Villain: Your Heroines Were Delicious - Chapter 197 - 62

Chapter 197: Chapter 62

The fluorescent lights of the underground parking garage flickered with a rhythmic, dying hum, casting long, jerky shadows across the concrete pillars.

Itoshi Emi stood at the center of the bay, her eyes darting between the exits as she ushered the terrified Kurosaki women toward the heavy steel fire doors.

The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and stale gasoline, but through the mundane scents, Emi’s heightened senses caught the metallic taste of blood and that disgusting fishy smell.

She knew that this place was probably used a lot by the people here to defile women, so much so that the smell itself stuck to the place.

Just as they reached the threshold, the silence was shattered by the sharp, electronic chirp of Erina’s phone.

Then, the high-definition voice of Haruka, filtered through an encrypted line, echoed with chilling clarity in the hollow space.

“Itoshi Emi, stay alert. A hostile unit is approaching your coordinates from the western stairwell. Speed is abnormal. Extreme caution is advised.”

Emi didn’t hesitate, and with a fluid, practiced motion, she reached into the air, and a shimmering, translucent silver bow materialized in her grip.

“Go! Hide! Now!” she commanded, her voice cutting through the panic of the women. “Find the maintenance closet behind the reinforced pillar and stay down. Do not come out until I call for you!”

The Kurosaki women, led by the grimly determined Akane, scrambled into the shadows, their footsteps fading into the darkness of the industrial basement.

Seconds later, the heavy thud of a fire door swinging open echoed through the garage.

From the stairwell emerged a teenage boy. He looked unremarkable at first—slouching, with long, greasy black bangs that obscured half of his face—but he was releasing a sickly, pulsating violet aura that can make those with sensitive senses puke on the spot.

Strapped to his left wrist was an oversized, antique-looking stopwatch that hummed with a low, discordant frequency.

Emi’s mind, fueled by years of absorbing every trope from the vast library of anime and “specialized” adult materials she used for “research,” immediately categorized the threat.

The stopwatch, the cocky smirk, the way he moved as if the world were lagging behind him—she knew exactly what this was.

“Time manipulation,” she muttered, her eyes narrowing. “The most cliché and annoying power in the book.”

“What a beautiful lady…” The boy muttered in amazement, “Hehe, I’m so lucky. Don’t worry, I’ll the time to—”

Before the boy could even raise his arm to click the timer, Emi released a pre-drawn arrow of pure light aimed for the catalyst.

The silver bolt whistled through the air, striking the stopwatch with the force of a hammer.

Surprisingly, the artifact didn’t shatter into gears and springs, but instead, the strap was torn violently from the boy’s wrist, sending the stopwatch skittering across the oil-stained concrete floor.

“Wha—!? You bitch! How dare—!”

He didn’t get to finish as following up in a heartbeat, Emi fired two more arrows in rapid succession.

They buried themselves into the boy’s thighs, pinning him to the ground before the light dissipated into burning heat.

“AAAHHHH!” The boy screamed, a high-pitched, pathetic shriek that bounced off the concrete walls. “It hurts! It hurts! You bitch! Give it back! Give it back to me!”

Emi walked toward him with a slow, deliberate pace, her face was a mask of cold, surgical indifference.

She looked down at him as if he were a particularly unpleasant insect.

“I’m sure you enjoyed feeling like a god, didn’t you?” she asked, her voice a flat monotone. “Stopping the world so you could play with people who couldn’t fight back. It’s the ultimate coward’s fantasy.”

She raised her bow, a final, glowing arrow aimed directly between his frantic eyes. “But in the real world, even time eventually runs out.”

Right as her fingers began to relax their grip on the string, the universe stuttered.

The vibrant silver of her bow, the red of the emergency lights, even the color of her own clothes—all of it vanished.

The world turned to a grainy, desaturated gray.

The dust motes in the air stopped their slow dance, frozen in mid-descent.

Even Emi felt a crushing, absolute stillness take hold of her body, as if she was a statue, unable to blink and unable to breathe, her muscles locked in the final moment of her kill-shot.

Surprisingly, however, her consciousness remained as her mind went to a frantic spark despite being in a frozen cage.

She could still see, though her field of vision was fixed.

Just then, from the stopwatch lying ten feet away, a dark, oily liquid began to seep out.

It didn’t flow like water, but it crawled, completely defying gravity.

The liquid convulsed and boiled, expanding until it formed a grotesque, shapeless creature—a blob of absolute black that seemed to absorb the gray light of the frozen world.

Countless lidless eyes opened across its surface, and dozens of toothless mouths began to open and close in a silent, rhythmic hunger.

The entity’s eyes focused on Emi for a split second, but its primary hunger lay elsewhere.

It surged toward the screaming, frozen boy, and without a hint of hesitation, the oily mass enveloped him, pulling his limbs and torso into its dark interior.

Emi watched in silent horror as the boy’s frozen face disappeared into the blackness, devoured completely by the very power he thought he controlled.

Once the “vessel” was consumed, the entity turned its full attention back to Emi.

It began to stretch, growing long, needle-like limbs that reached out toward her throat.

But then…

A sudden, violent explosion of crimson flames erupted from Emi’s pores.

The sheer heat was so intense it forced the oily entity to flinch, its limbs recoiling as if struck by a physical blow.

The gray veil of the frozen world didn’t break, but within that suspension of time, Emi moved.

She panted heavily, her skin glowing a dangerous, angry red as a mantle of burning flames draped across her shoulders, her silver bow turning into gold and shifted its shape, becoming more ornate, larger, and radiating a divine, sun-like pressure.

For a fleeting second, the phantom image of a dark-skinned, regal man in white robes—a warrior with an unshakeable gaze—loomed behind her before dissolving into the fire.

“Gandiva…” Emi whispered, her voice trembling with pain. “Damn it. I really… I really hate using my Karyoku.”

Her Karyoku, the legendary bow Gandiva, was a power borrowed from the spirit of Arjuna, the legendary hero of the Mahabharata.

It was a divine weapon of absolute destruction, but its requirements were simply too high for Emi’s mortal frame.

Every second she held the bow in its true form, she felt as if her veins were being filled with molten lead and her lungs were breathing in solar flares.

This was why she preferred the “limited” version of her power.

Back when she had fought Mira of the Eight Limbs, she had risked everything to end the fight in a single, overwhelming strike, knowing that a prolonged battle would literally turn her to ash from the inside out.

“I’ll end this quick… I don’t have the time to waste on a parasite,” Emi wheezed as she pointed the flaming tip of the Gandiva at the entity’s central mass.

But the creature was no longer the mindless blob it had appeared to be.

The moment Emi’s finger twitched, the entity vanished. It didn’t move, it simply… wasn’t there, and then it was… directly behind her.

“What—!?” Emi’s eyes widened.

Before she could pivot, the entity lashed out with a spear-like limb of black oil, but the flame mantle around Emi’s shoulders flared with defensive instinct, the heat so intense it vaporized the tip of the limb before it could touch her skin.

The entity hissed and retreated into the shadows of the gray world, but Emi let out a sharp grunt of pain.

She could feel the skin on her back blistering under the intensity of her own Karyoku.

“Too fast,” she muttered, her vision beginning to swim.

She spun and fired a burning arrow into the darkness, but the entity flickered again, appearing behind her for a second time.

This time, Emi was prepared.

She didn’t turn; she fired the Gandiva blindly over her shoulder, the bolt of fire illuminating the gray parking lot like a miniature star.

But the entity was made of shifting liquid.

It split its mass in two, the arrow passing harmlessly through the gap before the black oil merged back together into a single, looming shape.

“Oh, shit,” Emi grunted, her knees buckling as the internal heat of the Gandiva reached a critical point.

Before she could recover her footing or draw another breath, the entity moved with a speed that bypassed the frozen time itself.

A sharp, needle-thin limb of black oil shot forward, bypassing the flickering flames of her mantle by sheer, concentrated force.

It pierced through Emi’s stomach, the cold, oily substance clashing with the fire in her blood.

Emi’s eyes went wide, a spray of blood hitting the gray concrete as the entity began to reel her in for the final feast.