The Villainess Doesn't Want to Deal With This Shit

Chapter 4- From Asshole to Absent and Unwanted Lessons

“I need someone to teach me to control and harness my magic.” I told Kallen as I settled the sleeping animals in their respective beds. There was a woosh of displaced air behind me.

“Ah, what the-” Kallen cried, and I looked over my shoulder to where he was sitting at my table, tugging uselessly at the green collar around his neck.

I laughed. “They’re made so the familiars themselves can’t take them off and so they grow with them. I guess it works for gods too. Should I remove it for you?” I asked, moving closer.

The man sighed, slumping. “No, leave it for now. It would be suspicious if we forgot to put it back on and someone else saw. Anyway, have you decided on names for the little trouble makers? Outside of the frankly insulting one you picked for me.”

“Kale is close enough to Kallen that if I slip up, it’d be easy to explain away as a lisp or something. Gaslight people into thinking they misheard me. As for the others, well, I have one!” I pulled my hand out of my pocket, the little snake wrapped around my ring finger. “Hello little guy. How do you feel about the name Obsidian?” I asked, gently rubbing over its smooth black scales. It made no reply other than to shift under my touch. “I’ll take that as a yes, then.” I settled on the other side of the table. I would need to go out into the garden soon to try to catch a few crickets.

I had grabbed a notebook from the ornate desk in the corner, and pulled out a quill. “Okay, so we need a game plan. I don’t know why Solaria’s parents are mine now. You created everything here, what do you know about Solaria Argentum Christe? She’s the player character of the game.”

Kallen tilted his head in thought. “Well… actually, that was going to be the body I put your soul into, but your soul rejected it. So I had to find a suitable one.” He gestured to me. “Solaria is one of my creations, but it’s not like I keep tabs on every person who walks on my planet.”

“Right right, all powerful, not all knowing, I remember. Okay, so she still exists here though. That’s… well, that’s not really something I need to be concerned about. I’ll stay out of her way, she can stay out of mine and take whatever route she wants. I wonder if she’ll still have Mending Vine since I don’t have Creeping Vine. Anyway, she’s not really of my concern unless she makes herself a nuisance.”

“You’re speaking differently. I don’t think I’ve heard you say one cuss word.” Kallen said, his voice amused.

I groaned. “You made me nobility, I’ve got to act like nobility. And that means talking like a fucking grown up.”

“There it is!”

“Shut the fuck up you useless bird.” I grumbled as he laughed. It was a nice laugh, even if he was a dick.

I chewed on the end of the quill, staring down at the paper. 

“I don’t have Creeping Vine, so that saves me from some of the death flags. I can’t manipulate Prince Three into marrying me, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t in case you’re wondering. So that saves me from… well. All the rest! Great! Wait, shit. I forgot about Elijah.”

“Elijah?” Kallen prompted.

I twirled the quill between my fingers. “Yeah, he gets assigned as my personal manservant at… some point. Not yet, but soon I think. He’s obsessed with me to a murderous degree.”

Kallen was transfixed by the feather in my hand, watching the movements as he asked, “Isn’t that just the power of Creeping Vine?”

“That’s the big twist of his route. He was never infected. Creeping Vine requires skin to skin contact, and he was never that ‘lucky’. His words, not mine. No, he’s full on natural crazy. So when Solaria gets to the point she can start ‘pruning’ she doesn’t find any vines in his psyche. Instead it’s all just him twisting himself in obsessive knots over Celeste. There’s actually not a ‘good end’ to his route, because no matter what the player does, she can’t win him. Instead she accidentally gives him the idea that if he can’t have Celeste, no one should. So he poisons both Celeste and himself. That’s the technical ‘good end’ for him. In the ‘bad end’ he also poisons Solaria and Nathaniel at a tea party that Celeste invites them to.”