The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 659: Tales of The Long Ears (1)

The silence after the battle felt heavier than the clash of steel.

Ash drifted through the cavern like forgotten snow, settling in small drifts around shattered shields and broken spears. Each breath tasted of soot and spent magic. Draven inhaled sharply, his lungs flaring with the harsh tang, and exhaled slowly as if releasing a tether to the violence moments before.

Orc bodies lay in grotesque stillness, scorched and scattered across the chamber floor. Limbs jutting at odd angles, faces frozen mid-roar. Their ramshackle nests—crude piles of hides and bones—collapsed inward: half from the ferocity of Draven's final strike, half from the impossible force of the mana surge that had rippled through the rock itself.

He stood in the center of the carnage, twin blades humming softly at his hips. The steel's faint glow dimmed as he sheathed one, then the other, the sheaths swallowing the magic like hungry mouths. Each blade sighed as it slid home, the sound low and feral, a testament to power barely contained.

Across the chamber, Sylara's voice drifted in Elvish, low and clipped. She whistled sharply, and Vyrik—a magnificent chimera of griffin grace and direwolf muscles—tore through the haze in feathered wingbeats. Dust billowed around his landing, dust motes shifting in the drifting light, and he exhaled in a rumbling growl.

Sylara crouched beside him, offering a steady hand to soothe the beast's shimmering feathers. Her eyes flicked over her other chimeras, half-hidden in dim corners—one nursing a bleeding flank, another trembling with exhaustion. Yet all were alive, and that small victory settled in her chest like a warm ember.

Draven watched her for only a moment. Then he glanced upward, toward the cavern's jagged ceiling, as if expecting to see the Prime Draven's voice or presence hovering in the shadows. But the mental tether that linked him to his original self had gone silent—muted rather than broken, as though the Prime had plunged too deeply into some distant crisis to respond.

He closed his eyes briefly, letting the hush of detachment wash over him. In that space, he felt both absent and whole. Their minds worked in parallel: two vessels of the same essence, each capable of action and thought independent of the other. It was a bond of absolute trust, forged in arcane fire.

"Quest," he murmured, voice catching on the word like a casual shrug. "Figures he'd dive headlong again."

He didn't need the reassurance of the link. The absence was a gift—an opportunity to measure his own judgment against the world's reaction. No panic rose in his chest. Only the steady pulse of resolve.

The aftermath sprawled before him like a bleak painting—brutal, charred, efficient. There was no grandeur here, no triumphant shout. Only outcomes. Only the quiet proof that the orcs' defiance was met with cold precision. Draven stepped forward, boots whispering across slick stone, weaving between discarded axes and carved bone fetishes once meant to ward intruders. Each step was careful, deliberate, leaving no trace but the gentle flicker of mana in his wake.

Sylara fell into step beside him, her boots sounding louder in the hush. She shrugged a stray lock of hair from her face and gestured toward the collapsed tunnels. "This nest is older than expected."

Draven inclined his head, eyes sweeping over the rubble. "And enchanted."

Her brow lifted. "You saw it?"

He paused, lifting a gloved hand to touch his tongue. "Tasted it," he said, the brief motion carrying both irony and technical precision. "Residual wards. Old, twisted. Not orcish."

She studied him for a heartbeat—her dark eyes sharp, searching. "Then who?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he let his gaze drift down a narrow fissure leading deeper into the mountain. The tunnel mouth yawned like a question, dark and unwelcoming.

"That's not the way out," Sylara said quietly, concern threading her tone.

Draven's boot nudged a fallen stone, sending it skittering into the gloom. "No," he said simply. "It's the way forward."

She hesitated, brow furrowing. "We don't have a map of this sector."

He glanced over his shoulder, expression unreadable. The cavern's faint torchlight flickered across his sharp features, illuminating the glint of determination in his eyes. "Don't need one."

Draven didn't offer an explanation for how he knew the way. The tunnel beyond the orc lair yawned before them, its darkness mottled by flickering torchlight and drifting ash. Yet with each step, the path felt oddly familiar, as though some hidden memory had been etched beneath his skin and guided his feet.

The rock walls gleamed slick with condensation. Every drip echoed like distant thunder. Moss clung to the stone in dark green patches, each strand heavy with moisture. Draven's boots made no sound on the soft earth, but he could feel the path's subtle incline beneath his soles, as if the ground itself remembered his arrival.

"I've never been here," he said, voice soft enough not to disturb the cave's fragile quiet. "But my steps remember."

Sylara glanced across at him, weaving her bow's leather strap around her arm. She raised an eyebrow—her only tell of skepticism. "That doesn't sound suspicious at all," she teased, lips curved in a half-smile that didn't reach her eyes. The air between them was charged, half in jest, half in the unspoken understanding of shared secrets.

Draven offered her a brief, wry smile. "He prepared for this," he replied, voice calm and measured. "Left enough of a map inside me. Not directions. Intent."

She folded her arms, the quiver of her posture betraying her curiosity. "But…" she began, stepping beside him so that the faint glow of his blade's runes cast her shadow against the wall. "How do you follow intent through a labyrinth?"

He didn't answer with words. Instead, he slid his glove-clad fingertips along the carved runes lining the tunnel's edge—symbols half-erased by time, half-lost to dripping water. The etchings pulsed faintly at his touch, as though awakened from a centuries-long slumber.

Sylara watched, her gaze softening with each thrum of mana beneath his skin. She might not grasp the exact mechanism, but she trusted him enough to let intrigue override doubt. "All right," she murmured. "I'm following."

They descended deeper, the tunnel narrowing until their shoulders brushed the damp stone on either side. The air grew colder, each breath tasting of minerals and decay. Somewhere ahead, a distant drip of water tapped out a steady rhythm, like a heartbeat guiding them onward.

Draven paused at a fork in the path, where a splintered beam of wood lay half-buried in gravel. He bent to clear it, revealing a spiral of runes carved into the floor—so faint it was almost invisible. The pattern felt both new and ancient, a palimpsest of magic layered across eons.

Sylara knelt beside him, brushing debris away with careful strokes. "You said the Prime never came here," she whispered. "What does he know that you don't?"

He pressed his palm to the spiral, closing his eyes. The runes glowed, responding to a frequency only he could perceive. "It's not about knowledge," he said softly. "It's about resonance. Intentual echoes that bind places to moments. He left his echo here."

She blinked, shifting to peer at the carved spiral. It pulsed with silver-blue light, weaving in and out like shifting moonbeams. "That's… disturbing," she admitted. "Most people visit a ruin, they get lost. You get instructions from beyond the grave."

Draven straightened. He pocketed a small crystal—an old navigator's rune—that had latched onto the spiral's edges. He flicked a thumb over its surface, channeling a fraction of mana. It hummed obediently and projected a soft glow onto the ceiling, revealing another barely-there glyph pointing deeper into the darkness.

"No panic," he said, voice smooth. "We press on."

Sylara rose, adjusting her chimeras' makeshift saddlebags. She cast a glance back toward the skirmish site, where the orc carcasses lay strewn like broken marionettes. Dust motes drifted above the collapsed nests, hinting at a wind that no longer visited this cavern. "I like my maps with clear exits," she muttered. "Not these riddles."

Draven offered her a courteous nod. "Consider it a living map." He stepped forward, boots crunching on gravel. "Ready?"

She drew in a slow breath, threading her fingers around her bow. "Lead the way."

They moved as one, slipping past jagged stones and shallow pools of water that reflected the flickering crystal's light. Each turn brought a new memory-stir, a sense of déjà vu that prickled at Draven's spine. He caught glimpses of long-faded elven frescoes half-hidden behind moss—delicate lines of silver and gold that depicted a forest of impossible scale, guardians in flowing robes, eyes turned skyward in reverence.

He paused again, hunching to trace a hand over the most intact section. The glyphs shimmered, revealing a forest so vast and luminous it might have been painted by starlight itself. "Pre-exodus," he muttered. "These images… they predate the sundering."

Sylara crouched beside him, amber eyes wide as they drank in the scene. "Pre-fracture," she echoed. "You said that… earlier." She tapped her chin. "Does that mean someone here was preserving history?"

Draven's jaw clenched slightly. "Or burying it." He stood, brushing his coat free of dirt. "Either way, the next turn."

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They advanced until the corridor ended in a sheer stone wall. Nothing marked this place—no grooves, no cracks. Only silence. Sylara clicked her tongue. "So much for your intent map."

Draven knelt in front of the wall, hand hovering a hair's breadth away. He studied the stone's texture—fine grains marred by centuries of water seepage. A faint pattern of circles danced before his mind's eye, lines connecting dots in an impossible lattice. He let his mana pool beneath his palm, a subtle hum vibrating through his glove.

Sylara crossed her arms, shifting her weight. "If you're wrong—"

"Trust me," he said, voice low and commanding. "I won't be."