Only the smell of blood and gunpowder lingered in the night air, mixing faintly with the smoke that lazily rose from the debris scattered in every direction across the terrain.
In the midst of that devastated landscape, there were far too many bodies piled into grotesque mounds of flesh and bone.
Above it all, a figure remained standing with an unnatural calm that didn't match the disaster around him.
Marek, who was observing the battlefield with his red eyes—just as cold and expressionless as always—despite his entire body being in a deplorable state, wore a calm expression on his face.
His left arm hung at a grotesque angle, with bone protruding through torn flesh.
Meanwhile, deep wounds gushed from his torso, staining his ruined black shirt with blood.
Each breath he took produced a wet, bubbling sound that only indicated the severe lung damage he had sustained.
Even so, the man—nearly two meters tall—didn't even flinch.
There were easily more than three hundred men of all ages lying on the ground like corpses, although some still writhed weakly in their final moments of agony.
Among them were renowned assassins, elite mercenaries, and even a few individuals considered invaluable assets by governments.
All of those people had been summoned tonight with a single objective.
To eliminate the man known as "The Red-Eyed Demon," the one who had terrorised both the criminal world and the most powerful government organisations for an entire decade.
And they had failed.
Marek moved his right hand—the only one that still functioned with some normality—to grab a cigarette from one of his trouser pockets.
His fingers, stained with both his own blood and that of others, pulled out the crushed cigarette that had miraculously survived the battle.
With a swift motion, he brought it to his mouth while, with his mangled hand, completely ignoring the pain, he took the silver lighter in his other hand.
The metallic click echoed in the absolute silence of that place, followed by the soft crackle of the tobacco igniting.
Marek inhaled deeply, letting the smoke fill his damaged lungs before exhaling a greyish cloud.
Then, his legs began to move clumsily, carrying him away from the battlefield as he left a trail of blood behind him.
Each step became heavier than the last, yet his expression remained unchanged, as if all of this were just another task in his daily routine.
'What a waste of time…' he thought while glancing at the bodies he left behind.
'All that trouble just to gather a group of incompetents, and in the end not a single one managed to make me break a real sweat…'
Though as soon as that thought ended, a barely noticeable smile curved his cracked lips as he remembered an old man named Kozlov.
He had been the only one who gave him something decent the entire night, although in the end Marek had crushed his skull with his knee.
'This world has nothing left to offer me.' he thought, reflecting as the cigarette burned between his lips.
'No rivals, no challenges… just trash that thinks it can touch me.'
At that moment, his knees gave out without warning, and Marek soon found himself with his face pressed against the cold asphalt.
The cigarette rolled a few centimetres before going out in a puddle of his own blood.
His body had finally reached its limit. The willpower that had kept him standing for the past two hours could no longer compensate for the absurd amount of blood he had lost, combined with the perforated organs that barely functioned.
'So… this is what dying feels like.' he thought with an absolute calm that would have disturbed anyone else.
There were no regrets in his mind, nor any hidden fears surfacing in his final moments. Nothing.
Marek had lived exactly as he wanted, seeking absolute strength, crushing anyone who stood in his way, and experiencing those brief moments of ecstasy whenever he found someone worthy of making him fight seriously.
The fact that those moments had been so scarce was his only real complaint about existence.
Slowly, his eyes began to close as darkness enveloped him, and the last thing he felt was the cold asphalt against his cheek before all sensation disappeared completely.
- - - -
The absence of pain and exhaustion was the first thing Marek registered upon regaining consciousness.
He opened his eyes expecting to find nothingness, or some cliché version of hell he undoubtedly deserved, but instead he was greeted by a completely blue sky.
His body felt… light. Whole, without the constant murmur of pain that had been his companion during the past years of brutal combat.
Before he could process his surroundings, his combat instincts alerted him to imminent danger.
A figure had lunged at him at great speed, wielding what appeared to be an iron sword with a surprisingly refined technique.
It was a young girl, probably in her late teens, with a considerable height for a woman, perhaps around one meter seventy-four.
With silver hair that flowed wildly as she executed her downward strike.
Due to the violence of her attack and the momentum of the blow, her breasts bounced forcefully beneath her clothes, while her backside seemed to react provocatively upon landing, outlining her curves in a way that was inevitably enticing to anyone who saw her.
Marek didn't even react to the spectacle before his eyes; instead, his attention shifted to the enormous structure behind the girl.
It appeared to be a mansion with ancient architecture, with towers rising toward the sky. The gardens were equally vast, impeccably maintained.
From the balconies and windows of the mansion, several figures observed the fight, though their faces were difficult to distinguish due to the great distance between them.
Marek then scanned the area where he stood—it seemed to be some kind of training courtyard, with marks of combat etched into the stone ground.
'Hmm?'
That was his only thought before his body reacted purely on muscle memory.
In a swift movement that would have been imperceptible to a normal observer, Marek slid to the side, catching the girl's wrist with remarkable precision and using her own momentum against her.
A second later, she was face-down against the stone floor, her arm twisted into a clearly painful lock while her sword had flown several meters away.
In that position, the girl was completely subdued, and in an embarrassing pose, as her backside had been raised, offering Marek such a shameless view.
A muffled moan escaped her lips due to the brutality of the hold, but he barely registered the sound as his red eyes examined her face from above.
She had skin as pale as porcelain along with intense violet eyes that shone with anger and surprise.
She had aristocratic features that exuded arrogance even in that humiliating position.
All of these factors led Marek's mind to a single conclusion.
'Seraphine Blackwell'
Marek recognised her, a hint of disbelief crossing his usually impassive face.
'The first villainess of "Destined to End the SSS Villainesses"… but that's impossible… that novel…'
At that moment, his thoughts were abruptly interrupted when a translucent screen appeared before his eyes.
The letters glowed with a golden hue that contrasted against the semi-transparent background, and its contents caused Marek's pupils to contract almost imperceptibly.
[Transmigration Complete!]
[Destination World: "Destined to End the SSS Villainesses"]
[Host: Marek Nighthollow.]
As Marek read the contents of the screen, beneath him, Seraphine struggled uselessly while muttering threats.
In the distance, several of the figures from the mansion began to move urgently, probably alerted by the unexpected situation.
'…What the hell?'