The Villainess is the Villainess [LitRPG]

Book 2: Chapter 31 - A Wizard's Staff [Part 1]

"We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship."

– C.S. Lewis

Dawn speared through the cracks in Seraphina's velvet drapes, lazily stabbing at the darkness behind her eyelids. A dull throb pulsed between her temples, and her tongue felt as though it had been traded for cotton.

Fragments of last night glittered in her mind: a dizzying whirl of dances, more than one handsome stranger's smile, Desdemona's teasing laughter, and far too many crystal goblets refilled with deceptively mild wine—no doubt diluted by the wary faculty to keep the ball from descending into riotous chaos. She even recalled dragging a laughing Desdemona and Hughes onto the floor for one last waltz as the warm buzz settled over her.

Across the room, Eloise snored softly in the opposite bed, the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders proof that Sir Gravens had returned them both safely after the revels. At least, he had not done anything irrevocably scandalous—she hoped.

She chewed on a few mint‑sharp Payana leaves—this world's equivalent of all‑in‑one dental care. Payana was ubiquitous across the continent, growing just about everywhere. The young girl then scrubbed her teeth with a soft-bristle brush at the porcelain sink. Clear water gushed from the tap; that this "fantasy" world had made such advancements in plumbing still amused her. Amused, but more importantly, was grateful for. The thought of using a primitive toilet and bathroom facilities horrified her. All these advances in sanitation were probably why the population in cities like Meridian, despite its quasi-medieval setting, was rather dense.

In the mirror, a flushed but undeniably lovely girl stared back: no cosmetics, yet beauty clung to her like morning dew on rose petals. Had she looked so fresh at sixteen in her previous life? The thought vanished with a splash of cold water.

Though officially a holiday, Seraphina saw the day for what it truly was: precious, uncut time. She slipped into a light shift and cinched a loose robe around her. Taking a bunch of her latest correspondence and letters with her, she padded to the dormitory's common room—her private kingdom now that, save for her small circle, most students were too awed or wary to intrude.

The headache pressed on, a petty tyrant demanding tribute. Enough. She gathered the golden threads of magic, whispered the litany of the Heal spell, and felt the spell cascade through muscle and sinew. Knots eased, the ache dissolved, and even the grit in her joints melted away. Any Temple Priest witnessing such casual use of a miracle on such a mundane problem would have dropped dead of apoplexy, she ruefully thought.

Stolen story; please report.

The young girl only smiled, stretching like a cat. She did not care in the least what the Priests would think. And, right now, she felt right as rain and ready to tackle the world. Hopefully, before the rest of the world decided to tackle her.

A satisfied smile curved her lips—the latest reports from one of her ventures were overwhelmingly positive. A sizeable band of dwarves, both young and old, had trekked from Bronzegate Hold, enticed by promises of riches hidden beneath the Sariens Duchy's hills, close to the forest held by the Fae. With some help from her mother, they had already begun exploring and prospecting those slopes.

The younger dwarves, however, harbored a pronounced dislike for their ancestral language of Runes—an ideogrammatic language designed for exclusion and elitism rather than inclusion and egalitarianism. Mastery of Runes marked one's education and status; the most fluent in Runes occupied the loftiest posts in Dwarven society. Conservative by nature, dwarves placed tremendous value on words, especially the written kind.

That tradition now faced an unexpected challenge. The new generation of Dwarves had embraced Trade—the continent's lingua franca—as a simpler alternative. Their mountain strongholds could no longer remain sealed off; relevance demanded engagement with the wider world. And so, for better or worse, every contract written in Trade chipped away at ages‑old isolationism.

For Seraphina, the immediate effect was welcome: all correspondence with the Dwarven explorers arrived in contemporary, if somewhat blockish, Trade instead of antiquated Runes—a net positive in her view as it meant she did not need to hire a permanent translator.

Idly twirling the feather of her quill, she debated whether the moment was ripe to drop a hint about potential Mithril deposits in the Fae forest—"Saint's Silver," as common folk called the rare and most precious metal. Fae magic had polluted the very soil, seeping into the local soil and transforming ordinary bauxite into an ore that could be refined into enchanted aluminum, Mithril. In her former world, she would have killed to hold its patent.

Ultimately, she decided to tell the Dwarves about "a few rocks" she had spotted in the river meandering through the forest—just enough to stir their greed and set their picks swinging. If they still proved hesitant, she could always buy shares in a new mining venture and send them to prospect there herself.

Perhaps she would even provide the dwarves with a few human "apprentices" drawn from her orphanages; the idle children eating her out of house and home could use real work experience. That idea, however, was for another day.

She folded the missive, slipped it into a scented envelope, and sealed it with wax. Later, she would ask Miriam to dispatch the letters—formal documents would travel overland, while more urgent and critical notes and instructions would leave by bird in coded form.