NTR: Minor Villain Wants to Be the Main Villain - Chapter 135

Chapter 135: Its Called an Uppercut!
Artis sighed dramatically, shaking his head like an exasperated saint overlooking a horde of sinners.

“I would have asked you to apologize to Lily for everything you’ve said to her like a responsible patron…”

He smiled. It was a benevolent smile. The kind of smile an emperor might wear before ordering an entire bloodline to be wiped from existence.

“…But then again, I’m not here for that.”

The air shifted.

The workers blinked, their beer-addled minds processing the change in atmosphere.

Artis’ lips curled into something softer. Something that had no right being so damn condescending and smug at the same time.

“I’m here to show her…” He took a slow, deliberate step forward. “How a real man protects his girl.”

For a moment, there was silence. The workers blinked. Processed.

Then—

Laughter.

Raucous, gut-busting, tear-inducing laughter.

They clutched their stomachs, bent over, slapping their knees and each other’s backs. One guy literally had to sit down before he collapsed from laughing too hard.

“This fucking TWIG?”

The bicep guy howled, pointing at Artis like he was the punchline of the joke.

“Ha ha ha! Beating us?! Ha ha ha ha!”

“Oi, oi, careful! He might have a sword in those pants!”

The homo guy chimed in, cackling.

“It’s the only thing I see that looks remotely dangerous on him!”

The laughter was deafening.

Meanwhile, Lily’s face twisted in uncertainty.

She bit her lip.

For the first time since dragging him here, she hesitated.

She actually hesitated.

Her mind, previously burning with indignation, suddenly did the worst possible thing it could do at this moment.

It started calculating facts.

These guys were huge. They weren’t just big, they were boulder-sized meat sacks with years of physical labor behind them.

There were twenty of them. Twenty. That was nineteen too many.

Artis was, for lack of a better term, a pretty motherfucker. Lean. Aesthetic.

The kind of body sculpted for looking good shirtless on a balcony, not surviving a back alley beatdown from a bunch of construction-site ogres.

She had no idea if he was a cultivator.

And most importantly—

If he lost…

She gulped.

For the first time, a sliver of fear slithered up her spine.

Then—

A shadow.

A cold hand.

Before she could even look up, Artis’ fingers were already beneath her chin, tilting her face up effortlessly.

He was close.

So close she could see every mischievous detail in those crimson eyes—eyes that sparkled with an infuriating mixture of amusement and challenge.

Like he was saying—

“Oh, you poor, naive little thing. Did you really think I could lose?”

Lily’s breath caught.

Her heart thumped—not from fear anymore, but something else entirely.

Then Artis’ lips parted—

And he spoke.

“Watch closely, Lily.”

A chill ran down her spine.

He leaned in, so close their noses nearly brushed.

“You will only see this kind of scene when you’re with me because…I am… a man.”

His voice was rich, deep—dripping with arrogance and sinful confidence.

Lily’s thighs clenched.

She felt it.

The heat.

The shameful heat pooling between her legs like she was some village girl swooning over a knight in shining armor. What the hell was wrong with her? She barely knew him for a few hours, and yet—

Her breath hitched.

A memory flickered through her mind. A line she once read in some old, scandalous novel—

“A woman knows the moment she meets a man worth surrendering to.”

Then she saw it.

Artis turned around, his body moving in slow motion—or maybe it was just her mind warping reality because the moment was that damn epic.

His muscles coiled like a predatory beast preparing to pounce, his body shifting into perfect alignment.

Then—

BOOM!

His fist shot forward like a damn cannon, a blur of motion that even the gods would struggle to track.

The bicep guy barely had time to register his impending doom. One moment, his face was twisted in cocky amusement—the next, it was rearranged.

Artis’s piston-like uppercut connected beautifully with the man’s jaw.

A crack echoed through the air, sharp and satisfying, like the sound of a watermelon exploding under a sledgehammer.

Then—

Liftoff.

The bicep guy flew.

Not stumbled. Not fell.

Flew.

Like a majestic, overfed pigeon suddenly realizing gravity was a thing.

His body arced through the air in a spectacular display of unconscious aerobatics, soaring over the heads of his fellow thugs, his limbs flailing like a ragdoll tossed by an angry toddler.

Lily’s mouth parted, her eyes widening like a kid witnessing her first fireworks display.

This…

This wasn’t some drunken brawl in the streets.

This was the kind of fight that only existed in legends.

And she was watching it unfold right in front of her.

Her heart pounded.

Her breath came short.

And, gods help her, her legs shook.

Artis, standing tall, rolled his shoulders with casual ease, like he hadn’t just sent a grown-ass man to orbit with a single punch.

He exhaled.

“One down,” he mused, stretching his fingers. “Who’s next?”

The laughter died—not a slow, lingering fade, but an abrupt, choked-off silence, like someone had just yanked the needle off a record.

All eyes followed the unfortunate bastard who had just experienced accidental flight, his body spinning through the air in a majestic arc, limbs flailing like a chicken freshly separated from its head.

Then—

THUD.

He hit the ground with all the grace of a sack of potatoes thrown off a roof.

A tense silence stretched across the scene.

A single finger rose, trembling, pointing at the motionless man on the dirt.

“H-HOW DID… H-HOW DID HE FLY LIKE THAT?”

The disbelief was palpable.

“IMPOSSIBLE!” another one shrieked, his beer belly jiggling in distress. “THAT TWIG?! THIS TWIG?!”

All eyes snapped back to Artis, who stood there, nonchalantly cracking his neck, looking insultingly unfazed.

He exhaled through his nose, turning to Lily with a smug little smirk that made her stomach do something… weird.

“You see that, Lily?” He flexed his fingers. “That’s called an uppercut. It’s a basic move in boxing. You punch the chin, and the opponent gets thrown upward.”