*Content Warning: This chapter contains a fair bit of gore.*

“Tch, they let kids join the guards these days?”

This was the first words Villin heard when he went though the teleportation array. He looked around and found himself in a large rectangular waiting room with four teleportation arrays, one in each corner of the room.

Two of the walls were lined with hundreds of lockers. A few were open since a bunch of people were already here and checking out there lockers. Villin spotted a blue suit in each of the lockers, as well as a sturdy wand.

The man who spoke when he entered was an extremely burly male that was currently topless. He had large tattoos over each of his shoulders and looked extremely intimidating.

If it were a few months ago, Villin would’ve simply smiled and possibly made a joke about the man as he ddn’t see him as a threat, but because of the Cornelius situation he was more careful and his gaze carefully inspected the burly man and the surroundings. He was specifically looking for any people that could be his friends.

‘Bingo.’ Villin knew that it was the right precaution to take when he saw two lean men and a pretty lady exchanging gazes, they seemed to be looking for confirmation from the initial muscular man but he didn’t focus on them since the man noticed Villin’s gaze on himself.

“The f*ck are you looking at, kid?” the muscular man said angrily as he tilted his head upwards slightly to make the slight height difference between himself and Villin seem more apparent.

A quick gaze at the surroundings, told Villin nobody seemed to have any attention to speak up for him, the three people that knew the muscular man also weren’t moving as they simply observed the situation.

Villin’s mind worked overtime as he thought of his to fix this situation, he didn’t want another Cornelius on his hands who harbored bad intentions.

Then, he thought back to Atlantis, not the warehouse explosion this time but the people, they feared him and yet nobody did a thing to him. Some even felt the need to join him and even the leaders who he inconvenienced, didn’t make a move.

The reason? Fear.

When he thought of this, Villin knew what to do. He shouldn’t attack the man even though his chin seemed so exposed right now, that would only anger him and may even anger the people organizing this auction.

The answer was to act entitled, bait in an attack and squish it, pretending it wasn’t the slightest problem at all and he could kill the man at any point.

“Tch,” Villin scoffed as he began walking past the muscular man, an aloof expression on his face, “A little ant should know not to annoy a warrior. If the little ant does not know, he will be squashed.”

Villin spoke with a russian accent as he spoke in the neutral tone. Even though his words were brutal, his expression didn’t change, other than initially when he checked everything out, he hadn’t given the muscular man that questioned him another glance.

Still, Villin could see his expression perfectly well with his magic power.

As Villin walked past the man, he froze, as if he had no idea of what to do. Then a vein bulged on the side of his forehead, ready to pop as he seemed furious.

The man turned back with a furious expression as he looked at Villin who was aloofly walking through the room, passing by multiple stunned spectators.

“You dare call me, Alexi Gurnov, an ant?! You are the ant! Do you not know who I am?!”

Villin didn’t seem to react but he did think of the man’s name. Gurnov was a name he had heard before. If he was right this man’s brother should be the leader of one of the smaller guilds that aided Mafoli, or now Decorus, in combat.

After a moment’s hesitation, Villin decided to respond, angering the man further, “An ant supported by slightly bigger ants is an ant nonetheless.”

This casual-sounding reply was enough to anger Alexi to the point of no return. Villin saw his hand reach for his waist within his magical sight and silently checked his preparations, for the others it seemed that he was still walking though, unaware of the wand that soon pointed towards his back.

“For you to insult my brother! You will pay!” Alexi shouted angrily before a vicious orange streak came out of his wand and headed for Villin’s back.

Villin continued walking but before the spell hit him, a massive vine popped out of the ground behind them, slashing at the spell, the spell seemed to have no effect on the vine whatsoever.

“This! You!” Seeing that Villin didn’t even turn around to face his spell, Alexi grew even more furious, within just a dozen seconds he cast a number of spells, but all of them were deflected by the large vine. Occasionally a small section would get cut through or burnt slightly but smaller vines would then come out of the ground and assimilate with the big one, “Damn this thing is strong.” Alexi mumbled through gritted teeth. Not realizing what was going on behind him.

Just before he sent out a second string of spells, he felt a light tap on his shoulder.

“Huh?” Confused, Alexi turned his head to see what was going on behind him, only to be surprised by a dozen vines just like the one he had been attempting to destroy.

Before he could make a move, the thinnest vine, the same one that tapped his shoulder, shot forward, right into the muscular man’s slightly open mouth. Within a moment he had dropped his wand as he choked on the vines that seemed to be moving through his windpipe.

Only a second after the event began, Alexi’s eyes turned to the back of his skull as bits of puke and juice came out of his mouth around the area the vine was blocking.

The muscular man was easily lifted up, by the vine that reached his insides. A small string of it made its way to the heart, slightly piercing the stomach, letting blood in.

Even though Alexi had fainted, Villin knew that he would be able to feel it touching his heart, able to crush it at any moment.

It was only then that Villin took a condescending glance back. One of the three people that were friends with the muscular man quickly walked forwards with a desperate expression, “Please man! He was just messing around! That first spell he used was just a stunner, he wasn’t really going to hurt you, I promise!”

Villin simply scoffed but the vine began retracting from Alexi’s body, causing it to fall onto the ground. Seeing how deep the thinner section of the vine had gone and all the juice and blood that was now on the vine, all of the people within the dressing room gulped, looking at Villin like he was a monster.

One of the people who just entered through one of the teleportation arrays, immediately went back after seeing the vine coming out of the man’s body.

“Shhh, Viney, it’s alright.”

When Villin said this, everyone turned their gazes to him. The vine next to him seemed to be alive as it twisted in an oddly natural manner and Villin casually petted it. A few seconds later, the people in the room swore they could hear purrs coming from underground, even though this was just a sound effect caused by transfiguration, the majority of people here were completely convinced there was a beast made out of vines underground, tamed by the young boy, protecting him.

When Villin saw the terrified expressions of his fellow guards, he inwardly nodded, this would do.

Since he didn’t have to care about appearance as much anymore since the seed of fear had taken root, Villin took another look at Alexi, who was now surrounded by his three friends.

They seemed to be casting several healing and revitalization spells on him, Villin was sure he’d be all right. Other than poking a hole into the man’s stomach no truly severe internal damage was caused, it could all be healed by healing spells as long as they were cast quickly.

Even though he took care of Alexi this way for a decent reason, Villin had to admit it was rather nice to take care of people this way. It had been the same back when he took care of the attackers of Athena’ Forge. There was something quite satisfying in easily winning a battle. Then again, Villin didn’t have a lot of experience ‘winning’ thus far so that may be a reason.

Villin retracted the vine in a manner that made them look more alive once more, reinforcing the belief that ‘Viney’ existed. Then, the ground seemed to repair itself automatically. Most people managed to figure out it was Villin doing this easily as well due to the fact that he wasn’t wearing shoes. Then, a rumor popped into the heads of some of the people here.

“Did you read ‘Today’s Oddities’ last week? Didn’t they say that they had a contact that claimed that the Decorus headmaster has another son and that’s why she gave up on her daughter so easily?” one of the older guards here asked the person next to him in a whisper.

Soon, the rumor had gone all around the dressing room, Villin heard it but pretended not to. He hadn’t been outside of The Academy a lot yet and didn’t know for sure how accurate the claim was. But since it came from ‘Today’s Oddities’ and Elinoire never said she had a brother, Villin decided not to do anything, if they wanted to believe he was the Decorus heir, he would take the temporary bit of status. If anyone asked him about it though, he would have to come clean, he was already an opponent in Decorus as a whole, best not to make any more personal enemies.