Reborn as the Fated Villain

Damien swung open the window and soared into the night sky with Levitation. As a B-grade mage, he could sense the movement of mana to a certain extent, but even a random citizen would notice the enormous movement of mana in the air.

Warning bells echoed out across the city.

This is going to be interesting. Damien thought as he looked toward the palace. In times of crisis like this, the citizens expected the power royals and nobles to take action.

Sure enough, a booming voice resounded from the palace, and Damien instantly recognized the serious voice as the king. "Citizens of Kassinki, a pack of Wyverns are heading toward us from the north. Defensive measures are being put in place."

The ground rumbled as the already towering city walls rose even higher into the night sky. Meanwhile, the royal palace in the city center radiated a brilliant blue hue, reminiscent of Dalon's rune-engraved hands but on a grander scale

"Citizens, please retreat to the nearest underground bunker for safety." The king continued, "I also call upon the assistance of any A-grade mages. You will be rewarded handsomely."

The message ended, and Damien witnessed people running out of their homes, some still in their nightwear. They all ran toward designated underground shelters.

Damien knew he couldn't participate against an A-grade threat with his pathetic strength, but he was certain he could watch from afar without much danger. He made sure Fay was hiding in the basement of the tavern before ascending into the sky once again.

The city walls, now triple their original height, loomed over the cityscape, radiating a soft golden glow. "Magical reinforcement," Damien muttered, his eyes scanning the fortified surroundings.

"Back when this was a game, Wyverns were considered 'regional bosses,' appearing randomly in the wilderness," he recalled. Players would be alerted to their presence and given a quest to defeat them within a certain timeframe, or else the bosses would despawn, and the opportunity for significant rewards would vanish.

"But in the real world, I suppose these regional bosses don't just disappear. I've never witnessed how a city defends against such a formidable threat. This is a perfect chance to observe and learn how this world differs from when it was a game."

His gaze then shifted to the palace, which shimmered intensely. "For example, how is the palace glowing like that?" he squinted, puzzled. "Such a concentration of mana should be impossible. Unless there's a mana vein nearby."

Nodding thoughtfully, Damien concluded, "That makes sense. I always wondered why the cities were built where they were but I guess that's my answer. Otherwise, sustaining this level of defence would be unfeasible."

Suddenly, the vast amount of mana around the palace dispersed, enveloping the city in a golden hue. "A spell disruption field?" Damien uttered in astonishment. "Are they expecting the Wyverns to unleash ranged magic against the city?"

He inspected the thin golden layer, and as a mage he knew a spell disruption field was the bane of all mages. It was a shield that would consume itself to destroy incoming spells. "I guess covering the entire city in an actual shield would be too ridiculous, so this will have to do."

Damien then looked past the city walls and was surprised to see small golden blobs of light littering the horizon. Squinting his eyes, he could just about make out the closest blob of light. "Oh, it seems all the towns and villages are being covered in actual shields."

Damien then noticed mana flowing out of the city toward these blobs of light along underground lines. "Are those the equivalent of power lines? The palace must draw up power from the massive mana vein below the earth and then distribute it around the kingdom like a power station?"

Suddenly, the mana in the air shook and gathered toward the Mage Tower, and the golden runes on the white tower gradually illuminated.

"Is it charging up like a battery?" Damien was amazed by the sight. Within a few minutes, the white tower shone like a beacon of hope with golden radiance.

"This is quite the level of precautions. Wyverns are usually a B-grade threat on their own, but if they come as a pack, it can be considered an A-grade threat. Luckily a Dragon isn't coming; otherwise even with all these preparations the city would be wiped out. They are considered S-rank threats for a reason."

A terrifying screech was heard from the north, causing Damien to turn his attention to the approaching flock of Wyverns. The darkness didn't impede his vision as he counted twenty adult Wyverns littering the skyline.

They were between ten and twenty meters long with varying shades of scales. Once the Wyverns were within range of the city, Damien noticed a few powerful auras explode out across the city.

Nearby in the eastern wing, Damien witnessed a fairy shoot through the sky. She was tiny with little white wings and long pink hair. Her aura, however, was enough to almost suffocate Damien as she passed by.

"That must be Amaltheia Magigrace, the 'Queen' of the Mage Tower," Damien remarked as he recognized the fairy. "She possesses A-grade in Spirit magic."

Damien glanced at the university but noticed that the dean didn't make his move. "That old man is likely too engrossed in research to even notice what's going on." He chuckled to himself.

Two other powerful auras entered the night sky from the north and west wings of the city. "Their auras are so suffocating it's like trying to look at the sun directly."

The three miniature suns of aura gathered high above the city stood side by side in the sky and observed the approaching threat.

***

"Owl, what are you doing here, you bastard?" A tiny but profound voice filled with anger entered the old man's ears.

The elderly man who sat casually on a cushion suspended in the air gave the little fairy a grin, showing all his missing teeth. "You know me, Amaltheia. Nothing gets me more excited than shiny coins," he responded in a croaky voice.

Stolen novel; please report.

The fairy buzzed around his cushion with a clear pout on her face. "I don't like you, old man. You creep me out."

Owl just chuckled to himself at the fairy's remarks.

"Stop fighting. Let's work together." The old man and fairy stopped and looked toward a tall half elf who emerged from a portal. He was dressed in black with a weird purple swirling pattern.

"Oh, hi, Jannalor. How's being the president of the guild treating ya?" Amaltheia said happily and flew over to sit on his shoulder.

The half elf gave her a weary smile. He then looked at Owl with a disgusted expression. "What can a Psychic mage even do in this fight?"

Owl just shrugged. "I'm just here for moral support."

Jannalor sighed and surveyed the east side of the city. "I guess the dean will not be joining us."

"That darn old man is just as useless as Owl!" Amaltheia exclaimed, causing Jannalor to flick her head.

"Don't insult the dean like that. He taught both of us magic, after all, although our year groups were three hundred years apart."

Amaltheia cried out as she rubbed her head. "Are you calling me old? Three hundred years is nothing to a fairy!"

Just before Jannalor could apologize, they noticed the Wyverns were in the range of the Mage Tower's weapon.

"It's time," Jannalor announced, his gaze locked on Amaltheia.

The fairy took out a small gadget—a device Damien would liken to a laser pointer. She pointed it at the Wyverns and pressed a button.

Mana surged through the golden runes that lined the tower, racing upwards and converging at its summit. In moments, this energy formed a dense, barely restrained orb of pure power. With a sudden flash, the orb elongated into a dazzling beam of light that sliced through the night sky. The brilliance of that attack was so overwhelming that it could be mistaken for daylight from a thousand miles away. The beam burned through the sky as it flashed towards the Wyverns with devastating speed, leaving them no chance to react.

The intense display lasted but a second; then, as quickly as it had appeared, the night returned. The luminance of the Mage Tower's runes faded, yet those at the base began to slowly recharge their power.

"It will be ready to fire again in ten minutes," Amaltheia commented, and the two other A-grade mages nodded in agreement.

Jannalor then cracked his knuckles. "Time for us to step in."

Owl quickly noticed with clairvoyance that the beam had killed two twenty-meter wyverns, and their corpses were falling from the sky toward the city walls. Although the walls would survive, the corpses could deal heavy damage to the enchantments.

With a nonchalant flick of his wrist, the two wyvern corpses that weighed at least ten tons each were abruptly stopped in the air. He then clicked his fingers, summoning two portals below the corpses. Owl hummed to himself as he gestured downward with his finger, causing the corpses to fall through the portals.

Jannalor nodded at Owl, and they silently agreed to split the money from the corpses. Now, only eighteen wyverns remained. Jannalor's eyes turned pitch black as he chanted his spell, a small pitch-black rift formed next to him, and he reached his arm inside. His face contorted in pain for a second as his eyes rapidly switched between pitch black and bright, hot white.

The space around him trembled and warped as Void affinity mana poured out of the rift. Jannalor then pulled his arm out of the rift, causing it to suddenly collapse. His arm was wrapped in void tendrils that seemed almost too alien to look at.

He then brought his arm and slashed in a downward motion. A slash of the void that seemed to ignore distance appeared on a wyvern's body, and it screamed in pain as one of its massive legs fell to the ground. However, Jannalor wasn't finished; he slashed and slashed again. With every movement of his hand, a wave of the void that crossed space in an instant and was undodgeable appeared on the wyvern's enormous body, severing limbs with ease.

Although Amaltheia took a minute to admire Jannalor's amazing control over space and void mana, she worked her own magic. After a minute-long chant, her tiny body glowed a bright white, appearing as a miniature star in the night sky, and then her body seemed to expand rapidly in size.

An enormous spiritual avatar of a yeti appeared above her. It was kilometers tall and wide, dominating the night sky. Its head alone was bigger than the royal palace, which just showed its ridiculous size. The titanic spiritual yeti let out a thunderous roar and swung its fist toward the wyverns.

Most of them easily evaded, but the yeti's fist still connected with one of the smaller wyverns, causing a sonic boom as it sent the corpse flying all the way back to the Kazimir Mountains.

The remaining fifteen wyverns decided to launch their own counterattack. They all began charging up their breaths. Jannalor used his reach through space to slice at their necks, stopping the attack from five of them. The other ten, however, were able to release their breaths.

Beams of different colors descended upon the capital. They impacted the golden hue shield that wrapped the city; the shield burned its own structural integrity to interfere with the mana within the breaths.

The atmosphere boiled as it became superheated from the mana being forcefully destroyed and warping the spell's integrity. Owl casually contained the balls of the superheated atmosphere and threw them toward the ocean south of the city.

Despite the golden hue's defense and being supplied with endless mana from the palace, a single beam from a twenty-meter-long, red-scaled wyvern managed to penetrate the shield. The superheated beam of mana smashed into the north side of the city, destroying a couple of buildings in the process.

"Tsk." Jannalor cursed. "If only that old fool could leave his research for a single moment and help us out, people wouldn't have to die."

***

Damien was levitating in the air and watching the fight from afar. "They say A-grade mages are like walking demigods. When a mage makes a contract with a spirit or obtains an elemental stone, their power and comprehension of that school of magic will skyrocket. To compare a B-grade and A-grade mage is like comparing an automatic rifle to a nuclear submarine."

Despite it hurting his eyes, Damien watched from a distance as the yeti that looked like an incarnation of a god caused sonic booms every time it moved. "There's a reason Amaltheia's nickname is the 'Tiny Giant,'" he said while chuckling.

Damien also found Jannalor's usage of Space and Void magic very impressive. "The grandmaster of all the guilds in Kassinki, Jannalor. If I had to rank the powers of A-grade mages on the continent, he would be in the top five."

"Amaltheia's magic looks impressive, but its only practical purpose is for destroying large armies or fighting large monsters. Considering there's only twenty known A-grade mages on the continent, I would rank her around tenth."

Damien then thought of the final person there. "Owl would easily rank twentieth. Psychic mages are the weakest, after all. Look, all he can do is move corpses around because otherwise the Wyverns' mana circuits will defend themselves from his mana."

Damien calmly watched the rest of the battle. The mage tower ended up firing three times in total. Jannalor killed ten of the Wyverns by himself, and Amaltheia with the help of the mage tower killed the rest. Owl just moved the corpses and protected some people from falling buildings.

Eventually, the final Wyvern corpse fell through a portal and the battle was over. "As expected, with the home advantage and hiding behind this magic disruption shield, the Wyverns never really had a chance. If the battle actually got bad, the dean might make a move."

Damien shuddered slightly thinking about the dean of the university. If he had to place him on the rankings, he would easily be in first place. "Luckily for everyone that old man is only interested in knowledge and keeps out of mortal affairs. In fact, even if Kassinki was invaded, I'm sure he would stay out of it as long as the university was left alone."

He let out a long sigh. "I need to reach A-grade as soon as possible. It's a shame that A-grade in Psychic magic is so weak compared to the other schools. Not to mention a Psychic elemental stone does not exist, and a Psychic spirit is one of the rarest."

He then grinned. "But who needs luck finding things when I know the location before anyone else? I should also raise my Space magic to A-grade. Maybe then I can compete with some of the lower-rank powerhouses."

Letting out a final sigh, Damien flew back down toward the tavern's bedroom. The battle was over, and he wanted to continue his date.