THE VILLAIN'S POV

Chapter 217: Ashes of Hope -Frey starlight POV-

I clicked the question button without hesitation.

At that moment ..

I felt my very soul shudder, not just my body.

Anticipation, longing, fear...

All surging toward that unknown future.

The moment I clicked on the question option, unexpected words appeared before me—stopping me in my tracks.

Free Advice: -Think carefully before using your System Question. Who knows what the future holds? Regret may come too late.-

An overwhelming emptiness swallowed me.

A new tip appeared, alongside the usual Direct and Random advice .. something I had never seen before.

The system was literally telling me not to use my System Question right now. ”Regret? Future?”

I clenched my fists tightly, struggling to contain the flood of emotions surging within me. ”Are you kidding me right now?”

You want me to hesitate?

Now, after everything?

After all the suffering?

Without thinking, I completely ignored the warning. ”To hell with you and your stupid advice.”

I didnʼt want your bullshit.

I wanted an answer.

The path back to them.

Word for word, I typed the question that had haunted my mind for thousands ...no, millions ..of times. ”How can I return to my world?”

To my family.

To my life.

At that moment, it felt as if everything around me froze.

My entire world... stopped.

Even time itself seemed to halt.

The screen went black ..everything vanished.

And from deep within the laptop, I could feel a presence awaken.

At that moment, I heard a voice.

His voice. ”So, youʼve used it in the end... the System Question... even though I warned you ... you would regret it.”

His voice sounded mechanical ... inhuman.

A voice I had never heard before.

And yet, for some reason, every word he spoke stirred something deep within my being.

It was him.

He was the one behind everything that had happened to me until now.

I felt my head burning with rage.

I screamed. ”You bastard!”

I pressed my forehead against the screen. ”Fuck you! Burn in hell along with your damn advice!”

I screamed until my throat burned, cursing the entity on the other side of the screen.

I cursed.

And cursed.

And cursed again.

For a long, long time.

All while he simply listened in silence. ”Damn you... Just tell me...”

Tell me .. ”How do I go back to my world?”

I couldnʼt endure this anymore.

I couldnʼt fight anymore.

That thin thread of hope I clung to was no longer enough.

I had reached my limit.

I collapsed before the laptop, my body trembling. ”Please...” ”Iʼm begging you...”

With a trembling voice, I pleaded for an answer. ”Please... Tell me... How can I return to them?” ”To my world.”

I choked out those words, swallowed by silence.

The silence stretched on.

A minute.

A minute that felt like it lasted an eternity.

Until, finally, the answer came. ”You canʼt.”

Just those simple words.

And my mind went completely blank. ”Wh...at...”

I couldnʼt even form a proper word as he continued speaking .. ”You cannot return to a world you never left in the first place.” ”What...” ”Writer. Author. Son. Riding in a car with his family that day, heading to work.”

His words kept pouring out like a relentless machine. ”In the year 2026, on that night, humanity witnessed an unprecedented disaster .. when gates appeared out of nowhere, unleashing hell and its horrors upon their world.”

Those words hit me like a violent storm. ”That blinding light... was the light of the gate that opened before them, causing their car to crash and killing them all.”

They died.

Your family died.

Thatʼs what he was saying... ”And now, more than 300 years later, here you are, reincarnated ..not as that ʼwriterʼ ..but as your true self, Frey Starlight.”

The voice fell silent.

And with it, everything turned dark. ”No...”

Every fiber of my being trembled.

I could barely mutter the words. ”No...”

I had never left my world to begin with.

I had been there all along... just in the future.

That was the truth.

Tears fell from my eyes as I slumped to the ground, my face shadowed in despair.

I didnʼt even know what expression I was making at that moment.

Was I screaming?

Was I crying?

I didnʼt know.

There had been so many hints all along.

So many signs.

I punched the ground violently.

The floor shattered under my fists again and again.

If I had thought about it properly, maybe I could have realized everything from the beginning.

But I didnʼt.

I chose to ignore it ... to cling stubbornly to hope until the very end.

Two years...

Two years of suffering no normal human could have endured.

But the worst pain... worse than all of it combined... were those words.

They died.

They were dead.

All of them.

I heard a chilling scream.

A cry of deep anguish.

Like the roar of an ancient, enraged beast.

And eventually... I realized it was my own voice.

Those were my own tears.

The darkness thickened around me.

They died because of me.

Father...

The darkness grew even deeper.

Mother...

If I hadnʼt written that damn novel ..

My siblings...

If I hadnʼt created this cursed nightmare ..

All of them...

But no...

In the end... ”Youʼre the one responsible!!!”

I screamed, lunging at the laptop with unbridled rage, hurling it through the wall.

That thing...

That engineer... ”Youʼre the one responsible!”

I felt like I was about to explode.

I walked, shrouded in a storm of darkness.

My vision returned.

But I no longer cared about anything.

Everything was over now.

I found myself inside a hospital.

Inside the room I had just destroyed with my own hands.

As my consciousness slowly returned,

I saw the corpses of all the nurses and doctors sprawled around me.

I had killed them all.

But I didnʼt care.

Nothing mattered anymore.

With a dark, hollow face, I continued walking, smashing everything in my path.

At some point, guards began to swarm around me.

But I kept moving.

After unlocking the first phase of Shadow Adaptation .. and with that strange aura enveloping me...

I was stronger.

Far stronger.

I shattered everything around me.

I cried tears of blood, mourning my miserable state.

They were dead.

Why had I fought all this time?

Why had I endured all that agony?

I didnʼt even know when it happened, but S-class guards had surrounded me tightly now, restraining my body with all their might ... yet I didnʼt even see them.

All I could see... were their corpses.

The corpses of my family. ”Ah... itʼs pointless...”

Yes, it was pointless. ”Thereʼs no point in living anymore.”

Everyone around me shuddered in fear as my body began to crack, purple lines spreading across it like dreadful scars.

Letʼs end this pathetic suffering.

The violent surge of aura intensified, and everyone nearby felt an overwhelming terror.

I saw Ada, Carmen... and many others.

Many eyes were watching me.

But I no longer cared.

I closed my eyes, ready to detonate my body and put an end to everything.

I screamed: ”Ignition!” ... ... ...

As Frey Starlightʼs body cracked apart, unleashing a horrifying wave of aura, everyone around him was gripped by terror.

The fear of that young man.

Normally, Frey would unleash Ignition through detonating a weapon — not his own body.

His body was supposed to be merely a medium.

But now... that young man was about to explode himself.

This act unleashed the full force of an SSS-ranked aura domain.

Frey Starlight intended to blow himself up, ending his life ... and to drag this wretched world down with him.

The entire world trembled at that moment.

An explosion of that scale wouldnʼt just wipe out the Temple.

It would erase the entire capital, Belgrad, from the map.

Ada Starlight watched helplessly as her brother, swallowed by darkness, headed toward his own destruction.

And then, as if by some miracle, before the young man could explode ...

The serpent tattoo on Freyʼs left arm blazed with a brilliant blue light.

The serpent coiled tightly around his body, and from that hand emerged a cursed, pitch-black sword.

The sword moved as if it had a will of its own, rising upward and forcefully absorbing all the explosive aura.

Balerion had devoured it all, pulling the death-bound aura high into the sky.

A towering column of ominous black aura shot into the heavens, piercing through the S ranked dome protecting the Temple .. shattering it like fragile glass .. and continued on, carving a massive hole through the clouds above.

The entire world witnessed that pillar.

Everyone in the Temple.

The citizens of Belgrad.

All stared in horror at that dreadful sight.

Those who had been at the Island Trial had seen it before.

Among them...

Phoenix Sunlight stared at the young man, rushing toward him.

Toward Frey Starlight.

The sword on his left hand had saved them, forcibly casting that black death away into the sky.

Slowly, the darkness dissipated.

And there he was ..

Frey, his body cracked and broken, his eyes lifeless... like an ancient, withered corpse.

Ada Starlight watched in silence... as her brother collapsed slowly to the ground.

That final expression he wore was forever burned into her memory.

The expression... of someone who had lost everything.

The face... of someone who had chosen death.

That... was Frey Starlight. .... ... ....

A.N: 3 more chapters as a thanks for the unexpected gift! Thank you all!!

The current volume and arc will feature even stronger and more intense events ... look forward to it!

Thank you for your continued support!