The Villainess Returns with a System Chapter 117: Mind Goblin

"I don’t think I can do this." (Esralda)

"Young Esralda, if you don’t do it, you will never be able to beco truly strong." (Rusty)

"But to do it, I feel like a piece of my soul will be forever lost." (Esralda)

"To beco truly strong, it is not about how much muscle, magic, or aura one can muster. It is about the heart." (Ray)

"My less handso brother is right. True strength cos from the heart. That’s why you must experience heartbreak to be truly strong." (Rusty)

"I say! Do beg your pardon! But Mummy dearest has made it frightfully clear that I’m the looker in this family, old boy." (Ray)

"Wasn’t that during the twilight of her mind? I must assure you, brother, she has always ntioned that I possess the greater coliness." (Rusty)

"What? I have been graced with that pronouncent on too many occasions to enurate." (Ray)

"It was a pendulum’s swing, oscillating between us... but the scales tipped in my favor more often than they did for you." (Rusty)

"Inconceivable! You know what? I shall ascend to the moral high ground and ignore you, becoming the bigger man." (Ray)

"The bigger man?! Have you taken leave of your senses, brother?" (Rusty)

"Good heavens! Brother, you appear to be the one afflicted by a failing mory. You resemble a minuscule legu compared to . It is patently obvious that I am the larger of us." (Ray)

"That’s preposterous! I am far more..." (Rusty)

"BEAT IT, YOU TWO!"

And if it wasn’t for Vivian interfering at the nick of ti, Ray and Rusty might have gone on for ages.

"We apologize, Miss Vivian."

"Just focus on training Esralda, please."

Vivian’s ditating training was interrupted by the relentless bickering of the super-identical twins, Ray and Rusty.

What Vivian was doing was trying to access her combat mode to recall the mory of when Count Henry Marshall had snatched her gun from her. Each ti, she could snatch away the bolt before she could snatch the big gun, but what she was trying to change was how to attack him before he grabbed it.

Vivian tried so many combinations of movents, but each ti she tried to go for a weapon, her consciousness blacked out, without even being able to tell the cause.

This blacking out is the system shutting off the simulation just a millisecond before her death. During that tight ti fra, she never even noticed where her death ca from.

This millisecond is all that is needed for her to get killed by the Superhuman. In a way, it was humbling, and in another way, she realized that there is a lifeti between her and being able to react to that man’s death blow.

"As I said, when we open the box, you must resist. Steel your heart, young Esralda. Don’t make any reactions," Ray said as he brought the box closer to Esralda.

"I... I am not sure I can do it..." Esralda spoke with hesitation.

"Steel your nerves. Here we go one more ti." Rusty slowly opened the lid of the box, and Esralda’s eyes widened.

They were small, tiny, and devastatingly adorable. The little noises they made were heart-lting; it felt like they were owing on a frequency that pierced the hardest point in one’s heart.

"No! NO! STOP IT!"

Esralda averted her face away from the box of kittens and covered her face with her hands, trying so hard to resist the cuteness overload she was experiencing.

"You can do it, young Esralda," Ray encouraged her.

"You have lasted less than with the box of ducklings," Rusty analyzed as he recorded it in a small journal.

"Kittens are way too early for her, I told you," Ray said.

"She did well with the puppies, though. You need to be one stone-cold villain to resist the kittens," Rusty said before glancing at Vivian out of the corner of his eye.

Ray simply took cover behind his brother and glanced at Vivian, but luckily, she was too imrsed in her own training.

The two tried their best with Esralda for the remainder of the day until she was finally numb enough to look at kittens, puppies, and ducklings. If one were to manage to stay unaffected by their cuteness, one can develop the perfect ntal state to beco the perfect fighter.

After that, it was Vivian’s turn to train Esralda.

"In the beginning were the swords, and man did smite his brother with steel, and the ground drank much blood. And lo, the bow was wrought by cunning hands, but it was slow to learn and long to master. The strong in arm and the patient in aim did prevail. But in the fullness of ti, black powder was revealed unto man, and it roared like thunder upon the earth. And the Lord beheld it and said, "Let there be Guns." And behold—there were Guns. And the ek did cast down the mighty, and the woman did slay the man, and all were made equal in the smoke and fire."

"..."

"You should say An!"

"You convinced with training, not indoctrination."

"Oh, that’s just the intro for the manual of firearm anatomy, the Ballistic Psalms."

"Lovely!"

Vivian finished the intro of her sacred gun text and started teaching Esralda about how the guns function, how to dismantle and assemble various models of firearms, as well as ammunition, and how to handle them with care.

Vivian believed in laying down a simple theoretical understanding of firearms before allowing the wielder to start going boom boom on the shooting range.

Esralda was a math genius without knowing it all her life. She could crunch numbers together at astonishing speed, and the reason was sothing she didn’t share fully with Vivian, but she was a lonely child, seen by her tribe as a human, and as she had no playmates, she would always play with rocks and make formations with pebbles and rocks, morize their numbers, and even call them nas.

She played those gas so much when she was little that it beca natural to her mind to count things at insane speeds, as well as do all kinds of calculus, and she never stopped playing with numbers ever since.

Now, Vivian was going to weaponize that aptitude into sothing truly wonderful.

This wasn’t going to be easy. The amount of knowledge Vivian had to cram into Esralda’s head was going to be imnse. Physics alone is already hard enough, but Esralda needs to be taught how to calculate distances, understand gravity laws for bullet drops, as well as associate wind current and air density with the equations. And for more extre shooting situations, even Earth’s rotation, muzzle condition, and bullet properties.

Such knowledge would take ages in order to be put together to create a sharpshooter. And to reach a level where Vivian can rely on her in field action, it would take a year or two of constant training.

°°°°°

By the next day, Vivian started focusing on her own training with a more pragmatic approach than before.

She has been facing certain problems ever since yesterday. First, she has beco a two-star Bronze Aura user and started to realize that to reach a three-star Bronze Aura user will take her even longer, so it is going to be agony in order to one day walk proudly among the monsters of the world.

Firearms are good, but this encounter with the Superhuman was a wake-up call that she wouldn’t be able to match people like that with firearms alone.

Vivian may have started in aura training as a 19-year-old, in contrast to many others who have been doing it since childhood and early teens. Despite that, her advancent to the two-star rank was very quick thanks to her heavy reliance on the System’s Panacea. While her foundation may have blood at an older age, her advanced ntal age gives her the edge in becoming more strategic with how she uses her powers and abilities.

Then there is the Spell Ring she now has. Things have gone terribly wrong with that one, and so far, Vivian is unable to do anything with it. The System has stated that by using that ring, she has ssed sothing up regarding her survival chances, which has basically made her quite terrified. It also said that it lowered all the possible statistics of the ring, rendering it completely useless, which infuriated Vivian in so way, but she couldn’t do much with it now.

Vivian asked around about Spell Rings and learned that once a ring is paired with a user, they are tied together for good. If by any chance that ring got destroyed, the ring must be reforged by a runesmith in order to cast magic again. While other rituals are possible, this is the easiest solution to do, which is quite difficult by itself.

Vivian was sad she wouldn’t be able to learn magic, even secretly, but as a Moore, she is forbidden from touching magic, even with a hundred-foot pole. It wasn’t a great loss anyway, but she didn’t like loose ends, and it really felt like one.

But there was an interesting take on the system regarding the ring.

——————————

Na—Vivian Moore

Race—Human

Age—19

SP—4342

Social—

—Daughter of House Moore (Noble)

—Director of ViTech (Business)

—The Blood Swan (Criminal)

——————————

Aura—Two-star Bronze [djay Aura]

—ATK: 1

—CNT: 2

—DEF: 1

—SPD: 3

—STL: 2

——————————

Magic—Novice [Unawakened Ring]

—ALT: 1

—CNJ: 1

—DST: 1

—FRT: 1

—MST: 1

—QRK: 10

——————————

The System recognized Vivian as a magic user, but apart from the "Quirk" stat, every other stat was 1. Vivian had no idea what that implied, but she could at least now take the ring off.

For now, Vivian decided to leave the matter of the ring until she can find soone trustworthy to break things down to her. The System was rather upset with her after having this new ring, and it kept displaying errors whenever she tried to go into more detail regarding magic.

As for Esralda’s training, it was about ti she got into hand-to-hand combat. Ray and Rusty were masters in terms of unard combat, and Vivian was no joke either. In this kind of training, it was best to partner Esralda with soone as much of a beginner as her, and for that...

"I am so excited I am going to get so close to Esralda!"

"Dear Lord!"

... the temporary resident who invited herself into House Moore was picked by Vivian to be that partner.

Although Isabella knew about fighting, she was terrible at it because she lacked formal training. She kept her reasons for taking up boxing a secret, even from Vivian, who respected her friend’s privacy regarding the matter but always knew there was a story behind it.

"Use your hips when you punch. It makes more impact like this!" Isabella said as she kept instructing Esralda on punching.

"So I should move while hitting?" Esralda asked.

"Not necessarily moving, just try to support that punch with the weight of your body. It becos more effective that way."

"I see."

Esralda was also experiencing the sa thing Vivian was feeling. Learning new things at a late age is not necessarily bad. While one may be slow at adjusting to the new techniques, the ntal maturity of an older person can easily pick up on concepts and tactics better than the young.

Also, after a bit of convincing, Esralda was no longer hesitating to throw a punch at a sandbag that Isabella drew the face of Count Henry Marshall on, enticing the anger inside Esralda towards an actual soone she hates... also, she didn’t forget to tease Esralda about how tiny and petite Oliver is (Esralda’s crush), and how he would need protection from evil people like Count Marshall.

"Good job, you two." Vivian joined Ray and Rusty, who were watching over Esralda’s training from a distance.

"I must say I am glad that young maiden has finally broken her own limitation and is experiencing real growth," Rusty said.

"Do you know, brother, there is a na for this mind limitation in the Far East? They call it a Heart Demon," Ray comnted with a solemn face.

"Pft! A heart demon, you say? Such nonsense sounds like re excuses made by the weak-minded," Rusty retorted.

"Weak-minded, you say? Then have you heard of..." Ray then made his voice more dramatic, "... The Mind Goblin?"

"Enough of your nonsense! What is this Mind Goblin?" Rusty was instantly provoked.

The sly Ray had a mischievous grin as Vivian covered her face, knowing that Rusty had fallen right into Ray’s trap.

"Mind Goblin... Deez Nuts!"