I'm in Love with the Villainess!

*** A few hours ago – Third Person POV

An inquisitor pulling the strings of ordinary students, a plan to purge every dark mage in the academy, the grand priest, and a handful of other variables she couldn’t yet account for.

Evelina had already seen all of this once before.

A classic conspiracy.

And this one wasn’t special at all. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

She’d seen her father handle worse, after all. This would just be her first time trying to dismantle a scheme on her own.

"So... he has the academy infiltrated, and right now he’s only using mediocre students as pawns."

She ticked the points off under her breath, pressing the pen to her lips as she thought through her plan of action for the days to come.

"But I shouldn’t let the obvious fool me. Always assume there’s a stronger force backing the enemy."

Evelina scanned the list of students in the academy—more specifically, those who could pose even a vague threat to her.

They weren’t much of a danger in a direct fight, but when it came to distractions, even the smallest one could be enough to shatter an entire plan—hers included.

"I should isolate all of them... make sure that whoever’s left in the academy is either too weak to matter or surrounded by people who’ll make it hard for them to move..."

The last thing Evelina wanted was to confront the inquisitor and be blindsided when the entire academy suddenly went up in flames the moment she did. She had no idea if he had a failsafe prepared.

Her spies had found nothing in terms of planted explosives, but compromised students were another matter entirely.

What if the inquisitor she confronted had some kind of magic that automatically alerted every pawn he’d planted in the academy, ordering them to unleash chaos? A distraction to warn other inquisitors that their plan had been exposed—or a smokescreen he could use to slip away in the confusion.

She had to be absolutely careful.

"I’ll just take them all out and bribe the faculty so they don’t ask too many questions."

[Will that even work?]

"It’s not something I can pull off every month, but considering the stakes, now’s as good a time as any to use the one chance I have to bend the academy to my will like this."

*** Present Day

"I think I might’ve gone a little overboard with the preparations..."

Evelina muttered, snapping her fingers. The inquisitor collapsed to the floor, skin drained to a sickly white and eyes sinking into a bottomless black. The instant she had pulled every useful scrap of information from his mind, she ended him without a second thought.

"So... he really only had a bunch of average students backing him, and he didn’t even bother setting up a failsafe."

Evelina tapped her heel against the floor, impatience bleeding through the steady rhythm.

"And on top of that, it looks like he doesn’t know anything else."

She tapped the floor again, a little harder this time.

"You have got to be kidding me."

Evelina let out a sharp, irritated sigh.

"Here I was getting my hopes up for something actually fun. I mean, an inquisitor was involved, for God’s sake..."

[So... you basically just used your once-in-a-month trump card for nothing...?]

"I hate to admit it... but yes."

She turned away, heels clicking softly against the floor as the shadows peeled back from the walls. The classroom slowly settled, like it was waking from a bad dream: light easing in through the windows again, the crushing weight in the air lifting as if nothing had happened.

Except for the body. And the blood.

"And I even went out of my way to isolate every possible variable..." she muttered. "What a joke."

[Well... on the bright side, you did prove you can take control of an entire institution whenever you feel like it.]

"...That’s not the point."

Evelina paused mid-step. Something snagged at the edge of her thoughts—not a warning, not danger, just a small, stubborn discomfort. Like a word stuck on the tip of her tongue that refused to come out.

She frowned. "...Wait."

[What?]

She glanced back at the inquisitor’s corpse and, for a moment, just stared.

"...No failsafe. No backup. No deeper connection," she murmured. "An inquisitor working alone with a bunch of incompetent pawns?"

It didn’t sit right. Not with what she knew. Not with how the church worked. Not with how paranoid they usually were.

Even if the one he caught was just a pawn, there was no way his memories would be this... thin.

Her gaze sharpened.

"...That’s wrong."

[You just tore through everything in his head. What could you have possibly missed?]

Evelina didn’t answer right away. She stepped back to the body and crouched, crimson eyes narrowing as she studied his face—empty, lifeless, hollow after her extraction.

"...It’s not what I missed," she said slowly.

Her fingers hovered just above his forehead, where she’d pushed into his mind moments before.

"Come to think of it... the memory he had of his superior looked way too foggy."

Silence settled over the room.

"...Memories don’t feel like this when they’re complete. Especially as a high-rank succubus like me."

[...Oh?]

The succubus fell quiet. Evelina’s expression darkened.

"His memories are fake..."

Not suppressed or tucked away. Just cut out, cleanly, and deliberately. Like tearing pages from a book and insisting the story still made sense.

"...Now that’s more like it," she whispered, a slow smile creeping back onto her lips. Excitement flickered in her eyes again—sharper, more dangerous than before.

"So there is something deeper."

[So, what’s your theory, mistress?]

"There’s no way they’d send someone out here without being careful. Everyone knows this academy is D’Arclight territory."

[So...]

"I’m saying this one was meant to catch my attention. Which means their real force is already on the move."

[I’m surprised you’re just admitting you got played.]

"Not exactly. I’m sure that even with all their preparations, they never planned for someone who can read memories as precisely as I can. They probably think I’m still interrogating him right now..."

Evelina smiled.

"Which means they’re on a time limit they don’t even realize they’re under."