Reborn As The Minor Villain In A Romance Fantasy Novel - Chapter 278: I Can’t Laugh Yet
Chapter 278: I Can’t Laugh Yet
In the main office of the Aribio Industries, a man at the top floor with crystal windows that could show what was happening below sat at his mahogany table as several explosions sounded across New Avalon city.
The office occupied the entire sixtieth floor of the gleaming corporate tower, with floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of the capital city sprawling beneath.
Each boom rattled the reinforced glass and made the expensive paintings on the walls tremble in their gilded frames, shaking dust loose from the ceiling.
Dr. Matthias Aribio had been reviewing quarterly profit projections when the first explosion lit up the western district.
Now he sat frozen, watching plumes of smoke rise from what he knew were his facilities.
His secretary ran inside without knocking, her heels clicking frantically on the imported marble floor, her normally perfect composure completely shattered.
“Boss… several warehouses holding very important products have been completely decimated by an unknown Awakened. He or she can somehow use multiple attacking elements simultaneously and even the drones encircling the craters haven’t managed to get a glimpse of their face.” She reported while pursing her lips nervously, clutching her tablet close to her chest. “The destruction is total… No one or Nothing survived.”
Behind the table, Matthias Aribio bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.
’What the fuck is going on…?’ This was the damned capital with several active S-ranks based here permanently… why would someone in their right minds choose to attack his warehouses in broad daylight? And for what reason could possibly justify this level of aggression…?
His mind raced through possibilities.
Competitors? Activists? Government agents? None of it made sense. His operations were buried under enough shell companies and legal protection that direct assault should be impossible.
“What happened to Subject 01? Has the mission been completed?” He asked while tapping his foot impatiently on the ground even behind his chair, the nervous rhythm betraying his composure.
He was fine as long as his research wasn’t discovered and the warehouses that had been attacked didn’t include where the research data was stored—
“The attacks even pierced the Underground of Warehouse SP1, destroying several loads of materials as well as research that we’ve made on Force Awakening and even the scientists as well as everyone in these warehouses were killed.” The secretary said, her voice shaking slightly as she delivered the news. “The last signal from Subject 01 was that she was trying to divulge confidential information so the collar automatically triggered its termination sequence…”
Matthias couldn’t hold it anymore.
He slammed his fists onto the mahogany table with explosive force, pushing several documents and even his favorite custom-made ceramic cup to the ground with a loud shatter.
The sound echoed through the spacious office like a gunshot.
“What the hell is going on in New Avalo—”
There was a sudden shadow cast across the table from behind, blocking out the afternoon sunlight that had been streaming through the western-facing windows.
The temperature seemed to drop several degrees.
The secretary’s face paled to the color of chalk and Matthias slowly turned around in his leather chair to see Lucius hovering behind at the glass window, floating casually in midair sixty stories above the ground as if gravity was merely a polite suggestion he’d chosen to ignore.
He was floating effortlessly and in his arm was Subject 01, very much alive and looking completely unharmed despite the collar’s termination function.
The implications hit Matthias like a physical blow.
Lucius blasted a hole in his window with a casual flick of his wrist, the reinforced glass that was supposed to withstand hurricane-force winds shattering instantly.
The specialized security glass, worth more than most people’s annual salary, spider-webbed outward before collapsing inward.
Glass shards tinkled to the floor like deadly rain, scattering across the expensive Persian carpet and embedding themselves in the leather furniture.
“Is he the one?” Lucius shrugged at the girl, examining Matthias with mild interest.
He hadn’t seen the guy’s face in the manhwa or novel since the one hundred subjects had decided that they would kill the professors that had experimented on them as well as the man that owned the company.
They’d been quite thorough about erasing all traces of leadership from existence.
The girl nodded firmly, her eyes hardening with recognition and barely suppressed rage.
Lucius floated casually across the room until he was standing next to the secretary that had fallen onto her knees with trembling legs, unable to support her weight anymore.
Lucius pulled back a leather chair and sat down making sure Subject 01 sat down on his lap comfortably, and then he looked directly at Matthias with an expression of mild amusement.
“You know… I’m extremely surprised.” He said as the man’s eyes twitched with barely controlled fury.
“Lucius von Hohen—”
“Don’t interrupt me.” He raised a finger up calmly and the man shut up immediately, clamping his mouth closed with an audible click of teeth.
He was an Unawakened and Lucius was the Space Awakener, if Lucius wanted to kill him… then he would already be dead.
The power disparity was absolute. “I’m a foreigner so I don’t concern myself with the business of other people however what is this I’m hearing of you experimenting on a child to force awakening? That seems rather unethical, don’t you think?”
Matthias gripped his palms until they were white with pressure, his knuckles cracking audibly.
“Me? Doing that? How preposterous… So after believing the words of a random girl, you decided to attack my warehouses right? If you were this carefree and reckless in Aurelia then you shouldn’t think your childish behavior will be tolerated by anyone from Avalon.” Matthias said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, trying to regain control of the situation. “We have laws here. Due process. You’ll be arrested for terrorism before sunset.”
Lucius and Subject 01 chuckled evilly at the same time in perfect synchronization, like a villain and their sidekick in a stage play, and Matthias suddenly had a sinking feeling from this harmony, like watching predators coordinate before delivering the killing blow.
There was a terrible understanding between them, a shared knowledge that spelled his complete and utter doom. The girl knew all his secrets and this monster had all his leverage.
Lucius reached into his inventory with deliberate slowness, building the tension, and placed a small flash drive on the desk with a decisive click that sounded impossibly loud in the quiet office.
It had an ornate.. A symbol etched into its metal casing and Matthias could recognize where it came from immediately… The Head Scientist in charge of this project, Dr. Chen, had created exactly two copies of all the current research data.
One was kept with him under Warehouse SP1 in a very secure multi-encrypted flash drive that should be impossible to access without retinal scan, fingerprint verification, and a sixteen-digit password that changed daily while the second was with him.
“After destroying the first warehouse, I found the Head Professor of the Project. He’s quite a very nice person once you get past his initial reluctance to cooperate.” Lucius said as he picked the flash drive up again, moving it between his fingers like a magician performing a coin trick, making it appear and disappear with spatial manipulation. “He became very talkative after I explained the alternative options available to him. Now I’m sure that you don’t want the Head Scientist to appear in a GUILD Court or even more conveniently, I’ll just show them the flash drive with all its incriminating data and documentation of illegal human experimentation on minors.”
Matthias gulped, his throat suddenly dry.
That flash drive held years worth of experience in experiments, detailed records of every failure and success and even the information about the Dead experiments that Subject 01 didn’t know about… he needed to get it back because as long as Lucius had these things, he would be able to get good leverage over him especially since he had a direct connection with the Moon Goddess herself.
“What do you want…?” Matthias asked with a resigned sigh, his shoulders sagging in defeat. “I will do anything you wish of me to. Name your price.”
“Oh okay… I have a series of things to ask for.” Lucius said as the flash drive disappeared into his inventory and Matthias gritted his teeth again with frustration. “First of all, what’s the name of this girl…?”
He couldn’t keep referring to her as this girl in his head… she needed a proper name for legal documentation and his own sanity.
“She doesn’t have any names, her parents abandoned her on the streets when she was very young and we took her in to experiment on. Apart from 01, she has not been assigned a name or designation.” Matthias said while his hand went down casually… on the underneath of his desk, there were a series of buttons hidden from view.
One for ejecting himself from the building and the other for destroying the whole structure completely.
The explosives were everywhere in the very infrastructure, wired into the foundations and support beams.
He was sure that even Lucius would not be able to survive such a massive explosion at point-blank range… even if he had to kill everyone in the building including himself, that didn’t matter much as long as he took this threat with him.
The dead tell no tales.
“Oh I see.” Lucius said and leaned forward suddenly with predatory speed, placing a hand on the edge of the massive desk.
The mahogany surface was easily six feet across and weighed several hundred pounds with all its drawers and mechanisms.
Then with casual strength that defied physics, he threw it out the shattered window like it weighed nothing more than a cardboard box, letting it fall from the sky to the ground sixty floors below.
The desk tumbled through the air, spinning end over end as it plummeted past the lower floors.
Office workers in the building across the street screamed and pointed. The impact came seconds later when the desk crashed into the street with a distant crunch of splintering wood and twisted metal, the sound echoing up like thunder.
Car alarms started wailing from the shockwave.
“Oh, there were cables…” Lucius observed with mild interest.
Underneath where the desk had been, there were ripped cables that had been connected to it, sparking and sputtering against the marble floor. “You didn’t plan to blow us up, did you?”
Matthias shook where he sat while the secretary dropped to her knees completely, pressing her forehead to the cold marble.
If not for Lucius’s intervention… she would have been killed in the blast along with everyone else in the building.
“Now girl… what name would you like?” He looked down at 01 as she looked up at him with wide eyes full of disbelief and something that might have been hope.
“I should choose?” 01 asked as her eyes trembled with the weight of actually having agency for the first time… she had never been allowed to choose anything before in her entire eleven years of existence.
It was always obeying orders without question and taking tests until she collapsed and enduring punishment for failure. Even her meals and sleep schedule had been dictated by the researchers. The concept of choosing her own identity felt surreal.
“Yes or would you like me to pick instead? I was thinking Bee or something like that.” He placed a hand under his chin with a thoughtful look, genuinely considering it as if he were naming a pet rather than a child. “Since you have an annoying affinity with phasing through things and making them intangible, and bees are annoying as well when they get in your house and you can’t swat them.”
’He’s serious?!’ Both Matthias and the secretary’s eyes widened in horrified realization. This man could well and truly be worse than them in terms of casual cruelty…
“Uhm…” 01 stuttered nervously then raised up her hand like a student asking permission. “I would like Freya.”
“I see… Freya isn’t a bad name at all. Freya von Hohenberg has a nice ring to it too.” Lucius said with genuine approval and then placed a palm on her head gently, ruffling her hair.
She trembled for a bit before easing into the contact, something warm spreading through her chest. “You’re my daughter now… We’ll finalize the legal adoption once we get out of here.”
“Okay… do I need to call you papa?” She asked tentatively, testing out the word.
“Yeah yeah, it makes us sound closer and more legitimate for the paperwork.” He replied practically and then looked at Matthias again with renewed focus. “Next Matthias, I would like you to stop experimenting on little children… because of you, people like Freya don’t have good childhoods or any childhood at all really. Aren’t you a father yourself? You should be ashamed of yourself. How would it feel if I used your own child for an experiment on forced awakening…”
Freya gave a small nod of agreement, she liked how her papa fought for justice… she didn’t want anyone to suffer like she did while enduring the tests and isolation.
Matthias vibrated in his chair while clenching his fists so hard his nails drew blood from his palms.
“I promise to stop endangering the lives of children…” He forced out through gritted teeth.
“Good.” Lucius said and then extended his hand expectantly across the space where the desk used to be. “Your flash drive… I’ll be taking it as insurance.”
Matthias’s eyes widened in shock, that filthy professor had snitched on him having a personal backup copy to—
He looked at Lucius’s face and his own darkened considerably… Lucius’s face was contorted in a way where he gave the most devilish grin however at the same time, he was visibly holding back his own laughter at the situation.
The corners of his mouth twitched with barely suppressed mirth. It was humiliating to be toyed with so transparently…
He quickly acted like he was looking for it in his suit pockets with exaggerated movements, patting himself down like a bad actor in a worse play, however Lucius brought his hand out with the speed of a striking snake, crossing the space in a blur.
He removed an ornate gold ring from the guy’s left pinky finger before Matthias could even process what was happening, and squished it completely between his thumb and forefinger like it was made of soft clay.
The crunch of the flash drive hidden inside the hollow ring’s secret compartment sounded loud in the quiet office, the sound of circuits snapping and memory chips shattering into dust.
Matthias nearly cried at the loss, actual tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.
Years of work, gone… The backup to the backup, destroyed… His insurance policy, crushed to powder…
He was finished.
’No… I have to hold it in… I can’t laugh yet.’
The face of this man… he hadn’t even realized his own top scientist had been bought out by Lucius and snitched everything about the operation, including personal security measures.
Now that he had taken out the other backup copy, Matthias had nothing to fall back on for leverage or protection.
Lucius’s face distorted even more as the full realization hit him like lightning.
’Which means… THIS IS MY RESEARCH NOW!’ He thought with rising excitement and it started with a small chuckle that bubbled up from his chest like champagne fizzing.
He just had to legally adopt a bunch of orphaned children through proper legal channels and then make them accept to being willing lab rats in exchange for food, shelter, education, and a significantly better life than living on the streets.
Then he would slowly build an army of overpowered growing children that he could unleash upon enemies at a moment’s notice while also using them for dungeon streaming content.
The applications were literally endless… Power, money, influence, entertainment value. It was all his now. And the best part? It would all be completely legal since he’d have parental authority and signed consent forms.
He could no longer hold it in… The laughter demanded release.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”
The laughter echoed through the office and probably the entire floor, wild and unrestrained and slightly unhinged. It was the laugh of a man who’d just realized he’d won the lottery while simultaneously getting revenge on an enemy.
Matthias’s face darkened as he continued laughing evilly, the sound grating against his ears like nails on a chalkboard.
This was humiliation… complete and total humiliation at the hands of a foreigner who’d waltzed into his city and dismantled his empire in an afternoon.
’This is my perfect victory…. That’s right! I win!!!’ Lucius thought with pure satisfaction coursing through him, if it was a few weeks ago when he’d first arrived in this world… he would complain about being cringe and acting like a stereotypical villain.
However he didn’t mind it anymore. Villainy had its perks and the evil laugh felt surprisingly freeing. He was a minor villain after all.
Freya looked at his trembling back as she could not see his face from her position sitting on his lap, only hearing the manic laughter echoing around them.
“Why is papa laughing like that exactly…” She wondered aloud with genuine confusion, slightly concerned about her new father’s questionable mental state.
