The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

She wasn’t just a prodigy with SSS-rank mana veins. There were a few people scattered over the long history who did have the exact same rank of mana veins. But none of them ever had the one specific thing that Aria found out about herself.

And that was none other than the mythical Mana Core that was constantly talked about in fairy tales and ancient legends.

There were a lot of old stories. A lot of ancient texts from the past that had wild fantasies about the existence of a condensed magical core growing inside a human body. Something that was similar to a monster’s core, and one that gave people an insane, bottomless amount of power. The exact kind of world-breaking power that any greedy noble or king could ever desire.

And Aria had found out that she naturally had one growing under her heart.

And in the chaotic process of learning more about this impossible mutation, she had, in fact, been ruthlessly hunted down like a wild animal. And at the very end of it all, she was killed.

Aria sat in the cold room and thought back to the way it actually all happened on that final day.

She knew that she had an ancient artifact that was rumoured to have the ability to tamper with time itself. She had just gotten her hands on it when the guy; the so-called ’Hero’ who had just defeated the Demon Lord, had kicked down the doors and entered the exact same room.

And that was it.

She never even had the chance to properly test the artifact out.

So she did the one single thing that she logically thought was her only option at the time. She had already used up most of her internal mana fighting the monsters at this place, and she had already fought the Hero multiple times in the past years.

She couldn’t win against him.

He was just way too strong. He was completely beyond logic or reason. Even though she had an unfathomable amount of knowledge about magic, and even though she had a lot of experience in fighting people to the death, no matter what spells she used, she just couldn’t push him back.

The only thing she could ever realistically do was keep him where he was, keep him temporarily engaged in a flurry of spells, and just escape with her life.

But at that specific time, when she had the time artifact desperately clutched in her hands, she had already used up most of her mana reserves. She deeply knew that she couldn’t fight this monster of a man anymore, or even escape the sealed room.

So she did the one thing that was the most logical in her mind.

If she wasn’t allowed to use this artifact, if she wasn’t allowed to just live her life in freedom, and if she wasn’t allowed to do her own magical research in peace just because the greedy world desperately wanted to get their hands on her Mana Core... just because they wanted to strip every single powerful artifact she found...

Then she wasn’t really going to let them have their grand dreams come true either.

She wasn’t going to let them get their hands on a single thing that they wanted. She was completely done with fighting an endless, unwinnable battle against the world. And if she wasn’t going to win, then the others definitely weren’t going to win either.

She refused to let them win.

Aria vividly remembered standing in that massive, empty temple room. The stone tiles were big, and they were so starkly white that it felt, weirdly enough, kind of pure. Almost like they were magically enhanced to repel dirt. And they also had a slight, ambient glow to them.

She just stood there, exactly in the middle of the room with the artifact clutched tightly in her hand.

The artifact was none other than something that just looked like an oversized pendant or a locket. It had a thick chain, and at the bottom, there was a heavy circular body. It was thick, almost like a circular piece of hardtack in a way. And there was also a distinct bump on the top of it.

Aria just couldn’t exactly tell what the metal was. But it also had some incredibly intricate details and runes, almost like it was flawlessly carved by a god. And the device was surprisingly pretty light in her palm.

When she had turned her head to look at the Hero; the man that had made her life a living hell for the past few months, if not years, she noted that he was strikingly handsome.

He was tall, almost seven feet tall, with huge, dense muscles. But he had no hair at all.

He was completely bald.

He had multiple glowing, runic symbols and tribal drawings tattooed directly onto his skin, which looked, weirdly enough, highly symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing in a way.

She actually liked the design of the tattoos, but she just completely and utterly hated the man underneath them.

He had held two long swords in his hands while also having a massive, heavy sword strapped to his back which looked significantly more like a thick guillotine blade instead of a practical weapon.

Aria had just stared at him from across the glowing white room.

And the exact moment he confidently took one single step forward, she lifted the locket-like artifact up and pointed her glowing finger directly at it.

The Hero’s eyes widened in sheer panic.

”Don’t you dare!” he screamed.

But before he could even finish his sentence, a blindingly bright violet light just shot from her fingertip and pierced the artifact.

At the exact same time, multiple deep, jagged cracks rapidly appeared all over Aria’s own body. But instead of red blood pouring out, it was just pure, bright blue light that violently shot outward from the cracks on her skin.

It was almost like she was shining from the inside out.