Chương 17: Bribes and Brain Roasts

[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. But Hathaway felt the carpet beneath her feet turning sticky. Seeping through the door crack wasn't just cold air, but a black mist smelling of formalin and ancient graves. The magic lamps in the hallway flickered and hissed as if an invisible hand were choking the life out of the light particles. Victoria wasn't just annoyed; she was currently pre-casting a high-tier Instant Death spell. 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. Not in a welcoming way, but like a beast unhinging its jaw, revealing a sliver of pitch-black darkness just wide enough to see nothing. 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 she held a heavy, ancient tome in one hand. Obviously, she had been studying.

And obviously, she had been interrupted. 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.

"Just two hours ago, on the stairs, who was it that swore they would be 'quiet' and 'non-intrusive'? It's barely been sixty minutes, and you're 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 moved fast, jamming her foot in the door (relying on her 42, 000 M-Unit reinforced body to not get crushed). With lightning speed, she shoved the napkin right 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. In the hearts of academic witches, Heidi, the 10th Seat, was the Absolute. The unreachable ceiling of the Transmutation School. A barbarian who only knows how to throw lime powder met Lady Heidi? Despite her sharp tongue, Victoria's sensitive hands were already moving. She pinched the napkin with surgical precision, her mana senses tingling. She gently rubbed the paper, reading the data through touch.

"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. Even without reading the text, the mana resonance told her the contents.

"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, unable to hide her shock.

"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 slightly.

"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..." For an academic maniac like Victoria, this was like throwing a raw steak to a wolf that hadn't eaten in a week.

"She gave this to you?" Victoria asked in disbelief.

"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. She looked at Hathaway like she was watching a monkey holding the nuclear launch codes. What a waste of resources! Top-tier academic access given to an illiterate who hasn't even passed the A1?! Three seconds later. Victoria took a deep breath and released the door handle.

"Enter." She turned and walked into the dark living room. Her tone was still haughty, but now carried 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 cheered internally and scurried in after her. Plan: Success! Victoria walked to her desk, which was buried under complex star charts and parchment. She didn't sit. She stood with her back to Hathaway, her 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's it? You're 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's just 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. Stolen story; please report. But there was a problem. The book was wrapped in a layer of pristine, reflective magical plastic. The seal was unbroken. The price tag was still vibrant. It looked so new it was blinding. Victoria froze. She looked at the plastic-wrapped brick, then at Hathaway.

For the first time, her unfocused eyes showed genuine shock. Not sarcasm. Genuine shock, like she was witnessing a Dragon that was allergic to Gold.

"... You haven't even opened it?" Victoria's voice trembled, as if she had just swallowed a fly.

"This is the A1 Textbook! It's 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? This wasn't just being a "failure"; this was being a "Monument to Sloth."

"Has the Ludwig family fallen this low?" Victoria gritted her teeth.

"You aren't here for tutoring. You're 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 doesn't 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 5 minutes." Victoria picked up her teacup and took a graceful sip (though her hand shook slightly from rage).

"If the raw data isn't stored in your head in 5 minutes, I'm throwing you out. I don't teach morons who are too lazy to use their basic instincts, even if you have Heidi's pass." Hathaway took a deep breath. Let's do this! Since she'd already been roasted this hard, she had to show some competence or this carry would disconnect. She opened the book. Flip, flip, flip— The sound of rapidly turning pages filled the silent hall, fast enough to generate a breeze. Dense text flooded into her brain like a data stream.

Hathaway couldn't understand the logic connecting the words yet, but that didn't matter. 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 didn't ask about boring dates. She pointed to page 1, 900, throwing out a Tactical Analysis Question:"During the Unification War of the Fourth District, 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'? That's just 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 wasn't that expensive, fragile glass wall. It was the 'Mana Pollen' pervading the air. Every single grain of pollen was a micro Spatial Warp Beacon. That idiot commander wasted the payload of a Legendary Spell on 'breaking glass'—physical destruction—but left the pollen, 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, the Fourth District'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 wasn't '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? The romantic, tragic "Battle of the Flower Sea" described in the book instantly became a cold "Spatial Beacon & Warp Tactics Problem" in Victoria's mouth.

She suddenly understood the forum post:"The A1 tests Logic Reconstruction." History questions aren't about history; they're testing if you understand 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 the Fourth District.

"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." Victoria looked at Hathaway, 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 the 4th District, former 4th Seat)."

"And Ash (Current Border Guardian & 3rd Seat)." Hathaway sucked in a cold breath. All High Seats?! This wasn't a fight; this was an All-Star Raid Team!

"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. Her brain was frantically trying to process the combat data, but the result was a glaring [ERROR]. She remembered what Heidi told her about Lin's A3 Exam. Against Lin, Ovelia suppressed her mana to 60, 000 and crushed her with pure Logic and Syntax. That was "Technical Ovelia." And now, Victoria was telling her about the Battle of the Sunset Corridor.

Against the Ash-Josephine-Gil Ross Trio, literally the server's Top 3 Ranked Players, Ovelia fought 1v3 and nearly wiped them out. That was "Brute Force Ovelia." 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. She finally understood the weight of the name "Ovelia". She wasn't just a "High Seat." She was the Ceiling of this world's reality. An entity that simply refused to be balanced.

"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 (Current 2nd Seat)."

"The balance collapsed instantly. Because Famia Schüder didn't bring an army. She brought the Abyss itself. 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 looked at the stunned Hathaway and summarized:"That is why Lady Josephine suffered a severe nervous breakdown after the war. It's not the Monster-class opponents you need to fear; it's the pig-brained teammates."

"Alright, history class dismissed." Victoria sat back in her chair, her expression returning to indifference.

"What you need to learn isn't just tactics, but the Combat Logic and Human Irony hidden behind history. If you can't see through this, you won't get 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 just the Ticket." Victoria lifted her chin arrogantly, smoothing her expensive silk robe.

"The Wellington family doesn't lack money. But I lack Mental Damage Compensation."

"Tutoring a Ludwig from zero is a massive trauma to my psyche. I need the 'Starlight Black Tea' and 'Void Blueberry Tart' from the Yggdrasil Summit Restaurant to maintain my sanity." 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 in the guides. It was the most expensive dessert shop in White City. An afternoon tea set started at 500 Gold Solars! Her entire liquid capital was sitting at exactly 30, 240. This single snack would eat 1/60th of her assets!

"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, showing no mercy.

"I don't 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 slightly, revealing a faint, satisfied smile, the kind 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."