Taming The Villainesses novel Chapter 364

He had been an orphan without even a name.

And the world was not a kind place for a boy with no parents to survive alone.

So he did whatever it took to stay alive.

Then, one day—

While fleeing after stealing a loaf of bread, he was struck on the head by a rock and collapsed, teetering between life and death. In that moment, something strange appeared before his eyes.

「───.」

He knew it was writing, but as an illiterate boy, he had no way of understanding it. Still, he could sense that it was something important. And yet, he couldn’t read it at all.

But those letters became the driving force that kept the boy alive. Letters that no one else could see. Even as he was laughed at and beaten by others, those letters sustained him.

‘I’ve been chosen. I’m different from you.’

The boy who clung to that hope eventually met someone who showed him kindness.

A man called the father of orphans. The headmaster of an orphanage.

The man taught the boy how to read and how to live like a person. He also taught him how to kill people—especially how to kill effectively.

The teachings were strict, but for the first time, the boy knew what it meant to feel full and warm. He made many friends who were just like him.

Family was a good thing. He even liked the orphanage headmaster who had made him feel like a person.

The boy gradually became a man.

He eventually became able to read the letters that had always appeared before his eyes. And those letters that had long haunted his curiosity now said this:

「Kill the orphanage headmaster ── and take his name and the treasure in the basement vault.」

Ah.

The boy who had become a man now became Andromalli.

He lost warmth and fullness in exchange, but it didn’t matter.

Now he had the letters with him always. The letters that gave him a name and constantly told him what he had to do were no different from a father to him.

And so Andromalli knew.

“You’re our Father. I know it. I’ve seen those letters—tens of thousands of times, every day. You resemble them. You look just like them. Others may not know, but I do. This is the final test, isn’t it?”

The final commission from Father.

Kill the one among the tournament participants with a palm-shaped bruise on their ankle. Andromalli had seen those fixed words for three years and always found them strange.

But then word spread that the Queen was truly holding the tournament. And someone with a bruise just like that had appeared before him. Father really was incredible. He had foreseen all of it.

And the fact that he had understood Father’s will—that made him incredible too.

This was the final test.

A test to see if he could transcend Father and become truly free.

The others didn’t seem to realize it, but he understood it well.

So he would give it his all.

Just like he did when he first received a name.

***

Crack, crackle.

Bones fractured. It was the sound of the magic swordsman forcing himself upright against the crushing pressure that pinned him.

The gravity field wasn’t something an ordinary human strength could withstand. Yet Andromalli, the magic swordsman, managed to rise to his feet.

“Giving... it... my all....”

Of course, even though he had stood up, his condition was like a shredded dried pollack tossed onto a highway.

His arms, legs, chest, and lungs had all been fractured and shattered under the crushing force.

He likely couldn’t even move properly.

Clatter.

Then, the long iron chain wrapped around his left arm tightened violently. And not just around his arm—it coiled around his legs and chest too, mummifying him.

As I watched that, Bael bristled with tension.

━Grrrrrr...!

I know. He’s not normal.

This wasn’t how he looked when I took him down in the waiting room earlier. Honestly, I’d thought he was too petty for Bael to be on guard. But now I could tell.

This is the form Bael had been wary of.

“Ugh... final... teeeest... graduaaaation....”

Andromalli seemed to be alive, yet also not. It wouldn’t be wrong to call him a puppet, clinging to life through the chains coiled around him, manipulated by force.

What was certain was this—if I left him alive, something ominous and dreadful would happen.

So I gathered my mana while he still seemed half-unconscious and fired it like a spear straight at him.

─Gungnir!

A deadly technique meant to pierce a single point.

I no longer had any sentiment about having to kill him.

I would send him off painlessly—so quickly he wouldn’t even have time to realize he was dying.

That was the mercy I offered, if only as someone he had mistaken for Father.

Shaaaaak—!

Clatter...

The magic spear pierced cleanly through his stomach and chest, blowing a large hole in his torso. The chains coiled around his body lost strength and fell limp to the ground.

Thud.

The man’s corpse collapsed forward, smacking its face into the dirt. Maybe it was just my imagination, but his expression looked... peaceful. Now there were four left.

Shfft.

I pulled a flare rod from the scroll at my waist. After lighting the fuse at its base, I raised it high into the sky. A ball of flame shot upward from the tip.

Fwoosh—!

Pop—!

The firework blended into the sky with the rest of the opening ceremony’s explosions. Professor Balan would understand the meaning behind that flare. He’d either imprison these people or deal with them in some other way.

“So this wraps things up, for now.”

At least the slaughter of someone in the waiting room by a deranged psychopath wouldn’t happen now.

If Elga and Stella had followed my words correctly, the other conspirators would’ve been apprehended and excluded from the tournament ahead of time.

━Hioooong...!

It really was bizarre.

I had clearly made it to the main bracket, and now I had returned to the past to fix things I hadn’t even known before. Had I reversed time?

But from what I knew, reversing time was as impossible as reviving the dead. Even Solomon at the tenth tier had said it couldn’t be done.

So then, what exactly had I experienced? If I thought back to my final memory, I had been battling Ayra. I’d offered up a massive chunk of my lifespan and triggered a powerful explosion.

The ultimate-tier spell—Teo-Nova.

Had there been some variable in that spell I hadn’t accounted for? Had the energy—akin to a supernova—blasted me across space and time? That’s the scientific theory I considered.

It might also have something to do with that painting inside the frame.

“......”

I didn’t think it was entirely impossible. But it was also clear that this wasn’t something I could reason through on my own. I should discuss it with my wives later.

“Ugh...”

“Urgh...”

Then I saw the Brotherhood, still collapsed on the ground.

Just what was this so-called Father they spoke of?

The target they were after was clearly me. Not just me, but me who had returned through the frame and reversed time.

The palm-shaped bruise on the ankle. I couldn’t imagine that belonging to anyone else. If I pressed the Brotherhood further, I might be able to find out.

Pop, pop-pop!