The Villainesses in the Rain
People often encounter the unexpected in life. You trip while walking down the street, only to find money on the ground. You get caught up in an accident, or you win the lottery. Or… you get possessed by a character inside a game. Yeah. For some reason, I had been reincarnated into the world of a game.
Into the body of an extra who didn’t even appear in the original story. And at a point ten years before the main plot even began.
“……”
I glanced up at the gloomy sky before quickening my pace. The familiar jingle of a bell rang out as I stepped inside. What greeted me was a crowd of people dressed in all sorts of outfits. Listening to the noise they created, I naturally made my way toward the desk.
“Mister Gunter, you’re back.”
The woman sitting at the desk, Dorothy, greeted me with a bright smile. I lightly waved my hand in return.
“The request?”
“Finished it.”
I held out a pouch toward her. Dorothy opened it right away to check the contents, then smiled radiantly.
“It’s perfect. As expected of you, Mister Gunter.”
“It’s nothing special.”
“You’re so modest. No one else even dared to take that request.”
“That’s just because this is a rural backwater town.”
I waved my hand to brush off Dorothy’s praise. To be fair, her words weren’t entirely baseless flattery. Mercenaries were a dime a dozen, but truly skilled ones were rare. At my current level, I ranked pretty high—not just in this town of Elton, but across the entire mercenary industry.
Still, that was only within the mercenary world. Knowing that this world was crawling with absurd monsters, I wasn’t about to let praise like that go to my head.
“Here’s your reward for the request.”
Dorothy pulled out another pouch from beneath the desk and handed it to me. Feeling its reassuring weight, I tucked it into my coat and turned to leave.
“You’re heading out already?”
“Yeah.”
“Makes sense. This request took you several days, after all.”
“Exactly. So I’m gonna get some rest.”
I waved casually and left the guild. The bell jingled again as I stepped outside, but the sudden chill stopped me in my tracks. When I looked up, the sky thick with dark clouds had begun to shed a few scattered drops.
It’s going to pour.
I muttered quietly to myself. Sure enough—
Whoosh!
The rain that had been nothing more than a few droplets moments ago suddenly transformed into a torrential downpour, hammering the world around me. Fierce raindrops soaked everything in sight. Naturally, I was no exception.
“…Hmm.”
My hair and clothes were drenched, clinging uncomfortably to my skin. Some people might have frowned in disgust, but I remained calm. I didn’t particularly dislike the rain. If anything, I rather liked it.
Of course, most people felt differently. Unless they were suffering from a drought, not many enjoyed rain. It wasn’t just a matter of mood—heavy rain always brought damage with it.
Take right now, for example. Night had already fallen, and the thick, dark clouds completely obscured the moon. The surroundings plunged into darkness in an instant. A few streetlamps in the city struggled to push back the gloom, but in a rural place like this, there weren’t many lamps to begin with. They couldn’t cover the entire town, so blind spots were inevitable.
And it wasn’t just dark—the roar of the rain drowned out most sounds. It was the perfect environment for crime. The public order in this world was terrible. Compared to Earth, it was practically a lawless zone. Wandering around on a night like this was asking to get stabbed.
The locals knew that well, so most people stayed indoors on nights like these. Unless they had lost all sense of fear—or were confident in their own strength.
I fell into the latter category. Both in terms of raw power and heightened senses. The perception of a superior warrior could pierce even the deepest darkness. Of course, I wasn’t completely unaffected; I faced more restrictions than usual. But it was still far better than an ordinary person.
That’s why I was one of the few who could move freely through this darkness.
…Let’s just head home.
Shaking off the brief thought, I finally started walking again. No matter how much I liked the rain, I wasn’t going to stand there forever getting soaked. My destination was obviously home. After spending several days outside on that request, I was exhausted. All I wanted was to get home, crawl into bed, and sleep.
So I trudged through the pouring rain and thick darkness. Since the town wasn’t very large, it didn’t take long to reach my house. I was about to step inside when—
“…Ah.”
I suddenly stopped. I had forgotten something. The villa I had built outside the city. It was something the original Gunter, the owner of this body, had constructed for training and hunting. Even after taking over his body, I found it quite useful.
It was built solidly enough for a wooden structure, but without any special magic or proper defenses, it could easily collapse if the soil gave way.
“…Sigh.”
I let out a small sigh and turned around. I was tired and it was annoying, but I couldn’t just ignore it. Rebuilding the house and replacing everything inside would cost both time and money. With that in mind, I quickened my pace. Before long, I reached the foot of the mountain outside Elton.
I was about to start climbing when—
────.
A sound reached me. The pouring rain swallowed up almost every noise, but my senses, which had stepped into the realm of superhumans, caught something out of place within the violent downpour.
If I wasn’t mistaken, it was definitely—
Voices.
It was strange. Why would anyone be out here in the middle of the night? Especially in this kind of torrential rain. The situation reeked of something suspicious.
Before I knew it, my feet were quietly carrying me toward the source of the sound. I moved silently, suppressing my presence to the absolute limit using physical control far beyond that of an ordinary person. Slowly, I advanced in the direction of the voices.
After some time, I spotted something moving in the darkness. It was too dark to see clearly, but I immediately recognized it as people. Two of them. Both appeared to be men. They stood with their backs to a carriage.
“It’s really coming down hard,” one of them said.
“At this rate, it’ll be tough to keep moving.”
“Ugh, talk about bad luck.”
The two men chatted casually. Upon closer inspection, both were wearing hoods pulled low.
“……”
Suspicious. The hoods could be excused because of the rain, but everything else felt off. People being here at this hour, in this weather, at this location. Moreover, judging by the direction the horses were facing, it didn’t look like their destination was the town of Elton. That was the most suspicious part.
Even if their destination lay in the opposite direction, anyone would stop traveling in rain like this. No one would push forward in weather like this. You couldn’t make any real progress anyway. Especially not while pulling a carriage.
Watching them, I thought to myself.
…What should I do?
It was incredibly suspicious. But suspicion alone wasn’t evidence. Sticking my nose in just because something felt off could turn into a massive hassle if I was wrong. After pondering for a moment, I made my decision.
Step.
I deliberately made noise as I walked toward the men.
“Elton town guard. What are you doing here?”
Of course, it was a lie. My outfit was nothing like a guard’s uniform, and I had no identification. The lie would be exposed the moment they checked. I knew that, yet I still pretended to be a guard.
“……”
“……”
The moment the men noticed me, their attitudes changed. Panic, intense wariness, and… killing intent.
Bingo.
People with something to hide usually gave themselves away in situations like this. The level of reaction depended on how dirty their secrets were. If they chose murder without hesitation the moment they saw someone else?
That meant their secret was far from ordinary.
Sure enough, they moved immediately. One began gathering mana, apparently preparing to cast a spell, while the other drew his sword and stepped forward. They were fast. Both their reaction speed and the quality of the mana they emitted were far from amateur. If real town guards had encountered them here, they would have lost their heads in an instant.
But I was different.
Thud!
I kicked off the ground and charged forward. A sword had already appeared in my hand—
Slash!
“Guh…!”
Before their actions could bear fruit, my blade had already sliced halfway through the mage’s neck.
“You bastard…!!”
The remaining man roared in fury and swung his sword at me. His speed was impressive, but—
Clang!
I easily parried his blade. Without stopping, I redirected his sword. Unable to regain his balance, his strike cut through empty air—while my own thrust drove straight into his throat.
Shunk!
And just like that, the fight was over. Both the mage and the swordsman were unmistakably dead.
“…Haa.”
Watching the blood wash away in the heavy rain, I let out a small sigh. This wasn’t the first time I had killed someone. Three months had passed since I reincarnated into this body. During that time, I had worked as a mercenary and killed several people while carrying out requests. At first I had hesitated and felt quite a shock, but now I was fairly used to it. At least enough that I no longer writhed in self-loathing.
…Though the discomfort still lingered.
What kind of mess did I get reincarnated into?
Forcing down the bitterness on my tongue, I shifted my gaze. Toward the carriage behind the rapidly cooling corpses. It wasn’t hard to guess that something was inside. And that whatever it was probably wasn’t anything respectable.
From the outside, I couldn’t tell what was in there. It seemed to be magically treated; my mana couldn’t pass through the carriage. In the end, there was only one way to find out.
Taking a short breath to steady myself, I approached the carriage. Now that things had come to this, leaving it unchecked wasn’t an option. I kept my sword in my right hand and gripped the door handle with my left. I stayed tense, ready to swing my blade at any moment in case something jumped out.
After a brief pause, I flung the carriage door open. With my senses pushed to their limit, I scanned the interior in a single glance and—
“…Haa.”
I let out a small sigh. The sight that greeted me made all my heightened tension feel ridiculous. What was inside the carriage were children.
Three young girls with hair of various vivid colors, bound with restraints far too large for their small frames. Their clothes were ragged and somewhat dirty, and their eyes were filled with wariness as they stared at me.
…Slave traders, huh.
It seemed the men had been slave traders. Now it all made sense. Why they hadn’t entered Elton despite the weather, and why they had immediately chosen to kill me the moment they saw me. Because they were slave traders. After all, human slavery was illegal in this world. If they were caught during an inspection, it would be over. That’s why they had pushed on even in this weather.
It wasn’t anything major after all.
In the end, my intuition had been slightly off. I had expected something big, but while they were definitely shady and deserved to die, they weren’t hiding any grand secrets. Feeling a mix of relief and faint disappointment, I turned my attention to the children.
I hadn’t planned on it, but since I had rescued them, I needed to take care of the aftermath. I couldn’t just leave them here.
I guess I’ll have to find an orphanage.
With that thought, I reached out to undo their restraints when—
“……”
I froze. It wasn’t just that I stopped moving. My brain, my thoughts—they all came to a halt.
Thump. Thump—
My heart began pounding violently. A sharp ringing filled my ears. The roar of rain that had been hammering against my eardrums gradually faded into the distance. The blood circulating through my body, even though I was soaked to the bone, suddenly ran ice-cold.
My gaze, which had stopped so abruptly, remained fixed on the children. They were definitely children I had never seen before. And yet, I had seen them.
It was a contradictory statement, but it wasn’t a contradiction. Because what I had seen was their future selves.
Yes. I knew their future. I knew who these children were.
These children… were the villainesses who would bring destruction to this world.