Reincarnated As A First Rate Villain: I Don't Know How To Play My Role Chapter 44

To the verdant east of the Valderian Empire, where the sunlight filtered through towering trees and the scent of wild herbs laced the wind, stood the great Florentel Estate—an erald jewel nestled at the empire’s edge. The land of alchemy, brimming with dicinal herbs, mana-rich soil, and ancient botanical secrets, it was a paradise for potion-makers and scholars alike. Its nickna, "The Land of Potions," was well-earned. Alchemy was not rely a profession here; it was a culture, a tradition, and a way of life.

The estate was vast, ho to over five million people. Many of them were mages, scholars, and alchemists who had chosen to settle in the Florentel domain to pursue their craft. Massive greenhouses filled with rare plants dotted the estate like glass blossoms. Potion shops, both quaint and grand, lined cobbled streets. Incense from simring cauldrons drifted into the air, blending with the constant rustle of leaves from the lush, enchanted forest beyond. Beyond that lay the treacherous Twilight Glade, ho to beasts from which countless alchemical ingredients were harvested. Past the glade lay the realm of the elves—the Elven Kingdom ruled by the royal elven family the Sylvandel Imperium.

The Grand Duke of this land, Henri Florentel, was a stern but just man known for his extensive knowledge of magical flora. Beside him, Archduchess Camille Florentel—a fad potion master and forr guild head of the Imperial Alchemist Society—managed the household with grace and intellect.

Within the central mansion of the estate, behind heavy oak doors and spell-locked chambers, was a room that looked more like a chaotic lab than a noble’s bedroom. Glass flasks filled with swirling colored liquids bubbled gently atop enchantnt-runed stoves. Scrolls, charts, and old leather-bound books lay scattered across the floor. There were test tubes arranged by size, racks filled with shimring ingredients, vials marked with scribbles only their creator could understand, and a faint scent of lavender mixed with gunpowder.

Amidst the alchemical clutter was a tiny girl with long, curly green hair tied in a bushy ponytail. A pair of oversized protective glasses covered her eager aqua eyes. Her cheeks were flushed with excitent, her tiny gloved hands shuffling through loose parchnt.

"No, no... not this one either..." she muttered, voice filled with mild frustration. "I wrote it down... I know I did!"

This little genius was none other than Aurelie Florentel, daughter of Henri and Camille, and one of the fated 16 heroes.

Despite being only five years old in this life, Aurelie was a regressor—her mories from the previous tiline sharp and intact. Her forr self had been a potion-obsessed prodigy, and nothing had changed in this era. She had spent the morning rearranging her lab, only to misplace a crucial potion sequence she’d developed at sunrise.

"Aha!" she cried victoriously, holding up a slightly crumpled piece of parchnt like it was a holy relic. "There you are! I knew I didn’t imagine the stabilizing sequence."

With renewed energy, Aurelie skipped across the room and clambered onto a high stool behind a wide table, already cluttered with potion materials. She glanced at the ingredients with a gleam in her eye.

"This one’s going to be my masterpiece," she whispered like a secret to the room. "A potion to increase mana recovery and physical resilience... if it doesn’t explode again."

She humd a soft lody—one she rembered from her past life—as she carefully asured sparkling blue liquid from a burette into a cauldron. Steam hissed upward in thin spirals as a deep green glow began to emanate from the mixture.

She paused.

Her mind drifted.

Yesterday’s chaos resurfaced.

Aurelie had received the system shutdown ssage just like everyone else. The estate had been thrown into confusion. Alarms were raised. Archduke Henri summoned his researchers. Camille locked down the central labs. The old wards flickered for the first ti in a hundred years. People feared that awakening rituals would be disrupted, but the six Archduke families quickly reassured the populace of their own estate.

Especially her parents, Henri and Camille, had been particularly shaken for her. She could still rember her mother sitting at the edge of her bed last night, brushing her hair with a worried expression.

"Sweetheart... you won’t have a System anymore to track your progress when you turn ten. We’ll need to prepare other ways to support your awakening."

Aurelie had only nodded, her mind already occupied with refining her new potion-enhancent formula.

Humans would still awaken at age ten.

Only now, the system interface that quantified talent, stats, and growth trajectories—the very thing Aurelie had used to asure the success of her potion buffs—was gone.

Many wept.

But Aurelie? She barely batted an eye.

"Tch. As if I need a glorified nu to tell my worth," she said aloud, grinning proudly.

To her, the system was just a crutch. Real power ca from experintation, trial and error, and passion. It ca from pushing the limits of one’s craft with nothing but intellect and instinct.

She stirred the potion again. The color shifted into a deep purple—a promising sign.

Her thoughts turned darker for a mont. She rembered the war. The horrors. The people who died screaming. The way the potion she made too late could’ve saved them had she acted faster. The abyssians tearing through the front lines. The traitor who stood tall, uncaring and cold, on a throne of ashes—Lucien Caelum Velebrandt.

But she shook her head violently, scattering the heavy thoughts like smoke.

"No, no," she said firmly to herself. "That’s the past. This ti, we’ll be ready. I’ll be ready."

She held up the bubbling potion, now fully stabilized.

"With potions like these, we’ll never have to lose a battle ever again. We won’t depend on a system. We’ll rely on science, on alchemy. This tiline, I’ll turn Florentel into the most powerful house of them all. We’ll fund armies with our potions. Heal thousands. Buff heroes beyond their limits!"

She clutched the vial to her chest and smiled brightly.

"I’ll show the world that potions aren’t just support. They’re ga-changers."

"And who knows, maybe in the future potionology will beco the new mainstream magic! And if we defeat that oversized sludge-pile Abyssian King, everyone will know that it wasn’t so blade or spell that saved the world—it was potions. And ofcourse and My magnificent elixirs!"

Just then, the door creaked open.

A tall figure entered, his white lab coat flaring slightly with his movent. Grand Duke Henri himself, her father.

He chuckled upon seeing the ss.

"Let guess," he said warmly. "Stabilizing agents and too much lavender extract again?"

Aurelie bead. "No explosions this ti, I swear."

Henri walked over, patting her head. "I’m proud of you, Aurelie. But do try to sleep at so point. Even geniuses need naps."

Aurelie puffed her cheeks. "Sleep is for those who don’t have potions to master!"

Her father rely laughed and stepped back, letting her bask in her success.

As the sun dipped through the stained-glass windows, casting a rainbow sheen over Aurelie’s workspace, the little girl looked out toward the glowing horizon.

She raised her potion vial toward the light and whispered:

"The world doesn’t know it yet, but the age of potions has begun."

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Beneath the polished marble streets of the Valderian Empire’s outer wall, beyond hidden staircases and illusions ant to fool even the keenest of mages, a secret gathering blood like a decadent rot.

The underground auction hall, nestled beneath a forgotten fortress near the Empire’s border, glittered with an opulence that mocked the darkness of its purpose. The hall was imnse—vaulted ceilings inlaid with runic lights mimicking starlight, walls of polished obsidian veined with gold, and a central stage that glowed under spotlight enchantnts. Around it, more than a hundred masked guests lounged in semi-circular private boxes like emperors of shadow.

Each guest wore enchanted masks—woven with concealnt magic and carved in artistic designs from jade, bone, crystal, or demonsteel. Marquises. High-ranking rchants. Cloaked guild leaders. The room was filled with silent power and old money, their whispers muffled by sound-silencing runes, their intentions hidden behind glass goblets and veils of smoke from exotic incense.

The auctioneer, a tall, portly man dressed in crimson robes laced with illusion threads, stood at the center of the stage. His voice echoed clearly through the entire hall, courtesy of a magic microphone etched with amplifying glyphs.

"Welco, esteed guests," he announced, bowing deeply, the ruby clasp at his collar pulsing with mana. "Despite the minor... technical interruption yesterday, our beloved event proceeds as always."

A polite chuckle spread like perfu.

"Let us begin with sothing traditional to warm the appetite. Item one—two live Alkarian blood hawks, bred in captivity, obedient to command spells."

The stage shimred as a dod barrier flickered to life, revealing a pair of crimson-feathered birds with steel-like talons and glowing eyes. Bids rang out in the form of floating holographic numbers from each guest’s balcony. The hawks were sold within seconds to a masked woman bearing the sigil of House Volkmire.

Next ca rare potion sets—so glowing, others steaming, all brewed by renowned alchemists of the Florentel estate. The bidding escalated into a frenzy when a luminous vial labeled "Petal of the First Bloom" was revealed, rumored to reverse minor aging for a short period. It sold for 39 gold coins.

Beasts, weapons, armor enchanted with wind or fla resistance. Each item drew cheers and calculating silence in equal asure. Even a slab of bark from a fallen World Tree branch—sealed in glass and humming with ancient druidic power—was displayed.

But as the crowd reached a content lull, the lights dimd subtly, and a new spotlight flared on the now-empty stage.

"And now..." the auctioneer’s voice softened, tinged with theatrical gravitas. "Our final item for tonight. A rare find—delicate, yet durable. Beautiful, yet practical. The last remnant of a village long erased from our maps."

From the left wing of the stage, a pair of handlers walked out with restrained steps. Between them, in soft clinking chains, was a small boy no older than five. His skin was fair, unmarred by labor or malnourishnt. His brown hair fell in light waves around a quiet, unreadable face. He wore only plain black shorts. No sign of panic, no tears—just closed eyes and silence, like a statue carved in innocence.

Gasps whispered through the hall. Not at the child himself, but at the implication.

"A non-registered child," the auctioneer announced. "Recovered from the edge of the Empire wall after a beast tide wiped out an unrecorded settlent. According to our sources, the boy was the sole survivor—rescued by third-year rchant apprentices from the Reinegard Academy. He was... quite cooperative."

The silence thickened. To many of the guests, this was rare—a child not bound by imperial law, without docuntation, unclaid and unowned. A blank slate.

"I know what you’re all thinking," the auctioneer continued, clasping his hands with a smile. "What’s the value here, hm? He is young, yes. But strong. Well-fed. Intelligent, from what we’ve observed. A servant? A house page? Or perhaps... a more artistic addition to a collection?"

Floating panels appeared mid-air, displaying close-range images of the boy’s eyes, features, body proportions—clinical, cold, invasive.

The bidding began at one gold coin.

"Two," flashed one mask with a silver raven design.

"Three," followed another—this one seated in a balcony where crimson silk lined the seats.

The bids rose. "Five." "Eight." "Twelve."

All the while, the boy never moved. His eyes remained closed, his face unreadable. But within his mind, mories churned.

Everard. His na—once forgotten by ti—echoed within him like a dull heartbeat.

He had been here before. This sa stage. These sa chains. These sa voices.

This is nothing.

Compared to what he had seen. Compared to what he had suffered in that last tiline. He was one of the 16 heroes.

He rembered the horrors of war, the screams of friends dying in his arms, the betrayal that left their heroes bleeding on the broken ground while Lucien stood at the Abyssian King’s side.

He rembered fire, darkness, loss.

This auction? This parade of filth dressed in gold? It didn’t scare him. It bored him.

Last ti, he had been bought by a woman with kind hands and gentle eyes—a noble who adopted him, raised him, gave him the ans to awaken and rise. Her mask had been 132, he rembered clearly.

Now?

"Fifty-one gold coins!" barked a voice.

"Fifty-four!" replied another.

"Fifty-six," ca a calm, feminine voice from box 95.

The auctioneer raised his hand. "Any higher?"

Silence.

"SOLD! To guest number 95!" The crowd gave a polite, scattered applause.

The lights dimd as Everard felt his chains gently tug. His eyes fluttered open, and he sighed internally.

Finally. This farce ends.

But then—sothing strange. That number.

Ninety-five?

His gaze lifted, slowly scanning the balconies until he saw her. A silhouette behind a veil of illusion magic, seated where 132 had been in his previous life.

Not her.

Thats not his gentle mother of the past life.

The air around Everard seed to grow colder. The tilines diverged, however slightly. Sothing had changed.

Everard narrowed his eyes, cold calculation creeping into his expression as he stepped down from the stage.

This tiline... is already off-script.