Should I Become a Villain?

Radmilo had no idea what had happened, but when he opened his eyes, he found himself in a room. Someone had brought him out of the dungeon. He did not know who the person was. However, he had to kill whoever brought him into the room.

No one was allowed to know that he was in Semaphore Beach Dungeon.

For this reason, he immediately got up from his bed and took out a poisoned dagger from his inventory. He forced himself to stand up even though his whole body still ached.

"What exactly happened to me...?"

The man could not find the answer to the question, which hurt his head. He would get a headache if he thought about many things at the same time. Such strange conditions had never happened before.

Even though he returned to the past, his past self had a fit body. Radmilo even took another job besides being a hunter's assistant because the cost of living was very high.

His working hours before becoming a hunter were twelve hours. However, he was still alive and never experienced distress in his body. He was tired, but it was different from how he felt right now.

Radmilo almost lost consciousness if he did not hear something. He heard a voice from behind the door. With a quick movement, he opened the door and swung his dagger.

"Master, what did you do to me?!"

That familiar voice made Radmilo stop his attack. He blinked a few times as his vision was still blurry.

"It's me, Clem! I'm not your enemy!"

The voice came again. This time, Radmilo was able to figure out who he had just attacked. Turned out it was Clem. He let out a rough breath as he still could not see clearly.

"I don't know if it's you. How did you bring me here?" Radmilo asked while walking towards the room. He immediately lay down on the bed since he still felt tired.

Meanwhile, Clem looked at Radmilo with a sad face. "I wanted to see you to talk about Zivile. She's angry because you didn't thank her. I couldn't find you anywhere even after looking around your apartment."

"Then, how did you find me?"

"I know Zoilos, the slime monster in Beach Semaphore Dungeon. A few days ago, I talked to him about you. He seemed to remember your face and contacted me when he found you passed out on the beach. Zoilos helped me. He defeated the sirens so we could get out of there."

"You have a good friend."

Radmilo closed his eyes while catching his breath. He felt like his ribs would break if he breathed too hard.

"Zoilos is interested in you and wants to make a contract with you. I was planning to talk about that as well today. But you seem to be in a bad condition," Clem spoke in a sad tone.

"You can come to my apartment with Zoilos tomorrow afternoon. And can you tell me where we are now?"

"We are in my dungeon. This is a room in the guild building."

Hearing this, Radmilo immediately opened his eyes. He was not an old member of the Tasmanian Devil, so he could not remember all the rooms in the guild building. It turned out that the building was not completely destroyed after turning into Clem's dungeon.

"Um, what happened to you?" Clem asked hesitantly. "I healed you right away as soon as I moved you here. However, I can't really heal you."

Radmilo frowned. "You can't heal me? Is my condition that bad?"

"Yeah, really bad. It looks like you have been hit by a large amount of magic. Did you fight some high-class monsters recently?"

"I did fight a lot of monsters recently," Radmilo chose to lie because he had not found the cause of his strange condition. "Do you know how long it takes to recover from the effects of magic attacks?"

You only need a few days to quickly recover. You know the effects wear off quickly when your rank is high."

"Yeah, I know. But I don't want to be disturbed for a while."

Clem understood Radmilo's words, so he immediately left the room. Meanwhile, Radmilo went straight to the system menu because he suspected something. He checked the information one by one on the skills he had.

[First skill: <Speed Up> (S)

Triggers: Words

Effect: Speeds up time as desired by the user. (Everyone will be affected by the skill effect, except for people with Power Barrier power or items.*)]

Cost: User's Magical Energy. The longer you use the skill, the more Magic Energy is used. The system will give a warning if the Magic Energy is low. (**)]

[Second skill: <Slow Down> (S)

Trigger: Whistle

Effect: Slows down time as desired by the user. (*)]

Cost: (**)]

[Third skill: <Pause> (A+)

Trigger: Finger snap

Effect: Stop the time according to the user's desire. Effects only last for one day. The user needs to complete monthly missions to increase skill rank. (*)

Cost: (**)]

[Fourth skill: <Spool Back> (D)

Trigger: Middle finger 𝘧r𝗲𝑒𝔀𝘦𝙗𝓃oν𝑒l.𝐜𝗼m

Effect: The user can go back in time with this skill. Monthly quest rewards are required to increase skill rank. (*)

Cost: (**)]

[Another skill (???) will only appear at certain times]

Radmilo did not find what he wanted from this information. It was basic information that he had memorized by heart. He wanted to check the detailed cost of using his power but found nothing after searching the system for a long time.

"Is my condition unrelated to the cost?" he muttered while staring at his remaining magic energy.

His magical energy was reduced because he had used the <Spool Back> skill. However, he still had a lot of magical energy left since he had not used the skill for a long time. If the cost was the cause of the abnormal condition, then the magical energy should also be affected.

Radmilo tried to remember his previous life. He still found nothing, though. This abnormal condition had only ever occurred after he returned to the past.

"Ah, damn it! I feel like I forgot something."

His head was again attacked by excruciating pain when he thought about that. Radmilo was already suspicious about the cost of using his power. Unfortunately, he could not find anything wrong with it.

His body did not receive any harmful effects, so he thought his power just cost his magical energy. He changed his mind after experiencing an abnormal condition. Someone appeared to make him forget about the actual cost; unfortunately, he did not know who that person was.

"I swear I will find you and kill you!" Radmilo growled while grabbing his hair because the pain in his head was getting worse.

He did not remember that someone at the IRO had the power to manipulate memories. The person was quite powerful because the power effect persisted, even though Radmilo had returned to the past.

However, Radmilo realized the person could not make him forget about his time control power. Now the reason for his murder made more sense.

Because that person could not manipulate his memory any further, the IRO decided to kill him before he grew stronger than the organization.

Radmilo was determined to find the actual cost as soon as possible. Like it or not, he had to use his power to a certain extent to find out how the cost would react to his body.

***

The sky was deep red like blood, without a cloud, sun, or moon. The light source for this place was the sky itself, so everything looked red. Almost the entire place was filled with sand.

There were no roads, plants, animals, vehicles, lights, or anything that would normally exist in the human world. The place was like a deserted desert; not anyone was there.

However, the deserted wasteland finally had someone. A woman in a black robe walked in the desert with the help of her ward. The robe's hood covered most of her face so that one could only see her eyes.

"Ugh, it's so hot in here," the woman complained as she continued walking up the desert.

Her blue lips formed a wide smile as soon as she found a sand castle. It was no ordinary sand castle. The castle was large and did not collapse when the wind blew so hard.

The woman had to stick her wand into the sand if she did not want to be carried away by the wind. Soon, there would be a storm. Because of that, she quickened her pace to reach the sand castle.

Inside the sand castle, a boy was watching the woman with a straight face. He then raised the question, "Why did you come here?"

The boy's low voice surprisingly reached the woman's ears. "I don't think there's anything wrong with prime movers meeting each other," she answered with a grin.

Only the woman sounded excited. The boy still maintained his disinterested expression. He did not want to meet her, but he had to welcome her since she came from far away.