EX-Rank Villain: Rise Beyond Fate-Chapter 62 - 25 – Beneath the Mask

The academy grounds were calm on the surface.

But beneath the daily lessons and formal lectures, something darker had taken root.

Lucien had already known.

It wasn’t instinct. It wasn’t suspicion.

It was pattern recognition—an art he’d perfected long before this life.

---

For days, he had kept track of one particular student—quiet, seemingly average, always fading into the background. He never spoke out of turn. Never drew attention. Never failed anything either.

Too invisible.

Lucien tailed him after curfew, melting into shadows like smoke.

The student crept into an old, disused prayer hall. Forgotten architecture, barely lit, dust in the air.

Lucien didn’t breathe. He watched.

The boy knelt near the shattered altar and began whispering.

Lucien strained to hear.

A chant. Old. Not from any known spellbook.

Each word scraped like rusted metal against glass.

Forbidden language.

Lucien summoned one of his most silent Shadow Soldiers and signaled an approach. Just before the blade reached, the student flinched—casting a fast escape rune.

Blood spurted as the blade caught flesh, slicing deep across his leg.

He vanished in a shimmer of fractured blue light.

---

Lucien didn’t chase. Not yet.

He had heard what he needed.

The student was a node—a vein in the larger body of something festering.

---

The following day, the academy changed.

The administration confirmed the presence of Liberation Organization infiltrators. They claimed to have things under control. Escorts were stationed in the halls. Magic scans were deployed randomly.

But Lucien had no faith in slow hands.

He acted that same night.

---

He moved in silence through the dormitories, invisible to mundane senses.

The list had grown: nine students now flagged for inconsistencies.

He wasn’t certain each was an assassin, but certainty wasn’t a requirement.

He dispatched them all—quietly, ruthlessly—in the forests beyond the academy’s range of surveillance.

Shadow blades. Bone-splitting strikes. No cries for help.

They were not kids.

They were spies in uniform.

By the end, the snow was red.

---

Lucien stood alone, wind brushing past his cloak, eyes blank.

He activated a deeper trait—Shadow General.

Thick, inky blackness crept across the ground.

"Rise," he whispered.

One by one, the dead pulled themselves from the soil—shadows shaped in their image.

But the results were... lacking.

The shadows muttered random names. Incoherent fragments.

Fake memories. Bogus affiliations. All crafted and layered.

Even in death, their identities were a lie.

Lucien gritted his teeth.

Who trained them to this degree?

They hadn’t just been infiltrators. They had been living illusions.

Even their shadows were false.

---

Two other students—captured alive—were delivered to the underground chambers beneath the academy. Only a few knew such a place existed.

Liana was one of them.

She stood beside Lucien outside the sealed stone doors, arms folded, face unreadable.

"You didn’t wait for orders," she said flatly.

Lucien didn’t look at her. "Wasn’t planning to."

"Any regrets?"

"No."

She studied him in silence.

"I used to think you were holding back because you didn’t like blood," she said.

Lucien finally turned toward her. "I hold back so I don’t waste time."

Then walked off.

---

But even with most of the Liberation students gone, something still felt wrong.

Lucien could sense it.

A presence. Watching. Calculating. Not student. Not assassin.

Something... older.

He returned to the ruined chapel two nights later. Shadows accompanied him, silent as death.

He scanned the old altar and found something beneath—a scorched sigil hidden under the stones.

A Liberation mark.

It was old.

Weeks, maybe months old.

"Someone carved this before the term even started," Lucien muttered.

He was too late.

This had been planned from the beginning.

Suddenly, one of his Shadow Soldiers shimmered violently and exploded into black mist.

A warning.

Mana fluctuation. A hostile scan.

Lucien turned fast, dagger drawn.

No one there.

But at his feet—a small object rolled to a stop.

A crystal. Pale green. A memory orb.

He picked it up, channeled mana—and watched the scene unfold.

---

A faculty lounge.

A teacher. Familiar. Calm voice. Friendly posture.

But in the reflection of the glass behind him—

A Liberation brand, faint but glowing, pulsed on the nape of his neck.

Lucien’s jaw clenched.

Before he could see more, the crystal shattered in his palm.

Who left that message?

Why give him a glimpse?

A mistake?

Or a dare?

---

The next morning, Lucien sat silently in class.

Expression blank. Eyes half-lidded.

He hadn’t slept.

His mind raced—not with fear, but with calculation.

There was a sleeper agent buried in the system. A teacher. A high-level plant.

The assassins had been pawns.

The game had just escalated.

And Lucien was already planning his next move.