The Villain Princess Rewrites Her Fate

The Scholar's Path

Lovf did not know how long she spoke to the mirror, speaking until she curled before it and fell asleep.

She told the woman in red a great many things: that she had only meant to muddle along and wait for death, that Chester's character was so rotten she felt she could never grow up alive, that the etiquette training was terrifying, that she was unwilling to learn so much only to be trapped in the court all her life as a pretty doll.

The woman in red said nothing, yet always gave Lovf the illusion that she was listening. Lovf dared not say these things to anyone else, afraid of seeming unlike a child. But the thought that this woman might be Princess Lovfrida's mother, able only to listen and unable to speak, whether by ability or by will unlikely ever to betray her own child, gave her the courage to pour everything out to her.

Lovf felt she had poured out, in a rush of emotion, all the anguish of her five years in Radiance since transmigrating.

The confusion and despair of first arriving, refusing to accept it; the shock and fear of discovering she had transmigrated into a cannon-fodder side character; her father's coldness; Aita's stiffness; the dread Laila as a power-wielder, a being she had never seen, inspired in her. The carefulness of a princess who was not a child, the stifling of being trapped in a toddler's body and able to move only within the palace. She burst it all out like a flood of tears, and luckily some shred of reason remained, and she did not say she was a transmigrator.

What good would saying it do; the woman in red could only listen for now, but that did not mean she would only ever listen. She had taken her daughter's body and life; when she regained consciousness and movement, how was she to live with herself.

Lovf felt her own selfishness was laughable.

She said too much to the woman in red, speaking until she fell asleep before the mirror. She had sent the servants away and f*******n them in; when they came to check in the first half of the night she was still asleep on the bed.

No one discovered the little princess had curled on the floor in her nightclothes all night.

The next day Lovf ran a high fever.

Aita was terrified, sitting by her bed crying. Laila looked like she genuinely regretted telling her those things about the outside.

Lovf herself was fine; she was a child, catching a chill from the cold wind and sleeping on the floor and running a fever was all too normal. She knew her mindset had passed its most turbulent point; recalling all she had said to the woman in red yesterday, she felt ashamed, and wondered just how worked up she had been.

Chester never came to see her. Lovf wrote Chester's name on her inner list, and crossed it out again and again with a black marker, and thinking it not enough, nearly poked a hole through the paper.

In the afternoon a physician came, said Lovf had just caught a chill and would break the fever in a few days. Children should not overuse potions; he prescribed a mild medicine to ease her and told her to rest and recover slowly.

After the physician left, Aita began crying at Lovf again. Lovf very much wanted to say I'm still alive, but thinking Aita was truly worried, felt such a thought was heartless.

Laila clearly thought the same, and out of sight out of mind, made herself scarce.

Aita tucked the quilt around Lovf as she cried: "Our princess is His Majesty's daughter. Our highness is the best, doesn't care to become a power-wielder and fight and kill. Our princess is pretty and smart; later His Majesty will find her a duke or a marquis to marry, and she will still be Radiance's happiest woman."

Lovf, feigning sleep, felt even more stifled; this was exactly the life that filled her with fear. If upon first transmigrating she had still harbored fantasies about this vase-like existence, after Melica's worldview reeducation she had nailed that utterly wretched, stupid illusion dead in her mind.

Impossible, it did not exist. She was a modern person who had seen a great world and glimpsed another. To send her back to the middle ages and willingly be an illiterate was worse than death.

The fever was miserable; Lovf rolled over and slapped herself twice in her mind.

Lovf, it's about time you woke up too. Having the power-wielder path slammed shut doesn't mean you have to be a useless princess. Between those two there are still other roads. You're only five, you still have time, choose quickly, seize the chance.

Chester was utterly unreliable. But at least he had not blocked his own daughter's road.

After waking, first see whether she could keep that scholar teacher.

Chester had a bit of conscience after all.

On the third day the old scholar sent word asking after the princess's health, saying she could resume lessons whenever she wished.

Lovf breathed a long sigh of relief upon hearing this; even if Chester was utterly disappointed in her, at most he'd written her off, at least he hadn't thrown her out like trash.

Then in her mind she slapped herself several more times.

Wake up, Lovf! You must not harbor a single fantasy about Chester. Do you remember what happened after the first two times you misread him? Do you remember what ending Princess Lovfrida got in the novel after she cared about him? Stop it! Chant three times: Chester is a devil, not to be trusted! Chester is a devil, not to be trusted! Chester is a devil, not to be trusted!!!

After beating herself black and blue in her mind, Lovf finally cast Chester to the back of her head, and studied everything the old man taught with an eagerness even greater than her earlier zeal. This was her capital for the "other choice," after she neither wanted to be a canary in a gilded cage nor could become a power-wielder.

The world's basic education system was much like the one in the world she came from. Though she had begun schooling at five, a child's learning started with very basic content: broadly arithmetic, rune recognition, basic life magic (dressing, eating, making the bed), basic etiquette and moral education (hitting is wrong, say thanks when helped), natural history (basic natural science), basic social common sense, an overview of world geography, history and polities, and literacy in the Federation's common tongue. Much like what primary students learned in Lovf's old world, except for interfacing with that faintly-glimpsed world of power-wielders; otherwise no different.

Perhaps she was too eager; the old scholar also noticed Lovf's abnormally polished grasp of some subjects, such as basic arithmetic, while in others she was merely ordinary, typically basic runology.

She could not cast any magic at all; the most basic, everyone-can-do act of moving objects, she could not perform. Yet her memory and comprehension were superb, the typical mark of overflowing mental energy.

Unable to resonate with any magic, yet possessing such abundant mental-energy talent. The old scholar felt regret for Lovf too.

Lovf still did not know her too-eager, extraordinary performance had nearly blown her little-kid cover, and the old scholar had filled in the gaps himself and smoothed it over. Upon learning that failing to resonate truly meant she could not even become a martial artist, she gave up completely the fantasy of being a power-wielder, and studied frantically, bent on being a person with wisdom if no magic.

Wisdom and knowledge are a kind of power too.

She was still small, still had time, and did not yet know what choice she would finally make.

But she must begin accumulating power now.

The power to let herself choose.

At night, Lovf secretly tucked a notebook into the corner of the bookshelf. Inside, written in Chinese, were the novel's plot points she still remembered.

The novel was called The Sunwheel Princess.

The heroine, Annie Blova, was a pitiful child born out of wedlock to a maid in the Radiance Kingdom who had no steady clients. Bullied since childhood, she nearly lost her chance to learn to become a power-wielder.

After missing the mid-tier magic academy's entrance test, she ran through the rain, and her ability to part the rainwater caught the eye of a passing old mage. Thus she got to study under the old mage, and was admitted to some whatever Sanctum in the east of the continent with a ridiculously impressive name.

At the academy, she fell in love at first sight with a neighboring prince, and together they researched and restored the long-lost instant-cast magic formation, graduating with honor as a Saint-tier mage and returning home in glory.

King Chester held a banquet for her, welcoming this promising citizen back to her homeland. Yet at the banquet, Annie's face, resembling the late queen's, caught Chester's attention. Pushed by various forces, Annie's true birth came to light: she was the child the king, after a banquet, in a muddled state had mistaken a maid for the queen and fathered.

Chester acknowledged Annie, and she became a Radiance princess of extraordinary talent and boundless promise.

The kingdom's heir, the eldest princess Lovfrida, was jealous that Annie had stolen her father's favor, and was extremely unkind to Annie, scheming against her many times. Annie yielded at every turn, yet Lovfrida knew no restraint.

In the end Chester discovered all this, and with no choice took the heir position from the sibling-murdering Princess Lovfrida and locked her in a tall tower. The extraordinarily talented, sensible and obedient Annie took over as the first princess.

Lovf had only written this far for now; after all the original was a w*******l of over a thousand chapters. Even stuffed with descriptions of Annie's beauty and the sweetness of her daily life with the male lead, the real plot was still countless.

So much that five years on, Lovf trying to recall even left many plot points she could no longer connect.

But she did still remember that restored instant-cast formation technique.

In the novel Annie was a very gentle, sweet, sincere and kind girl, and truly smart, but it was not described that she had much of an academic air. This instant-cast formation technique, Lovf remembered, had been lost a thousand years before.

In the novel, a thousand years before, this world had undergone a great world-ending war; though it was held back from truly ending, the top combatants still died in droves. The sudden death of those mighty long-lived titans directly caused the damage and loss of a vast amount of advanced, high-tech civilization artifacts. All the way to the era of the story, the world's internal order was still in a continuous, endless slow collapse.

Lovf remembered that later Annie also awakened a great dragon that had survived the war a thousand years before but gone mad, helping her defeat the enemy or whatever.

It was under such circumstances that Annie, by a fluke with a treasure, stumbled into opening an ancient ruin from a thousand years ago and recovered the old technique. It was precisely because of this instant-cast formation technique that after returning she received Chester's special reception.

Six years had passed; how Annie got that treasure, where the ruin was, which scene in the book that plot belonged to, Lovf had forgotten completely. She was confined to the palace every day, with no intention or condition to beg Chester to leave it, so she never fantasized about such a heroine's adventure for herself.

But Annie at least told her this road was passable.

If she could not be a power-wielder, she could still be a scholar and a theoretical academic!

Don't give up, Lovf, Lovf cheered herself on. There's still a chance. Work a little harder. At least Chester didn't take away your chance to be educated, right? You can do it!