Chương 116: Skipping the Cooldown on a Horror Movie Curse

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 24 — 09: 15 AM [Location]: Gaia Dimension · The Sky Sea Archipelago · Silver Island (Temporary Designation) Tasia had named this floating landmass Silver Island on a whim, which was exactly the kind of naming convention you got when a Dragon Witch was the only one in the room. Its climate made no geographical sense. At this altitude, the oxygen should have been thin enough to drop a horse.

Instead, it was staggeringly rich: cool, crisp, subtropical, as if the Sky Sea surrounding the island had decided unilaterally that the air quality here would be exceptional and no one was going to argue. Witches had no need for [Environmental Adaptation] spells. They simply breathed, and the breathing was unreasonably good. The ground was another matter entirely.

The core of Silver Island encased a nascent Proto-Sun, a compressed fusion aggregate still in its early stages, radiating warmth steadily upward through the soil. Walking barefoot on the grass felt like standing on floor heating buried inside a cashmere rug. Warm springs gushed from crystal-lined cave mouths across the terrain, flowing downhill into steaming, sapphire-clear interconnected lakes. As Tasia's private territory, the island had been comprehensively de-fanged.

Any creature carrying even a trace of hostility had been swiftly and efficiently reclassified as dinner during the initial clearing phase. What remained was, in all honesty, a fairy tale. A diverse array of Lantern Cats, glowing softly in various pastel shades, threading through the grass. Chubby Sand Leopards spread-eagled on warm rocks in a state of supreme indignity. Ghost Octopuses drifting in the air above the lakes, operating on their own inscrutable schedule.

At the edge of the far tree line, Crystal Fire Deer moved silently, their antlers burning with a cold, permanent luminescence. Hathaway spent the morning wandering through this generously maintained ecological park, petting things that were too calm to escape. Eventually, a background process that had been running since she first set foot in the Gaia dimension kicked into full priority. Souvenirs. Her philosophy was simple: absolute standardization, zero exceptions. The exact same gift for everyone.

The reasoning was cynical but accurate. In Hathaway's extensive field research on Witch social dynamics, "the thought that counts" translated, with brutal literalness, to: the recipient must look at the object and conclude that you spent time on them specifically. Whether the object itself had any value was almost irrelevant.

She had once watched a Witch spend forty minutes analyzing the grain pattern of a pebble someone had handed her at a dinner party, concluding it represented a specific rare geological formation that only appeared near one district's dormant volcano, and being visibly moved by the symbolism. These were chronic overthinkers operating at full capacity.

Hathaway could hand them a slightly unusual seashell she bought for three copper coins, and they would construct an entire narrative about her diving into an abyssal trench and battling sea-serpents to retrieve the perfect specimen. She found the actual local specialty immediately after. Gaia Sugarcane Wine. Clear, faintly cyan, with a scent that drifted upward the moment the cork came off.

It entered the mouth sweet and clean, milder than raw sugarcane juice, carrying a rich botanical fragrance that bloomed a full second after swallowing. The danger was in the delay. It tasted like premium juice until, somewhere around the third or fourth cup, a drinker's legs independently decided to pursue different career paths. The ultimate stealth blackout drink. Hathaway approved. For packaging, she bought a massive bundle of local Cyan-Jade Bamboo for a handful of coins.

The bamboo smelled faintly of cool water. A few quick transmutation spells turned the raw material into a small assembly line: she sliced, sealed, and polished thirty-odd elegant bamboo tube flasks in under twenty minutes, leaving a few leaves attached for visual character. She filled them with the wine, nested each tube in a small box alongside a potted Gem-Sand Plant, Gaia-native, with roots threaded through luminous mineral powder in a glass bowl, and tucked in a sleeve of locally made Petal Pastries.

The result was exotic, aesthetic, and cost her approximately the price of a mid-range lunch. Perfect. Since Tasia was standing directly beside her, watching the production process with the mild expression of someone observing a competent foreman, Hathaway handed her the first set. Tasia accepted the bamboo tube. Something faint shifted in her grey vertical pupils: not quite warmth, not quite amusement, but somewhere between the two.

"Thank you," she said.

"The sugarcane wine of Gaia is genuinely good. I have always liked it." She held the gift for a moment, as though considering something. Then she placed a small, glowing object directly into Hathaway's open palm. A Frost Lantern Cat. Palm-sized. Ice-blue spectral glow pulsing with each breath. It landed in her hand and immediately began kneading her fingers with paws that weighed nothing and felt like static electricity.

"I have fifteen left from Settlement Day," Tasia said, in the same tone one might use to report a surplus of paperclips.

"Take one." Hathaway's internal accounting system, which normally processed every social transaction in terms of gold-coin equivalency, stared at the math for one full second and then quietly powered down. She touched its tiny head with one fingertip. The cat tilted upward, fixed her with golden eyes like melting arctic ice, and produced a sound that could only be described as aggressively soft.

"Myaaaaoo." Hathaway's reasoning faculties vacated the premises entirely. For the remainder of the trip back through the spatial gate, the High Witch who had just obtained a Tier-7 ability personally signed by the 1st Seat of the High Council spent the entire void transit with her face buried in a snow-white furball radiating a soft ice-blue glow. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. She had no memory of walking.

Her brain was running a single-thread process labeled cat. [Time]: Summer Break, Day 24 — 12: 30 PM [Location]: White City · Royal Rosas Club · Dining Room Hathaway walked to the front desk and deposited a stack of bamboo-tube sets onto the counter. The receptionist froze for a beat, then let out a muffled sound. The reason she'd manufactured extras was simple: the worst possible social outcome was handing gifts around a group and being the reason someone in the room walked away empty-handed.

Scorched-earth coverage was the only rational approach. She ordered lunch: teriyaki chicken over vinegared sushi rice, a box of thin-sliced dragon meat alongside black pepper veal, a clear winter mushroom consommé, and the seasonal Cherry Blossom Clams whose texture had the unique distinction of tasting exactly like premium cheese slow-cooked in coconut water. Milky, yielding, nothing like seafood. She had been thinking about them since the last time. The portions, when they arrived, were conspicuously enormous.

The staff member raised the tray to cover her face and gave Hathaway a very deliberate wink. Immediate return on investment. This is the only financial strategy that works every time. She carried her food to the main table, where Rhode, Bella, and Alucard were finishing their meals in post-lunch conversation. The interrogation started before she sat down. Nobody asked about her mana gain. That was a fixed constant, a precision-calculated ritual yielding a projected three thousand points. No suspense.

What they wanted was the Spell-like Ability. Hathaway set down her tray, swallowed a piece of teriyaki chicken, and said, with the careful casualness of someone holding a live wire:" [Cold Justice]." Rhode frowned. The frown deepened. She crossed her arms, deep red eyes narrowing as she ran through her mental catalogue and found nothing.

"Is that an ice variant? Some kind of locking mechanic?" Across the table, Alucard's reaction arrived without warning. She set her fork down. Her expression went completely blank, replicating the exact same flawless, dead-silent marble statue look Tasia had worn in the tent ten hours ago. As expected of twins. The genetic synchronization is impeccable. She turned to Rhode with the voice of a woman conserving energy for a long walk home.

"Rhode. That is Ovelia's spell." Rhode blinked. One second of silence. Then she brought her palm down onto the table hard enough to make the silverware jump. Bella, who had been waiting for exactly this opening, stood up, swept her cloak aside, and launched.

"Praise the Abyss!" Bella's proclamation rang through the dining room at a volume that made the adjacent table look over.

"You have seized the hidden current beneath the river of fate—plucked the Chief's forbidden script from the stars' dark treasury—you are the Deceiver of Destiny, the—" Hathaway's toes had already curled to the structural limit of her boots. She yanked the bamboo gifts from her spatial storage and distributed them across the table with the panicked efficiency of someone deploying countermeasures.

"Gaia specialty—for everyone—please try them—" Bella's mouth closed around the bamboo tube like a switch being thrown. The table fell quiet. Everyone examined the gifts. Exactly as projected. Whatever narrative they had constructed in their heads. Probably something involving a solitary descent into an uncharted ether-vortex, decapitating whatever ancient guardian spirit watched over the grove, and a meaningful moment of quiet reflection while the bamboo was being cut. The result was the same.

The way they looked at her became very, very soft. Then, with an enthusiasm that filled Hathaway with genuine physiological unease, they began producing return gifts. Rhode went first. She placed a black VHS tape on the table, pushing it toward Hathaway with both hands.

"Top quality," Rhode announced, with the specific pride of someone sharing a great find.

"The video itself is just some abstract, atmospheric noise. But immediately after I played it, my communication crystal rang. A very dramatic, spectral voice whispered that I had a seven-day countdown." Rhode rolled her eyes slightly.

"Naturally, I didn't have the patience for a week-long shipping delay. So I applied a localized time acceleration to force the summoning to completion instantly.

"A pale girl with long wet hair crawled out of the screen right on schedule. I've conducted thorough empirical tests on her. Her baseline body temperature is freezing, she's well-behaved, and she stabilizes a room's ambient temperature beautifully. Furthermore, the physical medium is fully replicable. I mass-produced thirty copies this morning. An ideal, easily deployable summer cooling companion." Hathaway picked up the tape. She stared at the black plastic casing. The magnetic spools inside.

The dried aquatic weed still stuck to one corner. Then, she felt a soft shift inside the spacious hood of her robe. Her tiny Frost Lantern Cat curled tighter, radiating a quiet, ice-blue chill against the back of her neck.

"Rhode," Hathaway said, her voice dropping to a cautious whisper.

"To compress a seven-day delay into a single night... Localized time manipulation of that magnitude is a Class-A felony. The chronal tremors alone can destabilize the surrounding reality for miles. You could have folded the entire block into a temporal loop."

"It was controlled," Rhode replied dismissively, already reaching for a piece of sushi.

"I anchored the focal point and vented the chronal wave backlash into the high seas. No collateral damage. No witnesses. It's fine." Venting chronal waves into the deep ocean like industrial waste. Hathaway stared at her cousin, envisioning the unsuspecting marine life in the Inner Sea suddenly experiencing a decade's worth of aging in three seconds because a top-tier Witch wanted her portable air conditioner to arrive faster. That is Sadako's tape.

My cousin received the iconic death threat and treated it like a shipping delay. She committed a temporal felony to skip the cooldown. Pirated the curse. And handed it to me as a souvenir.

"Thank you, Rhode," Hathaway said. Her voice was perfectly level. She tucked the tape into the deepest pocket she had and did not look at it again. Bella went next. A matte black ring that seemed to absorb the surrounding light. She placed it in Hathaway's hand with solemnity.

"The [Ring of the Dark Sun]." The speech that followed ran approximately forty-five seconds and covered the abyssal origins, the shadow-sovereign authority, and the fate of all who bore it. Hathaway extracted the relevant data: Stealth amplifier. Requires an active concealment source. Graduated scaling: T4 and below gains two tiers, T5 gains one, T6 unlocks a qualitative enhancement. T7 and above: unaffected. Permanent. The ring was excellent. Objectively. Unambiguously.

But wearing it while Bella watched was another matter entirely. Why does every piece of equipment Bella gives me fit the Eclipse aesthetic so precisely. Is she building a set. Does she have a gear list. Am I already wearing the Eclipse starter pack without having agreed to the premise. When a Witch finally ascended to the rank of Arch-Witch, the Witch Authority assigned them an official, permanent title based on their public perception and combat style.

The Authority's naming team had one setting: maximum dramatic weight. Titles like The Sovereign of Avarice or The Black Emperor. They were absolute, and they were legally binding. Hathaway mentally fast-forwarded to her future evaluation.

If she kept accepting these gifts, if she genuinely stepped into the Arch-Witch realm wearing the complete 'Eclipse' gear set, the Authority's evaluation committee would look at her combat logs, look at her pitch-black stealth ring, and lock in "Eclipse" as her permanent title without a second thought. Worse, she couldn't even argue against it. Because objectively?

"Eclipse" was a fantastic title. It was concise, elegant, and perfectly fit the Authority's dramatic aesthetic. They would rubber-stamp it immediately. I am being methodically, inescapably funneled into Bella's roleplay setting. And the server admins are about to make it canon. Alucard recovered from her earlier silence and slid a glass flower across the table. Transparent petals. Microscopic arcane circuitry visible through the glass, sparkling like a galaxy compressed to millimeter scale.

"An [Arcane Detonation Bloom]," Alucard explained, in the tone of someone recommending a reliable umbrella.

"Yield is half a standard arcane nuke, blast radius compressed by eighty percent. Lethality at ground zero is only marginally lower than the standard model.

"Highly portable. Will not trigger security arrays. You can use it as a daily self-defense measure." Hathaway looked at the nuclear bloom in her hand. She had no words. But she also, inexplicably, felt more secure than she had ten seconds ago. This is fine. This is just the White City operating normally. A cursed horror movie tape and a tactical nuke. Standard. She carefully stowed the items and looked across the table at Rina and Yenna, who were just finishing their meals.

At least, Hathaway thought, filled with the naive, perilous optimism of someone who had repeatedly failed to learn her lesson, the walking cheat code and a quiet, sensible Fox Witch will definitely give me something normal.