and I ducked under his blade, driving my knee into his stomach and slamming him into the ground. But even as he fell, another strike cracked across my back.

Pain flared hot all over my body.

I staggered forward.

My body wasn't keeping up anymore. My skills, my meagre two skills, were all I had.

And they weren't enough against these tens of elders with centuries of experience.

After all, almost all of these people had a stronger soul than me, making my main skill useless.

As for mana drain?

These fuckers were already wary of it after seeing the confrontation between my grandpa and me and focused on continously hacking their weapons at me at a close range, so I couldn't use my mana drain.

Each second that passed, I lost ground.

Each second that passed, Pixie's condition seemed to be getting worse.

I wanted to scream at her to run. To fight. To do anything. But when I looked back at her… she wasn't even aware of us.

Her body shook violently, her eyes rolling back as if she was lost somewhere else.

And Venus just stood there.

Watching her break.

Watching me bleed...

My grip on my sword faltered.

Another strike crashed against me. Then another. My legs started losing strength, and my body was screaming for me to fall, but I forced myself to stay upright, forcing my blade between myself and the storm.

I could feel my mind slipping. The voice kept growing louder, more demanding. The worst part was, I couldn't even talk to Damien. Not here and definitely not now. There was no time to understand who or what the voice was.

I was trapped in my own head while fighting for my life.

And then it happened.

I didn't even see who it was. Maybe I blinked too long or maybe my body slowed just enough.

But I felt it.

A cold steel piercing through my chest.

My breath stopped for a moment as my knees gave out. Warmth spread across my torso, sticky and heavy.

I coughed, the taste of iron flooding my mouth.

The world tilted sideways, the screams and crashes of battle fading into a distant hum. My vision blurred totally, but I could still make out the devastation across the Romero estate. Fires burned in the distance, flickering across the black sky, the scent of smoke and blood mixed together, choking me and I could not help but wonder how Sylvie grandma would react after coming back from her secret mission.

Would she just mourn my death and move on...or would she take revenge for me?

And then, everything started to mix.

One moment, I was fighting the elders with nothing but my two skills and raw strength.

The next, I was…somewhere else.

I stood in front of a ruined house, realising that this was one of my memories.

The air was the same, thick with smoke and bitter with iron.

Just a few feet away from me… a lifeless body lay on the ground.

Munro Aldritch.

Pixie's father...or maybe not.

All I knew was that he was a man who had done nothing wrong.

A single father who had just been trying to live.

And I had killed him.

Not out of choice. Not out of anger that was mine.

But out of spite.

Spite that didn't belong to me.

My chest rose and fell as I stared at the body, blood dripping from my blade in this memory.

And even as my consciousness began slipping away, the pieces finally clicked.

The voice inside my head all this time…

…it wasn't some unknown stranger.

It wasn't an enemy.

No.

It was me.

The Noah that I was supposed to be in the book.

***