I'm in Love with the Villainess!

The twin doors loomed above us, each one carved with scenes that seemed to move in the corner of my eye, battles, betrayals, ascensions, only to freeze into static stone the moment I looked directly at them.

Evelina stepped closer to the left door, running her fingers along one of the carvings. A figure reaching toward a floating crown. A serpent eating its own tail. A tree with roots that grew into the sky and branches that burrowed into the earth.

"This isn’t just architecture," she said, amused. "It’s a statement."

"What kind of statement?"

"That the person who built this place thought they were a god."

I couldn’t argue with that.

Between the doors, a pedestal waited. Small, unassuming, carved from the same polished marble as everything else. Resting on top was a single brass bell, no bigger than my fist, with a clapper that looked like a coiled serpent.

No inscriptions. No warnings. No instructions.

Just a bell.

"Know what to do here?" Evelina asked.

"Of course, not even a single lacking piece of info."

I walked up to the pedestal and studied the bell without touching it. Julius in the novel had approached this trial alone, without any of the nuance or preparation I’d had. He’d just rung the damn thing and let chaos sort itself out.

Typical.

"Kevin and Vivianne should be waking up soon," I said. "Let’s get the first trial going."

"For how long?"

I opened my mouth to answer—

DONG.

The bell rang on its own.

Evelina and I both stepped back, hands raised, magic already coiling at our fingertips. But nothing attacked. No traps sprung. No monsters lunged from the shadows.

Instead, the twin doors began to open.

Slowly. Silently. Grinding apart along some invisible seam until they revealed a chamber beyond that shouldn’t have fit inside the building we’d just walked through.

It was a forest.

An actual forest, with trees that reached toward a sky that had no ceiling, a stream that wound through moss-covered stones, and light that filtered down like it was coming through real clouds.

"How?" Evelina whispered.

"Magic...?"

We stepped inside.

The moment both of us crossed the threshold, the doors swung shut behind us. No handle on this side. No visible way out.

"Of course," I muttered.

"Of course," Evelina agreed.

The forest stretched ahead of us, peaceful and silent. Too silent. No birds. No insects. Just the sound of the stream and the occasional rustle of leaves that didn’t seem to come from any wind I could feel.

Then the trees began to move.

Not all of them. Just a few, here and there, their trunks twisting almost imperceptibly, their branches reaching toward us like they were trying to decide whether to block our path or grab us.

"The trial," I said. "It’s started."

"Finally," Evelina said, cracking her knuckles. "I was getting bored."

She stepped forward before I could stop her, and the forest reacted.

A root erupted from the ground beneath her feet, thick as a python, aiming to wrap around her ankle. She sidestepped it without looking and kicked off a second root that lunged from her left.

"Friendly place," she called out.

[Dark Manipulation]

I sent out a wave of shadow that pushed back the nearest trees, creating a small clearing around me. But the forest adapted quickly—the shadows I controlled seemed to be getting absorbed into the bark of the trees, feeding them instead of repelling them.

"Dark magic doesn’t work well here," I said. "Something in the trees is eating it."

"Then use something else!"

[Malignant Flame Manipulation]

I switched to fire, hurling a stream of pale flames at the trunk of the most aggressive tree. It caught, briefly, but the flames sputtered out almost immediately, leaving nothing but a blackened scar.

What about something else?

[Holy Flame Manipulation]

Brighter this time. The tree recoiled, its branches jerking back and its trunk leaning away as if it were trying to escape.

That worked better.

"Evelina! Stick to light magic!"

Of course light magic would work; that was the only attunement Julius had, after all. The novel never even said the other magic types wouldn’t work. He really wasn’t the main character for nothing.

Evelina was already three trees deep, weaving between grasping branches and snapping roots with a dancer’s grace, like she was on an afternoon walk.

At my call, she shifted her attacks, sharp blades edged with whatever light magic she could muster, and the forest recoiled further.

But it didn’t stop.

"We can’t stay here for long," she yelled out.

The path ahead of us was barely visible now, a narrow gap between trees that were pressing closer by the second. The stream had vanished, swallowed by roots. The light from above was dimming, as if the clouds were thickening.

"We need to move faster," I said, pushing forward with a torrent of holy flame clearing the way.

The first trial of the library wasn’t combat; it was patience and determination.

The second trial clearly wanted us dead.

***

Kevin woke up to the sound of a bell.

Not ringing, exactly. More like... humming. A low, resonant vibration that seemed to come from everywhere at once, buzzing in his teeth and his bones and the back of his skull.

He pushed himself up from the marble floor and immediately regretted it. His head pounded. His muscles ached like he’d run a hundred laps instead of fifteen. And his mouth tasted like copper.

"Where are we...?" he croaked.

No response.

He turned his head, slowly, carefully, and found her lying a few feet away, still unconscious. Her chest rose and fell steadily, so at least she wasn’t dead.

"Wake up, you idiot..."

She stirred and groaned, then rolled onto her side and promptly vomited onto the floor.

"...Not my finest moment," she muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "Where are we?"

"Some kind of library..."

"Right. The library." She sat up slowly, blinking against the light streaming through the painted windows. "And where’s Cael?"

Kevin looked around.

The fountain. The shelves. The spiral staircases. The two enormous doors at the far end of the chamber cracked open just enough to reveal shadows and the faint smell of earth.

"I don’t know, but if my senses are correct..." he said. "I think we’re supposed to go through there."

Vivianne followed his gaze, and her expression hardened.

"Doesn’t look ominous at all..."