Villain Rising: My Job In This New World Is To Cuck The Protagonist Chapter 55 - 055. The Beginnings Of Horror [II]

There was no grogginess or sleepy confusion in them.

The mont the violent red light hit her eyes, She imdiately threw the thick silk blankets off her legs with her bare feet hitting the hardwood floor.

"A Class-S periter breach..." Astrid whispered with her breath catching in her throat.

The red wards didn’t trigger for a stray goblin or a minor localized dungeon break.

The red wards only triggered when the absolute structural integrity of the town itself was facing an existential apocalyptic threat.

Astrid didn’t bother changing out of her thin white nightgown.

She forcefully channeled her twilight mana into her right hand.

The air rippled and her imposing high-tier magical staff materialized directly into her grip from her spatial storage.

She threw a heavy, dark coat over her shoulders and sprinted toward the door.

Down the hall, in the master guest suite, the luxurious tranquility had been violently murdered.

Ren was lying on his back in the center of the massive, four-poster bed.

He had been deep in a highly satisfying sleep, dreaming about entirely bankrupting Jace but the blaring high-frequency siren echoing through the walls, coupled with the violent red light bleeding into the room from the hallway, aggressively dragged him back to reality.

Ren let out a long deeply irritated groan.

He just lay there for a second, rubbing his face with both hands.

"Are you kidding ?" Ren muttered to the empty room. "It’s three in the morning. I just moved in."

As if to answer his complaint, his vision violently illuminated.

『CRITICAL SYSTEM ALERT!』

『ANOMALY DETECTED: The Eighth Demon King has successfully initiated a high-tier Bloodline Tracking Ritual!』

『The tracking magic has bypassed the capital and locked directly onto the primary blood relative of the Hero: Target "Astrid".』

『A massive coordinated Abyssal Monster Tide has been summoned and is currently breaching the outer borders of Astelvern Town! Estimated ti until the vanguard reaches the upper ring: 14 Minutes.』

『ERGENCY QUEST TRIGGERED: MONSTER TIDE SURVIVAL』

『Quest Objective: Survive the apocalyptic swarm. Protect the highly valuable assets you have accumulated (Astrid, Eternia, Lyra). Ensure the Hero’s Aunt is not butchered by the Demon King, as her death will prematurely trigger the Hero’s "Tragic Awakening Arc" and grant him a massive power multiplier!』

『Failure Condition: Death. Or worse, Jace gets a tragic ani power-up.』

Ren stared at the glowing red text hovering above his bed.

He read the words Eighth Demon King... Bloodline Tracking... and Monster Tide.

He read the part where his incredibly comfortable, free-rent mansion was currently the absolute epicenter of a demonic invasion because the villain had accurately deduced that killing Astrid would ruin Jace’s life.

Ren sighed with a slow realization settling in his gut.

He kicked the expensive silk sheets off his legs and sat up on the edge of the bed and he reached for his light armor, pulling it over his shoulders as the deafening frantic sounds of the town’s ergency bells finally pierced through the night air, joining the blaring siren of the manor.

He walked over to the glass balcony doors and pushed them open.

He looked out over the glowing upper ring, past the walls and toward the dark plains.

Even from here, he could feel it.

The suffocating terrifying pressure of thousands upon thousands of corrupted beasts marching in unison.

Ren leaned against the doorfra.

"So much for my chill vacation." Ren murmured into the roaring night.

...

Astelvern Town was tearing itself apart.

The serene opulence of the upper ring had vanished entirely, replaced by a screaming chaotic nightmare of stampeding bodies and blaring magical sirens.

The deep continuous tolling of the town’s bronze warning bells echoed endlessly providing a grim terrifying rhythm to the apocalypse unfolding outside the walls.

High above the panicked streets, a massive, luminescent do of condensed magical energy covered the inner town.

The Town Guard and the combined forces of the Major Guilds had successfully activated the Aegis Protocol, erecting the highest-tier defensive barrier the province possessed.

The do glowed with a fierce pulsating golden-blue light casting harsh shadows across the cobblestones.

It illuminated the unfathomable horror raining down from the sky.

Thousands of massive, winged monstrosities slamd continuously against the outer layer of the barrier.

Corrupted Wyverns unleashed torrents of necrotic green fire that washed over the magical shield, causing the golden light to violently ripple and groan under the imnse pressure.

Obsidian Gargoyles dove like stone teors, crashing headfirst into the do, their bodies shattering into jagged shrapnel, only to be imdiately replaced by hundreds more.

The air pressure inside the town fluctuated wildly with every massive impact and down on the ground, a desperate frantic evacuation was underway.

City guards clad in silver armor shouted themselves hoarse, directing the massive surging wave of terrified citizens toward the heavily fortified underground municipal shelters.

Won carried crying children... Wealthy rchants abandoned their carts of gold and silk, trampling over their own wares in a blind primal desperation to survive.

Caught directly in the center of the crushing tide of humanity were Lyra, Kala, Mandy, and Eternia.

Mandy marched at the front of their small group, acting as a physical wedge to carve a path through the panicked crowd.

The butler had stripped off his pristine suit jacket, his white dress shirt stained with sweat and dirt.

He forcefully shoved a hysterical woman aside, wrapping one arm protectively around Kala’s small shoulders to prevent the child from being trampled by the mob.

Lyra stayed close to Mandy’s side with her hand gripping the hilt of her newly purchased masterwork steel sword.

Her knuckles were stark white. Her auburn hair stuck to her sweaty forehead.

She kept her eyes darting between the terrified civilians and the groaning magical barrier above them, her heart hamring a frantic, terrifying rhythm against her ribs.

Eternia brought up the rear, guarding their flank and the Snakekin looked absolutely furious.

She walked with a rigid coiled posture with her golden slit-pupils completely dilated in the dim flashing light.

Her hands hovered re inches from the hilts of her twin daggers.

She bared her sharp fangs at anyone who dared to push too close to her group, letting out low highly dangerous hisses that forced the panicked commoners to instinctively recoil from her path.

She hated this.

She hated the noise, she hated the suffocating press of bodies, and above all else, she hated the fact that she was running away.

A thunderous explosion rocked the eastern wall of the town, sending a violent tremor through the cobblestones.

The crowd shrieked in unison, surging forward with renewed desperation.

Eternia looked over her shoulder with her gaze fixed entirely on the distant flashing explosions of elental magic lighting up the frontline.

Her Master was out there and he had told her to run.

The blaring high-frequency wail of a nearby guard siren pierced her ears, triggering a vivid agonizing mory from just twenty minutes prior.

...

The interior of Astrid’s sprawling manor had been bathed in a violent crimson light as the ergency wards scread their warning.

Eternia had kicked her bedroom door open, stepping out into the velvet-lined hallway fully ard.

Her twin daggers were already drawn, her swords were on her back and her blood ran hot.

She was ready to butcher whatever fools had dared to trigger the alarms of her Master’s territory.

Lyra had sprinted out of the eastern wing a second later with her sword gripped tightly in her hands.

The Sub-Heroine’s blue-gold mana already flickered around her forearms.

They converged at the top of the grand staircase, fully expecting to charge into battle.

Ren stepped out of the master guest suite.

He was wearing his charcoal-grey coat over his light armor and he looked at the two ard girls, taking in their combat-ready stances.

"Put the weapons away," Ren commanded,.

Eternia blinked, her golden eyes wide with confusion. "Master? The periter has been breached... We must defend the Mansion. I will take the vanguard."

"You are going to take Mandy and Kala, and you are going to evacuate," Ren stated with his voice leaving absolutely no room for argunt or negotiation.

He walked down the hall, grabbing Eternia by the shoulder and physically turning her toward the stairs.

"No!" Eternia protested in panic.

She dug her new boots into the carpet, refusing to move. "I am your sworn blade! My place is at your side! I will not abandon you to the enemy!"

Lyra stepped forward with her grip tightening on her sword. "Master, please! I am stronger now! I can fight! Let us help you!"

Ren stopped.

He turned around with his crimson eyes locking onto the two girls.

The weight of his presence pressed down on the hallway, entirely silencing their protests.

"Listen to very carefully," Ren said. "This is not a goblin raid. This is an abyssal monster tide led by a Demon King... The frontlines will be a complete at grinder. If you co with , I will have to spend half my mana keeping you alive... I can’t fight at my maximum capacity if I’m watching my back to make sure you aren’t torn to pieces."

Eternia’s breath hitched.

The harsh truth of his words struck her like a physical blow. She wanted to protect him, but her current strength would only make her a liability in an apocalyptic warzone.

Ren’s expression softened as he reached out, placing his hands firmly on Eternia and Lyra’s heads and smiled.

"Kala has no combat abilities while Mandy can fight," Ren continued. "She’ll be trampled in the panic so I need you two to protect her, Mandy and yourselves."

Lyra swallowed hard with tears pricking the corners of her eyes.

She nodded slowly, lowering her sword.

Eternia stared up at him with her chest heaving as her golden eyes glowed with tears.

The thought of leaving him behind tore at her very soul, but his logic was absolute.

She was his subordinate and her highest duty was to obey his commands.

"I will protect them, Master," Eternia whispered. "But you must promise to return to ."

"Well I haven’t died yet, have I?" Ren smirked. "Now go... Survive."

He shoved them gently toward the stairs, turning his back on them and walking purposefully toward the balcony to intercept the incoming apocalypse.

...

Eternia gritted her teeth, snapping back to the present reality.

She forced her eyes away from the distant flashing lights of the battlefield.

She focused entirely on the back of Mandy’s sweat-stained shirt... her Master had given her a direct order.

She would drag this butler and these two human girls to the underground shelters if she had to carry them all by their necks.

"Keep moving!" Mandy shouted with his voice cracking as he shoved a large wooden cart out of their path. "The shelter entrance is just past the plaza! Stay close!"

The massive central plaza of the upper ring was a scene of unmitigated pandemonium.

Thousands of citizens funneled toward the gaping, heavily reinforced steel doors of the underground municipal bunker.

Guild mages stood on the elevated stone platforms flanking the entrance, firing warning flares into the air and casting calming spells to prevent the mob from crushing itself to death in the bottleneck.

Above the plaza, the golden-blue Aegis barrier groaned with a sickening high-pitched whine.

The monster tide had realized the town’s forces were concentrated on the outer walls.

A massive flock of Corrupted Wyverns and Obsidian Gargoyles had broken off from the main assault, swarming directly over the center of the town.

They plumted from the heavy grey clouds like a shower of dark teors, slamming relentlessly into the apex of the magical do.

BOOM! BOOM! KRA-KOOM!

The impacts sent violent colorful shockwaves rippling across the surface of the barrier.

The magical shield was designed to absorb distributed damage, but the concentrated bombardnt at the exact center of the do was pushing the mana matrix past its breaking point.

Lyra looked up with her breath catching in her throat.

The golden-blue light directly above the plaza began to flicker as deep glowing fault lines spiderwebbed across the magical energy, spreading like cracks in thick ice.

"The barrier!" a city guard scread from the platform, pointing his spear toward the sky. "It’s buckling!"

The crowd in the plaza erupted into a fresh deafening wave of hysteria. People shoved wildly, clawing at each other to reach the bunker doors.

mandy was violently thrown against the stone wall of a nearby bakery, taking the brunt of the impact to shield Kala from the crushing weight of the mob.

High above them, the sickening sound of shattering glass echoed across the entire town.

The magical do fractured as an irregular hole, roughly twenty feet wide tore open in the golden-blue energy shield.

The monsters swarming the exterior recognized the breach instantly.

A colossal Obsidian Gargoyle, its stony hide scarred and glowing with volatile dark mana folded its massive bat-like wings.

It dove directly through the fractured opening before the city mages could funnel enough mana into the matrix to seal the gap.

The massive beast plumted toward the packed plaza like a runaway boulder.

Its terrifying glowing red eyes locked onto the dense cluster of terrified humans below and it opened its jagged, rocky maw, unleashing a piercing blood-curdling screech that shattered the windows of the surrounding boutiques.

"Incoming!" a Guild Captain roared from the rooftops flanking the plaza.

The Major Guilds had anticipated structural failures.

Positioned strategically on the high ground around the plaza were specialized squads of heavy-artillery mages.

Five mages, clad in matching enchanted robes, raised their staffs in perfect synchronization.

They bypassed complex incantations relying on pure elental output.

A roaring vortex of hyper-compressed fire, razor-sharp wind blades, and dense arcane energy coalesced above their staves.

The mages combined their output into a singular massive blinding beam of destructive magic.

The combined elental beam shot upward, illuminating the plaza in a brilliant flash of searing white light.

It struck the plumting Obsidian Gargoyle dead center.

KABOOM!

The force of the impact violently halted the massive beast’s descent. The gargoyle’s thick, stony exterior superheated in a fraction of a second, glowing a furious blinding orange before detonating entirely.

Chunks of jagged, smoking obsidian rained down harmlessly onto the magical deflector shields raised by the guards below.

A massive cheer erupted from the terrified citizens in the plaza.

The Guild Mages lowered their staves, panting heavily from the massive mana expenditure with their faces lighting up with victorious relief.

Eternia however did not cheer.

Her golden slit-pupils completely swallowed her irises, dilating to their maximum capacity.

Her highly advanced predatory beastkin senses pierced through the thick, billowing cloud of smoke and ash left behind by the explosion.

She saw the truth...

The gargoyles summoned by the Eighth Demon King were not standard dungeon fodder.

They were abyssal variants, specifically engineered for psychological terror and maximum lethality.

The massive, hulking stone exterior was nothing but a heavy armored shell... a delivery chanism.

The elental beam had successfully obliterated the transport but it had released the payload.

From the center of the dissipating smoke cloud, a smaller horrifying silhouette launched itself downward.

It was a Nested Gargoyle.

Barely the size of a large dog, this inner creature possessed zero heavy armor.

Its body was composed of sleek hyper-dense razor-sharp black glass. It had four elongated multi-jointed limbs ending in six-inch talons capable of shearing through solid steel.

Its wings were thin aerodynamic blades and its face was a featureless, smooth black visor split only by a maw of needle-like teeth.

It plumted toward the ground with a terrifying silence as its sleek form generated zero wind resistance.

It was moving exponentially faster than its massive outer shell.

Eternia tracked its descent flawlessly.

The creature bypassed the heavily armored guards... It bypassed the glowing mages on the platforms...

The predatory instincts of the monster sought the easiest, most vulnerable prey to initiate a chain reaction of slaughter within the densely packed crowd.

Its featureless visor locked directly onto Kala.

The girl was entirely exposed, leaning against the bakery wall with Mandy’s arms wrapped securely around her and Lyra standing close by.

She possessed zero combat abilities, zero protective aura, and no magical shielding, making her the perfect target.

The Nested Gargoyle tucked its bladed wings, entering a terminal velocity dive aid straight over Mandy’s shoulder to reach the child.

"Mandy!" Lyra scread, her voice cracking with terror.

She swung her masterwork sword upward, her blue-gold mana flaring to life, but she was too slow.

The creature was a blur of black glass, moving at a speed her newly awakened eyes could barely track.

It was already within ten feet of the butler, aiming directly for Kala.

Mandy turned his head with his seasoned combat instincts imdiately overriding his fear.

He shoved Kala forcefully behind his back, pressing her safely against the bakery wall, and dropped into a wide martial stance.

He raised his bare fists, fully prepared to intercept the lethal glass talons with his own flesh to protect the child, even as the Abyssal variant’s hyper-agile speed completely outclassed his own.

FWOOSH!

A violent explosive burst of displaced air ruptured the space directly next to Lyra.

Eternia engaged.

She channeled her raw mana into her boots, instantly utilizing the full, devastating potential of her new Whisper-Step Treads.

Eternia channeled her raw Soul beastkin mana directly into the wind runes inscribed on the soles of the dark Wyvern leather boots and the runes flared with a brilliant green light.

She crouched low, dropping her center of gravity and kicked off the cobblestones with catastrophic force.

The boots completely absorbed the kinetic recoil, eliminating all sound.

The cobblestones beneath her simply cracked under the imnse pressure as she launched herself into the air at a speed that defied the laws of physics.

To the surrounding crowd, Eternia simply vanished.

She materialized directly in the path of the plumting Nested Gargoyle.

She was hovering six feet above the ground, perfectly intercepting the creature’s dive.

Her purple hair whipped wildly around her face as her golden eyes burned with murderous intent.

The Nested Gargoyle screeched, recognizing the sudden obstacle.

It wildly lashed out with its glass talons, attempting to severe Eternia’s torso in half but Eternia’s hands were a seamless, terrifying blur.

She drew her twin, curved steel daggers from her thigh sheaths in a single fluid motion.

She didn’t rely on heavy sweeping strikes... Instead Eternia crossed her blades in front of her chest, catching the creature’s descending talons in the exact crux of her daggers and she utilized the gargoyle’s own extre downward montum against it, violently twisting her wrists.

SCREEECH-SNAP!

The dense high-carbon steel of her daggers acted like a pair of industrial shears.

The creature’s extended forelimbs were cleanly amputated at the joints with the razor-sharp black glass shattering upon impact with the enchanted steel.

The gargoyle shrieked in sudden agony, its montum carrying its torso directly toward her face.

Eternia uncrossed her arms, bringing both daggers down in a blindingly fast, devastating parallel slash.

The twin blades carved cleanly through the creature’s sleek, black glass body.

The high-speed cross-slash severed the gargoyle’s wings, bisected its torso, and cleanly decapitated it in a fraction of a second.

The creature was shredded into jagged useless ribbons of black glass as Eternia allowed gravity to reclaim her.