A Villain's Will to Survive novel Chapter 270

Chapter 270: Ashes (2)

After meeting them by chance in a shop in the Ashes, Arlos led Mage Epherene of the Mage Tower and Prosecutor Rose from the Supreme Magic Prosecutors' Office to the base of her adventurer team. It looked no different from an ordinary office. There, Epherene and Rose removed their robes—only to be stunned in surprise as their eyes met.

“Are you the Professor’s protégé?” Rose asked.

“Oh, you’re Professor's bodyguard,” Epherene said.

"I'm not a bodyguard. I'm a prosecutor—assigned to the Supreme Magic Prosecutors' Office of Yuren," Rose replied, her brows drawing together ever so slightly. _{freeweɓnøvel.com}

“Oh~”

Epherene, of course, had no idea what a prosecutor from the Supreme Magic Prosecutors’ Office even was.

“Anyway,” Epherene said as she turned toward Arlos, or more precisely, toward her puppet. “Do you know who it was that stole the transformation formula?"

“I cannot say for sure,” Arlos replied, shaking her head. “But it’s obvious—it’ll be one of the names on this wanted list.”

Several wanted posters were pinned to the corkboard on the wall of the adventure team’s base.

“Carla the Authority? Carla’s here?” Epherene said, peering at the array of faces on the corkboard, then flinching as her eyes landed on a name she hadn’t expected.

Carla, the Authority, was once a prodigy and the leading candidate to become the next Archmage. But at some point—whether she fell to corruption or had grown tired of the Floating Island and its politics—she disappeared from the magical world, erased her record, left her legacy behind, and in the end, became a criminal, wandering the Ashes.

“Yes, she’s here,” Rose replied, her mouth tightening with visible displeasure. “She’s been a nightmare in both Yuren and the Ashes, and her brother Jackal speaks for himself—but she has committed far too many crimes on her own.”

As the words left her lips, Rose’s eyes remained locked on Carla, the Authority’s wanted poster.

However, there was no face, no features—just the name Carla written beneath the figure in a robe. Just as expected from the most mysterious mage in the world.

“It was five years ago that Carla first appeared in Yuren. At the time, we were hopeful. Yuren had few magic talents in the region, and we had hoped she would become a guiding hand for the next generation.”

“And what happened?” Epherene asked.

“Guiding the next generation? That dream died fast,” Rose replied with a chuckle. “She turned to theft, buried herself in strange magic research in the Ashes, and her brother Jackal—he’s a murderer, but he’s so powerful that even Yuren’s authorities have never been able to lay so much as a hand on him.”

At those words, Drent and Julia—both as delicate as flowers raised in a greenhouse—swallowed hard, the kind of fear that tightened their faces and dried their throats.

“Fortunately, Jackal has disappeared into Hadecaine, and Carla, too, has been quiet for a while... but of course, something else had to go wrong,” Rose added, turning toward Epherene and clicking her teeth. “Miss Assistant, is that research really worth one billion elne?”

“Yes—but I’m not an assistant. I’m an assistant professor,” Epherene replied.

“I’m not a bodyguard either,” Rose said as she adjusted her robe across her shoulders. “I’m a prosecutor.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m headed to the volcano since someone has begun to follow Decalane’s trail.”

“I’ll come with you. Drent, Julia—are you coming too?”

Drent and Julia rubbed the backs of their necks before shaking their heads.

“We’ve got something we need to do... so I think we’ll have to head back to Yuren.”

“Yeah? Alright then. What about you, Miss Puppeteer?”

“I’ll come with you. The Ashes are full of dangerous types, and I’ve known Deculein for some time—consider the escort free of charge,” Arlos replied with a chuckle, swinging a large duffel over her shoulder.

***

... The volcano in the Ashes buried everything even deeper than the village and the commercial district. The further they descended underground, the darker everything became—washed in crimson shadow—and the air grew thick with volcanic ash.

The ones who came and went in that lowest layer were miners, criminals, and drug addicts—people who had no purpose, no direction. Pathetic souls who’d long since thrown away even the worth of their own lives.

I stood deep in the center of the volcano, looking down at the molten magma churning beneath the crust.

“This is as far as it goes. There’s nothing beneath it,” the man said. “Umm...”

“Take it, and be gone,” I said, tossing him the pouch of gold coins.

“Oh! Thank you, sir! Hahaha!”

The man who guided me here stepped back with the brightest smile, and I stood there, staring into the volcano in silence.

Beneath the ground, an aura swirled and shimmered, the flow of mana too dense to hide, and through my Sharp Eyesight, I saw it all.

Without a word, I raised the Wood Steel and bound four blades of steel into a platform beneath my feet. I stepped on and let myself descend into the volcano like an elevator, gliding through the heat of the magma, chasing the aura below.

Then, I found a shelter carved into the wall of the volcano. It led into a long, winding passage, its stone scorched by the breath of the magma.

Clack—

I stepped inside and looked around. The first things I saw were ordinary furnishings—a sofa, a desk. Magic paper was likely here too, but none of it caught my eye.

“... This is where you were.”

There, at the back of the cave, a bed had been placed—and on it, lying without the faintest movement, was a woman I’d seen before. One of the strongest beings in this world.

“Carla,” I said.

I stepped toward Carla, the Authority, and looked down at her as she lay sprawled across the bed, drenched in cold sweat, her black hair clinging to her skin, soaked through, while her whole body burned like a live flame.

Carla looked at me in silence. From the very beginning, her body had been terminal—born with a death sentence and a talent too immense for her frame to contain, and now, that body was little more than a shell.

[Independent Quest : Carla]

◆ Carla, the Authority, does not want to die.

“... I wonder if you are Deculein,” Carla muttered, barely above a whisper.

The sound of Carla’s voice reached into me, drawing me back through time—into Deculein’s past, far removed and fading at the edges of memory.

From her earliest years, Carla bore the genius of a mage born, not made. Once, through sponsorship from Deculein, she came to teach me—and that memory still burns clearly in my mind. In other words, she was Deculein’s mentor long before Rohakan ever was.

“I wonder why you don’t know this.”

“I wonder why Deculein never seems to understand the lessons.”

However, the difference in our talent was overwhelming. Carla, confused that Deculein couldn’t understand a single part of her teachings, eventually left the mansion. That innocent confusion of hers became a deep wound that Deculein could never quite shake for years.

“Indeed, I am Deculein,” I replied. “We haven’t met since Ghost Island.”

“... I wonder,” Carla said with a smile.

Meanwhile, I turned to the magic papers laid beside Carla’s bed, and each line of spellwork revealed itself to me in turn—Comprehension coming as naturally as breath. They described a Harmony category spell designed to trigger an artificial eruption by planting a magic circle at the base of the volcano.

“Carla, why are you trying to make the volcano erupt?”

[Main Quest : Volcano of the Yuren Mountain Range]

◆ Reward Granted Based on Choice

The Main Quest had begun to overlap with the Independent Quest—and Carla’s appearance was the sign. A signal flare marking the start of the episode’s second half, she was, after all, a named character aligned with the Altar.

“... I wonder if Deculein came here to stop me?” Carla asked, sitting up and leaning her back against the bed frame as she looked up at me.

“I came to ask for the reason.”

Carla lowered her head without a word, sweat pooling on her face and trailing down beneath her chin.

“I wonder... if maybe I don’t want to die after all,” Carla said, her voice shaking as she caught her breath.

Carla’s voice trembled with emotion, on the edge of tears. Within Carla’s failing body, mana erupted like a volcano—raging hot and unrestrained. It was eating away at her heart and veins, devouring her from the inside out.

“Was that why you cooperated with the Altar—because you didn’t want to die?” I inquired.

The will to survive was universal. Whether this world was a game or not, almost no one welcomed death. That was only natural—we're all human, after all.

“I wonder if it all started with requesting it from Decalane. Was he chasing immortality even then, through his research? But...”

“Decalane is dead.”

“Cough— Cough—”

Thud— Thud—