The Villainous Noble Regressed With The Villain System
Chapter 37: Class Division Exam [29]

Chapter 37: Class Division Exam [29]

ACT 4 : THE LOST LAMB

The situation was a bit strange to me.

After residing in the outer part of the Southern Forest of Grisha, I used the system file of the web novel, and found out many truths of this world.

First of all, the usual plot went like this, for the first event of class division exam.

Aster, the protagonist, forms a party of 5 talented fighters from other noble houses.

But, at that time, Monica Croft was a part of his party.

Yet, I couldn’t find her anywhere.

If she were there, I would have hesitated to attack them one sidedly.

The plot has clearly shifted a bit.

But apart from that, Aster goes on to clear the hurdles one by one, and was able to collect 2 of the monster tokens successfully.

He fought valiantly along with his teammates’ help, and was able to defeat two of the toughest monsters in the dungeon, which brought him into many professor’s attention.

And thus, his glory of a genius swordsman started, right from this academy.

Well, that’s a different story.

But, in the novel too, before moving on to the third monster, Dorian Valen, which is me now, confronted and fought with his team.

You might have guessed the reason already.

It was due to Monica Croft.

Dorian Valen, the Youngest son of a powerful Ducal house Valen, and Monica Croft, the daughter of House Croft, a fallen house, with little to no power, were promised to marry.

It was a decision made by the Duchess Croft and my father, Duke Valen, in order to establish a friendly relationship between the two houses.

Well, the friendly part was a lie, obviously, because, it was just a master-servant relationship.

House Croft was desperate, and we provided some relief to them.

It was only natural, for the Crofts to remain under House Valen, with their actual ruler, Duke Croft dead.

That was the line of thinking of Dorian too, the old Dorian.

Seeing the same Monica, under the wings of a country bumpkin, a no-name noble family’s child, Aster, Dorian was furious.

Seeing her choose Aster—some minor noble’s bastard son from the countryside—was unacceptable. So Dorian interfered. Ambushed them inside the dungeon, blinded by pride and entitlement.

He failed, of course. Monica helped repel him. Aster dealt the final blow.

It was meant to be a clean humiliation.

But that entire chain of events rested on a single truth:

Monica Croft was supposed to be there.

She wasn’t.

Not in Aster’s party. Not anywhere near the coordinates I scouted. No mention. No aura. No trace.

So when I attacked his party, I didn’t hold back.

And that’s what scared me now.

Because that divergence from the original story? It meant fate had taken a different route—and I was blind again.

Still, I had something the original Dorian never did: foresight.

I had memorized the dungeon’s layout from Dulhard’s smuggled blueprints. Narrow corridors. Three monster chambers. Three chokepoints. Only one exit—east tunnel, curving upward through the fungal crevices. Aster and his team had no choice but to move that way after the ambush.

And I followed.

Step by step.

Mist curling like hungry snakes around my boots. My shadow twisted unnaturally in the torchlight.

But I never found them.

No footsteps. No blood trail. No arcane signature. Nothing.

I reached the eastern corridor. Waited. Scanned.

Still nothing.

They hadn’t passed through here.

Impossible, I thought.

The last battle had taken place near the western fork—fifteen minutes from here. This was the only logical direction. If they had gone deeper into the central floor, they would’ve crossed my path.

Unless...

Unless something else took them.

That pressure from before—the overwhelming, unnatural aura that blanketed the entire dungeon—hadn’t vanished. It had grown stronger.

I clenched my fist.

This mist wasn’t normal. Not a spell. Not illusion magic. It moved like it had a will. Like it was searching for something.

I stepped carefully around a collapsed archway, eyes straining through the haze. My hand brushed the hilt of my replacement dagger, half-broken and poorly balanced.

And then I saw her.

A single silhouette, curled up against the dungeon wall.

Sitting in a patch of silver-blue crystal moss, her knees pulled tightly to her chest, her face buried between them. Her shoulders trembled faintly, though there was no wind.

My breath caught.

Monica Croft.

Her hair was longer than I remembered—messy, tangled with dust and crystal fragments. Her robe, partially torn. But it was unmistakably her.

Alone.

And terrified.

I approached slowly, my instincts still sharp. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe not even she was aware she’d been used as bait.

But no traps triggered. No aura spike. No illusion glitch.

She didn’t even lift her head when I knelt beside her.

Her breathing was shallow. Her fingers clawed into her sleeves.

Something had broken her.

I didn’t move closer. I didn’t speak again. I just watched.

For a while, I waited in silence, unsure if I should reach out or walk away. The System didn’t give me quests for this. It only cared about Aster.

But my gut twisted.

Monica was a variable now. A missing piece. Whatever happened to her—whoever did this—had shifted the story in a way even I hadn’t foreseen.

If I am right, then, probably, she remembers everything from her regression, and decided to take a different path this time.

In that sense, I should stay away from her, because, she tried to kill me the first time we met.

Well, it was the first time for me only, as she remembers everything about the old Dorian, from her regressions.

Yet, now that I look at her, she is just scared of something, like a little girl.

A lost lamb.

Well, whatever she is scared of doesn’t matter to me.

My goal is to complete the main task, and leave this dungeon, as soon as possible.

For that I left that mana emitting scroll in that place, where I fought with Aster and his party.

As I saw they have not escaped from that place, as I never saw them through the exit.

If they are still there, then it would be entirely possible that the entity which produced this mist would go after him and his party.

It would be my win.

But, if they were to die, due to that entity, things would be a bit difficult for me.

.......

Oh well, he is the protagonist of this story.

I am sure that he will survive, somehow.

As I was going to leave Monica and move forward, I heard footsteps, echoing.

The red mist only deepened as I was able to see a silhouette.

"Hello, my dear friends", a female voice echoed, as I prepared myself for combat.

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Author’s note :

Please comment your thoughts.

Next - ACT 5 : THE REGRESSORS

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