[Time]: 2:15 PM
[Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · "Iron Throne" Dueling Club (AKA: High-Risk Mana PvP Zone)
Hathaway carried two takeout bags that looked as exquisite as jewelry boxes, containing the 500 Gold Solar "Starlight Black Tea" and "Void Blueberry Tart."
This was the "Victoria Happy Meal," purchased with clenched teeth and a bleeding wallet, her toll fee to the A1 passing line.
On her inevitable path back to the dorms, she passed a building that looked like jagged obsidian, currently belching thick purple-green smoke: the Dueling Club.
The air was thick with ozone and burnt circuitry, the specific scent of high-concentration mana colliding inside a very short timeframe. Before she even entered, Hathaway felt the space around her vibrating, as if a miniature dimensional storm were raging inside the building.
Driven by some masochistic "I just lost 13-0" PTSD (or perhaps a desire to steal a few moves to update her own meta), Hathaway drifted inside like a ghost.
"Intuition! I said INTUITION! Why are you still routing the signal through your brain?!"
The moment she stepped in, Hathaway saw a senior witch hovering in mid-air, roaring at a junior.
Her fingers snapped.
A dozen [Feeblemind], [Melf’s Acid Arrow], and [Reverse Gravity] spells fired at once, with no "casting process" involved: mana as an extension of will, lashing out like invisible whips, as natural as exhaling.
The freshman was clearly a genius with maxed-out reflexes. Her body performed a physics-defying Z-Axis Blink in mid-air, while her staff spun into a defensive blur:
"[Spell Turning]! [Mirror Image]! Also, Senior, I can feel the mana turbulence 0.1 seconds before you fire! Take this! [Mass Polymorph · Modified]!"
Poof!
The senior turned into a pink sheep in mid-air and slammed into the ground, and before the hooves even touched the floor the transformation shattered.
Biological Rejection.
Her body’s mana circuits were too domineering; they simply refused to accept the "Weakness" definition imposed by the foreign spell. The sheep form peeled away like burnt paper.
Bang!
The senior’s main body emerged from the smoke, blasting the freshman away with a point-blank [Arcane Missiles · Shotgun Mode].
"Too slow! Your Polymorph is potent, but there is a 20-millisecond lag between your intent and the reality!"
The senior flicked her staff, giving a cold, merciless review: "You are still trying to 'control' the magic. In a real duel, that 20ms of conscious thought is enough for me to kill you three times. Don't think. Let your instincts take the wheel."
Hathaway: "..."
This... this is the Dueling Club?
Frame-perfect offense and defense at lethal speed. Everyone in this building was a monster who had min-maxed "Cast Speed" and "Reaction Time" and dumped every remaining point into contempt.
And in the center of this chaos, hovering above the main ring with the highest density of mana turbulence, was a Forcefield Hammock.
Rhode von Ludwig, wearing triple-reinforced lead eye-masks, was sleeping peacefully in an environment that looked like a permanent warzone.
Hathaway stared at the hammock, and a piece of "ghost data" from the original Hathaway popped up like an autocomplete suggestion.
Thirty-three years old, and refusing on principle to adult. Tenured Honorary Advisor to the Dueling Club, a title that in practice meant permanent server-admin privileges and a hammock. The same title parked the Ludwig Family Board's Quarterly Performance Review indefinitely, since she was technically always on campus business.
The Review always ran the same script. The Matriarch would produce "The Wellington Successor," who had taken a PhD in Folklore from Minothnago Academy at twenty-seven, hold her up like a comparison chart, and suggest that Rhode stop playing games and secure a Strategic Merger to improve the family's gene portfolio. Strategic Merger meant marriage.
Rhode's rebuttal had been transcribed verbatim by three separate cousins: "So what if she has higher specs? She digs up dirt in the countryside for a living. Why would I compete with a glorified librarian when I can stay here and smurf on students?"
"Advisor! Advisor, wake up!"
The Club President (a short-haired witch in a skin-tight combat suit, surrounded by seven floating funnel drones) was screaming from below.
"The 'Turtle Mages' from the [Black Forest Alchemy Club] are back! They brought their new invention, 'Truth No. 2'! They say they're here to teach us the 'Art of Firepower'!"
Before the sentence finished, the main gates were blasted off their hinges, and a thick smell of engine oil and preservatives slammed into the room, clashing with the crisp scent of ozone.
A group of witches in white lab coats stained with suspicious potions rushed in. They wore gas masks and had the fanatical eyes of cultists.
Leading them was a short witch riding a monstrous mechanical abomination cobbled together from countless brooms, alchemy boilers, rune circuit boards, and the still-beating heart of a dragon.
She held a complex Magitech Remote Terminal, the screen frantically scrolling through thousands of lines of code.
"Listen up! You apes who only rely on intuition to spam spells!"
The short witch adjusted her goggles, declaring her manifesto: "Mana isn't for wasting! Mana is for CALCULATION!"
She slapped the leaking, screaming machine beneath her:
"Behold! The [Ultimate Alchemy · Chimera Fortress · Mark III (Safety Valves Removed Edition)]!!"
Vrrr—!
As she introduced it, hundreds of complex alchemy arrays lit up on the mechanical beast. Red warning lights flashed madly, and steam erupted from every valve.
"Core powered by a Three-Phase Mana Reactor! Equipped with six hundred High-Pressure Alchemy Blast Flasks! Loaded with an 'Auto-Aim Retaliation Matrix' and an 'Anti-Magic Field Generator'!"
"And..." She wore the blissful smile of a martyr ready to ascend. "...To pursue maximum instant output, we hard-locked all the limiters!"
"As soon as I press this button, this baby releases a mana torrent equivalent to a 9th Circle Forbidden Spell in one second! Even your proudest shields are as thin as wet tissue paper before the Cannon of Truth!!"
Facing this industrial horror weapon, the Dueling Club members wore the exact disdain of a Pro Player watching a Noob queue into ranked.
"Hah? Another clumsy hunk of metal?"
The President's funnel drones spun rapidly as she crossed her arms and sneered. "Is the Alchemy Club brain-damaged? The wind-up animation is way too long!"
"By the time your broken stove pre-heats, my [Disintegrate] could disassemble your turtle shell into spare parts eighteen times over."
"Exactly!" Another witch holding a crystal sword mocked. "You still use a 'Remote Terminal'? You still write code? Do you not use Brainwave Direct Connect? Your latency is high enough to be my grandmother!"
"Sisters!" The President waved her hand. "Show these nerds who only know how to read books what it means to be Speed Kings! Dismantle that scrap heap! I want the core!"
"In your dreams!"
The short leader laughed maniacally and slammed the red button.
"Full Salvo · Torrent of Truth! Login!"
BOOM—!!!
The "Chimera Fortress" let out a soul-tearing roar as six hundred blast flasks ignited at once, spraying a stream of Alchemically Compressed Ether Particles that punched the mech into a Mach 3 charge and packed a visible Hemispherical Anti-Magic Barrier across its front.
"Wha—?!"
The President's face changed. "Scatter! That's Ether Turbulence! All directional spells will be distorted!"
Dozens of curses and rays fired by the Dueling Club members hit the barrier and bounced off like water hitting a rock, deflected, twisted, or reflected straight into the ceiling.
Rumble—
The mech bulldozed through the crowd like a steel beast wrapped in a storm. Aiming was optional; the AOE Mana Radiation alone stunned the witches trying to blink-attack it.
"Hahahaha! Do you see?!" The short leader laughed, her voice amplified by a rune array. "This is called Yield Suppression! This is called Saturation Attack!"
"Screw your technique! Screw your reaction speed! In the face of absolute mana density, your flashy little tricks have zero casting space!!"
The mech, carrying world-ending momentum, charged straight toward the central ring (where Rhode was sleeping).
Hathaway stared, dumbfounded.
So this is the Alchemy Club's "Science." Terrible wind-up, no cancel window, and once the animation commits it deletes the lobby.
Just as the out-of-control, ether-spewing mech was about to vaporize the ring along with Rhode...
Rhode was woken by the ear-splitting screeching. She rolled over and pushed up her eye mask, crimson eyes carrying the specific grievance of an interrupted nap.
"...So noisy."
Rhode yawned and made a casual "come here" gesture.
Yoink.
Both paper bags tore themselves out of Hathaway’s grip and landed in Rhode’s hand.
Hathaway: "!!!"
My 500 Gold Solars! My bribe money!
"Yo, Hathaway. Good kid." Rhode happily took a sip of the priceless tea, not even looking at the incoming steel beast. "Did the Alchemy Club lunatics come to feed again? What is it this time? Anti-Magic Barrier?"
"Advisor! Watch out!" The President shouted while maintaining her shield. "The mana density is too high! It's scrambling the spatial coordinates! You can't Blink!"
"Density my ass."
Rhode sneered, tossing the expensive blueberry tart into her mouth and mumbling through the crumbs: "That thing is just Loud and Messy. What's the use? Too unoptimized."
"Unoptimized?!"
The Alchemy leader was enraged. She manipulated the mech, pushing the mana output to 120%, crashing toward Rhode with a sonic boom that tore the air apart:
"What do you know! This is a Perfect Matrix calculated twenty thousand times! It is a seamless unit that cannot be parsed! You uncultured barbarian, become ruin!!"
It was a Mana Tsunami rising from the depths. Mach 3. Anti-Magic Barrier. Plus an Overloaded Elemental Core. Any spell attempting a direct confrontation would be washed away by this torrent.
Rhode kept chewing the tart, eye mask still shoved up on her forehead, and did not bother to look.
Just as the chaotic mana storm was about to swallow her. 0.01 seconds.
Rhode moved.
She didn't cast a spell. She didn't summon a shield. She didn't even use her massive mana pool to counter-blast.
She extended one finger, the other hand still holding the empty tea cup, and the fingertip lit with a faint red light barely visible against the glare: [Ludwig Style · Curse Deconstruction].
The fingertip came down on the 427th Rune Node in the bottom right corner of the behemoth's Anti-Magic Barrier. Among tens of thousands of complex runes, this was just an inconspicuous connection point responsible for mana recirculation and cooling.
Ding.
A crisp sound, almost inaudible, cut clean through the roar. The next second, a miracle occurred.
The "Chimera Fortress," which had been bouncing high-tier curses off its hide a second earlier, went slack like something had pulled its skeleton out through the exhaust port.
With that node blocked, the high-speed mana circuit picked up a 0.05-second lag. In a Mach 3 overloaded state, a 0.05-second lag was a catastrophe.
Zzzzt—
The mana turbulence began to backflow.
The Fire Elemental Lord noticed the circuit blockage and began to expand in rage.
The perfect defensive matrix, on the strength of one tiny blood clot, went into a system-wide chain reaction.
Click-clack-click-clack—
The massive machine began to self-disassemble in mid-air. Parts flew off like rain.
KABOOM!!!!
A grand, multi-colored Great Explosion filled with alchemical bad taste bloomed in mid-air.
The short leader was blasted into the sky, laughing maniacally as she flew:
"Hahahaha! Beautiful! It's so beautiful! This explosion color! It's the Void Purple I've never seen before! I know! The phase parameter on the cooling valve was wrong! Next time I'll adjust it to 37.5 degrees!!"
Splat.
She hit the ground and became a twitching pile of charcoal, regenerating at its leisure.
The smoke cleared. Rhode was still lying in the hammock, not a single drop of tea spilled.
"...Did you see that, Hathaway?"
Rhode licked the frosting off her finger, pointing at the pile of scrap metal below.
"So-called 'Witch Science' is just a group of maniacs trying to use the most complex formulas to calculate uncontrollable chaos. They chase 'Massive Compute Power'. They think more runes mean more power, thicker matrices mean more stability."
"But we Ludwigs chase 'Absolute Intuition'."
Rhode pulled her eye mask back down, delivering the final summary:
"Any complex spell model has Nodes. As long as your eyes can see that node, and your finger can slip into that crack... Even a Forbidden Spell is nothing more than a balloon that will pop with a gentle poke."
The crowd cheered. The Dueling Club members waved their staffs excitedly:
"Advisor is OP!! That is the peak of 'Debuffing'!!"
"I told you! Stacking raw stats is useless! It's all about the mechanics!"
"Quick, quick! Before that Fire Elemental dissipates, seal it! We're having a barbecue tonight!"
Hathaway stood frozen, looking at the mess.
Looking at the Alchemists who, despite being covered in soot and ash, were still arguing about whether "that deconstruction technique utilized the wave-particle duality of mana."
Looking at the Duelist maniacs rushing to loot the alchemy core.
She understood.
There are no normal people in this world.
Alchemists are "Data Maniacs." Duelists are "Mechanics Maniacs."
And I... I am the unlucky soul trying to carve a bloody path between the maniacs.
And...
Hathaway looked at the empty takeout bag in Rhode's hand.
"...Cousin Rhode." Her voice came out as a wail. "I bought that for Victoria!!! That was my tuition fee!!!"
"You ate my 500 Solars!! You just bricked my save file!!"
If Victoria does not see the afternoon tea...
Hathaway remembered the ultimatum, "I do not drink dishwater. And I do not teach students who drink dishwater," and somewhere in the middle distance the expulsion notice waved at her.