Betrayed as an Archmage, I Was Reborn as a No Rank Healer (Archmage Revenge #2)

CHAPTER 1 — “Unanimous”

The Demon Lord dies ugly.

They always do, the big ones. All that power, all that menace, all those years of humanity pissing themselves at the mention of his name—and in the end, he’s just meat on the floor, leaking black ichor across stones older than any kingdom still standing.

Anticlimactic, really. You’d think the embodiment of darkness would have a more dramatic death.

Maybe some final words, a curse, a prophecy about how evil never truly dies.

But no. He just kind of… stops. One second he’s the most terrifying thing on the continent, and the next he’s a cooling corpse that smells like sulfur and regret.

I lower my staff and try to feel something. Victory, maybe. Relief. Triumph. The kind of emotions normal people have when they accomplish something impossible.

Instead, I’m mostly thinking about how my back hurts and how I really, really need to pee.

Forty-two years old. Defeated the Demon Lord. Still can’t escape my bladder’s schedule.

This is the glory they write songs about.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ QUEST COMPLETE ││ "The End of Darkness" │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ Objective: Defeat the Demon Lord Karvaxis ││ Status: COMPLETE ││ ││ Rewards pending party leader confirmation...

││ ││ "Congratulations. You saved the world.

││ Try not to let it go to your head." │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The System’s always got something to say.

Snarky little blue boxes appearing at the worst possible moments, offering commentary nobody asked for.

I’ve been dealing with it for thirty years now, ever since the whole world woke up one morning with stats and skills and a fundamental restructuring of reality that nobody voted on.

The scholars think the System appeared as a response to Karvaxis—some kind of cosmic immune system kicking in to give humanity a fighting chance.

The priests think it’s a gift from the gods.

I think it’s probably just the universe being weird, because the universe is always being weird, and expecting explanations is a good way to drive yourself insane.

Point is, we adapted. We figured out classes and levels and skill trees, built new societies around grinding and dungeons and the pursuit of bigger numbers. And after three decades of blood and death and people I cared about becoming memories, we finally, finally won.

So why do I feel so empty?

Probably just the exhaustion. Four days without sleep will do that to you. Makes everything feel distant, like you’re watching your own life through foggy glass.

“Velthar!”

Dario’s voice cuts through my haze, golden and warm and so perfectly him that I almost smile despite myself.

He’s already grinning when I turn around, sword raised high like he’s posing for a painting, playing to an audience that isn’t here.

Classic Dario. The man could stub his toe and make it look heroic.

That’s the thing about having the [Hero] class—everything you do comes with invisible background music.

The System looked at Dario Valdris thirty years ago and said “yes, this one, this is the protagonist,” and it’s been proving itself right ever since.

He’s got the jaw, the eyes, the shoulders, the whole package.

Women write songs about him. Men want to be him.

Children play pretend as him in the streets.

Me? I got [Mage]. Common class. The System basically handed me a participation trophy and told me to figure it out myself.

But I’m stubborn. Stupid stubborn. The kind of stubborn that looks at a participation trophy and says “watch me turn this into a championship.” Twenty years of grinding and studying and nearly killing myself more times than I can count, and now I’m one of maybe six Archmages on the continent.

Legendary class. Top of the magical food chain.

And right now I can barely stand because I burned through ninety-seven percent of my mana keeping everyone alive.

The things we do for friendship.

“We did it, brother!” Dario pulls me into a hug before I can protest, and I get a face full of his shoulder and a nose full of expensive cologne.

Because of course he wore cologne to fight the Demon Lord.

Of course he did. Probably picked it specifically because it would smell good mixed with the blood of evil. “We actually did it!”

“We did,” I manage, my voice sounding like someone ran it through a gravel pit. “It’s over.”

“Over!” He pulls back, hands on my shoulders, those perfect blue eyes bright with joy. “Thirty years of darkness, and we ended it. Us.”

Us. I like that he says us. Even if we both know the truth—that “us” mostly means “me doing complicated magical calculations while everyone else looked impressive.” I don’t mind, though.

I’ve never minded. Someone has to be the face of the operation, and someone has to be the brain, and I made my peace with being the brain a long time ago.

Dario gets the glory. I get the satisfaction of knowing nothing would work without me.

Fair trade, right?

Right.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ CURRENT STATUS ││ Velthar Ashworth (Archmage, Level 97) │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ HP: 34/2,180 │ MP: 89/15,340 ││ STR: 45 │ AGI: 62 ││ INT: 847 │ WIS: 523 ││ DEX: 78 │ LCK: 31 ││ ││ Status: Exhausted, Mana-Depleted, Smells Weird ││ ││ "You look like hammered shit, but you won.

││ Take the W and maybe a bath." │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Thirty-four HP out of over two thousand.

One more hit and I would’ve been modern art on the throne room floor.

That last spell—the one I spent six years designing in secret, scribbling equations on napkins at three in the morning, testing components until my eyebrows grew back wrong—it took everything I had.

Every drop of mana, every ounce of will, every prayer to gods I don’t believe in.

But it worked. The Demon Lord is dead. The world is saved.

And all it cost me was the ability to stand without swaying.

“Vel.”

Persephone’s voice is soft behind me, and then her hands are on my shoulders, already glowing with that warm golden light that means healing’s coming. My wife. My anchor. The woman who’s kept me alive through twenty years of stupid decisions and near-death experiences.

Twelve years of marriage and she still makes my chest do stupid things when she looks at me like that—brown eyes soft with concern, dark hair escaping its braid, someone else’s blood on her cheek. She’s beautiful even now, maybe especially now, covered in the proof that she fought beside me.

“You’re running on fumes,” she says, and there’s that tone she gets when she’s about to start mothering me whether I want it or not. “Sit down before you fall down.”

“I’m fine.”

“You have thirty-four health.”

“That’s still positive numbers. Still technically winning.”

“Velthar Ashworth, if you don’t sit down right now, I will make you sit down, and it won’t be gentle.”

I sit. Mostly because my legs were about to give out anyway, but I let her think she won because that’s what twelve years of marriage has taught me. Pick your battles. Lose the small ones gracefully. Save your stubbornness for things that matter.

Her healing washes over me like sinking into a warm bath after a long day—the good kind of bath, not the “something’s definitely growing in this water” kind you get at cheap roadside inns.

It won’t restore my mana, nothing does that except time and rest and occasionally very expensive potions I can’t afford because I keep spending all my gold on spell components.

But it stops the bleeding I hadn’t noticed. There’s a gash across my ribs, deep enough to see things I’d rather not see, and I genuinely don’t remember when that happened. The fight’s already blurring together into a mess of fire and screaming and “oh shit, dodge that.”

“Thank you,” I murmur.

She kisses my forehead, gentle and familiar. “Always.”

Always. I tuck that word away somewhere safe, hold it close to my chest like a talisman against the darkness. After everything we’ve been through, after all the close calls and near misses and nights I didn’t think I’d survive—she’s still here. Still with me.

Some things, at least, are constant.

The party gathers in the aftermath, five people moving through the wreckage of humanity’s greatest victory, and I watch them from my spot on the floor like a tired old man watching kids play.

Which, I suppose, I am now. Forty-two. When did that happen?

Gorath’s laughing somewhere to my left, that deep booming sound that always makes me think of avalanches and friendly earthquakes.

The man’s built like someone tried to crossbreed a castle wall with a bear and somehow succeeded—seven feet of muscle and scars and cheerful violence.

He took a hit from Karvaxis earlier that would’ve turned me into chunky salsa, and he just…

walked it off. Cracked his neck, said something about “good warmup,” and kept fighting.

Tanks are different. I’ve stopped trying to understand them.

“The Demon Lord,” he’s saying now, reverent and disbelieving. “We actually killed the Demon Lord.”

“Technically, Velthar killed the Demon Lord.” That’s Sylva, crouched over the massive corpse with the single-minded focus of a woman who’s already calculating the resale value of demon organs.

She’s got nimble fingers working through the drops, cataloging and storing with practiced efficiency.

“That last spell of his? I’ve never seen anything like it. What even was that?”

“Custom work,” I say, because I can’t help showing off even when I can barely sit upright. “Six years of development. Lots of math. So much math. I have nightmares about math now.”

“Six years? For one spell?”