The Villain Professor's Second Chance

A faint tremor lingered in my fingertips—residual static from the synchronization surge—so I flattened my palms against the desktop again, grounding myself. The wood felt warmer now, faintly resonant, as though my study recognized the returning master and adjusted its hum to match my heartbeat. I traced idle circles across the burn-mark near the inkwell, letting small sparks of mana flick off the edge of each motion. They sputtered, harmless, miniature comets dying on impact with the varnish. It was a needless flourish, perhaps, but after days—or had it been weeks?—of relentless utilitarian struggle inside Kyrion's labyrinthine request, the simple luxury of wasting a joule or two of power felt almost decadent.

Outside the tall windows, the dawn moved from pearl grey to delicate amber. That soft gradient painted the spires of distant watchtowers with a kiss of rose-gold, like a careful artist touching up a grand canvas. I measured the shimmer on the slate roofs and calculated humidity, temperature, wind-shear: perfect conditions to keep the city's ward crystals from overheating. Good. Less risk of an early-morning flare setting off alarms among the junior wardens. I had no time to scurry down six flights of stairs just to soothe panicked apprentices.

The Devil's Pen—or I suppose Noctgrave, now—pressed a whisper against my awareness. Not words, just sensation: a predator stretching inside its new skin. It wanted ink. It wanted paper. It wanted, if I allowed it, blood. I responded with a pulse of my own will, firm and unmistakable: Patience. The artifact settled, the way a leashed hell-hound might circle once and lie down, eyes still gleaming red around narrow slits.

I lifted my head, letting my focus roam. The room reacted to my scrutiny. Shelves of codices shifted subtly as their containment wards re-aligned to my magic signature. A stack of crystal tablets flickered on, displaying a frozen readout from the observatory's night cycle. Tiny, glowing vectors mapped star-drift—data I'd told an aide to leave for my eventual return. The figure in the corner—an articulated brass automaton designed for note-taking—whirred to life, raising its quill in mute greeting. I waved it off; the air smelled too charged for mundane scribbles.

My mind pivoted, cataloguing the ripple effects of the upgrade. With Noctgrave's core density increased, its ink output would be thick as obsidian but flow smoother than mercury. That meant vector runes could be drawn in half the usual strokes—time savings in any future duel. The nib's new alloy, judging by the red glow, likely contained a drop of Bael's Quintessence. Useful: the ink would cling to metaphysical structures, letting me write directly on condensed mana streams. I envisioned etching counter-sigils on an enemy's spell mid-casting, watching their offensive weave unravel into harmless sparks. Efficient—and humiliating for them.

A stray gust rustled the curtains. I frowned. I had sealed the window before leaving on the quest. With a twitch of fingers, I extended a spectral thread of perception into the draft, scanning for magical tampering. Only mundane airflow: temperature differentials as the manor's furnace kicked in. Still, it reminded me how quickly complacency kills. I redirected the thread, sweeping the room for listening insects—arcane or otherwise. Three minuscule scry-mites glowed beneath the underside of a secondary bookshelf. Common city surveillance models, keyed to the watch captain's crest. Likely planted during my absence to ensure the Earl hadn't vanished entirely.

Lazy. They really should have known a basic obscurity field wouldn't fool me. I flicked a mote of darkness from Noctgrave's reservoir; the droplet hissed across the floor, popped, and the mites vanished in a puff of blue sparks. Somewhere in the watchtower a junior officer's scry-mirror would shatter. Let them panic for a few moments; it would teach them to upgrade their tools.

The room quieted once more. But the newfound silence wasn't empty—it thrummed with possibility. A canvas waiting for first ink. I caught my reflection in a polished bronze astrolabe, noting the tired set of my eyes, the infinitesimal flecks of crimson still swimming in the whites. Residual devil mana. Harmless, but telling. I closed my lids, inhaled through my nose, and cycled my core once—drawing latent energies inward, burning impurities in the crucible of will, exhaling a thread of smoke so faint the lamps barely flickered. When I opened my eyes again, they were clear. Better.

I turned toward the center of the study where a free-standing drafting table waited, parchment unrolled. My feet moved before my conscious thought caught up, carrying me to that blank sheet as if by gravitational pull. Noctgrave twitched, eager. I indulged it—unsheathing the nib with a single practiced flick and touching it to the page. Ink bled forth, jet-black with a hint of deep crimson vortices swirling inside each droplet. The odor was ferrous but sweet, reminiscent of old libraries and distant thunder.

I let the first line form—a wide sweeping flourish that resolved into a binding curve. Not a spell. Merely a word in an ancient devil dialect meaning Silence. Appropriate tribute to the artifact's rebirth. The rune's edges shimmered, itch-bright, then cooled, locking into the parchment as if hammered into stone. Satisfied, I pulled back. Test complete: ink flow stable, mana signature perfectly slaved to mine. No rebellious bleed. Subservient indeed.

A smile—thin, efficient—found its way to my lips. "Serviceable," I whispered to the quiescent pen. It hummed, perhaps pleased.

Memory Synchronization still pulsed behind my eyes, packets of data surfacing in orderly waves. I latched onto the Strategist Clone's latest report: expansion of the dungeon core was entering phase two. Mana-sluice gates excavated, guardian matrix seeded. I pictured the crystalline heart of that underground facility beating in rhythm with Aurelion's ley lines. Each pulse a promise that the city could survive a siege others wouldn't even see coming. I should visit soon and overlay Noctgrave's new schemes on the core's surface. An optimization to the rune lattice might increase flux absorption by thirteen percent—small in isolation, enormous in aggregate.

Another data pulse: the Necromancer Clone's lessons with the Queen. I skimmed, noting her progress in shadow weaving—adequate but not yet weaponized. She would need that skill before the year's turning. Kyrion's corpse could accelerate her mastery; necromantic inscriptions on royal flesh carried a poetic symbolism court bards would adore once the truth inevitably leaked.

I felt a tug—an emotional echo from the Adventurer Clone, something like admiration or perhaps relief. Sylara Storm-Wrought had accepted her lineage with admirable composure. Good. An unstable storm-witch was useful but dangerous to allies. A centered one was an asset. I allowed the echo to linger a moment, then filed it away. No time for sentiment.

The Professor Clone's social network came next, a mesh of names, favors, rivalries. I visualized it as threads across a star map, glowing brighter where influence pooled. He'd secured three new sponsors for the symposium, all eager to outbid each other for exclusive research results. They didn't realize the results were secondary; the real prize was the network itself, and I already owned that. The irony drew a brief exhale that might have been a laugh.

My gaze drifted upward to the heavy beams crossing the ceiling. Each beam held a carved ward glyph—my work, of course—yet a new idea sparked: What if I embedded micro-reservoir charms tuned specifically to Noctgrave's ink? I could saturate the entire room with devil-aligned mana, invisible until activated. A flick of the pen could turn the study into a punitive cage for any would-be assassin. I tucked the thought into a mental folder labeled Immediate Upgrades.

A sudden warmth pulsed at my side: the Water Elven Pen's gentle nudge. It had drifted closer, perhaps jealous of my attention to its infernal sibling. I reached out, brushing its cool silver barrel. The mana coursing through it felt like spring rivers under moonlight—steady, confidence-inspiring. "Patience," I told it. "Your refinement will come." A ripple of azure light danced along its runes, placated.

Across the room, the brass automaton clicked its gears, reminding me it still held a quill poised. "Stand down," I ordered. "No dictation yet." Obediently, it folded in on itself, head bowing, returning to stillness.

The system prompt, forgotten until now, flickered once more—bright letters crowding the edge of my vision. It offered a neatly packaged summary of the upgrade's technical parameters: Ink Capacity +120%. Runic Saturation Efficiency +45%. Blood-Bonded Signature Imprint—Unique. I dismissed the pop-up with a blink. I did not need its assurances; my senses told me more than numbers ever could.

Still, I couldn't shake the faint irritation over the reward's singularity. After so many loops, after orchestrating the Chancellor's second death beneath an oceanic fortress, why limit me to one upgrade? I considered possible answers: perhaps the system feared a cascading imbalance. Perhaps it wanted to see what I would do with scarcity. Or perhaps—most intriguing—it simply obeyed rules set by a writer who never anticipated me surviving that many resets. A glitch in design. If so, I would exploit it like any weakness.

My gaze returned to the pens hovering in quiet orbit. I envisioned an army of pens, each specialized: one inscribing illusions, another rewriting gravitational constants, another stitching time. Greedy? No. Adaptive. The world was expanding beyond its initial parameters; I had to expand faster.

A soft creak sounded from the hallway—floorboards warming under the footfalls of servants beginning their rounds. I flicked my wrist, sending the pens back into their dimensional pocket; they vanished in a swirl of colored sparks. Best not to have a maid faint at the sight of a devil artifact drawing breath.

I circled the desk, pacing once from window to wall. My body felt lighter, the old fatigue peeling away. Noctgrave's upgrade had given me more than ink; it had sharpened my mind's edge, like pressure washing grime from a blade. Every sensation, every angle of light, every distant sound now slotted into tidy matrices of cause and consequence. If the system believed a single upgrade would satisfy me, it had underestimated my appetite.

A sudden thrill buzzed beneath my sternum—the same electric jolt I'd tasted long ago when Gilgamesh first handed me these pens under the silent gaze of ancestral statues. He'd seen potential in me then, something he filled with challenges instead of praise. As memories of his smug grin returned, I realized he would approve of what I'd just done. Make the strong stronger. Keep carving until only the essential remains.

A soft hiss escaped between my teeth, equal parts satisfaction and warning. Rest would come later—after I reclaimed Kyrion's corpse, after the symposium bent around my lecture, after the auction transformed money and secrets into ammunition. For now, plans required a fresh layer of ink.

I reached for a second sheet of parchment. Noctgrave drifted to meet my grasp, eager to continue our collaboration. With deliberate strokes, I began sketching a sigil cluster—part battle spell, part invocation, part signature flourish. Each line glowed a heartbeat after the nib left it, as if the ink itself contemplated eternity and decided to stay.

My thoughts drifted through the city beyond these walls—through its alleys, markets, and catacombs—plotting routes, risks, redundancies. Every name on my network map had just become a piece in a new end-game. They simply didn't know yet.

I pictured the morning patrol on Sentinel Street: five Justiciar loyalists shifting uneasily because their sergeant was found with memory sigils scorched from his skull. A warning to keep their curiosity out of my affairs. Two streets north, the bakers of Copper Row were loading ovens. I could almost taste the yeast. Firewood-smoke would mask lesser aura fluctuations—useful if a sudden experiment went volatile. And beneath them, in the storm drains, smugglers from the Tatterhand Guild were finishing a hand-off of contraband crystals. Those crystals already bore my sigil; when the guild tried to double-cross me, the stones would detonate in neat, painless flashes. Minimal collateral. Maximum example.

All in order.

A soft exhale slid past my lips, thin as a knife's edge. It felt foreign—something close to relief, perhaps. For the first time in cycles, I permitted myself a smile like the ghost of a crescent moon across glass. Brief. Functional.

Then a memory clawed to the forefront, unbidden.

Kyrion.