The Villainess Is An SS+ Rank Adventurer

Marina Lainsfont’s mini-arc. 1/4.

***

 

“[Arcane Teleport]!”

A resounding crack filled the air.

Marina stumbled as she snapped into existence, arms windmilling before catching herself. A motion often seen in apprentices learning to hurl themselves through existence for the very first time. But even if her nose had directly assessed the sturdiness of the wall directly in front of her, no failing marks would have been given.

After all, most mages only teleported to the nearest bar. 

And that’s if they were exceptionally lazy. 

There was a reason mages needed to budget for travel expenses instead of navigating the world as easily as ducks fluttered across a pond. And that’s because unlike small bodies of water, the world enjoyed nothing more than to push back.

And teleporting into the Royal Institute of Mages?

That wasn’t merely a push back. It was a troll lifting her up by the ankles and swinging her around and around until all the world became the same dizzying shade of vomit.

Marina felt like she’d just experienced that several times in a row.  

She sucked in a deep breath, as much to steady her queasiness as it was to make certain her lungs were still present. Because when it came to stealing into any mage’s tower, the consequences were usually beyond the crushing fatigue. There were countless dangers when it came to intruding into magical abodes. And almost all of them unintended as actual defences.

For example–

“–Aaehhhh?!”

Building staircases not up to modern construction practices.

Slippery, narrow and just short enough to guarantee a broken shin, Marina yelped as she took a step backwards and found nothing there to meet her heel. As she began to topple, she found that the wall in front of her wasn’t actually part of a nicely level corridor. 

It was the wall of a stairwell. 

And that meant solid ground was only a few inches wide.

The windmilling returned with a vengeance, this time propelling her forwards. She crashed face first into the steps, hands clinging onto the rough edges as though grappling the precipice of a cliff. 

Only after a moment to suck in her regret did she peek behind her.

Immediately, her fingers clung on slightly tighter.

An almost vertical spiralling staircase. Down and down it went, with no end in sight. A glance beyond where a railing should really exist revealed an abyss disturbed by no hint of light. Fractions were all that separated Marina from an appalling death by rolling. A humiliating demise spelled by a thousand bumps against her head as she crashed to the feet of some yawning apprentice.

It could have been worse.

Because when it came to magic, it could always have been worse.

Marina slowly rose to her feet, delicately touching her nose. A sore tip was all the humble pains that met her intrusion. A small price to pay for what was a feat few could achieve, including those who also resided in this tower.

The Royal Institute Of Mages.

To outsiders, it appeared as little more than a fetching candle in the dark. Under the correct conditions, those who viewed it from the obscenely priced observatory nearby could glean the dispersion of magic occurring from within, never knowing they were marvelling at the fumigation of cursed experiments that would have them fleeing for the nearest chapel. 

But to Marina, it was even more than that. 

It was a barrier. The distracting residue of innumerable miscast spells as talentless apprentices turned daisies into shrieking mandrakes and celebrated it as a success, proudly clinging to the blood frothing at their ears.

And then there was the actual barrier.

Powered by runes sewn into the ground, the walls and the very air, the shield as vivid as the iridescence of a dewdrop accounted for everything a modern mage’s tower required. 

And that meant disproportionate lethality.

Those who attempted to breach it were rebuffed, their face turned to cinders as feedback spells returned the unwanted curiosity with interest. Those scrying for secrets were addled, their every spell forgotten as they were reduced to the horror that was a wide eyed apprentice. And those teleporting were invited elsewhere–such as directly into a disintegration chamber fuelled by dragon fire.

Marina swallowed another deep breath.

A moment later, she appraised herself. 

Nothing broken. Nothing lost. And no dragon fire torching her hair. She had her alchemist’s satchel. She had her robes. She had what she wore underneath her robes.

And now she also had a spiral staircase.

One she belatedly recognised. And that was bad. 

As wildly impressive as it was for her to breach the tower’s defences, her destination had been somewhere even bolder than merely somewhere within. 

The Headmaster’s Sanctum.

Even after all this time, she could picture it well. The gaudiness of the chairs. The endless shelves filled with books forgotten to time. The plethora of artifacts hung like the skins of great beasts. The overbearing smugness of the man unworthy to occupy it.

This place wasn’t that. 

But it was several huffing footsteps away. And that would have to do.

Marina raised her hands. Her [Magelight] was already half-formed when she extinguished it, wincing from the sudden feedback. Her instinct was to fill the stairwell where the dim torches failed. But the convenience of light wouldn’t do here. There were still other runes. Other defences. And eyes that weren’t lidded with sleep. 

She’d need to proceed quietly like what she was.

A thief scaling a tower. 

And that was fine. She wasn’t an adventurer bumbling her way through a castle or the Snow Dancer murdering her way through the Winter Court. Marina was stealthy. Marina was subtle.

“[Incendiary Ray]!”

Which was why she used her least explosive spell as she was forced to raise her palms towards the first of the creatures to welcome her.

Fwoooooooooooosh!

The flames met the arcane wyrmlings even before they’d fully materialised.

They came through the walls. Pests which fed upon magic. And those which cast them. Translucent serpents the size of a troll’s arm. And just like serpents, they sprung with little regard to Marina’s teetering sense of balance. 

They gave no rattle or shriek, but a cry like a bird’s call. And theirs was a hunting cry. As more of them flew towards her, they were met by a spray of flames so volatile it warped the air around it. The arcane wyrmlings in the scorching ray’s path were stopped. But they didn’t burn.

Instead, they began to expand.

Marina groaned. She always hated the next bit.

Pwooomph!

The creatures exploded, imploding from their gluttony. 

Marina raised her hand, her [Barrier] mercifully rising in time to absorb the gooey innards. At once, they began to crystallise into tiny shards of pure magic. Crystals worth enough crowns for an apprentice to fund their room and boarding for a year or more. 

And all of it ignored by Marina as she began to climb the spiralling staircase.

She frowned. The mages here were even more lax than she remembered. Arcane wyrmlings were as wild as the elemental plane they traversed. And as dangerous to mages as their own hands. They were creatures the tower explicitly warded against. 

For them to be present could only mean one of two things. Either the runes were weakening–or something powerful enough to invite them was being cast.

Poor maintenance or forbidden magic.

Marina had a hard time deciding which was more likely.

Ignoring the urge to [Levitate] her way up the steps, she climbed, palm against the wall as she studied the magic embedded within it. The runes pulsed against her touch, no less powerful despite her mocking presence. And how glad she was of that. 

The Dealer has failed to accompany her.

A bliss her ears were long overdue. Yet more than the gift of her absence was the knowledge that her ability to traverse in the blink of an eye was not without limits. 

Powerful limits, but limits nonetheless. 

The Dealer could not break through the laws preventing passage into the Fae Realm. Nor could she breach the magical barrier Marina had opted to sidestep rather than destroy. 

Useful. Possibly.

When the time came that Lotus House’s few dividends ceased to pay, she’d need to neuter that ridiculous girl’s powers of immediate translocation. Marina still couldn’t explain it. She wasn’t even certain which branch of magic she was employing. And that in itself was deeply vexing. 

But in the end, how that girl moved mattered less than knowing how to stop it. And if her promise held true, Marina would find within these walls what she needed to do that and more.

The last catalyst needed to reach her goal. To finish an experiment long in the making.

It came with strings attached, of course. Just as these things always did. And one growing far longer than the crumbs she was offered in return. But her partnership with Lotus House was never one about equality. It was payment for a service. And for even a compass direction to where she needed to be, she would roll her eyes and accept any amount of errand work they required.

Yes.

Even if errand work involved common burglary.

Marina didn’t slow as she climbed, yet she grew more cautious with each passing moment. It should’ve been more than arcane wyrmlings here to disturb her passage. 

Those within may be asleep, but the walls were not. 

Her eyes remained alert as the staircase itself changed, shifting from a pale grey into shimmering steps of stabilised magic. Only the most senior of mages could continue. To do otherwise was to invite the wrath of the tower’s guardians. And yet the strength of her concealment spell didn’t need to be tested just yet. Not when only silence and missing statues welcomed her.

She examined the empty podiums as she ascended the steps.

Conjured creatures could be found like empty sophistries in the Royal Institute. But it was the creations binded with stone that evoked the most pride. None could now be seen. Where the gargoyles had previously sat, their presence was marked by the gaps amidst the dust. 

Marina didn’t consider herself lucky. 

And she didn’t consider the absence of the tower’s guardians to be a good omen. 

Far from it, she outstretched her palms like a knight with a raised shield as she climbed the length of the shimmering staircase without challenge, save for the tails of the arcane wyrmlings as they fled. And not all of them from her.

She furrowed her brows as she reached the top.  

The restricted corridor which greeted her was bizarrely furnished, in keeping with the eccentricities of the archmages who’d resided here over the centuries. They could reconstitute physics, but they couldn’t put a chair the right way up. One glance and she saw half a table sticking out of a wall, a carpet used as a curtain, and a chandelier stood upright in place of a doorway.

Even the corridor itself was odd, warped and misshapen.

But not nearly as much as the guardians which defended it.

Marina found where the gargoyles were. 

Their wreckages were scattered amidst the length of the corridor, wings clipped and torsos cleaved. A curious sight. They hadn’t been destroyed defending the staircase they were charged with watching. 

They’d flown here instead … almost like hornets recalled to defend the hive. 

And soon, Marina saw they hadn’t been alone.

Stone corpses littered the next corridor. Golems which could match her own constructions, laboriously made over the many years within some darkened chamber. These ones, like her own, had been torn asunder. But it was not the blast of arcana crystals which had seen these ones broken.

It was a great weapon, hewing them in two.

Their great figures were separated as cleanly as wheat with a sickle. Nor were they the only creations to be offered such a decisive end. Enchanted suits of towering knights littered the floor, their scattered armour fallen in heaps where their magic had been severed. 

On and on it went, a trail of wreckage with no hint of magical onslaught. No blasts of flame shrivelling up the portraits. A powerful warrior had swept through like a knife carving through butter.

Marina, it seemed, wasn’t the only unexpected visitor tonight.

She didn’t need to wait long to observe who it was.

Before the wide doors which led to the headmaster’s sanctum, a towering figure clad entirely in obsidian and death stood waiting, hands gripped around the pommel of a greatsword, its blade pointed downwards … waiting and silent.

The death knight remained poised and ready. A cold gleam emanated from behind the visor. 

Marina chose not to approach, mindful of the veritable sea of oathbound defenders which lay fallen as crumbling husks around it. Yet despite the carnage, the death knight stood not like a monster run rampant, but like a watcher at the gates. 

This horror was guarding the door … against the tower’s own defenders.

A bizarre mystery with few answers. 

After all, despite the eccentricities of mages, she at least knew they did not dabble in necromancy.

At least not openly.

Marina raised a brow.

To become a death knight was to lose oneself to the darkest of powers. Possessing all the strength and martial skill of who they were in life, but now enhanced by death. They were the champions of evil. The torch bearers for calamity. The generals of armies and the gladiators of destruction.

And that rarely resulted in them being made into doorstops.

Few could command a death knight. And even fewer could hold the loyalty of one with the strength to tear through the tower’s defenders … even if he himself now appeared to take their place. 

Suddenly, he shifted, raising his pommel up slightly. 

Marina bit her lips as she considered the death knight. An obstacle she was far from certain she could match. From afar, she could probably fell him … it. But were it to cover the distance–

“I bid you welcome, my lady,” said the death knight, his tone hollow but courteous as it easily carried through the corridor. “The headmaster is expecting you.”

He turned, revealing the door.

“You may proceed,” he finished simply.

Marina was stunned.

But not only because a death knight was now gesturing the way forwards like a servant in a hall.

Instead, she noticed the dents upon the door. 

They were not caused by any knightly blade, but by fists as great as boulders. The golems, the tower’s staunchest defenders, hadn’t sought to destroy the death knight. That was not their goal.

They’d attempted to forcibly enter the headmaster’s own sanctum.

As though seeing her unmoving state, the death knight leaned to the side and knocked on the door. It began to slowly part, creaking and grinding like a castle portcullis. Yet even before the chamber revealed itself, Marina understood why a death knight was lowering itself to guarding a door. 

That much was simple.

There was something far worse inside.