[Time]: 3:00 PM
[Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · Dormitory [Golden Bough] · Room 302
The hallway was bathed in blindingly bright sunshine. Outside the stained-glass windows, the cicadas of late summer chirped with annoying vitality. It was the noisy, chaotic, vibrant soundtrack of the living world.
Hathaway stood at the door of Room 302, her hand hovering over the brass handle. On the floor plan, this was a dormitory. Everything else about it said Mausoleum.
The handle itself was sculpted into the shape of a skeletal finger, cold enough to freeze moisture from the air, leaving a layer of white frost on the dark wood.
"Hoo..."
Hathaway took a deep breath and set her mind the way she used to set it before a raid boss: mana topped up, nerve located, exit route known. Two out of three, then. Her fingers touched the bone-chilling brass.
Creeeeak—
The heavy black walnut door groaned like a coffin lid being pushed open after a century of silence.
The moment Hathaway crossed the threshold, the world Died. The sunlight behind her stopped at the doorframe and was eaten, and the room closed over her, heavy and absolute.
The curtains were Holheim silk, drawn tight, enchanted with the Wellington family art called [Silent Black]: a fabric that swallowed photons, sound, heat, and color with equal appetite. Behind her the cicadas of late summer cut off mid-shriek, as if someone had unplugged the season.
The air pressure dropped. A damp, gloomy chill, a mix of old parchment, dried rosemary, and high-concentration mana residue, seeped into her bones, making her joints ache.
"...Victoria?" Hathaway called out tentatively.
Her voice sounded strange, flat, dampened, as if she were speaking underwater. The darkness ate the vibrations before they could echo.
No answer. Only a rhythmic sound out of the depths of the darkness.
Swish... Swish...
It was the sound of pages turning. Fast. Too fast for human hands.
Hathaway swallowed hard and strained her eyes, forcing her pupils wide, parsing shapes out of the abyss until the darkness gave up its master.
In the center of the room, where the "living room" should have been, dozens of ghostly blue specks of light floated.
Books.
Hundreds of hardcover spellbooks were defying gravity, suspended in mid-air. They rotated and intersected in complex celestial trajectories, like a miniature galaxy made of knowledge.
And in the center of this "Universe of Paper," sat the Conductor.
Victoria Wellington was sunk deep into a high-backed Gothic iron chair.
Through the dim, ghostly blue light of the floating books, Hathaway could barely make out the embroidery on the chair's velvet headrest. It was silver thread, glistening coldly in the dark.
She only saw a fragment: a twisted silver thorn piercing a shattered lens. But that fragment was the key that unlocked a rusted door in her mind.
Back at the Entrance Duel, when she first saw this crest, she had merely recognized the shape. But now, in this damp, sunless crypt, the Meaning behind the symbol flooded her brain like black ink, and the complete image settled onto her retina: a family crest that doubled as a signed confession.
She "saw" the Inverted Cello, a silent tribute to Holheim's obsession with the music of the dead.
She "saw" the Shattered Monocle in the center. The memory clarified the gruesome detail: the lens wasn't cracked from the outside; it was exploded from within. There was no glass debris. Instead, a black, tar-like shadow oozed from the cracks, dripping down the silver threads.
To an outsider, this was mysterious and gothic.
But to the Ludwig DNA in Hathaway’s veins, this was simply... Gross.
It was the feeling of a sun-loving lion stepping into a damp cave full of bats. It was the clash of "Aesthetics."
The Ghost Data sneered in Hathaway's mind, practically screaming:
Look at them. Hiding in the dark like mushrooms.
They shatter their own glasses because they are too weak to handle the 'Glare' of reality.
They call it 'Elegant Mystery.' We call it 'Being a Creepy Stalker'.
Where is the Light? Where is the Passion? Turn on the damn lights!
Hathaway felt a phantom itch in her eyes.
If she were a "True Ludwig," her red photophores would have auto-activated by now, blasting Twin 150-Lumen Beams into this darkness, tearing apart Victoria's carefully crafted atmosphere just to assert dominance.
(“Turn off your high-beams!” “I am admiring the embroidery! Is it illegal to look?!”)
Hathaway suppressed the biological urge to glow. She stood there, blinking her dull, non-luminescent red eyes, and rolled them internally.
Shut up, ancestors, she thought, silencing the Ghost Data. You guys are the ones with the problem.
From a Game Designer's perspective, the "Ludwig Eyes" were a Design Flaw. Who in their right mind evolves bioluminescence in their corneas? Sure, the Ludwigs gaslit the entire world into believing it was "Style" and "Intimidation." But Hathaway knew the truth: It was just Light Pollution.
If you need a light, buy a flashlight for 5 Solars, Hathaway scoffed internally. Don't evolve a mutation that ruins your sleep schedule. My "Defect," my inability to glow, isn't a bug. It's a patch. I'm the only normal person in this asylum.
She focused on the person sitting below that "disgusting" crest.
Victoria worked in the dark. For a Wellington, normal light was just noise.
Illuminated only by the faint, ghostly blue aura of the spellbooks, she looked eerily beautiful. Her skin was pale to the point of transparency, like polished marble. Her silver hair cascaded down like a waterfall of moonlight.
She was reading without touching anything. Only her left index finger moved, raised in the air and rhythmic, conducting a silent symphony: with every flick a book opened, pages fluttering like bird wings, and the knowledge inside poured into her.
The finger stopped. The symphony halted mid-bar, and the hundreds of floating books froze where they hung, every cover turning toward Hathaway at once.
Victoria raised her head.
Those deep blue eyes locked onto Hathaway: beautiful, vast, and completely unfocused, staring through her at a world running parallel to this one. To that physical vision, Hathaway was a fuzzy pink-and-silver blob.
But Hathaway felt no safety in that blur. Because while Victoria's retinas saw a blob, her [Mystic Eyes] saw Everything.
Hummmm—
A low frequency vibration started in Hathaway's skull. The air in the room seemed to thicken, turning into viscous syrup. Hathaway felt the floor beneath her feet turn into liquid mud. The Gothic chair grew taller, transforming into a throne that reached the ceiling. Victoria's figure elongated, becoming a giant looking down on an ant.
Victoria sat through all of it perfectly still, hands loose, mouth closed. The room did the work on its own, the way a deep cave does cold, and it had been doing the work since the door opened.
Kneel.
The voice whispered in Hathaway's brain, editing her common sense at the source.
The floor is soft. Kneeling is comfortable. Submitting to the High Conductor is the only logical choice. Why are you standing? Standing is tiring. Kneel and be forgiven.
Hathaway’s knees buckled slightly. Her center of gravity shifted downward. The desire to surrender was sweet, like falling asleep in a warm bath.
No.
Hathaway’s eyes narrowed, and inside her mind two forces surged up to meet the invasion.
One was the "Gamer's Soul," an alien rationality that treated this mental pressure as nothing more than a debuff icon on a screen.
The other was the "Ludwig Bloodline," the ancient, arrogant DNA of the Crimson Witch family that found the very idea of kneeling to a Wellington biologically repulsive.
I am a Ludwig. I do not kneel to a blind girl in a dark room.
And I am a Player. You can't cutscene-kill me.
Hathaway gritted her teeth, red eyes flashing. She skipped the tongue-biting and went straight to Refusal: knees locked, spine straight, and a firm memo to her own brain that the floor was wood.
Crack.
The illusion of the giant throne shattered like glass. The floor solidified.
Hathaway gasped, sweat drenching her back, but she was still standing. Upright.
"Oh?"
Victoria let out a soft sound of surprise. She tilted her head, the ghostly blue light casting long shadows over her delicate features.
"You are late."
Victoria's voice was soft, devoid of inflection. It sounded less like it came from her throat and more like a resonance ringing directly on Hathaway's cerebral cortex.
"From the dormitory entrance to the L’Étoile patisserie, based on a Witch's average walking speed (1.2m/s), plus the 12 minutes required to queue for the 'Void Blueberry Tart'..."
Victoria's unfocused eyes stared emptily at a point slightly to the left of Hathaway's head. "...You should have appeared behind this door thirty-five minutes ago."
She tapped her finger on the armrest.
"However, not only did I wait in vain for my afternoon tea... My auditory organs detect that your heartbeat is 15% faster than baseline. And my olfactory senses do not detect the scent of caramelized sugar or Darjeeling tea on you."
Victoria focused. Or tried to. She squinted, her pupils dilating, and the pressure in the room doubled until the floating books began to vibrate.
"Explain yourself, Hathaway von Ludwig. Did you lose my afternoon tea? Or do you believe that a Wellington on the verge of hypoglycemia is more merciful than an expulsion notice from the Academic Affairs Office?"
Hathaway clutched her staff.
The excuse "I lost it" would lead to being labeled "Incompetent."
The excuse "I ate it" would lead to death.
What I need is a Scapegoat.
"The tea was stolen," Hathaway said, her voice trembling, half from real fear, half from calculation. "Rhode took it."
"Rhode?"
The name acted like a summoning spell for frost. The temperature in the room plummeted, and Victoria’s fingers tightened around her Adamantite Quill until the metal shaft groaned.
"Your cousin? That... 'Muscle Gorilla' who walks around like a source of light pollution? She took my things, and you just stood there and watched?"
"I tried to resist!" Hathaway stepped forward, putting on her best 'Victim' face. "But Victoria, you know her. She is... unreasonable."
"Unreasonable is not an excuse for incompetence," Victoria said coldly. "You are a Witch. You have spells. You have a staff. Did you just hand it over?"
"I couldn't do anything!" Hathaway raised her voice, injecting a tone of genuine shock and helplessness. "It wasn't a duel. It was... a massacre."
"The President of the Alchemy Club tried to stop her with a Mach-3 Alchemy Mech." Hathaway paused, ensuring Victoria was listening. "Rhode didn't even chant. She didn't use a staff. She just used One Finger."
"She poked the mech's defensive matrix. And the entire machine... disintegrated. She swiped the tea bags from my hand while chewing on the wreckage of the mech's core."
Victoria went silent, and the quill in her hand stopped moving.
"One finger?" she whispered. "Against a Mach-3 kinetic barrier?"
"Yes," Hathaway nodded vigorously. "She destroyed it like it was wet paper."
Victoria let out a cold laugh. It was a terrifying sound, sharp and dissonant.
"Of course. Brute force. Overwhelming mana output to crush the structure before the logic can even engage. How... Rhode of her. She acts like a natural disaster because she lacks the intelligence to be a surgeon."
Hathaway swallowed hard.
Disdain isn't enough. I need Rage. I need this personal.
She took a deep breath. She was about to walk a tightrope over a volcano.
The Wellington family feud was a black box. Archetypes were not. The Hardworking Intellectual always keeps a festering file on the Talented Savage, and for a house built on Structure and Logic, the killshot was one syllable long: weak.
"If it were just the tea, or just the violence, I would apologize," Hathaway whispered, lowering her head to hide the glint in her eyes. "But... what I couldn't stand was what she said after she took it."
"She said something?" Victoria leaned forward slightly. The darkness in the room churned. "That creature... has opinions?"
"She laughed. Loudly."
Hathaway adjusted her posture. She relaxed her shoulders, mimicking Rhode’s nonchalant, arrogant slouch. She lowered her voice to imitate that lazy, punchable drawl:
"Oh? This is for that little blind girl in Room 302?"
Hathaway saw Victoria’s eyebrow twitch.
"Giving such high-end mana food to her is a waste," Hathaway continued, weaving truth and lies with the confidence of a playwright on deadline. "Someone like Victoria is great at solving test papers, sure. She can recite the Universal Rune Dictionary backwards."
Hathaway paused, letting the silence stretch.
"But in actual combat? She is a joke. Just like your little duel. She lost to you, didn't she, Hathaway? A Wellington losing to a newbie... hilarious."
Victoria's face had gone completely still.
Hathaway armed the Nuclear Option.
"And then... she said something else." Hathaway hesitated, acting as if she was afraid to repeat it.
"Speak," Victoria commanded. The floating books were trembling now.
"She said..." Hathaway whispered, "To be honest, the entire Wellington family is the same. They act all elegant and mysterious, hiding in the dark... But that's just because they are weak."
"They overcomplicate magic with their 'Perfect Logic' because they lack the raw power to just Crush reality."
"Victoria is just a cheaper copy of that Failure of an Heir."
Silence.
The floating books stopped spinning. The blue ghost fires flickered and died, plunging the room into total darkness for a split second before flaring up in a violent, unstable Crimson.
SNAP.
The sound was crisp and loud, echoing like a gunshot. The Adamantite Quill in Victoria’s hand, a metal harder than tank armor, finally succumbed. She didn’t just bend it. She pulverized it.
Fine metal dust dripped from her pale fingers like glitter.
"Failure... of an Heir? Weakness... disguised as Logic?"
Victoria repeated the words.
The conductor's flatness was gone. Her voice shook, and the air around her shook with it.
She stood up out of her iron throne, and her silver hair floated up, defying gravity, dancing like snakes in the charged air. Her unfocused eyes were now wide open, burning with a terrifying light. Whatever the room had been doing to Hathaway, it now did harder.
Hathaway felt like the ceiling was collapsing on her. The walls were bleeding shadow.
Victoria stepped forward. Her bare feet fell silent on the boards, but every step pushed a ripple of mana through them. She walked until she was inches away from Hathaway, looming, radiating the pressure of a collapsing star.
"Words are cheap, Hathaway," Victoria whispered. Her breath was ice cold. "Since you claim she insulted the Wellington Doctrine... Since you claim she mocked Her..."
Victoria grabbed Hathaway’s shoulder. Her grip was like an iron clamp.
"Reproduce it."
"Huh?" Hathaway stammered, her legs shaking for real this time. "Reproduce... what?"
"The scene where she destroyed the Mech. The scene where she demonstrated her 'Superior Brute Force'."
Victoria pointed to the empty space in the center of the room.
"Use [Illusion · Memory Recall]. Now."
"I want to see exactly what kind of 'Power' gave that barbarian the audacity to open her mouth."
Victoria leaned in, her blurry, beautiful eyes looking straight into Hathaway’s soul.
"If you miss a single detail of her mana flow... I will dismantle your hippocampus piece by piece to find the truth myself."