NOVEL NEXT Chapter 1825: Reap the Worthless
Villain Ch 1825. Reap the Worthless
"That video leaked?" Shea said, casually skewering a screaming rogue with her feather blade.
The blood mist evaporated before it even hit the sand.
They were in the Crimson Dust Flats—burning sun, cracked terrain, sandstorms forming in the distance. The kind of place where heat made your health bar sweat and visibility dropped faster than a newbie in PvP. But it was oddly… peaceful. If you ignored the explosions, the dying screams, and the occasional tsunami from Zoe's latest mood swing.
Allen nodded once as he cleaved a berserker in half with a single, quiet slash.
No flare. No fancy VFX. Just clean, brutal finality.
Today's daily quest was a joke.
[Quest: Reap the Worthless]
[Objective: Terminate 100 players above Level 120.]
[Rewards: Chaos Gems 10 ea ]
[Time Limit: 3 hours.]
Usually, it was ten kills. Maybe twenty.
But today?
A hundred.
Which clearly meant the devs were up to something. Pre-event, pre-tourney. Stirring the PvP pot. Letting the sharks stretch their jaws.
And Allen?
He was always ready to eat.
He flicked blood off his blade with a single fluid motion, the crimson streak trailing in the air before evaporating into infernal ash.
"Yes," Allen replied calmly, stepping over a twitching corpse. "I never thought it would actually happen. But it is what it is."
Behind him, Vivian giggled, wiping brain matter off her cheek. "Public humiliation with a splash of sex scandal. Honestly, I applaud the chaos."
Alice spun her broom and crushed a dying caster under her heel. "I'd call it unfortunate. If I cared."
Vivian tilted her head, perched on a sand-slick rock. Her wings flicked behind her as she hummed thoughtfully. "It's everywhere. Forums. Threads. Even the perv communities think it's too much."
"They're calling it 'The Fallen Trio,'" Zoe added dryly, tentacles slithering across the battlefield as she grabbed a fleeing healer and crushed him with a wet snap. "Apparently the frame-by-frame breakdown is trending."
"I saw a thumbnail of Sophia crying," Larissa muttered, licking blood from her claw. "Gorgeous angle, though."
Allen didn't smile. He never smiled when he was focused.
He just kept walking. Sword humming at his side like a living curse.
A group of four approached from the dunes.
Assassins. Fast.
Too fast.
Didn't matter.
"Left," Allen said without turning.
Vivian blinked forward with a devilish smirk and met them mid-sprint.
Three seconds later?
Only sand remained.
Jane strolled up from behind the hill, wiping blood off her cheekbone. "The leak was expected. But the timing? Odd."
Allen's gaze sharpened. "Sophia."
"Obviously," Zoe said. "But the thing is… she's not smart enough to distribute it like that. You saw the pattern. It hit the underground and influencer groups first. Then the reaction channels. Then the scandal breakdown streams."
"Scripted," Allen said.
Shea sat up straighter. "You think someone helped her?"
"No," Allen replied, decapitating another target with a flick. "I think someone waited for her to lose control."
"And used it," Alice finished.
The silence afterward wasn't empty—it was measured.
Allen wasn't angry.
He didn't get angry.
He got calculating.
But then—Jane blinked.
"…Weird," she said.
Bella, who had just pounced on a fire mage, looked up from the corpse. "The video?"
Jane nodded. "Yeah. I got it, like, half an hour ago. The R18+ chat was lighting up. But… it looked fake. Some people said the same."
That made everyone pause.
Even Allen.
"What do you mean?" he asked, eyes narrowing.
Jane gestured vaguely with her hand. "AI-made flaws. Little things. Glitches. One of Darren's hands has six fingers for a frame. Sophia's hair clips through the bed in one shot. There's a moment where Liam's left eye blinks in two directions."
Bella nodded, crossing her arms. "I saw that too. It's too perfect in composition, but too weird when you slow it down."
Allen frowned. "But I already checked it."
Shea tilted her head. "Same. I watched it earlier. Nothing looked off."
Jane blinked. "Weird…"
Allen was quiet for a moment, expression tightening. His thoughts sharpened like daggers sliding into their sheaths.
"Could you send it to me?" he asked.
Jane arched a brow. "Why?"
Allen looked up, cold and deliberate. "For comparison."
A beat. Jane gave a slow nod. "Okay. Wait a sec."
Her avatar flickered briefly. She vanished for a moment, a blur of particles floating in her place.
A couple of seconds passed.
"Done," Jane said.
Allen nodded once. "Alright. I'll open it here. Emergency connection. Just give me thirty seconds. Watch my back. If I die to a rogue in a bathrobe while comparing p*rn videos, I'm logging off forever."
Bella rolled her eyes but smiled faintly. "Got it. We'll kill anything with a shadow."
Allen's fingers slid through the air as the screen stabilized and the video loaded.
His brows knit the moment it started playing.
This version was… off.
Exactly like Jane said.
A weird frame skip on Darren's arm. The fingers elongated for a blink—six digits—then back to five.
Sophia's hair jittered once, sliding into the pillow like bad collision physics.
Liam's eye? It blinked in two directions. Simultaneously.
Allen's stomach dropped.
He tapped his screen and opened his own saved file. The one Gerry had sent him.
He played it side-by-side.
This one?
Smooth.
Polished.
Raw.
Ugly, but seamless.
The real version.
So that only meant one thing.
Allen slowly straightened, the emergency display fading.
He exhaled sharply. Coldly.
"There are two versions."
Vivian frowned. "So it's edited?"
"Or made to look edited," Alice added. "Which is clever. If you wanted to spread doubt."
Shea narrowed her eyes. "So what? They deepfaked their own scandal just to counter her releasing it?"
Allen was already walking. His boots crushed a half-dead rogue still trying to crawl away.
"No," he said calmly. "They knew she still had a copy. Probably couldn't erase it. So they made a version look like a deepfake. Spread it the moment she leaked the real one."
"To make hers look like the AI-polished version of the original fake," Jane finished, voice grim.
Vivian let out a low whistle. "That's cold. Even for us."