The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 665: The Elven Test (1)

"All right," she said. "Lead on, maestro. Let's see what encore the demons left us."

Draven's answer was a quiet chuckle—quick, sharp, gone almost before she confirmed she'd heard it. He nodded once, pivoted toward the grove's unexplored heart, and walked, boots whispering over moss that seemed suddenly eager to bear his weight.

Above them, the towering branches let a single shaft of moonlight spear down, illuminating the path ahead like a beckoning ribbon.

And behind, at the base of the purged tree, the first healthy leaf in decades unfurled, green and fragile, reaching for an unstained sky.

"I found you," Draven repeated under his breath—not to the tree, not to the swords, but to something deeper, farther, waiting in the dark.

A promise laid out like a blade.

One sword twisted mid‑air, catching the faint glow of the rune‑lit stairwell and bending it across its polished length. For a breath it hovered—perfectly level, almost curious—then lashed forward with predatory intent.

Steel met nothing… and nothing broke.

A brittle, crystalline scream rippled through the passage. It sounded like a wineglass fracturing inside a deeper, thicker glass bell—layers of resonance shattering at once. Blue sparks chased themselves across unseen seams, and the world where the tip had darted buckled inward. A sheet of false space peeled away in glittering scales, collapsing into itself with a sigh that smelled of ozone and old books.

Illusion gave up its secret.

Dust and half‑coherent runes exploded outward, drifting like dying fireflies. Where moments before there had been only gloom, a staircase spiraled into view—narrow steps slathered in moss, their edges slick with centuries of condensation. Faint glimmers of emerald lichen pulsed along the hand‑carved risers, as though trying to guide any would‑be pilgrim downward.

Draven didn't hesitate. He flicked two fingers; the blade snapped back beside its twin and both glided to heel behind his shoulders like disciplined dogs. Then he stepped into the new‑born aperture as though he had always known it was there.

"Follow me," he said, voice carrying the weight of a commandant and the calm of someone stepping onto a porch.

Sylara's first instinct was to argue—ask if Laethiel would be safe, demand a strategy briefing, maybe curse about 'fun parts'—but the whirlwind of fractured mana still twitched in the air, and she remembered how easily it could claw open her thoughts. She settled for a tight nod. One glance back confirmed that the boy's breathing remained steady, silver aura pulsing like a firefly trapped in glass. Vyrik whined once, nose nudging her calf, impatient for her decision.

"All right, fang‑face," she whispered, brushing his feathery mane. "Guard the kid." She unhooked a luminous whistle from her belt—a two‑note recall charm. If anything went wrong topside, her chimera would relay. Vyrik huffed, circling Laethiel twice before lying across his feet like a vigilant stone gargoyle.

Sylara pivoted, drew a dagger for comfort, and plunged after Draven.

The first steps slapped wet beneath her boots. Cold seeped up her soles, chased into her bones. The further she descended, the deeper the smell changed: wet bark, then mineral chill, then a faint metallic perfume—like breathing in half‑cooled sword steel. Shadows pressed in, but faint runic dashes glowed at irregular intervals along the curve of the inner wall. Each symbol flared brighter when Draven passed, dimmed a little for her, and faded to a memory the instant she cleared it.

"Heavy filtration wards," Draven observed, half to himself. His voice bounced strangely in the confined coil, emerging slightly behind his own shoulders. "Something up top wanted to hide scent signatures. Shame. Sloppy work on the illusion seal, though."

"Sloppy?" Sylara muttered. "I couldn't see squat."

"That's because you're looking," he said, as if that explained everything, but he added after a beat, "Illusions always echo around boundaries—think ripples hitting a shoreline. Train your ears, not your eyes."

A dozen more steps slipped by. The walls here bore shallow claw marks—some no larger than bird scratches, others deep enough to fit her thumb. Sylara traced a groove with her dagger tip. The stone was flinty, impenetrable to ordinary steel. Whatever had raked it wasn't ordinary.

Great.

She focused on her breathing the way her handler had drilled during beast‑taming trials: in through the nose, quick three‑count; hold; out through parted lips. Let the heart settle. Let instincts sharpen. She felt rather than saw the passage widen.

The stairs spilled into an echoing dome.

Cold air spooled across her skin—cooler, thinner. It felt like mountain air hauled underground, strained of warmth. Her first full step onto the floor made water bead under her boot‑tread, as though even friction was insufficient to warm the stone.

Overhead, the ceiling vanished beyond sight: a cathedral void painted in absolute black. Yet flecks of luminescence hung midair like stars, reflecting off spiral glyphs incised into every slab of the circular wall. The sigils lit sequentially, one after the next, chasing each other in an endless rotation—like a clock trying to remember time.

The sunken dais yawned at the chamber's center: broad, three tiers deep, carved from milky quartz shot through with gold veins. And standing sentinel round its rim—

Three golems.

Colossi of mismatched matter: one shoulders hewn of ruddy granite, torso wrapped in bark like iron‑hard muscles; another pieced of bleached bone plates welded to grizzled log‑limbs; the tallest carved from the stump of an ancient world‑tree, its core exposed stone veins pulsing faint aquamarine. They faced outward, eyes dark fissures, motionless yet oppressive, as though the very air bowed around them in deference.

Draven halted a stride before the dais. His arms folded behind his back with precise calm, the blades taking up station to either side of his silhouette, tips canted slightly inward—two narrow guardians.

"This is the fun part," he murmured, voice thwarted but amused, as if the words tasted like an old inside joke.

Sylara shot him a look that could have soured cream. "Define 'fun'."

His shoulders hitched—half a shrug. "This grove's heart is a dungeon. The Prime used to call it a gate key—completing the trial here binds the next sequence of the arc. Without it, the entire storyline bottlenecks."

Storyline. He used the word so casually, as if their breathing, bleeding, perilous reality were a page he could flip. She wanted to press him, but stone groaned.

Before the echo of her exasperation could fade, the golems awoke.

Granite shoulders rolled forward, dislodging decades of dusty spores. Joint seams unlatched with a hollow clack, each motion sending quivers along the runes inlaid down their limbs. Eyes—once empty hollows—ignited: molten amber, cold sapphire, ghost‑white. Runes along the chamber walls flared brighter, as if excited to witness violence.

From between their plated ankles loped constructs shaped like wolves—frames of knotted branches lashed together by thin scrolls of luminous script. They skidded across the marble dais, claws sparking bright; eyes twin pinpoints of emerald fire. Bark teeth gnashed. Ten, no—twelve of them encircled the floor, each exhaling wisps of cold rune‑mist.

Draven glanced over his shoulder, expression lazily curious—like someone checking weather before a stroll. "Try not to destroy them," he instructed. "Let them recover."

Sylara's jaw dropped. "Are you insane? They're trying to crush us!"

He didn't answer.

Because he was already moving.

His silence was a drawn bow; the release came as a flourish of impossible grace. Both blades shot forward—one high, one low—curving like silver comets. He pivoted at the edge of the dais, coat flaring, and time around him hiccuped. A wolf‑construct lunged—snout parted to show glyph‑etched fangs—and met the flat of the first sword mid‑air. The impact rang like a struck tuning fork. Runic lines across its wooden ribs flickered; the beast tumbled off course, skidding on its side.

The second blade sailed beneath, clipping a rune‑trap the golem had projected onto the floor. The sigil sputtered out with a hiss, its energy severed before it could bloom into a binding circle.

Sylara forced her feet to move. Instinct told her to stay mobile. She twirled her daggers once—silver arcs that steadied her mind—and angled toward the nearest golem's shadow. Her footsteps echoed between pulsebeats.

A kinetic shockwave boomed across the chamber—the tallest golem had hammered a stone fist into the air, discharging a concussive burst. The ripple bulged outward, shattering loose stones. Sylara dropped into a slide, feeling pressure ruffle her braid as the wave roared overhead. She popped up behind the giant's tree‑bark calf and slashed a neat X near a knot. Wood fibers split, not deep, but enough to sap leverage. With a grunt, she rolled aside as the colossus tilted, recalibrating its stance.

"Not lethal!" Draven's reminder whipped across the space like a thrown pebble—stern, precise, but still leaving room for improvisation.

"Working on it!" she shot back.

One of the rune‑wolves darted at her flank, legs moving like sprung crossbows. Sylara pivoted, meeting it with the flat of her blade. Sparks skittered where metal kissed glowing bark. She used the rebound to flip backward; the creature's momentum sent it under her arc. While inverted she snapped a smoke pellet to the marble. It exploded in lilac haze, swallowing the wolf's sensory glyphs. Disoriented, it spun, trailing rune‑spores.

Another wolf leapt. This time Vyrik intercepted, feathers bristling. The chimera clawed the construct mid‑air, wings beating a cyclone of dust. Wood cracked but did not splinter; Vyrik twisted, tossing the wolf into a pillar where it stuck like a magnet to iron, held in place by the runic field humming along his talons.

The bone‑armored golem stamped forward, ground quaking under its weight. Runes along its spine ignited deep crimson. Its forearm cracked open, revealing rows of embedded shinbones carved into arrowheads, now primed to fire. Sylara's heart stuttered. She braced, daggers raised.

Then Draven was there. Or rather, his left blade was—flashing in a tight spiral, carving sigils mid‑air that knitted into a translucent hexagonal shield just as the bone shards launched. The projectiles struck the barrier and dissolved into white dust, unable to maintain form inside the counter‑frequency field.

Draven's right sword banked around him, smashing the rune projector on the golem's forearm with a single precise tap. The colossal limb jerked, sparks of amber mana showering down like dying fireflies.

Sylara used the distraction. She sprinted, planted a foot on the golem's shin, spring‑boarded up to its hip, and jammed a dagger into a seam where bark met bleached bone. She didn't aim for structural failure; she aimed for the rune cluster powering its kinetic bursts. Metal met stone; sigils sputtered. The golem's next attempt to punch stalled mid‑motion, arm locking at the elbow as though unsure which magic to obey.

She vaulted off, landing in a crouch. "That'll slow you!"

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Across the dais, Draven dipped under a swirling illusion cast by the granite golem. For a second the chamber filled with mirror images—hall of reflection throwing duplicates of the same threat. Draven flicked two fingers; his blades split formation, each carving a lazy S‑curve through separate phantoms. Every copy burst into motes, revealing the original's rune anchor. He raked a toe across the anchor, severing it from the projection spectrum. The illusion shattered like smoke undone by wind.

Sylara saw him turn, measuring everything: her breath rate, the wolves' recovery arcs, the slowed golem's stance, the granite giant's cooldown interval. He could probably chart it on parchment if given five seconds and a quill.

She huffed. "Show‑off!"

He tilted his head minutely—a concession that, yes, it was showy, but also necessary.

The broad dais pulsed. The wolves regrouped, their glyph eyes brightening. The colossi flexed, resetting joints, adapting strategies the same way living warriors would.

And all the while Draven remained impossibly calm, as though the golems were pupils he'd invited to spar.

"Try not to destroy them," he'd said. Let them recover.

Sylara realized he meant it literally—this was a stress test, not a slaughter. The grove wanted its guardians tempered, not shattered. The trial demanded restraint.

Fine.

She inhaled, daggers spinning in her grip, feet finding the old rhythm of the arena where she'd trained chimeras—dance around, strike joints, disrupt spells, never break the toy.

Vyrik bounded to her flank, gaze burning emerald. Together they moved, weaving through construct jaws and ponderous fists. Where bark talons slashed, she parried flats. Where rune blasts flashed, she lunged into blind spots, tracing quicksilver lines just deep enough to disrupt.

Sweat slid down her spine. Every heartbeat sounded louder in her ears—part fear, part thrill. Somewhere in the chaos she laughed, short and raw. Maybe Draven's definition of fun wasn't so terrible after all.

But she kept that admission to herself.

Because he was already moving. Because the blades were already carving through shadows. Because precision felt like grace under his command.

And because when she shouted "I need a gap!" he pivoted without hesitation, sent one sword darting overhead to intercept a lunging wolf, then angled the second to slash a kinetic plume away from her path. For two seconds the dais cleared like curtains drawn, and she dove through, planting a sigil jammer against the tallest golem's ankle.

Stone cracked, runes fizzled, and the giant stilled—deactivated but undestroyed.

All five senses rang with adrenaline. She risked a quick grin.