I, The Villainess, Will Seduce All The Heroines Instead
Chapter 139: Beyond Just Teamwork (1)

Chapter 139: Beyond Just Teamwork (1)

Sirius stood in the center of the field, arms crossed, his coat billowing slightly in the wind like the final boss of a particularly harsh curriculum. The sky above shimmered faintly with residual astral energy—leftovers from the morning’s exercises. The training ground, warded and reinforced, buzzed softly with latent celestial tension.

"Again," Sirius barked, his voice like a blade slicing through the stagnant afternoon air.

Raphael panted, fingers flickering with orange heat. Sparks danced across his knuckles, flickering in and out like impatient fireflies. "I’m trying—"

"Don’t try," Sirius snapped. "Control it. You’re not lighting a match. You’re invoking ignition itself. The flame doesn’t ask for permission. It obeys because it fears being extinguished."

Raphael grit his teeth, eyes narrowing. He thrust his palm forward, summoning the fire again—but the blaze erupted in a burst too wide, scattering across the grass and nearly catching his own sleeve.

Sirius raised one brow in quiet disappointment.

Raphael groaned, rubbing ash from his arms. "You make it sound easy."

"It is easy. For someone with discipline." He turned. "Isolde. Show him."

From her corner of the field, Isolde was already working in eerie silence. Her fingers moved with meticulous grace, threads of silver barely visible to the naked eye snaking through the air like ghostly spiderwebs.

One strand looped around a floating practice dummy, and with a precise flick, she yanked it down. Another thread intercepted Raphael’s runaway flame from earlier, snuffing it out midair before it could reach a tree.

Her movements were economical—every gesture deliberate, controlled, elegant.

Raphael watched, frowning. "How are you so calm all the time?"

Isolde didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she guided another thread into the dummy’s chest, severing its internal enchantment. It collapsed, inert.

Only then did she speak. "Because I don’t treat magic like a tantrum. The Zodiac Weave isn’t chaos. It’s a loom. You either learn to thread it, or it tangles you."

Sirius smirked faintly. "She listens."

"I just don’t want to catch on fire," Isolde murmured dryly, glancing at Raphael.

"Fair," he muttered.

Sirius stepped forward. "Both of you—your Weaves reflect your personalities. Raphael, yours is volatile and powerful, but if you don’t learn how to compress your energy, you’ll never master sustained ignition. Fire that only burns for a second is just a spark, not a weapon."

"And mine?" Isolde asked.

"Yours is precise. But precision becomes rigidity if you overthink. Your Bind Magic needs to adapt faster under pressure. Threads that don’t bend will snap."

A tense pause. Sirius clapped his hands once.

"Now—duel."

"What?" both said at once.

"Fight each other," he said plainly. "Real magic doesn’t wait. Neither should you."

As Raphael and Isolde squared off, tension flickering in the air between them, Sirius gazed up at the sky. The astral weave was stirring, subtly responding to the clash of their zodiacs.

And somewhere distant—Penelope sneezed, mid-sparring, as Clarina ruthlessly flipped her into the dirt for the fifth time.

A rough day, all around.

And Sirius was only just getting started.

Verena rounded the corner of the library courtyard, having successfully escaped a mandatory etiquette seminar by bribing the announcer with sweetbread. She was halfway through a celebratory bite when her eyes narrowed.

Beatrice.

Surrounded.

By men.

There were at least four of them—tall, smug, reeking of secondhand perfume and the entitlement of mid-tier nobility. One of them was leaning just a little too close, another was "casually" flexing while pretending to reach for her fallen book, and a third was actually juggling roses. Juggling.

"Oh hell no," Verena muttered, tossing the bread like a grenade.

She stormed forward with the posture of a tax auditor and the fury of a mother hen who just discovered foxes near her coop.

"Ahem," she announced, placing herself squarely between Beatrice and the hormone parade. "I believe you’re all late for your... basic decency lessons?"

One of the men raised a brow. "Excuse me?"

"Oh no, no, excuse you, sweetheart. See, this right here? This is what we call a swarm of desperate peacocks. You’re crowding a lady who—"

"Verena." Beatrice’s voice was soft, but sharp.

Verena paused. "What?"

Beatrice looked... calm. Not flustered. Not cornered. She hadn’t even activated her usual death glare. In fact, she was smiling.

She placed a gentle hand on Verena’s arm. "It’s okay. I asked them to be here."

Verena blinked. "You what?"

Beatrice turned to the boys. "Thank you, everyone. That’s all for now."

Like trained dogs, they all bowed and scattered. One of them even winked at Verena, who made a noise that sounded like a dying kettle.

"I—What—Why?!" Verena turned to her. "You invited them? What in the painfully polite social masquerade is going on here?"

Beatrice looked away, brushing invisible dust off her skirt. "I just wanted to know what it felt like."

"What what felt like?"

"To be wanted," she said quietly.

Verena’s joke died in her throat.

Beatrice’s fingers curled around the edge of a marble bench. "Back in the palace, no one ever looked at me unless it was to measure my worth. To weigh my usefulness. My body, my title, my magic—they were all someone else’s investment."

She glanced up, eyes misty but clear. "So I wanted to know... what it felt like when people desire you. Not for power. Not for marriage alliances. Just because they see you."

Verena opened her mouth, then shut it. Her usual sharp wit dulled by something deeper—pain, understanding.

"Even if it’s shallow," Beatrice added, voice wobbling. "Even if it’s fake. At least for a moment, I get to pretend I’m not invisible."

There was a silence. The kind that rang louder than any argument.

Verena sat beside her, uncharacteristically quiet. She didn’t offer empty comfort. She didn’t dismiss it. She just... stayed.

After a while, Verena said softly, "Next time you want attention, let me know. I’ll bring a crowd and a fog machine."

Beatrice smiled, wiping her eyes. "You’d really do that?"

"Of course," Verena smirked. "But I’m charging you by the dramatic entrance."

Their laughter wasn’t loud, but it was real.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.