Dear Heroes, I really am a Villain

"No! Lady Atherna, it's not what you think! I didn't even touch that mortal, he killed my avatar!" Ares tried to protest, but…

In the next instant, Ares felt his vitality drain away. His skin dried up like a mummy's, and his divinity shattered. His body crumbled to the floor and turned to dust, as if millions of years had passed in a blink.

Ares died… without even realizing it.

In a space where time is exist, no one can win against Atherna.

Atherna turned to look at the robed man, who was partially frozen in time, only his limbs able to move.

"Dr. Omnipotent… You lied to me. And you tried to take over Max's body. I want to erase you from this timeline, but without you, Max wouldn't have the body he has now."

"Yes… Your Majesty. If you erase me from the timeline, your lover will lose his body and all of his power," Dr. Omnipotent said. He felt relieved, it was a good thing the Queen of Time thought before acting.

"And you can't kill me either, Your Majesty. The moment you do, the medallion inside your lover will stop functioning, and his soul and body will no longer synchronize. The best you can do is imprison me," Dr. Omnipotent added.

"I expected as much," Atherna said.

With these words, Atherna's hand pierced into Dr. Omnipotent's body, but… there was no blood or injury.

"What… what did you do to me!?" Dr. Omnipotent asked, his voice tinted with fear.

Then, in the next second, Dr. Omnipotent vanished… only to reappear on the ground.

"What?..."

He vanished again, then reappeared.

"What did you do!?"

He vanished once more and reappeared the next second, again and again, until Atherna snapped her fingers, and the transition stopped.

"What did you do to me?" he asked.

"Nothing much. I just… turned you into two states of existence by interchanging your two timelines, between your current self and your past… in the state of a zygote, that is," Atherna said, revealing a cruel and mischievous smile.

"What!?" Dr. Omnipotent blurted out in disbelief.

"Yes… in this state, your power will slowly flow into the medallion within Max's chest. A zygote cannot hold all of your power, but it won't rush in all at once and damage the medallion either, because the next second, you'll return to your current self.

You'll slowly lose your power and your hold on the medallion inside his chest, due to the degradation caused by the constant interchange between the two states of your being," Atherna explained, her cruel smile like a child playing with an ant, dissecting it limb by limb.

"You!" Dr. Omnipotent wanted to curse, but with another snap, he vanished once more.

Atherna then imprisoned him inside a special time sphere where he couldn't exist properly. She brought the sphere into her castle and locked it away in the deepest part of the dungeon.

"Phew… that should take care of it," Atherna uttered with a smile. She checked her machine and found that the system's functions were slowly returning as Dr. Omnipotent's power leaked back into it.

"He should be able to use all the power stored in that system within ten years," Atherna said to herself. By that time, within ten years, her beloved would be able to ascend to the realm of gods.

— A week pass —

Within the café, Maximilian decided to stop pretending. Since his clone had stopped working when the system went down, and Strauss didn't seem to care about his existence or send anyone to bother him, he saw no point in keeping up the facade.

Moreover, Photon Fury knew he was the one who ended the war. Even though he told her to take the credit, the massive blood lake, just 30 kilometers outside the city wall, stood as undeniable evidence. Even if she chose not to tell anyone, Strauss would still know that he was the one who ended the war.

He didn't believe for a second that Strauss hadn't figured it out or would allow him this much peace without a reason.

Even if Strauss hadn't taken action yet, Maximilian had recorded proof that he was the one responsible. If Strauss ever tried to pull something underhanded, he wouldn't hesitate to release that evidence.

At this moment, the usual news buzz about the end of the war suddenly shifted to a special broadcast from Arkadia City Hall.

The sudden change in programming caught Maximilian's attention just as he brought a fresh cup of coffee to one of his new regular customers, Kiyomi, the heiress from the Triune City.

"Ahhh, never thought I'd get served by the greatest villain of all time, Nihilus," Kiyomi said with a mischievous smile.

"Shut up and drink. Keep blabbering nonsense and I might charge you extra," Maximilian replied.

"Go ahead! I'm rich, charge away. You can't stop me," Kiyomi said smugly, clearly enjoying how much she was annoying him.

The two continued their banter while Maximilian waited for the broadcast to begin.

The person walking up to the podium was none other than Strauss, still wearing his usual grumpy expression.

"Greetings, citizens of Arkadia. I'm Heinrich Strauss, the director of Arkadia City's IHB branch. I have great news for all of you." Strauss paused, allowing the reporters in the live broadcast room to focus on him.

"We have a new hero, a hero who has saved us, who has saved our beloved city, and even humanity itself from the cruelty of the mutant war." As Strauss spoke, the screen cut to a scene of Maximilian tearing through the mutant army alone.

The footage was captured from a high angle, clearly recording everything he did. That meant whoever filmed it had been there from the very beginning.

After a few minutes of showing the evidence, the feed returned to the broadcast room. This time, the murmurs in the room echoed throughout the venue.

Everyone had seen it, who he truly was. The supposed villain had just been revealed as the one who protected the city.

"Shit… this is bad…" Maximilian muttered, visibly shaken.

Atherna, who had been helping him behind the counter, watched with interest, as though enjoying a particularly good drama.

"What's so bad about this? You do know you don't have to pretend to be a villain anymore, right?" Atherna asked with a smile, clearly waiting for his reaction.

"I know that, but this… If this gets out, I can kiss my peaceful days goodbye!" Maximilian retorted. He had no desire for a superstar lifestyle where he'd have to avoid crowds or keep a pen and paper ready for autographs every time he stepped outside.

That would be a major hassle.

"Ohhhh? I never thought you'd be this type of person. What do you call it?" Kiyomi uttered with a mischievous smirk, looking at Atherna.

"A tsundere," said Atherna.

"Oh right! A tsundere!" Kiyomi said with a Cheshire grin.

"This is not funny," Maximilian grumbled.

At that moment, the broadcast continued.

"As you can see… Nihilus, or Mr. Maximilian Sterling Graham, has been working for us under the guise of a villain in order to help root out the rebel element within the UEC known as the Echelon, a group with radical beliefs such as mutant supremacy. As you may have noticed, in all of his operations as a villain, there were no innocent casualties, and none of the heroes died. The only casualties were villains and personnel under the Echelon radical group," Strauss said, displaying a rare smile.

The screen showed Maximilian's face without his helmet.

"What!? That grumpy dead-faced guy can smile!?" Kiyomi stared at the TV as if she had just seen the sun rise in the west.

"Is that really the thing to be surprised about? But… I think I get what you mean," Rebecca replied. She had also met that grumpy guy once.

"That bastard revealed my name! He even showed my face! This is bad…" Maximilian gritted his teeth.

At this moment, the customers inside the café turned toward Maximilian and began murmuring. Some of them started walking up to him with pens and paper in hand.

The autograph session began. Maximilian had no choice but to respond enthusiastically to the excited customers. But before he could finish giving autographs, a crowd began to form outside. It seemed more people were coming for him.

"Err… sorry, the café is closed for today! Please go home for now!" Maximilian quickly ushered the customers and Kiyomi out of the café, then closed it with the help of Rebecca and Atherna.

He then turned toward Atherna.

"Athel, let's… let's go back. Open the portal and let's go back right now!" Maximilian said, clearly alarmed.

Atherna chuckled and began using the ticket they received earlier from the system to open the portal.

"Are we… going to your previous world?" Rebecca asked, feeling nervous.

"Yes… and we're going to meet his parents too," Atherna said, her mischievous smile playing on her face as she gave Rebecca a light push from behind and waved her hand to open the portal.

By now, Rebecca's arms and all her missing limbs had been restored to their original flesh with Atherna's help. With a simple gesture, Atherna had returned her body in full.

At this time, a loud bang on the shutter door was heard, followed by shouting.

"Mr. Nihilus! Please open the café! We're here for you!"

"Yes! Our hero, don't be shy!"

The shouting could be heard clearly from outside.

"Shy my ass! I'm a villain, you idiots! Shut up and go away! Isn't this bothering the neighborhood!?" Maximilian shouted back.

"Ohhhh! He's so shy!" the people outside murmured, completely misinterpreting his words as endearing.

Realizing they weren't going to leave anytime soon, Maximilian couldn't help but quickly retreat into the portal.

— ??? —

At the secret laboratory where Atlas was staying, the time on the clock rapidly increased. What had once been a single-digit year had now passed a hundred, and was still rising fast.

Seeing this, Atlas could only smile as a tear slid down his cheek. The clock displayed the countdown to the end of the universe, as the force of entropy continued to eat away at existence.

But after the mutant war, the entropy force had continuously receded, as if the lifespan of the universe had been restored. Just a moment ago, the remaining time of the universe had suddenly jumped forward by more than ten years.

This time, however, the laboratory had detected a strange energy signature in Arkadia City when that time spike occurred.

"Finally… finally, we have a chance," Atlas uttered as hope returned to him.

There was one secret he had never told anyone, something he had kept hidden ever since he destroyed the alien mothership.

The aliens had cursed him, claiming he had doomed the universe. They explained that they had only come to use Earth as the center for activating the Entropy Reversal Engine. It would have killed all life on Earth, but saved the universe.

To prepare for this, the aliens had used an Evolution Bomb to mutate all life on Earth, granting them the ability to survive the extreme environmental changes that would follow the engine's activation.

Without effective communication, Atlas had misunderstood their intention… and nearly doomed the entire human race. He had carried that guilt with him ever since.

"Congratulations… Atlas. Now, shall we go and check what happened in Arkadia?" said the old cowboy, one of Atlas's former comrades-in-arms, with a smile as he patted Atlas's arm. Atlas remained silently staring at the numbers that continued to climb on the clock.

— A Day Later – Texas —

In front of a ranch, Maximilian stopped at the front gate. The sign on the gate bore words that felt both familiar and strangely distant to him:

"Graham Ranch"

"Is this the ranch that Max used to stay at during his childhood?" Rebecca, now dressed in jeans and a jacket to match her usual style, asked curiously.

"Yes… I bet his room is still the same," Atherna said with a mischievous smile.

At the mention of his room, Maximilian shuddered. He had no idea what kind of chaos his silly girlfriend might cause once she got inside, especially with someone like Rebecca around.

He still didn't know how to explain these two girls to his parents… or how much he had changed. But he figured that would take some time.

Then, Maximilian noticed a figure… a small girl, around fourteen years old, walking out from the farm and staring at him with curiosity.

"Ellie," Maximilian said quietly. The girl was his daughter.

"Sir… how do you know my name?" she asked, a strange, familiar feeling rising inside her as she looked at the stranger before her.

Maximilian smiled. For now, he would forget everything…. whether villain or hero. He just wanted to go home, sit down with a beer, and talk with his family.

"Let's go, Atherna, Rebecca," Maximilian said as he led the two women toward the entrance of the ranch, where his family was waiting.