[Time]: 1:10 PM
[Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · Golden Bough Apartments · Room 302
Hathaway stood before the heavy black walnut door on the first floor, clutching a napkin stained with grease from a dragon steak: Heidi’s booklist.
Crisis Imminent.
She took a deep breath, smoothing her clothes, trying to look less like a hooligan who had just assaulted her roommate with extra-spicy chili powder and more like a scholar thirsting for knowledge.
Knock, knock, knock.
The sound echoed down the silent hallway. No response.
However, Hathaway could feel the ambient temperature behind the door drop by five degrees.
"Victoria?" Hathaway pressed her face to the crack of the door. "It’s me. I come bearing tribute."
Still no response.
The carpet under her feet turned sticky. Cold air came through the door crack, and with it a black mist that smelled of formalin and ancient graves, while the magic lamps down the hallway flickered and hissed like an invisible hand was choking the light particles one by one.
Somewhere behind that door, a high-tier Instant Death spell was finishing its charge. Hathaway gulped.
"Don't cast yet! I know you're charging a spell! Put the mana down! Let's talk! About the A1! About Truth!"
Click.
The door opened the way a beast unhinges its jaw, on a sliver of pitch-black darkness just wide enough to see nothing through. Victoria Wellington stood in the shadows.
She had changed into a deep purple silk dressing gown, buttoned strictly to the collarbone. Her silver hair was loose and messy, and one hand still held an open, heavy, ancient tome with a finger marking her place.
Her blue eyes were unfocused, yet Hathaway could clearly feel a killing intent that screamed: "Give me a valid reason, or I will turn you into a specimen for my jar collection."
"Reason." Victoria’s voice was cold enough to freeze nitrogen. "One hour ago, on the stairs, who was it that swore she would be 'quiet' and 'non-intrusive'? It has barely been sixty minutes and you are already scratching at my door? Did the Ludwig bloodline get diluted with house-wrecking Goblins, or are you people just genetically allergic to the concept of 'Silence'?"
Hathaway’s mouth twitched.
Toxic... The Young Miss’s verbal DPS is increasing.
"Ahem." Hathaway cleared her throat and delivered her prepared line. "Miss Victoria, I am here to offer you a trade you cannot refuse."
"A trade?" Victoria sneered, her disdain practically dripping onto the floor. "What? You want to trade your leftover chili powder for my forgiveness? Or perhaps you want to lend me that empty cavern you call a brain so I can research 'Primitive Thought Patterns'?"
She reached out to slam the door.
"Not interested. Get lost."
"Wait!"
Hathaway jammed her foot in the door, letting 42,000 M-Units of reinforced body absorb the consequences, and shoved the napkin under Victoria’s nose.
"Look at this! Heidi gave it to me!"
Victoria was already preparing a [Repulsion Aura] to yeet this scoundrel down the hall. But when that name hit her ears, she froze.
"...Heidi?" Victoria repeated the name, her tone laced with suspicion.
"A barbarian who only knows how to throw chili powder met Lady Heidi?"
Whatever her mouth was doing, Victoria’s hands had already moved, pinching the napkin between two fingertips and rubbing at it, reading the data through skin because her eyes were useless at this range.
"This residual mana signature... it really is the 10th Seat’s work. That cool, moonlight-like fluctuation can't be forged."
Victoria’s expression shifted.
"Hyper-Dimensional Mana Constructs... Non-Linear Mana Collapse: A Conception of the Fourth Dimension... Deadlock Analysis in Chaos Theory regarding Wish Spell Paradoxes..."
Victoria’s head snapped up, finally focusing properly on Hathaway’s face.
"These are [S-Class Restricted] titles from the Library's Forbidden Section!" She took a sharp breath. "These books contain extremely dangerous cognitive paradoxes. Usually, only elites with A3 Exam Qualifications, backed by the joint guarantee of two Tenured Professors and a two-week political background check, can even apply to view them!"
"But this napkin..." Victoria’s fingers trembled. "It bears Lady Heidi’s Highest Authority Seal. This means you can bypass all bureaucracy and check out forbidden books that would boil the brains of low-tier witches! Furthermore..."
Victoria’s voice dropped to a whisper. "This level of clearance usually grants access to the 'Author’s Annotated Editions'. Heidi is one of the foundational architects of these theories. If I could see her handwritten notes..."
"She gave this to you?" Victoria said. "She gave Unrestricted Academic Privilege to... you?!"
"Yes." Hathaway puffed out her chest, capitalizing on the misunderstanding. "Lady Heidi appreciates my... uh, potential. She told me to study hard and pass the A3 ASAP."
Victoria fell silent, looking at Hathaway the way one looks at a monkey holding the nuclear launch codes.
Three seconds later, Victoria took a deep breath and released the door handle.
"Enter."
She turned into the dark living room, tone still haughty, carrying a hint of reluctant compromise. "Let's be clear. I am not helping you. I am doing this for the Truth. Letting precious tomes with Lady Heidi’s annotations rot in the hands of someone like you is blasphemy against knowledge itself."
Hathaway scurried in after her.
Plan: success. Cost: my dignity, already a depreciating asset.
Victoria walked to her desk, which was buried under star charts and parchment, and stayed on her feet with her back to Hathaway, voice cold.
"Speak. What do you want in exchange for this access? Do you want me to do your homework? Or help you cheat?"
"No," Hathaway said sincerely. "I want you to tutor me to pass the A1."
Victoria turned around, brows furrowed. "That is it? You are holding a Grand Witch’s Guarantor Pass, and you want to trade it for... remedial literacy classes?"
"Yes." Hathaway nodded. "Because I only have 30 days. If I fail, I get expelled."
"Heh." Victoria let out a cold laugh. "If it is merely literacy, that should be simple. Where is your textbook?"
Hathaway scrambled to her bag and pulled out a heavy object.
"Right here!"
Victoria looked at the object in Hathaway's hands. It was indeed A1 International Witch Standards: The Ruthless History, a brick of a book totaling 2,750 pages.
It was also wrapped in a layer of pristine, reflective magical plastic, seal unbroken, price tag still vibrant, so new it was blinding.
Victoria looked at the plastic-wrapped brick, then at Hathaway, and for the first time her unfocused eyes went wide with the expression of a woman witnessing a Dragon that was allergic to Gold.
"...You have not even opened it?" Victoria’s voice trembled, as if she had just swallowed a fly. "This is the A1 Textbook! It is the bedtime story every witch hears while still in the egg! You are 18 years old, and you've never even torn the plastic wrap?!"
Hathaway blushed, hugging the mint-condition book, pulling out the excuse she had prepared (which was technically the original Hathaway's truth).
"Well... you know. I used to only have 8,200 M-Units. I was just a useless... cough, I mean, I planned to invoke Article 72 of the Witch Code: 'Deferred Assessment Rights'. My plan was to... stall until I was 20 to take it, so I never opened it..."
"..."
Victoria massaged her temples, feeling a migraine coming on.
Deferred until 20.
That was the "Walk of Shame" clause reserved for witches with intellectual disabilities or severe psychological trauma. A Ludwig intended to use that? That was a Monument to Sloth with a commemorative plaque.
"Has the Ludwig family fallen this low?" Victoria gritted her teeth. "You are not here for tutoring. You are here for Early Childhood Development!"
She pointed a trembling finger at the table.
"Unwrap it. Now."
Hathaway scrambled to tear off the plastic. Riiip.
The dust of factory-fresh paper wafted into the air.
"You may be trash, but you are still a Witch," Victoria commanded. "Eidetic Memory is factory-installed hardware for our race, even for the weakest among us. It does not require mana; it requires you to have a brain. Now, open your damn optic nerves and scan this pile of waste paper into your cerebral cortex."
Hathaway looked at the book, which was thicker than her face. She gulped. "...All of it?"
"All of it. You have five minutes." Victoria picked up her teacup and took a graceful sip, the saucer rattling under it. "If the raw data is not in your head by then, I am throwing you out. I do not teach morons too lazy to use their basic instincts, Heidi's pass or otherwise."
Hathaway took a deep breath.
Let's do this. Roasted this hard, I either show competence or the carry disconnects, and I cannot afford to re-queue.
She opened the book.
Flip, flip, flip—
Pages turned fast enough to generate a breeze, and dense text flooded into her brain like a data stream.
The logic connecting the words stayed opaque, and that was fine. Victoria wanted "Data Entry," and Hathaway could deliver.
4 minutes and 30 seconds.
"Done." Hathaway closed the book, her brain feeling swollen, like someone had stuffed a compressed zip file inside her skull.
"Good." Victoria set down her cup. "Test begins."
Victoria skipped the dates entirely, pointed to page 1,900, and threw out a Tactical Analysis Question:
"During the Ovelia War, there was a battle known as the 'Textbook Example of Tactical Suicide': the 'Battle of Fortress Narcissus'. The attackers amassed an army of 350,000 and used a Legendary Spell to shatter Lady Josephine’s pride and joy, the 'Crystal Flower Wall'. The book says this was the peak of Josephine’s command art, wiping out the enemy with inferior numbers."
Victoria’s distant eyes stared at Hathaway, cold and sharp despite the blur.
"Now, using Arcane Logic, tell me: Why, when the physical defense line (The Crystal Wall) was completely shattered, is the attacker's charge still classified by tactical historians as 'taking a shower in the enemy's portal'?"
Hathaway opened her mouth confidently. Her internal database pulled up the text instantly.
"Uh... because the sea of flowers was poisonous?" Hathaway tried to recite the book. "The text says Lady Josephine used a confusion formation within the shattered crystal ruins to split the enemy forces and defeat them one by one..."
"Wrong." Victoria cut her off coldly. "That is a fairy tale written for the nouveau riche in Casendiara who only know how to arrange flowers. 'Confusion formation' is a clumsy metaphor for spatial technology."
Hathaway stalled. "Huh?"
"This is the difference between Storage and Processor." Victoria stood up, walked behind Hathaway, and tapped her temple lightly, as if clicking on a lagging CPU. "You only saw 'Shattered Crystals' and 'Pretty Flowers'. That is mortal visual logic. In a Witch's war, physical entities are meaningless."
Victoria’s finger traced a complex 3D grid in the air, simulating the trajectory of pollen.
"The core defense of Fortress Narcissus was the 'Mana Pollen' pervading the air, not that expensive, fragile glass wall. Every single grain of pollen was a micro Spatial Warp Beacon. That idiot commander spent the payload of a Legendary Spell on breaking glass, on physical destruction, and left the botanical medium intact."
"For Lady Josephine, this was a gift-wrapped present."
Victoria’s voice became low and oppressive.
"As long as the pollen existed, Casendiara's redeployment latency was zero. Josephine used those pollen beacons to teleport her rear guard of 200,000 main force troops directly into the gaps of the enemy formation within 3 seconds."
"That was not 'falling into a confusion array'." Victoria sneered, her eyes full of contempt for low-level tactics. "That was 'sticking your face directly into someone else's warp gate'."
"350,000 elites (pure Witches, not counting the 100 million servant-race cannon fodder no one cares about) were turned into live targets and shredded by point-blank fire simply because the commander failed to cut the spatial connection."
Hathaway listened, dumbfounded.
So this is the perspective of a straight-A student. Three hundred and fifty thousand dead, and she is reviewing it like a patch note.
Somewhere in the back of her skull the forum post finally clicked: "The A1 tests Logic Reconstruction." History questions were never about history. They were testing whether you could read the backend code of magical warfare.
"The victory of this battle directly led to the infinite scaling of the war's intensity." Victoria closed the book, her tone turning solemn. "Because Chief Ovelia realized that ordinary commanders and legions could not breach Josephine's defense. So, she decided to log in personally."
She turned, looking at the yellowed map of the continent on the shelf, tracing the border of Casendiara.
"After that, Lady Josephine repelled (or rather, stalled) Chief Ovelia six times front-on at the Sunset Corridor. The book just says 'resisted tenaciously.' But as a Witch, you should understand the weight behind those words."
She swung back around, posing a soul-searching question:
"How do you think Josephine survived against that 'Monster'? By herself?"
Hathaway hesitated. "...Willpower?"
"No. She pinged for backup." Victoria held up three fingers, her voice carrying a reverence for supreme power. "To stop Ovelia, Josephine had to use herself as the tank, and she invited two helpers capable of shaking the world."
"Don Gil Ross (Former Lord of Casendiara, former 4th Seat)."
"And Ash (Current Border Guardian & 3rd Seat)."
Hathaway sucked in a cold breath.
All High Seats?!
That is an All-Star Raid Team. That is the entire server leaderboard queuing together for one fight.
"You have to understand, a team of Witches is never just 1+1=2," Victoria’s voice was low. "Three Grand Witches at their peak means infinite-spam Legendary Forbidden Spells, seamless Domain Expansions, and perfectly complementary Rule Suppression. Theoretically, this trio could flatten half the Abyss."
"But even in this world-ending 3v1 scenario..." Victoria paused, delivering the most terrifying line. "...They only managed to 'barely not die' in front of Ovelia. Every encounter was a pyrrhic victory involving heavy injuries."
Hathaway sat frozen on the stool while her brain tried to process the combat data and returned a glaring [ERROR].
Two hours ago Heidi had described the same woman capping herself at 60,000 M-Units and dismantling Lin with syntax alone. Now Victoria was describing her going 1v3 against the server's top three ranked players and very nearly deleting all of them.
Hathaway felt a phantom pain in her gamer soul.
This isn't a Raid Boss.
A Raid Boss has mechanics. A Raid Boss has phases. A Raid Boss is designed to be beaten if you have the right gear.
But this?
If you try to outsmart her, she out-calculates you with perfect syntax. If you try to zergrush her with numbers, she stat-checks you with a sheer, cliff-like mana lead that towers over even the Second Seat.
This isn't a fight. Hathaway looked at the map, visualizing that despair. This is the Game Master (GM) logging in to beat up the players.
"So..." Hathaway's voice was dry, "Basically, the Third Seat, the Fourth Seat, and the Fifth Seat teamed up... and they were just... content?"
"Content describes it perfectly," Victoria nodded grimly. "To survive an encounter with the Chief is a badge of honor in itself."
Hathaway swallowed hard. The name "Ovelia" had stopped being a rank and become a ceiling, the hard-coded limit of this world's reality, an entity that had refused every balance patch ever proposed.
"But here comes the irony." Victoria’s tone shifted from awe of power to dark historical humor. "After the sixth battle, Ovelia lost patience. She pinged for backup too. She called in [The Black Emperor] Famia Schüder, the current 2nd Seat."
"The balance collapsed. Because Famia Schüder brought the Abyss itself instead of an army. Lady Josephine was finally exhausted and captured."
Victoria scoffed, her eyes full of mockery for that era.
"Josephine thought her sacrifice would awaken the people's bloodlust. She thought there would at least be urban warfare. The result? Less than half an hour after news of Josephine's capture reached the capital..."
"The Capital of Casendiara, which she fought to the death to protect, didn't cast a single spell. The councilors couldn't wait to open the gates and hand Ovelia their surrender papers."
"Lady Josephine broke her back holding the front line, summoning half the Witch World's top DPS to help. She turns around, and her base is gone, sold out by her own family."
Victoria took in whatever Hathaway's face was doing, and summarized:
"That is why Lady Josephine suffered a severe nervous breakdown after the war. It is not the Monster-class opponents you need to fear. It is the pig-brained teammates."
"Alright, history class dismissed."
Victoria sat back in her chair, her expression returning to indifference.
"What you need to learn is the Combat Logic and Human Irony hidden behind history, not merely the tactics. If you cannot see through that, you will not score a single point on the A1 Political Bonus Section."
She snapped her fingers.
"Now, pay the tuition."
Hathaway blinked. "Huh? Tuition? Wasn't the Heidi permission..."
"That permission was merely the Ticket." Victoria lifted her chin, smoothing her expensive silk robe. "The Wellington family does not lack money. I lack Mental Damage Compensation."
"Tutoring a Ludwig from zero is a massive trauma to my psyche. I require the 'Starlight Black Tea' and the 'Void Blueberry Tart' to maintain my sanity, and I am particular about the provenance."
She pointed to the door, naming a brand that made Hathaway’s heart skip a beat.
"I want the Afternoon Tea Set from L’Étoile. Go buy it. Now."
Hathaway’s face turned green.
L’Étoile. She had seen that name in the guides: the most expensive dessert shop in the White City, where an afternoon tea set opened at 500 Gold Solars. Her entire liquid capital was sitting at exactly 30,240, which made one snack a 1/60th slice of everything she owned.
"Um... Miss Victoria," Hathaway tried to bargain. "The school cafeteria's black tea is actually quite nice..."
"Then get out." Victoria pointed at the door. "I do not drink dishwater. And I do not teach students who drink dishwater."
Hathaway gritted her teeth, looking at Victoria's "non-negotiable" expression, then thought about her expulsion notice which was ticking like a time bomb.
Fine! You gotta spend money to make money (or survive)!
"Fine! I'll buy it!"
Hathaway clutched her chest (where her heart ached for her wallet) and pulled out her debit card. "Starlight Black Tea, right! Blueberry Tart, right! As long as you teach me, I... I'll treat you until you're sick of it!"
The corners of Victoria's mouth quirked up, the smile reserved for watching a sucker pay the bill.
"Good. That distinct temperament of 'starving in a silk robe'... strictly speaking, it does fit the Ludwig family style."