The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 664: Tales of The Long Ears (End)

"Devour," Draven said.

The syllable was soft, but the forest reacted like it had been struck by a gong. It did not echo; no tree dared repeat the command. The swords accepted it with hungry delight: their runes flared white‑hot, then shifted instantly to a deep, furnace red.

Mana flared.

The corrupted tree answered with violence. Scarlet and ebony tendrils shot from the ruptured trunk—dozens, then hundreds, each a serpentine lash of burning corruption. They writhed in erratic arcs, clawing for any life to cling to, shrieking in a voice that was felt, not heard—a banshee‑pressure inside the ear canal, an itch behind the eyes. Sylara reeled as the branches in front of her blurred, edges doubling like a bad reflection on oil‑slick water.

Crimson and black tendrils snapped out from the tree like writhing snakes.

And the swords drank it all.

Lightning in reverse—jagged rivers of infection plunged inward rather than striking out. Streams of viscous darkness curved like ribbon toward the hovering blades, folding upon themselves again and again, shrinking as they approached the runed steel. Each tendril collapsed into a single point of searing light the instant it touched the metal, becoming wisps of shimmering ash that spiraled up in quick, hungry spirals.

They screamed—not with sound, but with pressure, like thought being bent in half.

The air thickened, compressing against Sylara's eardrums until they popped. Colors inverted: shadows blanched; moonlight blackened; the forest washed in a momentary negative. She stumbled backward, boots skidding on rune‑lit moss, her lungs refusing to pull a full breath. Even Vyrik flattened to the ground, claws gouging furrows in the soft earth, wings flared defensively.

The swords pulled the corruption in, greedily.

Draven stood motionless at the vortex's eye, coat flapping in currents that Sylara could not see. His expression remained detached—eyes half‑lidded, lips a firm line—yet the sinews of his neck stood out, cords taut with restraint. Every pulse of demonic energy that slammed into the blades bounced through him like an echo through a bell tower. She could feel the recoil in her chest, dull and distant, like heartbeat thunder after lightning.

The gloom reeled as the demonic aura was ripped from the air.

Sylara's vision tunneled—first black at the edges, then pinpricks of white like starbursts. She forced herself to keep watching, nails digging crescents into her palms. "Stay conscious," she muttered. "Stay useful." A tamer who lost awareness was just prey.

The pressure dropped, ears popping.

Leaves lifted then fluttered down, as though gravity had momentarily forgotten its weight. The moss sank an inch, exhaling a gasp of spores that glimmered silver and evaporated. Sap reversed direction, trickling up the wounded trunk briefly before freezing in amber beads.

The tree let out a long, guttural groan—fibers splitting, wood settling—then fell silent.

Silence, absolute and ringing, spread through the grove. No rustle, no insect chirr; even the faint thrum of runes dimmed as though holding breath. The smell shifted—from metallic decay to nothing, like the air after a cleansing thunderstorm.

The rot evaporated. Mana went still.

Small, pale fungi sprouted instantly along the base of the trunk, as if the forest recognized room for new growth and hurried to claim it. Their tiny caps glowed with harmless bioluminescence, painting the roots in speckled moon‑dust.

Draven lowered his hand.

The swords lingered, hovering like predator birds perched on invisible wires, runes now a gentle burnished gold. They thrummed—sated. Sylara felt the resonance settle into the soil, traveling outward in gentle ripples she could feel more than hear. It reminded her of the hush right after a chimera's heartbeat evens out beneath a healer's spell: poised between relief and fragile uncertainty.

The blades hovered, still humming, now brighter, like fed animals.

He closed his eyes briefly. The last trace of tension in his shoulders slipped away, as though a hidden lattice inside him unlocked. A soft exhale hissed between his teeth—not exhaustion, but satisfaction, the engineer after a successful test fire.

"Finally," he said.

His voice was tight, but not with fury; rather, it carried a note of homesickness relieved, a chord that had long sought its right harmony and at last discovered the key.

Resolved.

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"I found you."

The words fell into the quiet like pebbles into still water, sending measured rings outward. Somewhere high in the canopy a single bell‑shaped blossom unfolded in answer—silver petals trembling, releasing a droplet of glowing nectar that cascaded down in a gentle arc, evaporating before it reached the ground.

And though Sylara could not see the significance, Draven felt it—something beneath the forest's skin, deeper than root and rune, pulsing once, twice, in acknowledgment.

The swords rescinded a breath later, dissolving with a soft hiss, strands of gold unspooling back into the ether, leaving only two faint motes of light that winked out against the gloom. Draven flexed his fingers, testing invisible threads, ensuring the corruption's residue had not found purchase.

Behind them, the trunk stayed blackened but no longer bled. The veins of rot had gone dull, as if starved. A few stray motes of leftover darkness twitched atop the bark, then crumbled into inert flakes.

Sylara found her voice. "You—" She cleared her throat, tried again. "You pulled the infection straight out of living leywood. I thought that was impossible."

"With enough precision," Draven said, eyes still on the tree, "impossible just means untested." He rotated his wrist; the tattoos dimmed, sealing the channels. "The grove planted the lock. I simply provided the correct key."

She huffed a breathless laugh that wasn't truly amused. "That simple, huh?"

"For you," he offered, "I'll write a pamphlet."

Her shoulders loosened. Sarcasm meant he believed the danger passed, at least for now. She wiped a bead of sweat from her brow and risked a glance at Laethiel; the boy lay unchanged, but the silver pulsing at his sternum had grown steadier, no longer fracturing into violet shards. The lullaby of his aura resumed, softer, like flutes from a distant banquet hall. Manageable.

Draven's gaze tracked her eyes, reading the same improvement. He gave an almost imperceptible nod, then turned his attention back to the still air, tasting for hidden threats. After a moment he murmured, "Residual contamination: minimal. Portal signature: dormant. Good."

Sylara adjusted the strap across her shoulder. "And the swords? They just—ate it?"

"They're hungry, not stupid," he replied. "Blades remember what they swallow. We'll need to bleed them later, flush the residue into a warded vessel."

Her mouth twisted. "Like a snakebite."

"Precisely." He brushed a splinter of corrupted bark off his coat. It drifted downward, turned grey, and crumbled before it hit the moss. "Demons leave venom wherever they crawl."

Sylara shivered. "Speaking of crawling… will it come back?"

"It will try." His expression hardened, gaze sliding to the ragged gap where the rot had burst free. "But now we know its door. Next time, we slam it on whatever limb it reaches through."

"Next time," she echoed, voice half‑wary, half‑admiring. Even after seeing him rip the life‑poison from a tree, he still spoke of counters and next moves, never final victories. And that, she realized, was why he survived so much: he never assumed a monster was dead until the ground sprouted wildflowers over its bones.

She exhaled carefully, willing her legs to stop quivering. Vyrik nudged her hand; she scratched his feathered mane, soothing them both. The grove watched, silent but witness.

Draven looked down at his runic tattoos, letting the last glow fade to dull ink. A small frown creased the space between his brows—contemplative rather than troubled. "We've identified the infection point," he said. "That was step one."

Sylara cocked a brow. "Step two being?"

"Excavation." He gazed past her, deeper into the grove, where darkness paled to a subtle greenish glow marking another node of dormant power. "And autopsy."

She grimaced. "You do make it sound like fun."

He gave a half‑shrug. "Fun is variable. Results are mandatory."

Still, she caught the spark in his storm‑grey eyes—a fierce pleasure in puzzle‑solving, in tearing secrets out from knots of decay. He'd risk his life for that spark. Possibly theirs, too. And yet she followed, because in the worlds she'd wandered, no other guide could carve a path through this brand of madness with such assurance.

Sylara drew a long, centering breath. The grove exhaled with her, new scents lifting—fresh sap, distant rain, promise.

Draven glanced at the boy again, as if double‑checking a chessboard. Laethiel's breathing remained steady. Good.

The swords were gone, but their memory hovered, a phantom tremor in the air. Sylara squared her shoulders and stepped in line beside him. "All right," she said. "Lead on, maestro. Let's see what encore the demons left us."