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 6
The academy cafeteria was a massive, vaulted hall filled with the clatter of silverware and the roar of a hundred overlapping conversations.
Elara sat alone at a small table near the stained-glass windows. She pushed a piece of lettuce around her plate, her eyes darting around the room to ensure no one was watching her.
She closed her eyes and pulled up the White Lotus System interface in her mind.
The panel was a mess of angry red warnings.
Target: Seraphina. Jealousy: 0. Suppression: 0. Mana Plunder: FAILED.
System Recommendation: Target emotional threshold abnormal. Logic loop broken. Abort and select new target.
Elara's fingernails bit into her palms. Why? she screamed in her mind. I played the victim perfectly! She should be a social outcast by now!
The system remained silent, offering only its cold, mechanical text. Elara grabbed her silver fork and squeezed the handle until her knuckles turned white.
A burst of laughter from the adjacent table pulled her out of her rage.
Six upperclassmen were huddled together, leaning over their trays.
"Did you hear what happened in Basic Water?" a boy with thick, round glasses asked. He adjusted his frames, his eyes wide with excitement. "Seraphina blasted Elara with water from her eyes. Literally cried a river."
A few students snickered. Elara's stomach twisted into a cold knot. They were laughing at her.
"But that's not the crazy part," a girl with braided hair whispered, leaning in closer. "Did you hear what she said to Professor Silas? She said she just wants to be saved."
Elara waited for the insults. She waited for them to call Seraphina a coward.
Instead, the girl sighed, her voice softening with pity. "Think about it. She's the Vanguard heir. Do you know the kind of brutal training that family puts their kids through? She's probably been pushed to the absolute breaking point."
"Exactly," the boy with glasses agreed. "She's not a coward. She's traumatized. Professor Alden is always screaming at her. No wonder her magic seems completely broken. I heard she can't even cast a basic water spell now without making a mess. She's crying out for help."
Elara felt the blood drain from her face.
Her narrative was crumbling. Her perfect setup-the bullied junior and the evil senior-was being rewritten by the academy's rumor mill into a tragic tale of a broken hero.
Elara couldn't let this happen. She grabbed her tray, forced her facial muscles to relax into a mask of gentle sorrow, and walked over to their table.
She set her tray down harder than necessary. The loud clatter made everyone jump.
Elara let out a soft, trembling sigh. She looked down, letting her eyelashes cast long shadows over her cheeks.
"Please," Elara whispered, her voice thick with fake emotion. "Don't talk about Senior Seraphina like that. It's my fault. If I weren't so slow to learn, she wouldn't be so stressed. I just wish I could take her pain away."
She waited for the chorus of sympathy. She waited for them to tell her she was too kind, too pure.
Silence stretched over the table.
The boy with the glasses pushed them up his nose. He looked at Elara, his eyes completely devoid of warmth. He analyzed her like a math problem.
"Elara," he said flatly. "Seraphina literally surrendered her Chief key. She has removed herself from all competition. Taking the blame for her stress makes zero logical sense at this point. It just sounds like you're trying to make her breakdown about you."
The words hit Elara like a physical slap.
The other students at the table shifted uncomfortably, looking away from her. The illusion was broken.
Elara's system chimed. Warning: Sincerity rating dropping. Charm effectiveness reduced.
Elara's smile froze. Her chest tightened so hard she couldn't breathe. "I... I just meant..." She stammered, grabbing her tray. "Excuse me."
She turned and practically ran out of the cafeteria, her face burning with humiliation.
When she reached the safety of her dorm room, she slammed the door and leaned against it, panting. She pulled up the system's character index. She swiped past the low-level students, her eyes scanning for gold.
She stopped on a glowing portrait.
Cedric Mallow. Potion Genius. Background: Elite. Personality Trait: Savior Complex.
Elara wiped her eyes. A cold, vicious smile curled her lips. If she couldn't beat Seraphina directly, she would use the most brilliant mind in the academy to do it for her.
Meanwhile, in her own dorm room, Seraphina rolled over in her massive, soft bed, let out a loud snore, and pulled the blankets over her head.
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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."