The Unwanted Genius Escapes Her Dark Fate
Seraphina was the greatest mage of her generation. Then she saw her future: betrayed, broken, and left for dead.
She woke up with a new plan: do absolutely nothing.
Trip on flat floors. Cry magical floods. Tell professors her only goal is "three meals and eight hours of sleep."
Let Elara steal her glory. Let the system target someone else. She just wants to nap.
But no one will let her fail.
The strictest professor calls her breakdown "enlightenment." The potion genius turns her scribbles into "divine wisdom." The more she acts like trash, the more they worship her.
She didn't choose to be a legend.
She chose to be useless.
Why is that so hard?
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Chapter 2
The potion display room smelled like dried sage and centuries of dust.
Seraphina stood in the center of the aisle, staring at hundreds of low-tier glass vials. Alden had assigned her here to "cool off and organize." It was a punishment disguised as therapy.
She yawned. Her jaw cracked from how wide she opened her mouth.
The heavy wooden door creaked open. Elara stepped inside. She held a steaming ceramic mug in her hands. Her face was arranged into a mask of sweet, innocent concern.
"Seraphina?" Elara's voice was soft, coated in fake honey. "I brought you some calming chamomile tea. I heard about your... breakdown."
Seraphina didn't miss the slight narrowing of Elara's eyes. She didn't miss the faint blue glow of the system panel booting up above Elara's head. Testing target stability.
Seraphina sighed. She let her shoulders droop, adopting the posture of a beaten dog.
"Thank you, Elara," Seraphina whispered. She reached out with both hands to take the mug.
The ceramic was scalding hot. Elara had clearly boiled it to the maximum temperature.
Seraphina's fingers wrapped around the mug. Instead of using a basic ice ward to protect her skin-something any first-year could do-she let the heat sear her flesh.
Then, she intentionally jerked her wrists.
The boiling tea sloshed over the rim, splashing directly onto the back of Seraphina's hand.
The pain was sharp and real. Her skin instantly turned a violent shade of angry red.
"Ah!" Seraphina shrieked. It wasn't a fake cry this time; she put her full lungs into it.
Elara jumped back, startled by the sheer volume of the scream. The blue screen above her head flickered violently into a string of chaotic numbers.
Seraphina didn't stop there. She flailed her arms backward, pretending to lose her balance from the pain. She threw her entire body weight against the towering crystal display cabinet behind her.
The heavy glass rattled. The wooden frame groaned.
On the very top shelf, a single vial of High-Tier Dragon Blood Potion wobbled. The liquid inside pulsed with a deep, starry crimson light. It was priceless. It tipped over the edge.
Elara's eyes went wide. She instinctively raised her hand, her lips moving to cast a Levitation Charm to catch the falling vial.
Seraphina narrowed her eyes. Deep in her core, she tapped into a microscopic fraction of her true power-Chaos Mana. It was invisible. It was absolute.
She pushed a microscopic fraction of her true power-Chaos Mana-outward in a silent pulse. It locked the surrounding air, suffocating all basic magic within a ten-foot radius.
Elara's spell fizzled into nothing.
The vial hit the stone floor.
CRASH.
Thick, glowing red liquid exploded across the stones. The sheer density of the magic hitting the air triggered the room's highest security wards.
A piercing, high-pitched alarm ripped through the corridor. Red lights flashed from the ceiling.
Footsteps pounded outside. The door flew open, and Professor Alden burst in, his wand drawn.
He froze. His eyes locked onto the shattered glass and the glowing puddle of Dragon Blood. The muscles in his face twitched. His breathing stopped. That potion was worth more than his yearly salary.
Before Alden could open his mouth to yell, Seraphina threw herself onto the floor right next to the shattered glass.
"I'm so clumsy!" Seraphina wailed. She grabbed her hair with her unburned hand and pulled. "I ruin everything! I can't even hold a cup of tea without destroying a masterpiece! I'm useless!"
Elara's face turned purple. "Professor, she threw herself backward! I tried to catch it, but my magic-"
"I don't deserve to be a mage!" Seraphina screamed over her, her voice raw and desperate. She held up her scalded, blistering hand. "Look at me! I'm a disaster!"
Alden looked at the angry red burns on Seraphina's skin. He looked at her tear-streaked face. The fury in his chest hit a brick wall and crumbled into pity.
He remembered her breakdown in his office. He thought her mind was fracturing under the pressure of perfection.
Alden let out a long, defeated exhale. He waved his wand. The glass shards swept themselves into a dustpan.
"Get up, Seraphina," Alden said. His voice was exhausted, devoid of anger.
Elara stared at Alden in disbelief. Her system panel chimed. Warning: Alden's Favorability shifting toward target.
Seraphina sniffled. She reached out and grabbed Alden's pristine white sleeve to pull herself up. She made sure to smear the sticky chamomile tea and floor dust right onto his expensive fabric.
Alden winced at the stain but didn't pull away. He tapped his wand against her burned hand. A cool, blue healing light washed over her skin, pulling the heat out of the burn.
"I need to go rest, Professor," Seraphina whispered, looking at the floor. "My heart is beating too fast."
"Go," Alden said softly. "Just... go rest."
Seraphina turned to leave. As she walked past Elara, she kept her head down. But just as their shoulders brushed, Seraphina let out a low, breathy chuckle. Only Elara could hear it.
Elara stiffened. Her fingernails bit so hard into her palms they drew blood. She couldn't say a word.
Seraphina pushed through the door, flexing her newly healed hand. Breaking things and getting away with it felt incredible.
Behind her, Alden rubbed his jaw and looked at Elara. "I think we need to move her to a lower-stress environment. I'm reassigning her."
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7.5
For five years, I was locked away in the freezing royal dungeon, starved and used as a bloody plaything by the kingdom's sadistic Cabinet Minister, Brandt Fischer.
He tortured me daily for one twisted reason: I simply looked like someone else.
When he visited my cell to casually announce my father's execution and drag a silver dagger across my neck, he expected me to beg.
Instead, I laughed, sank my teeth directly into his carotid artery, and was violently thrown against a jagged stone wall to my death.
As my skull cracked and my blood stained the moss, I thought about my so-called family. The moment Brandt had demanded me, my father, the Duke, handed me over without a single hesitation to save his own political career.
I was nothing but a disposable pawn, left to rot in the dark while the monsters who ruined my life thrived.
I died suffocating on my own blood and absolute, destructive vengeance.
Then, I opened my eyes.
I was lying in my silk-sheeted bed, reborn as my fifteen-year-old self.
Today was the exact day Lord Daryl Langley, the God of War, would be ambushed and crippled—the event that allowed Brandt to seize ultimate power.
I immediately stole a horse, rode to the palace gates, and threw myself directly in front of Daryl's moving carriage.
"I just didn't want to see a hero die like a slaughtered pig."
I didn't care if I had to shatter my own ankle to hijack his convoy. This time, I was going to save the general, and he would become the blade I use to slaughter them all.
8.8
"Werewolves are just a fantasy. They can't exist in the real world. You don't have to say such absurd things just to claim my son as yours. Alpha, my ass!" -- Noreen.
"You left me speechless, miss, and therefore you must take responsibility. I couldn't have sex with anyone after that night you marked me. Now, be my Luna, and I'll give you the world. Besides, even without a DNA test, he's definitely my son. He has a strong Alpha aura." -- Alpha Thiery. "He's my heir, the next Alpha of my pack!"
Noreen Winchester never imagined that her reckless, unprotected sex with a mysterious, charming man, on the night her ex-boyfriend married her cousin, would transport her to a world she had previously only considered a fantasy.
That one-night stand caused Alpha Thiery to lose all sexual desire after a beautiful, sexy woman bit his mark gland during a wild night at his uncle's bar three years ago.
His inner wolf claimed that the woman, whose name he didn't even know, was his mate. But the woman was a mere human, and it was impossible for him to have Luna, a mere human.
Then, after many years, the woman appeared before him again, with a boy who was every bit like himself.
The problem was, the woman was not only a mere human, but also incredibly stubborn, believing that anything related to werewolves, vampires, witches, and all supernatural creatures existed only in children's fantasy tales.
Alpha Thiery had to prove that he was a real being, not just a fairy tale creature. More than that, the child she bore was his flesh and blood, the next Alpha of his pack, and he had to have him. necessary, with her, too. Even if she was only a mere human.
7.6
I woke up to the suffocating smell of copper and sulfur, my fingers wrapped around a blood-soaked leather whip.
Hanging from an obsidian cross in front of me was a boy with silver hair and dead, golden eyes.
His pale chest was torn open to the bone.
I recognized those eyes immediately. I had spent three years describing them on my laptop.
He was Kamari Monroe, the tragic, overpowered protagonist of my own web novel.
And I wasn't just a bystander. I was Benedict Guerrero, the sadistic academy headmaster. The ultimate villain.
A reel of images flashed in my mind: my original ending. Kamari, fully awakened, skinning me alive and burning my soul in a furnace for forty-nine days.
My loyal attack dog, Gideon, stepped forward with a basin of glowing green liquid.
"Headmaster, let me wake him up with this bone-rot acid so you can resume."
If that acid hit Kamari, his hatred would become permanent. My gruesome death would be sealed.
But if I broke character and apologized, the magical world would sense the shift, and Kamari would just think it was a sicker, more twisted trap.
How was I supposed to survive a death sentence I wrote myself?
I couldn't show weakness. I had to play the monster to survive.
Suppressing my terror, I smashed the acid basin, healed his ruined flesh with agonizing dark magic, and lied straight to his face.
"Someone had to be the monster to push you into the fire."
This time, I will rewrite my own fate.
9.0
Isolde woke up in a freezing, ruined stone house with a splitting headache and only five percent of her life signs remaining.
Before she could even process the mechanical system voice in her head, a flood of violent memories slammed into her.
She had transmigrated into the body of a cruel noblewoman who mercilessly tortured her beastmen husbands with a barbed whip.
And right now, she was lying in a pool of her own blood, having been shoved against the stone floor by one of them.
Outside the rickety door, her husbands were coldly discussing her death.
"Just go in and finish her. One stab, and we're free."
"If she hit her head and died on her own, then it's an accident. We walk out of here as free males."
To test if she was faking her sudden amnesia, the snake beastman Dangelo even ground his heavy military boot into her injured hand, waiting for her to snap so he could legally end her.
She was poisoned, freezing, and entirely at the mercy of the men who deeply despised her.
She was bearing the deadly consequences of a monster she never was, with a red system warning of imminent death flashing in her mind.
But they didn't know the new Isolde had awakened a survival system and Life Magic.
She swore a blood oath to the Beast God to buy herself three months of time.
Then, she turned her sights to the dying wolf beastman chained in the shed, deciding to pull him back from hell to become her very first shield.
7.4
Bridget, a ruthless twenty-first-century Wall Street analyst, woke up violently coughing up murky lake water in a decaying 1978 slum.
She quickly realized she was trapped in the body of a naive, marginalized teenager who had just committed suicide over a boy's cruel rejection.
The original girl had been mercilessly bullied by a fake rich kid named Kurtis and his cruel followers. They had publicly read her desperate love letters out loud, mocking her as a toad trying to eat swan meat, and simply watched as she threw herself into the freezing water. Now, her impoverished mother was left weeping by the bed, facing catastrophic debt and total social ruin in their small town. Everyone expected the surviving girl to wake up begging and crying for the boy who humiliated her.
Instead, a cold, calculating fury took over Bridget's analytical mind.
"I already died in that lake. That stupid girl is never coming back."
How could anyone throw their life away for a pathetic, vain clown wearing a mass-produced fifty-dollar watch? To Bridget, those uncollected love letters weren't symbols of teenage heartbreak. They were toxic assets. They were reputation landmines left out in the open that threatened her new family's survival.
Locking away the dead girl's weak emotions, Bridget forced her freezing, exhausted body out of the clinic bed. She set a hard three-month deadline to drag this family out of tier-one poverty. But first, she was marching straight to the volunteer camp to liquidate those liabilities and completely destroy the people who drove this body to death.
9.6
Antoinette stood on the manicured church lawn, the blinding summer sun stabbing her eyes. The funeral service for her parents had just ended.
A hand wrapped around her trembling shoulder, carrying the sharp, cloying scent of Fabian Cash's cologne. It was the exact same cologne her fiancé wore the night he locked her in a burning house to die in her previous life.
Now, wearing a mask of sorrowful devotion, Fabian tried to drag her to his car to control her parents' massive life insurance payout.
When she shoved him away in pure nausea, his mother Eleanor immediately shrieked to the crowd, deploying her usual guilt trip.
"She's lost her mind! The girl has completely snapped!"
The townspeople whispered and pointed fingers, watching Fabian play the victim as he tightened his bruising grip on her wrist, claiming she was hysterical and needed to be locked away.
Antoinette stared at the mother and son who had conspired to steal her family's estate and end her life. The rage inside her felt like battery acid pumping through her veins.
They didn't care if she lived or died; they only cared about the money. How could she let them strip her of everything again?
She didn't hesitate. She swung with every bit of strength she possessed, slapping Fabian across the face in front of the entire town.
"The engagement is over," she announced coldly.
Then, she turned her back on her greedy ex-fiancé and walked straight toward the terrifyingly powerful billionaire Hiram Graves, ready to let the world burn.