The Villainess Returns with a System-Chapter 117: Mind Goblin

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

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

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

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

"My less handsome brother is right. True strength comes 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 mentioned that I possess the greater comeliness." (Rusty)

"What? I have been graced with that pronouncement on too many occasions to enumerate." (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 memory. You resemble a minuscule legume compared to me. 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 time, Ray and Rusty might have gone on for ages.

"We apologize, Miss Vivian."

"Just focus on training Esmeralda, please."

Vivian’s meditating 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 memory of when Count Henry Marshall had snatched her gun from her. Each time, 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 movements, but each time 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 time frame, she never even noticed where her death came 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 lifetime 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 Esmeralda. Don’t make any reactions," Ray said as he brought the box closer to Esmeralda.

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

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

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

"No! NO! STOP IT!"

Esmeralda 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 Esmeralda," 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 immersed in her own training.

The two tried their best with Esmeralda 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 mental state to become the perfect fighter.

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

"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 time, 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 meek 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 Amen!"

"You convinced me 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 Esmeralda 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.

Esmeralda was a math genius without knowing it all her life. She could crunch numbers together at astonishing speed, and the reason was something 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, memorize their numbers, and even call them names.

She played those games so much when she was little that it became 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 something truly wonderful.

This wasn’t going to be easy. The amount of knowledge Vivian had to cram into Esmeralda’s head was going to be immense. Physics alone is already hard enough, but Esmeralda 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 extreme 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 become 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 advancement to the two-star rank was very quick thanks to her heavy reliance on the System’s Panacea. While her foundation may have bloomed at an older age, her advanced mental 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 messed something 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 some 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.

——————————

Name—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 [Medjay 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 someone 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 Esmeralda’s training, it was about time she got into hand-to-hand combat. Ray and Rusty were masters in terms of unarmed combat, and Vivian was no joke either. In this kind of training, it was best to partner Esmeralda with someone as much of a beginner as her, and for that...

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

"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 Esmeralda on punching.

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

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

"I see."

Esmeralda was also experiencing the same 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 mental maturity of an older person can easily pick up on concepts and tactics better than the young.

Also, after a bit of convincing, Esmeralda 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 Esmeralda towards an actual someone she hates... also, she didn’t forget to tease Esmeralda about how tiny and petite Oliver is (Esmeralda’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 Esmeralda’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 name for this mind limitation in the Far East? They call it a Heart Demon," Ray commented with a solemn face.

"Pft! A heart demon, you say? Such nonsense sounds like mere 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!"

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