THE VILLAIN'S POV Chapter 930: The Beginning of the End (3)

The luckiest among them had lost only a single limb.

They climbed toward the place where the three giants had fallen.

They cursed them.

Then they fled, abandoning a world where nothing remained except death.

They wandered endlessly across the ruined land, searching for salvation...

Until death claimed them as well.

Once everything ended, Frey awakened inside the Council’s prison.

He opened his eyes in terror.

He tried to breathe properly, but could barely force air into his lungs.

Sweat covered his entire body, while his open wounds began leaking even more blood.

Drops of sweat and crimson alike fell upon the prison floor.

Frey paid no attention to either.

He gripped his head, feeling as though his mind had been shattered completely.

Pure horror covered his face.

"That final vision..."

His voice trembled.

"It was the most terrifying one so far."

Frey struggled to properly process everything he had experienced.

The amount of death he had witnessed...

That tragic ending...

"What was that?"

"Was that my fate...?"

"Damn it!"

He cursed loudly and struck the ground beneath him with tremendous force.

The entire prison shook.

Frey’s sudden emotional outburst caused him to release aether without realizing it.

The reaction was immediate.

The colossal eye hanging in the prison’s sky blazed with overwhelming light, and an immense pressure crashed down upon Frey’s shoulders.

It forced him to submit beneath its sheer weight.

"Ghhhaaaargh!"

A pained groan escaped Frey.

Even remaining seated became difficult.

It felt as though gravity had multiplied hundreds of times over, affecting him alone.

For a brief moment, the rage and confusion caused by the prophecy completely overwhelmed him.

Dark thoughts flashed through his mind.

"Should I bring this entire prison crashing down over your head, Adam?!"

Frey shouted the Prison Lord’s name, issuing a direct threat.

The prison trembled violently in response.

For several seconds, battle seemed inevitable.

It appeared only a matter of time before Frey destroyed the entire prison.

Yet at the final moment...

The son of the First Writer regained control of himself.

’Rebellion will bring me nothing.’

’What am I doing?’

Rebuking himself, Frey withdrew his aura.

He finally submitted beneath the Prison Lord’s pressure.

The tremors stopped.

Once the chaos subsided, the voices of the other prisoners finally became audible.

Panic had spread throughout the prison.

Many screamed in fear, convinced the entire structure was about to collapse.

A simple clash of pressure between Frey and the Prison Lord had been enough to cause such terror.

Adam, the Lord of the Prison, was an exceptionally powerful Writer.

He ranked among the five strongest members of the Council.

He was also one of the ancients.

A battle between him and Frey would have caused unimaginable destruction.

Fortunately...

That battle never happened.

Later, Frey’s sentence was extended.

He was forced to spend even more time inside the prison because of the disturbance he had caused.

He did not resist.

He quietly served the remainder of his punishment, using the time to revisit the five prophecies again and again.

Perhaps, through enough contemplation, he could understand them more clearly.

Perhaps he could find a way to avoid the worst possible future.

Yet the greatest problem remained unchanged.

He still did not know the timeline of those five visions.

He had no idea when any of them would come to pass.

In a situation like this...

He had no choice but to rely upon his instincts and trust his own perception.

Throughout his imprisonment, the war against the Lords of Mist continued.

Audrey brought him the most important news whenever she was permitted to visit, allowing him to remain aware of everything happening outside.

His father and siblings never came.

They were deeply involved in the war and never had the opportunity to return.

And so...

The days passed one after another.

Throughout his confinement, Frey remained worried about three things above all else...

The visions Lea had shown him.

The being he had created with his own hands... Agaroth, whom he had not seen since the incident with Clea.

And the Pale Devastation, whose return he feared, while remaining completely unaware of how the Council intended to respond if that calamity appeared again.

Yet none of those fears ever came to pass.

Despite spending a long time imprisoned and cut off from the outside world, the Pale Devastation never appeared, and the Writers continued performing remarkably well in the war.

According to everything Audrey told him, their side had achieved one victory after another and slain many Lords of Mist.

The way the war was progressing made victory overwhelmingly likely for the Writers.

In fact, this was the most one-sided conflict between the two forces in history, unlike the previous wars, which had always remained balanced.

That was also why Frey had not been released from prison and sent to the battlefield.

They simply did not need him.

The Writers and the Lords of Mist had been enemies since the dawn of existence, the two supreme powers ruling over the Aether World.

There had never been a third force capable of approaching either of them.

A balance had always existed between the two sides.

But if that balance ever collapsed, the entire world would change and fall beneath the rule of a single power.

The devastating wars between them were true calamities, battles where SSS-rank giants fell dead like flies.

After so many years of conflict, countless beings had awaited its end with desperate anticipation.

As events continued unfolding, Frey began wondering whether all his fears had been unnecessary.

Perhaps the horrifying visions he had witnessed would not come to pass anytime soon.

That thought eased his heart slightly, even though he never managed to force the prophecies from his mind.

Before long, his sentence came to an end.

Frey was finally free again.

And as always...

The first thing he did was return to his own world, hoping to see Agaroth once more.

He had been deeply worried about him.

After having his powers sealed and everything he had fought for torn away, Frey feared Agaroth might have finally collapsed beneath the weight of despair.

Perhaps Agaroth had come to hate him.

Perhaps he had come to hate every Writer after everything that had happened.

He had always questioned freedom.

Its meaning.

Whether he had ever truly possessed it.

He had pursued that freedom for so long, and just as it seemed within reach, the First Writer appeared, shattered every illusion he held, and forced him into submission.

When Frey entered the Land of Survival again after his long absence, Agaroth was nowhere to be seen.

For the first time, he had not been waiting for him.

Frey spent some time searching.

Eventually...

He found him.

And what he saw genuinely surprised him.

His peculiar friend appeared to have built himself a home.

It was a magnificent, colossal fortress.

Its walls looked as though they had been forged from black metallic stone, while its towering ramparts stretched high enough to inspire awe.

Agaroth was inside.

At the deepest point of the castle.

He stood in the center of an enormous chamber where everything lay scattered in complete disorder.

He looked busy.

Like a mad scholar conducting impossible experiments.

The moment Frey entered, Agaroth turned toward him.

Their eyes met.

And in that instant...

Frey received his answer.

’Those crimson eyes burned like fire.’

’They shone more fiercely than ever before.’

’The moment I saw them, I understood...’

’The man standing before me had never surrendered.’

Despite everything that had happened, Agaroth remained standing.

He was still fighting to reclaim what had been taken from him.

His power had been sealed.

His fate had been manipulated.

He had been treated like a slave.

And yet...

He had never given up.

That alone made Frey happier than he could have expressed at the time.