Why Am I The Villain?! Reincarnated in My Favorite Novel-Chapter 51: Sun and Singularity

The door swung open.

Darius stood in the doorway, a grin stretching across his face.

"Yo!" he called out, his voice booming. "Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long."

Nero, still seated, didn’t look up right away. His fingers tapped the edge of his mug, a slow, deliberate rhythm.

Klein, standing beside him, seemed to melt into Nero’s shadow, but his eyes betrayed a razor-sharp alertness.

"Darius," Nero finally said, his voice calm but cutting. "You’re late."

Darius let out a hearty laugh, stepping into the room. He stopped a few paces from Nero.

"Late?" He raised an eyebrow, his grin widening.

His gaze swept over Nero, head to toe.

"Funny, you’ve got a different face... voice too. But those eyes."

His smile vanished.

"I’m only asking once."

The air shifted. Instantly.

The heat surged, suffocating. A chill crawled up Klein’s spine. He took a step forward.

"Back off," Nero said without looking at him, raising a hand slightly.

Klein froze, lips pressed tight.

Darius tilted his head, amused.

"What, you’re so low now you need kids to shield you?"

A deep tremor rippled through the floor. The air grew heavier. The ceiling light flickered. A wisp of smoke curled from a corner of the room.

"So?" Darius’s voice dropped, gravelly. "Are you really Zeref? Or did you just steal his name?"

Nero didn’t answer. He slowly turned his head toward the bay window.

"We’re in the middle of a city. You really wanna do this here?"

Darius’s brow furrowed. The wooden floor cracked. Paint on the walls began to blister.

"I’m not the one deciding," he murmured. "I just want an answer."

The temperature spiked again. Unbearable now. Klein grimaced, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple.

"Now!" Nero shouted.

A blinding light erupted beneath their feet. The world collapsed.

The wind howled. Sand lashed against skin like needles.

Darius landed on his feet, unshaken. He scanned the desolate landscape, then slowly turned to Nero.

"The kid did this, huh. Interesting."

He took a step toward him, his shadow stretching across the scorching sand.

"But now, nothing’s holding me back..."

A sharp crack. Fire exploded beneath Nero in a sudden geyser. His clothes ignited instantly.

But he didn’t flinch.

Flames licked his skin. He stood there. Motionless. Naked. Face impassive. Only his hair swayed in the heat.

"Good to see you," he said simply.

Darius stared, his breath hitching.

"...Guess you don’t need to answer. Just wearing that name is enough."

A vortex of flames erupted around Nero. A roaring, devouring pillar of fire. The sand beneath vitrified under the pressure.

But Nero pivoted. His foot scraped the ground. He rolled to the side, dodging the heart of the inferno.

Darius cracked his knuckles.

"Last time, I burned you to ash, I’m sure of it. How’d you survive?"

Nero stood tall. A shadow crossed his face. He was breathing hard.

"I couldn’t..."

A pulse.

A searing pain.

His right hand exploded. An inhuman scream tore from his lips.

Nero collapsed to his knees, ashes from his arm falling like black snow.

"Don’t care," Darius spat. "You’re still breathing? Good. This time, you won’t get up."

Nero raised his eyes. His pupils trembled, alive with pain.

A chuckle. Raw. Twisted.

Nero was smiling.

"Hurts like hell..."

His breath was shallow. His body bled, burned, half-disintegrating. And yet, he smiled.

"But damn... I think I can finally say I gave my all for my dream, right?"

Standing, naked, arm reduced to ash, he lifted his chin.

"The Zeref you knew is dead."

A long, oppressive silence.

Darius lowered his gaze.

"Guess so."

He looked up. His irises blazed with scarlet light.

"And his ghost goes with him."

The desert burned.

Darius raised a hand, palm to the sky. An orange glow ignited the air, and suddenly, the sun itself seemed to pour into his hand. A swirling, crackling sphere of plasma grew rapidly.

Nero, kneeling in the sand, raised the smoldering stump of his right arm. His face was a mask of agony, but his eyes... they burned with cold resolve.

A sharp snap tore through the air. Between him and Darius, space crumpled like paper. A perfect black sphere appeared. A miniature black hole, swallowing light, sand, even sound.

Darius’s solar sphere wavered, warped by the unnatural gravity.

His fist clenched.

The explosion was blinding.

The black hole imploded under the pressure, consumed by a blast that vaporized miles of desert. Nero was hurled backward, his charred body carving a flaming trench through molten sand.

A mosaic of golden particles shimmered around him. The flames chasing him snuffed out abruptly, as if smothered by rewritten physics.

Darius walked toward him, slow, each step leaving a footprint of lava.

He snapped his fingers.

The sky turned white.

A rain of solar flares crashed down.

Nero raised his intact arm.

Space warped. The plasma jets twisted. Some struck the desert, carving craters of smoking glass. Others... turned back toward Darius.

He smirked.

He opened his mouth.

And inhaled the flames.

The fire jets orbited him before vanishing into his throat, swallowed by a bottomless void. His body now radiated a light so intense the sand around him melted into rivers of quartz.

"Your turn," he sneered.

Nero didn’t have time to blink.

Darius’s flaming fist punched through his chest.

A surreal moment of silence. Nero stared at the arm piercing his torso, Darius’s fingers clutching his charred heart.

Then, the temperature spiked to 15,000,000°C.

Nero’s body disintegrated. Not burned—demolecularized, reduced to a cloud of elemental particles. The blast vaporized the desert for twenty kilometers, leaving only a sea of gleaming black glass.

Darius stood still, breathing lightly.

A crackle.

Ten meters away, photons began to dance.

Nero materialized. Naked. Whole. His right arm regenerated.

"Sorry for the wait," he said, brushing back a lock of hair. "Had to let the concept settle."

Darius turned his head, slow. For the first time, a spark of genuine interest flickered in his eyes.

Nero smiled. The smile of a teacher facing a promising student.

"Let me share a theory: the observer shapes reality."

He snapped his fingers. A Rubik’s cube appeared in his hand, rotating slowly.

"By invoking quantum uncertainty, I made my existence... probabilistic."

The cube shattered into a swarm of pixels.

"You can’t kill a probability."

Darius roared with laughter. Deep, genuine amusement.

"You’ve got some guts now," he bellowed. "Let me remind you who you’re facing."

Hell unleashed.

The ground split, spewing geysers of magma. The air ignited in a 360° firestorm. Kilometer-long plasma serpents erupted from the clouds, striking everywhere at once.

Nero raised two fingers.

A spectral glass dome enveloped him. The flames passed through without touching him, as if he existed in a superposition of states.

"Believe it or not," he said, "I know you better than you think."

He clasped his hands.

The sky tore open.

Cosmic strings slashed through the atmosphere. Free quarks rained down, disintegrating matter in their path. A massive sphere materialized, crushing Darius under hundredfold gravity.

Darius’s knees buckled under the pressure.

With a flick, he hurled a fireball at Nero.

The nuclear explosion ravaged the battlefield.

For ten minutes, it was apocalypse.

When the dust settled, both men stood in the center of a crater the size of a city. Nero’s body was laced with glowing cracks, like shattered glass. Darius bled from minor scratches.

"Let me show you something else," Nero panted. "I call it ’Singularity.’"

He pressed his hands against his sternum.

"It’s a mockery of a black hole. A point where all laws..."

Already, the air warped around him.

"...even yours..."

Darius felt his inner flames flicker.

"...cease to exist."

The singularity activated.

Darius laughed as his body turned into a human torch.

"You’ve gotten tougher," he roared. "But you’re still an ant facing the sun."

His left eye blazed with a fire fiercer than his own body.

He stretched out his hand, materializing a sword of pure plasma.

Nero smiled.

"You talk about probabilities," Darius sneered, his voice rumbling like a volcano. "But with me, there’s only one certainty: everything burns."

He swung his sword. A wave of plasma surged, so dense it warped space itself. Nero raised a hand, and a spectral barrier shimmered before him. The wave struck, cracking the barrier like brittle glass. Nero was thrown back, his body tumbling through molten sand. Glowing shards spilled from his wounds, as if his very essence threatened to dissolve.

’He’s too strong,’ Nero thought, his breath ragged. ’He’s earned his title of monster. Standing against him, I can’t deny it. Darius Volkran. The world’s strongest deviant.’

Yet he stood. His arms trembled. His smile, though strained, didn’t waver. ’I’ve surpassed the original. The Zeref of this body was a mountain. But Darius... he’s the sun.’

"Still getting up?" Darius said, one eyebrow raised.

He extended his hand, and the sky ignited. Comets of fire, each the size of a building, tore from the flaming clouds and hurtled toward Nero. The impending impact promised annihilation.

Nero closed his eyes.

’I’m betting my life,’ he thought. ’Everything I have. Everything I am.’