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?
Chapters
Share
Chapter 4
Silas stared at the muddy puddle on the desk. His chest rose and fell in sharp, angry jerks.
"What kind of joke is this, Seraphina?" Silas's voice was dangerously low. It carried across the room like a physical threat.
Seraphina held her hands up in surrender. She widened her eyes, making them look as vacant as possible. "No joke, Professor. My mana is just really messy right now. That was my best effort."
Elara saw her opening. She stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the floor.
"Professor," Elara said softly, pressing her hands to her chest. "Please don't be angry with her. I can help her. Let me try to guide her mana flow."
Silas didn't say no. He crossed his arms, waiting to see how this played out.
Elara walked up the stairs to the back row. She stood in front of Seraphina's desk, looking down at her with a sickeningly sweet expression.
"Senior," Elara whispered, just loud enough for the class to hear. "I know you're struggling because of the jealousy in your heart. You resent me. But if you just let go of your dark feelings, the water will become clear again."
The first-years murmured in agreement. They looked at Elara like she was a saint.
Seraphina looked at Elara's perfectly curled hair and her smug, glowing system panel. A dark, chaotic thrill buzzed under Seraphina's skin.
You want water? Seraphina thought. I'll give you water.
Seraphina tapped into her Chaos Mana. She disguised it perfectly, wrapping it in the signature of unstable, low-tier water magic. She pushed the energy straight up into her tear ducts.
Seraphina let out a sudden, ear-piercing wail.
She slammed both hands over her eyes and stumbled backward, kicking her chair away.
"You're right!" Seraphina screamed. "I can't let it go! I'm a jealous, useless failure!"
The moment she screamed, two massive, high-pressure jets of water exploded from her eyes, blasting through the gaps between her fingers.
It wasn't a stream of tears. It was like a fire hydrant had burst open inside her skull.
The water blasted straight forward. It hit Elara square in the face with the force of a physical punch.
Elara shrieked. The blast knocked her backward. Her pristine uniform was instantly soaked. Her perfect curls plastered to her skull like wet seaweed.
Seraphina kept crying, thrashing her head from side to side. The twin jets of water swept across the room like a rogue sprinkler system.
"I'm so sorry!" Seraphina bellowed over the sound of rushing water. "My emotions are tied to my magic! I can't stop crying!"
First-years scrambled under their desks. Textbooks and parchment floated down the aisles as the stepped floor of the lecture hall turned into a rushing river.
Elara tried to stand up, her shoes slipping on the wet wood. She flailed her arms, lost her footing, and slammed hard onto her back, sliding three feet down the aisle.
The back row erupted into muffled laughter.
Elara's system panel screamed in red text. Charm Level dropping! Public humiliation detected!
Silas stood frozen at the podium. He had been teaching for thirty years. He had never seen a student weaponize their own tear ducts.
"Enough!" Silas roared.
He slashed his wand through the air. A wave of intense, dry heat blasted through the room. The water evaporated instantly, leaving behind a thick cloud of steam and the smell of damp wood.
Seraphina dropped her hands. The water stopped. Her face was completely dry. Not a single real tear stained her cheeks.
She let out a loud, wet hiccup. She looked down at Elara, who was shivering on the floor, looking like a drowned rat.
"Oops," Seraphina said, her voice completely flat. "My bad."
Elara's face contorted with pure rage. She pointed a shaking finger at Seraphina, opening her mouth to scream.
"Sit down, Elara," Silas snapped. His voice left no room for argument.
Silas marched up the stairs. He stopped inches from Seraphina. He stared down at her, his flinty eyes searching her face.
He was a master of magic. He had felt the sheer, terrifying density of the power that drove that water. It wasn't unstable. It was absolute. But looking at Seraphina's blank, stupid expression, he couldn't prove it.
Silas decided to bypass the physical magic. He would test her mind.
He turned around and walked back to the blackboard. He tapped it with his wand.
"Since your practical magic is currently... compromised," Silas said, his voice echoing in the dry room. "Let us test your theoretical understanding. A question for the Assistant."
The room went dead silent.
Silas locked eyes with Seraphina. "What is the ultimate responsibility, and the highest truth, of a Mage?"
You may also like
7.1
I was the top commander of a black-ops military program. After slaughtering my way through a hellish mission, I reached the extraction helicopter, trusting my second-in-command to watch my back.
But the moment our hands locked, he didn't pull me up. Instead, he plunged a syringe of lethal neurotoxin directly into my neck.
He aimed his gun at my chest, coldly stating that I was too dangerous to live. My lungs stopped, and I died in a pool of my own blood. But the endless blackness suddenly shattered. My consciousness violently forced its way into a new, broken shell. I woke up in a freezing alley, soaked in muddy rain.
This body belonged to seventeen-year-old Eliza Wyatt. A massive wave of foreign memories crashed into my brain. Her own younger sister had just stood at the top of the stairs with a mocking smile, watching street thugs beat Eliza to death.
"Take good care of the Wyatt family's eldest daughter. Tonight is the night she finally disappears."
The endless humiliation, the cold stares of her family, and the brutal betrayal by her own blood flashed before my eyes. Why was this fragile girl treated like garbage and pushed to her death by the very people who should have protected her?
I looked down at my pale, trembling hands. The top commander was dead, but in this bleeding shell, Eliza Wyatt was very much alive. I picked up a switchblade from the bloody puddle and stood up in the storm. It was time to hunt.
9.7
Elara Voss was rejected by her Alpha on the night of the Blood Moon - cast aside as a nobody with no wolf, no rank, and no future. She ran. But fate had other plans.
In the human world, she collides with Damien Crest - cold, ruthless billionaire by day, the last living Shadowking by night. He offers her a contract marriage. She has nowhere else to go.
But ancient markings are awakening on her skin. A god is whispering her name. And Kael, the fearsome Werewolf High King, has declared across all supernatural realms that she is his fated mate.
Two kings. Two worlds. One woman who was never supposed to matter.
They all rejected her once. Now they'll burn their empires down to claim her.
7.6
He hated my gut!
I detested his arrogance!
I was supposed to be his ex-stepmother,but I hated pack politics and returned to the human community after Alpha Holt's death.
I was forced back to heal the wounds of the one that hated me the most, my stepson Adrian.
To the world he was the famous NHL golden boy of hockey and to the Frostfang pack, their feared Alpha.
But the moon goddess had another plan.
On the night he was crowned as Alpha, his father's mark faded from my neck and Adrian's mate bond burnt harshly on my skin. But fate wasn't done yet.
We were expected to team up to fight a common foe when we could barely stand each other.
Was our fate strong enough to overcome physical hatred?
8.8
Alaia Dudley spent her life playing the devoted partner, completely unaware that her fiancé Austen was sleeping with another woman.
She thought the worst he could do was break her heart, until she found herself pinned to a cold operating table.
Austen held her down with a cruel smirk while a scalpel sliced through her sternum.
They cracked her chest open while she was still fully conscious.
The agonizing pain of her heart being cut out burned into her nerve endings.
She realized then that to him, she was never a lover—just a spare organ, a boring piece of wood to be discarded the second his true love needed it.
She died in excruciating agony, choking on her own blood while the man she loved walked away with her heart.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand why she had to suffer so brutally.
Why did she waste her life begging for a monster's attention? Why did they get a happy ending while she was carved up like an animal?
But then, ice-cold water flooded her lungs, and Alaia violently broke the surface of her bathwater.
Her trembling fingers touched her smooth, flawless chest. No scars. Her heart was still beating.
The date on her phone glared back at her: it was exactly five years ago.
Tonight was the exact night Austen first took his mistress to a hotel room.
This time, she wouldn't just expose them. She would use Wall Street's most terrifying tyrant as her personal weapon to strip them of everything they had.
7.9
Cora Foster was a brilliant archaeologist, but a jagged burn scar across her face made the world treat her like a contagious monster.
During an elite excavation of a Gilded Age crypt, touching an ancient artifact triggered a terrifying memory. She remembered being Seraphina Beaumont, a socialite brutally buried alive by her vain, cruel sister, Isolde.
When the team pried open the crypt's pristine mahogany casket, they cheered, believing the mummified corpse inside was Seraphina. But Cora recognized the onyx hairpin and the angular jawline. It was Isolde. The sister who had stolen her life, mocked her agony, and left her to suffocate in the dark. Her colleagues scoffed at her forensic proof, dismissing her as a scarred, delusional liability.
Worse, the ruthless billionaire funding the expedition, Julian Montgomery, was the spitting image of Alistair—the man Seraphina had deeply loved. Why was Julian staring at her ruined face with such intense, inexplicable recognition? And why did Isolde take Seraphina's most precious silver ring to the grave?
Driven by a century of agonizing grief, Cora secretly pried the tarnished ring from the mummy's stiff, dead fingers and dropped it into her pocket.
"What are you looking at, Foster?"
Julian's deep voice vibrated inches from her ear, his cold, predatory eyes locked directly onto her half-open pocket.
8.0
Eloise Ferguson was the legitimate daughter of a powerful Senator, yet she was treated like a hysterical burden by her own family.
In her past life, her parents forced her to marry a sadistic billionaire for political funding.
When she resisted, they locked her in a psychiatric facility, drugged her, and left her to die in restraints while her "fragile" cousin Jaylene stole her life.
She never understood why her mother hated her so fiercely.
Why did her mother treat her brother Cortez and her cousin Jaylene like absolute royalty, while throwing her own flesh and blood to the wolves?
Opening her eyes again, Eloise found herself back at age twenty-two, trapped in a restroom at a charity gala.
Escaping her abuser, she used her awakened mystic abilities to look at her family's life forces.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
Thick, red biological cords connected her mother directly to both Cortez and Jaylene, intertwining in a perfect symbiotic bond.
They weren't cousins. They were illegitimate twins born from her mother's secret affair.
Eloise was the only true outsider in her own home.
The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her entire life of abuse was just a cover-up for a nest of parasites stealing her father's name and her inheritance.
But this time, she refused to be their victim.
Armed with an unchallengeable executive order she blackmailed out of the United States President, Eloise crushed the hidden microphone in her bedroom.
"Game on, Mother."