Villain: Your Heroines Were Delicious

Chapter 118: Chapter 39

The sliding door of the guest wing moved with a silent, practiced ease as Retsu entered the room.

Seijirou opened his eyes to find her already sitting by his futon, the soft morning light casting a halo around her ash-blonde hair.

Her smile was as perfect and inscrutable as ever.

“Good morning, Seijirou-kun,” she said, her voice a calm ripple in the morning air.

“Morning,” Seijirou grunted, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

The stiffness from yesterday’s “sparring” with Retsu still lingered in his joints, but it was overshadowed by a sharp, electric hum in his chest.

“Breakfast is waiting,” Retsu informed him, standing up with fluid grace. “Eat well. Once you are finished, go directly to the mountain-side training field. Grandfather has concluded the morning’s business and is waiting for you. He does not appreciate tardiness.”

Seijirou nodded, his gaze hardening into a look of cold determination.

Today, he would step into the world of the supernatural under the tutelage of a man who was essentially a living legend.

*

*

*

The training field was a flat, windswept plateau carved into the side of the mountain.

Below, a sea of clouds obscured the valley, making it feel as if they were standing at the edge of the world.

Shirohara Ichibei stood in the center, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his black kimono. His eyes, sharp as a hawk’s, immediately fixed on Seijirou as the boy approached.

“You’ve been busy,” Ichibei rumbled, his voice cutting through the whistling wind. “When did you unlock your Ki circuits? I don’t think you unlocked yours when you first got here.”

Seijirou stopped ten paces away, standing straight. “Retsu helped me yesterday.”

Ichibei’s eyes narrowed into slits as a heavy, suffocating pressure seemed to expand from his frame.

“I see. Then she must have explained the fundamentals of the awakening process to you. Tell me, what did she name as the catalyst?”

“Irritation,” Seijirou answered simply.

The silence that followed was absolute. Ichibei paused, his stoic mask slipping for a fraction of a second as he blinked in genuine, stunned shock. “Irritation? That is what she told you?”

Seijirou frowned, his hand instinctively going to his chest. “Is it wrong? I did manage to activate the circuits through it. It felt like… a rejection of my own limitations.”

Ichibei let out a long, heavy sigh and shook his head. “It is not ’wrong,’ but it is the method of a butcher. It is the fastest way to awaken Ki, yes, but it is also the most incomplete and agonizing. It forces the gates open through sheer psychological trauma and ego-friction. Let me guess, the light of your Ki is a pure, flat white?”

Seijirou concentrated, letting the energy flare around his hand, and soon a pale, flickering silver-white mist appeared. “It is.”

“Basic white,” Ichibei noted with a hint of disappointment. “That means you are a vessel with no contents. You have the energy, but you have not yet awakened your Origin.”

“Origin?” Seijirou repeated.

“The Origin is the core of your soul,” Ichibei explained, walking toward the edge of the plateau. “It is the fundamental truth of who you truly are at your most basic, primal level. When you awaken your Origin, your Ki undergoes a qualitative shift. It gains a color and an attribute. For example, those with an Origin related to ’Protection’ or ’Iron’ will possess Ki that is incredibly dense and solid, making them near-invulnerable. Those with ’Severing’ will find their Ki can cut through armor like paper.”

Seijirou listened intently, his mind racing.

In the game, Ki was treated like a standard mana bar, you leveled it up, and you hit harder, basically similar to a certain anime hailed as the father of shounen anime.

But Ichibei was describing something deeper, something that sounded suspiciously like the conceptual systems of other high-stakes supernatural universes, like the magecraft of a certain franchise.

“The Origin is your core,” Ichibei continued. “But it is also a shackle. Since it is who you truly are, you cannot betray it. If someone with a ’Heroic’ Origin chooses to commit a cowardly or evil act, their Ki will become unstable. At best, it will weaken them. At worst, the dissonance will cause their Spirit Circuits to collapse, killing them instantly.”

Seijirou’s brow furrowed. “So Retsu’s method…”

“Retsu gave you the engine, but she didn’t give you the fuel,” Ichibei stated firmly. “Normally, a disciple spends three to five years in meditation just to identify a trace of their Origin before they ever dream of opening their circuits. The fact that you are standing here with open gates and no Origin is an anomaly. Retsu took a 99 percent risk of your soul shattering just to save time.”

A cold shiver ran down Seijirou’s spine.

He thought of Retsu’s gentle smile during breakfast and couldn’t help but curse, ’that crazy woman really gambled with my life!’

Ichibei stopped and turned to face him. “I must warn you, the longer you use your Ki without awakening your Origin, the less likely it is for you to awaken them. Now, Kageyama Seijirou, you have a choice. If we spend this month training your Ki as it is now, you will be stronger than 90 percent of the fighters in this world. You will be a master of the ’Standard,’ but your potential will be capped. You will never reach the pinnacle. You will never be able to face the true monsters.”

He paused, the wind whipping his beard. “Or, we can spend this month hunting for your Origin. I can help you increase the chance of finding it within thirty days, but the process is grueling. And if you only find it at the last moment, you will have no time to train your techniques before your deadline with that boy, Ayano.”

Seijirou didn’t even need a second to think.

He thought of Ayano’s golden, overwhelming aura.

He thought of the gap between him and Retsu.

His fists clenched hard, turning them white. He didn’t come to this place to train just for him to be “stronger than 90 percent.”

He came to be the exception to every rule.

“I choose to awaken my Origin,” Seijirou interrupted, his voice echoing across the plateau. “I’d rather risk awakening and have no time to train ki than live with a capped ceiling. I’m not interested in being ’standard.’”

Ichibei stared at him for a long moment, searching for any flicker of doubt. Finding none, he gave a sharp, satisfied nod.

“An arrogant choice,” Ichibei remarked, a ghost of a smile appearing on his face. “Very well. Follow me. We are going to the Inner Sanctum. If you want to find the core of your soul, we must first strip away everything else.”

With that, he turned his heel and walked away, hands behind his back.

Seijirou took a deep breath, preparing himself, and followed after him.

It took a few minutes, but the two of them eventually arrived on a cave, and looking at it made Seijirou shiver, as if something terrifying was hidden in that place.

The cave entrance was a jagged, tooth-like opening in the mountainside, partially obscured by the ancient, weathered wood of a Torii gate.

The structure looked as though it were barely holding back the darkness within.

Thick, braided straw ropes—shimenawa—were draped across the entrance, heavy with thousands of yellowed paper talismans that fluttered aggressively in the mountain wind like the wings of trapped insects.

Ichibei stopped at the threshold, the glowing silver of his own Ki dimming as he looked at the abyss.

“This place was forged by my hand and the hands of three other friends. We called it the Mirror of the Void. It was designed to accelerate the soul’s realization of its Origin by forcing it into a corner. However,” the old man’s voice turned somber, “since its creation, no disciple has ever walked out the other side. Those who lacked the fortitude saw things they weren’t meant to see. Most came out screaming, their minds shattered into a thousand pieces. Others… they simply stopped being. Their bodies remained, but their eyes were empty shells.”

Seijirou stared into the darkness of the cave.

Even from the outside, he could feel a strange, gravitational pull emanating from the entrance—a cold, psychic weight that made his skin crawl.

He frowned, his jaw tightening. “You’re really selling this place, old man.”

Ichibei waved a hand dismissively, though his eyes remained grave. “I would never suggest this to a normal student. But you are an anomaly. You survived that brutal awakening suggested by Retsu without your Spirit Circuits exploding. That alone suggests your soul has a high density. Your chance of success here is significantly higher than most.”

Seijirou exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He felt a flicker of hope. “Higher? How high are we talking? Fifty? Sixty percent?”

“Ten percent,” Ichibei stated flatly.

Seijirou’s face went blank. Ten percent? You and your granddaughter are cut from the same cloth! Do you people just gamble with lives for fun?

The urge to curse the old man out was overwhelming, but Seijirou suppressed it.

He looked at his hands, thinking of the golden aura of Ayano and the absolute speed of Retsu.

He was tired of being a spectator in a world of monsters.

“Ten percent is better than zero,” Seijirou muttered, his voice hardening into a blade of pure intent.

Ichibei nodded, stepping aside to clear the path. “Listen carefully. The moment you cross the Torii gate, the talismans will activate. The cave is designed to strip you of everything. Your sight will vanish. Your hearing will become a vacuum. You will lose the sensation of your skin, the taste of your tongue, and the scent of the air. You will be a consciousness floating in a void of absolute sensory deprivation.”

The old man’s gaze pierced through Seijirou. “In that darkness, the mind tries to compensate. It will create illusions, fears, and false memories to fill the silence. You must ignore them. You must walk forward until you find the one thing that the cave cannot strip away. That thing… is your Origin. If you reach the other side, you will be reborn. If you don’t… Well, let’s pray it doesn’t come to that.”

He doesn’t know what Retsu would do if something bad happened to him.

Seijirou took a deep, steadying breath as he adjusted the collar of his white Gi and stepped forward.

The air grew colder with every inch, then as his foot crossed the threshold of the Torii gate, the talismans hissed.

The transition was violent. It wasn’t like closing his eyes; it was as if the concept of ’sight’ had been erased from the universe.

Then, the sound of the wind died, followed by the feeling of the ground beneath his boots.

His own heartbeat vanished from his ears.

He couldn’t feel his breath in his lungs.

Now, he felt like he was no longer a man in a cave, but a spark of thought in a boundless, silent ocean of nothingness.

’Well,’ he thought into the void, the only thing he had left. ’Let’s see who I really am.’