The Villain Princess Rewrites Her Fate

The First Lesson

Lovf had still given Chester far too much credit.

The next day she went to find Chester fully expecting to warm up the father-daughter relationship, only to be informed on arrival by Gene that Chester was very busy today and had no time to see her. Per the previous arrangement, Mr. Gwen would stay on to teach the princess basic social customs and etiquette, and to satisfy Her Highness's curiosity about the scholar's profession. It was likewise hoped Her Highness would keep her promise and properly learn the things a princess ought to learn. Furthermore, since the princess now possessed the capacity to learn magic, courses related to power-wielders would also be put on the schedule, lest when His Eminence Lute came to instruct Her Highness, Her Highness's weak foundation should make understanding difficult...

Even Gene, as he talked on, ended up giving the little princess, who barely cleared the tabletop, a look of sympathy.

Lovf: Ha. Ha. Holding onto any illusions about Chester was her biggest mistake.

People truly are insatiable. When she thought she had no aptitude at all, she was terrified Chester would raise her into a waste. The moment she discovered she carried a great secret and had excellent aptitude, she started cursing Chester for yanking the seedling to make it grow. No wonder the original novel's actual daughter spontaneously combusted.

Lovf swallowed it down in the end. She looked up and asked Gene: "Did Father say when I start?"

Gene smiled kindly down at the soft dumpling of a little princess: "Mr. Gwen will continue teaching Your Highness general social and cultural knowledge, natural studies, reading, writing, and arithmetic, all as usual. His Majesty is still selecting a court etiquette tutor. As for the many matters of power-wielders, I will be the one explaining them to Your Highness." He placed a hand on his chest and bowed to Lovf.

Lovf: "Q... QAQ, Mr. Gene, you... you won't be fierce, will you."

"Do I look fierce?" Gene made a good-natured show of surprise, eyes smiling. He bent down and said softly at Lovf's ear, "His Majesty does not trust anyone else to teach the princess, which is why he sent me. With Your Highness at such a tender age, were you handed to some power-wielder with ulterior motives, he could not rest easy either."

He winked at Lovf: "His Majesty is simply not very good at getting along with you. But after His Eminence Lute left that day, His Majesty did think seriously about what he said. That is probably part of why he sent me. Rest assured, I certainly will not be fierce with you."

Lovf truly did not know what to say about Chester.

Scolding him didn't feel quite right, but the man's moods really did change faster than a young lady's face. Enough to make your hair fall out.

She blinked up at Gene. The young knight really did look good-tempered, and was more reliable than Laila by a margin too wide to measure.

Here's hoping he isn't too fierce, QVQ...

Gene was indeed not fierce.

For Lovf's first lesson, he arrived all smiles with a gift: a box of candies with fuzzy little wings that puttered around wildly, and invited the solemn-faced, painfully earnest little princess to relax and listen while she played. So considerate that Lovf seriously wondered how on earth Chester had managed to bag such an angel of a guard captain.

"Your Highness's constitution is rather special, and I fear the cultivation methods I know would not suit you. Until your true teacher arrives, I will go over some common knowledge of the power-wielder world with you. That way, things will be easier once you have a mentor." Gene said, beaming, motioning for Lovf to try one of those flapping, fluttering candies. He spread the book in his hands, big as a cutting board, open in front of Lovf.

The book held only a single page. The whole continent's mountains and rivers, cities and buildings, gorgeous and grand magical phenomena wreathed in drifting cloud and mist, spread open before Lovf.

The continent was vast, wide east to west and narrow north to south, its edges ragged. Centered on the Bewildering Abyss where the Floating City stood, the settlements of the various races radiated outward in a rough ring.

The western regions held the ancient empires of wizards and the Demon Race. Beyond the Sharlton-Grolin Mountains in the south lived magic beasts and elves. On the northern plains, where night ran longer than day, the sprite folk lived their scattered, easygoing lives. Humankind was spread across the enormous eastern territories. Old scholar Gwen had taught her that tens of thousands of years ago, after the Ancient Divine Race and the Phantasm Race of the northeast were wiped out by a great catastrophe, humans from the nearby human empires gradually migrated in, and through many turns of history formed what was now the Mortal Autonomous Region of the Fifteen Eastern Kingdoms, to which Radiance belonged.

Those mountain ranges and national divisions Lovf had all seen at Gwen's lessons. But unlike those ordinary maps, this enormous map had no borders drawn on it; layer upon layer of light and shadow formed the buildings of legend.

At the continent's center there really was a gigantic hollow, where churning white mist of nothingness blotted out everything on the land, and unstable magic lightning flashed through the air from time to time. That was the Bewildering Abyss, seat of the Floating City, the heart of the power-wielders' governing system, and seen this way its expanse was a good three times the size of the entire kingdom of Radiance.

In the Ancient Forest where the elves lived there really was a colossal tree that blotted out the sky, clearly visible even on the map, the magic ripples beneath it brilliantly bright, showing the prosperity of the Forest Capital, economic center of the south.

On the continent's east-west axis, two brilliant points of light shone: the world's two greatest cities, the eastern pearl of trade, the Grand Capital, and the western political center, the Central Capital. Looking closely, threads of fine magic ripples danced endlessly across countless cities and magic nodes over the whole continent.

Farther out past the Fifteen Eastern Kingdoms, a wall of light rising straight into the sky cut off one corner of the continent. That was the barrier called the Boundary of Light, dividing the continent's main regions from the abandoned Eastern Freehold. It was said that countless magics were laid upon that wall of light, that it was impregnable, and that even information could not pass through.

These legendary wonders and structures, though she had already heard them all once in Gwen's lessons, so startled Lovf now that she was seeing them with her own eyes on a miniature three-dimensional map that the candy halfway to her mouth fluttered up and flew away.

"This is the world of power-wielders, standing independent above the mortal world." Gene said to her with a smile. Assuming the little princess was startled by the map's exquisite detail, he explained gently, "This map is only a projection. It renders many magical fluctuations visible. In truth that light cannot be seen with the n***d eye; it is nowhere near as dramatic as the map makes it look."

Lovf stared at that colossal band of light slicing across a corner of the continent, conservatively at least ten thousand kilometers long, dumbstruck.

Gene quite understood her excitement. He had been shocked too, the first time he saw those enormous magical wonders. So he said nothing, and considerately gave the little princess a moment to collect herself.

What had stunned Lovf was something else entirely.

She stared at that magnificent band of light, visible even on a map: tens of thousands of kilometers long, tall enough to show at map scale, built over ten thousand years ago in a few months at most, still running perfectly today. She deeply reflected on how badly she was still underestimating a high-magic world. Her mouth kept saying she feared the bigshots' power to rewrite physical law, but inside she clearly still lacked understanding.

This needs adjusting. Lovf thought. Memo entry: do not underestimate how far a civilization can develop, and do not use imagination to guess at the ceiling of a high-magic world.

She glanced again at that vast white-mist crater in the map's center. Big as several countries put together, and the story went that in ancient times the gods, fighting demons, had destroyed the spatial laws of the entire region. Later, when they stopped fighting, they stabilized a patch in the middle of the great hole and casually threw up a Floating City there.

Lovf drew two hard underlines beneath the memo entry she had just written, then went ahead and pinned it to the top, placing it only below the two entries "harbor no illusions whatsoever about Chester" and "little children do not ask questions about the structure of society."

Seeing she had recovered, Gene continued her lesson on the common knowledge of the power-wielder world. Broadly speaking, the whole world rested under the rule and protection of a handful of supreme, heaven-spanning bigshots. The bigshots adjusted and maintained the natural environment, kept the circulation of magic smooth and orderly, held down their own home turf, deterred power-wielders of unsound mind from disturbing the social order, and also kept watch for any grave dereliction by rulers in the mortal autonomous regions.

Hence, although the power-wielder system and mortal political systems were essentially separate, sharing the same popular foundation and the same handful of bosses at the top, they got along fairly amicably.

Lovf thought of what the blue-and-green-eyed minstrel had said that day about serving the Godkin: "Like the Godkin?"

"Yes, Your Highness." Gene smiled at her approvingly. "The Godkin, His Venerable Majesty Talvia, is the protector of humankind. He watches over and guards the lives of the thinking beings of the eastern lands."

Lovf mulled it over and decided Chester didn't have it easy as a king either. This world had no Church wrestling the crown for power; instead, turn around and the Godkin himself was standing right there.

Gene looked solemnly into Lovf's eyes, his tone earnest and weighty: "The gods protect power-wielders, and they protect Mortals. One day you too will become someone as remarkable as His Majesty. But please remember that you were born a Mortal. You came from among Mortals, and to the Mortals' resting place you will one day return. Your thinking may change as your power grows, but your personhood, like every Mortal's, is a treasure that exists nowhere else. Please keep this engraved in your heart, and never let a gap in power lead you to disregard Mortal lives. Being a power-wielder does not mean doing as one pleases. Those who a***e their power without restraint will have that power reclaimed by the gods."

His tone was gentle and tactful, but Lovf was no five-year-old; she could hear the sharpened warning folded inside those words. Especially the last half-sentence, its icy calm carrying a terrible force. And Lovf had by no means forgotten that somewhere in this world, the great god who sheltered all humankind and the eastern lands existed in living fact, watching over the land and people under His protection, and at Chester's request had dispatched one of His Legends to help her.

Ah, picture it vividly for a second and suddenly the Godkin doesn't feel so impersonal anymore. Kind of cute, actually.

Having finished this speech, Gene watched the little princess stay lost in thought for a long while before coming back to herself, and knew she had taken it in. Though at the very end she wore a faintly entertained expression, and he had no idea what she had been thinking of.

He said to Lovf gently: "This is the first lesson I give you, and the first lesson of every power-wielder: having power does not mean doing as you please. You will walk farther and farther down this road, but of this one thing someone will always be there to remind you: in the world of power-wielders, likewise, someone is watching."

Lovf nodded away furiously.

She suddenly found herself looking forward to that world a little more. A more ordered world, in truth, meant more freedom.