Few seconds ago,
"Aaarghhhh—Arvi—"
Arvia's father groaned.
His head throbbed like a drum being beaten from inside. Something warm ran down his temple—blood, he guessed—but he couldn't move his hand to check. His legs were numb. His chest ached. He was still inside the car. Somehow.
His eyes slowly turned toward the dashboard.
Smoke.
Oil.
Something was leaking from below. The car made a strange hissing sound, almost like it was breathing its last breath. The air inside was heavy. Hot. Metal creaked and shifted as if warning of what was coming next.
His breath was shallow. His mind foggy. He knew something was wrong. Badly wrong.
He could barely think—but even in that dazed state, he knew he had to get out.
He tried to move.
Nothing happened.
His body didn't respond.
Just then, a voice broke through the haze—raw, strained.
"Uncle... hold yourself..."
It was Satteus.
He wasn't sure if it was a memory or real until he felt a hand tug at his arm—shaky, weak, but real.
Satteus was crawling.
Dragging himself across the twisted inside of the car, using just one arm, his entire body bleeding and broken. His shirt was soaked in blood. His face was pale. His eyes were glassy.
But he was still moving.
Still trying.
The father blinked slowly. He could only see the boy struggle, dragging himself closer like a wounded animal. It didn't make sense. He looked more dead than alive. His breath was wheezing. His hands were trembling.
And yet—he was trying to pull him out.
Trying to save him.
The man wanted to speak. To say run. To say leave me. But all he could manage was a low groan.
"R...un... Satte...us..."
He didn't even know if the boy heard him.
Satteus didn't reply.
He just slipped his arms under the man's shoulders—barely managing to lift him an inch—and then began to drag him toward the open door.
Every pull was torture.
The broken glass beneath scraped their clothes.
The metal frame of the car groaned louder now. More smoke.
The oil near the engine was spreading like a puddle under fire.
Satteus gritted his teeth.
His knees were slipping, his blood leaving a trail as he dragged the man out, inch by inch. No strength left. No logic. Just desperation. Pure will.
They made it to the edge of the car.
Then a few more inches.
And then—
BOOM!
The blast finally came.
A thunderous roar behind them, heat pushing them forward like a wave. Light flashed white. The sound tore the air apart.
The man's eyes fluttered open in shock, but by then, they were already out. Already on the ground.
His body shook from the shockwave. His hearing rang. His eyelids dropped again.
But somewhere in that dizzy, fading moment—he realized.
Satteus just saved both his and his daughter's life.
thud
"Haah...! Haa...!"
:: Master, even though you cannot die, it doesn't mean you should break your own body like that... can't you just, like last time, torture that woman? ::
'....' Satteus didn't reply; instead, his eyes glanced towards the highway where soon enough the cars started to halt at a distance as people were coming out towards the accident area. His eyes looked towards a distance where in the blood pool was lying Arvia and then turned towards the man.
Clearly, a short term smirk passed through his lips before his amethyst eyes looked towards a monitoring camera or surveillance cameras nearby.
"Haah, you are really blessed, Arvia." The reason he sighed right now and placed His arms on his forehead while lying on the squalid bloody desk was due to the fact that how Arvia, being a heroine, was this lucky.
In short, he wanted to kill her father today, so that she didn't have anyone in her life left to lean on, except him.
But unfortunately, the accident happened in an area where the monitoring camera was present, and if he were to crawl out of the car alone, then that would have just ruined the whole setting of him becoming her only salvation.
So the source of his amusement was from the fact that again, defying the logic in the most logical way, the heavens favored him once again.
Arvia—being a heroine—possessed the ability to enhance the luck of the people to whom she was emotionally close.
The closer one is to her emotionally, physically, and spiritually, the stronger they would be blessed by the heavens.
This was the same ability, a passive one of hers, which had kept him alive in the early years of the transmigration inside a world of the demon king.
She was like a lucky charm to him.
Only if not for those repeated visions her active ability to see the future showed her about her fate at his hand—everything would have been too smooth.
He wouldn't have killed her nor would have to kill any of those women who were too stubborn, too prone towards justice to believe in heaven.
Technically, heaven was true all along about him, after all, he did kill those women in the brutal way possible.
But the issue was… they were responsible for those outcomes by even thinking to betray him. He killed them one by one, and with each of their deaths, he realized how he was losing valuable assets for him.
Until finally, when he killed Arvia.
He realized that he just did what exactly heaven wanted him to do.
He just walked the path destined for him unknowingly and acted as heaven's puppet.
Destiny wasn't something that controlled someone's free will, but it cornered them, molding them into becoming like that.
For example, in Arvia's case, before transmigration, she started to see the visions that were dormant in her soul memory as part of her active skill, which was warning her about her life's biggest event, which was her death at his hand.
However, being childhood friends, her emotional attachment to him was strong enough until she transmigrated and awakened her ability and started to learn to control it; she suppressed that vision on her own, treating it as a fake illusion, even telling him about it at the very start.
She seemed not to care about it, but he did.
He let the voice inside of him slowly tell him about his destiny, strengthening the weakest ability he had awakened—healing.
Slowly, however, his way of using them on the battlefield, coupled with distance due to being the weakest member of the hero party, made him distant from her, and over time, they separated in a way that weakened their bond.
And finally, when they met, it was on the battlefield against the Demon Army.
:: Master, why are you pushing yourself this much though? ::
'....To break her.... Obviously.'