Trust could be a fragile dwelling to house your brief mortality in. For a Villain, trust was often hardly given and quickly taken away. Everyone had their schemes or ploys that would subvert you to nothing but a stepping stone on their own path to glory. Trust wasn’t to be trusted, the irony not lost on me. Heroes thrived on it, and despite my warming to my human companions, part of my old ways lingered in the shadows. Waiting for their inevitable fall.

The woods were a drab affair. Dull shadows and muted colors were an enticing backdrop for a bloodthirsty predator, but here I felt we were the hapless prey. Even with murderous intent at the back of our minds, we were just as easily returned to an earthen tomb.

“You’re, uh, pretty proficient with the sword,” Jakob offered the compliment steeped in suspicion.

“Thank you.” I avoided his eye contact and focused on not getting eaten by the set pieces.

“I’m… I mean, I’ve seen adventurers and even experienced ones don’t… flourish…”

Ah. It was less that I was able to fight it out against larger numbers and prevail easily - but I had been a little too fancy and confident about it. Decades of practice made the movements muscle memory. Barbarians weren’t often martial experts in that sense.

“You should have seen the trees back home,” I gave him a sheepish grin, “winters could get pretty boring.”

“…You’d blunt your blade on-“

“It is a magical sword, young Master,” Basil interjected with a polite nod. His eyes met mine.

Jakob relented. “True, I suppose.”

There was still a hint of distrust lurking within that feigned acceptance. He had seen something that didn’t have a decent enough explanation - in fact, I commended him for the scepticism. It was the kind of thought that could save his life one day. Not against me, of course. But, in general.

“Focus,” Florence frowned at the Ranger, “You’re supposed to be our eyes here, not prodding at Victor.”

I waved my hand. “No, it’s fine, Florence. In truth, I would be surprised if he didn’t bring anything up. I mean, look at me. I’m hardly your run-of-the-mill farmhand, huh?”

Jakob nodded, but the Mage still looked eager for the focus to be on the task at hand.

“I have secrets, and it is perhaps unfair of me to ask you to accept me blindly. Just know that my intent is to become a powerful Hero.” I put on the most bland and earnest smile that I was capable of.

The Ranger rolled his tongue across his teeth and narrowed his eyes. “It’s okay, I understand secrets. Adventurers often hail from dark paths to bring light. There, a little poeticism of my own.” He gave a brief smile and turned to the path ahead.

It was an odd feeling, but these younglings almost felt too good to be Heroes. Surely heroics needed a strong sense of justice and will to carry it out, but there was also the hard slog of hardship and trauma that came along with it. A good heart often got you killed sooner than a hard one.

I wondered how many F Ranks just like them I had killed in my early days. How many E or D Ranks that had struggled and dragged themselves forward each and every day only for me to cut them down? There was no capacity for regret in my heart, only somber realization and acceptance of what I had been.

In silence, we carried on, the crunch of leaves or snapping of twigs as the route led us to an odd portion of the woods that seemed to be in a state of early Fall. Clearly a sign of the corruption lying close by.

With a hand held up, I signaled the group to slow. Jakob tilted his head in view of the near distance. While the gloom of the morning had continued to darken our venture, there was now an odd tinge to the air. A colored mist of greenish-yellow. Not so much a cloud as just a filter on our perception of the area. Where the trees had been sparse and decaying, there now lay a wall of verdant and deep vegetative colors.

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“It looks like a jungle,” Basil ran his fingers across his mustache.

“Albeit an abrupt one,” I nodded. No doubt the lair of that which we sought. “Must be slowly expanding. Destroying the current forest to replace it with… that.”

A think tangled brush of plant life that wouldn’t look out of place somewhere more tropical. Not the sort of place I cared to hand around in my previous life. Too humid. This looked different, though - despite the place being thick with plant life, it almost looked cold and uninviting.

“Undead plants?” Jakob squinted his eyes in following my gaze.

“That just means they’ll be extra weak to fire, right?” Florence had her face scrunched up and didn’t appear to be too hopeful of a positive answer.

I shrugged. It mostly depended; undead could mean dried up and desiccated, or it could mean damp and rotting. From our outside perspective, it looked like both. “Want to try?”

The Mage raised her hand, and a spark of flame began forming in her hand. As it reached a couple of inches in diameter, she flung it forth - the amber glare lighting up the drab distance between us and the mass of vegetation.

With a shimmer of green, the blast of fire was blocked by some manner of magical shield. Immediately after, vines shot out in our direction.

A flash of my blade severed them on their approach, the ends of the reaching plant dropping to the floor inert just before Florence. The rest of them retracted slowly, slithering like snakes after having dropped to the floor.

“Ah.” I tilted my head to check on the Mage. She looked fine, if a little concerned. “Heat-seeking vines.”

“That’s a specific plant,” Basil put his hand to his chin. “Can’t remember the name from the top of my head, but the main body is like a large tulip. Dark red with yellow spots.”

I gave the elf a half-bow. There was definitely a book in my library that detailed odd plants. However, it wasn’t something that came immediately to my mind. At some point, he must have read through some of them - without my permission. That seemed beyond the point at this stage, and I was genuinely thankful for his input.

“So I guess I’ll just stand and pull faces if there are lots of those around,” Florence sighed.

“There will be a lot worse than something that keeps you idle,” I smiled. “Jakob - could you see the main body?”

“Not from this angle.” He sniffed and gave the severed probes a glare. “I know the rough location, but…” He knelt and covered his face - giving the vine pieces a poke with the tip of his bow.

“Undead? Or reanimated in some way?” I didn’t feel much like kneeling down to check for myself.

“Never actually come across undead before,” the Ranger shrugged. “This is definitely no normal plant, though.”

Killing zombies and skeletons was almost a rite of passage for adventurers. They tended to be a low but ever-present threat that would blight random villages and towns on occasion. Not a lot of loot directly, but you’d save a lot of lives. Something heroic. Not to sound like this made my trust in the pair slide, but it was a point of curiosity to bring up with them in safer times.

“Allow me,” Basil knelt down beside him to glare at the sliced parts. “Yes. Definitely undead.” He beamed at the Ranger, who just returned a furrowed brow.

“How can you tell?”

“Experience.” With a wink, the Cleric stood and dusted his robes down.

Whether he was intending that to be a little in-joke for me, he didn’t look my way to confirm. As a vampire and skeleton in disguise, we certainly did have some experience in things being undead. Basil was fast showing that he was quite knowledgable too - so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“Well then,” I rallied the troops. “Best course of action is to allow me to hack and slash through whatever is before us. Jakob hits anything in the distance, and hopefully if we clear the anti-fire bulbs, then Florence can clear up everything else.” I opened my arms to see if there were any disagreements or additional points to be made.

“How will we know which way to the lair?” The Mage rubbed her gloved fingers together as she peered into the undead jungle.

“You’ll know.” It would be a bit reductive to say it would be in the center. If the plant life was expanding outwards and taking over the forest then it made sense for there to be a central origin point where the power was strongest. Plus, Villains were often cliche in that way. Why not live directly in the middle of your domain?

Briefly, I considered where my estate was situated amongst the areas I had controlled. Definitely not directly in the middle, I convinced myself, without considering all the evidence.

Stepping forward, my greatsword began to glow crimson. A sure sign that we were on the right path. Or at least the path where conflict would lie.

Sure enough, with a swing of my sword, aged branches and weakened stems snapped or were sliced. Perhaps I did not realize at first how long it would take to get the lawn looking neat, picking one blade of grass at a time. That’s why I had servants.

A vine shot out, and I sliced it from the air before a second caught me off guard. Wrapping around my neck, the small spines cut into my skin. Not enough to rupture anything important, and my return slice freed the grasp before it could garrote or drag me forward.

[Dual Shot]

Twin arrows of blazing green energy snaked from either side of me, zipping through the air in the direction the vines had come from. With a screech, they had met their mark - and we paused as silence filled the area around us.

“I think I got it-“ Jakob began.

Twelve vines shot towards us from all angles.