Chương 198: Chapter 178: The Door to the Non-Existent

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 48 — 7: 10 PM [Location]: The Crown of Ovelia · The Sealed Void Irene arrived exactly at the microsecond the artillery detonated. In the arithmetic of Witch combat, one plus one did not equal two. When five world champions initiated a synchronized assault, the result was the simultaneous layering of infinitely looping Legendary spells, completely randomized casting sequences, and overlapping, contradictory domains fighting to overwrite the same spatial coordinate.

With every additional caster, the operational difficulty of surviving the frame escalated logarithmically. Irene cracked open the encyclopedia of absolute magical law. There was simply no defensive architecture she did not know. [Counterspell]. [Greater Dispel]. [Eradication]. [Spell Silence]. [Dismantle Matrix]. [Guided Deflection]. [Mutual Annihilation]. [Mana Nullification]. [Directive Control]. It was a masterclass spanning every known branch of abjuration and denial, but the raw spells were only the chassis.

The true horror was the engine driving them. Irene triggered a cascading fractal of metamagic modifiers, multiplying her action economy into the hundreds within a single microscopic frame. [Empower Spell] stacked onto [Spell Rebound]. [Chain Cast] wove flawlessly into [Sequential Cast]. She layered [Quicken Spell] into [Super-magic Quicken], and linked the entire impossible sequence together with a system-breaking [Chained Super-magic Quicken].

Her accumulation of Legendary-tier equipment screamed as it processed the load: automated metamagic holsters, prismatic amulets, the deep gold shimmer of the [El Dorado] cloak, auto-triggering dozens of reactive barriers and reflection arcs to assist the suffocating casting volume. And for the artillery that still managed to bleed through: Irene simply used her bottomless, terrifying mana pool to tank the overflow directly.

Hundreds of world-ending matrices splashed against the golden light and dissolved into harmless, glittering ash. Evangeline had not moved a single muscle. Her hands remained loosely draped over the head of her cane. The deep amethyst eyes hadn't even blinked. If Irene's reaction had been slower by one microsecond, Evangeline would have been vaporized and overwritten countless times over in that exact instant.

As the blinding residual light of the intercepted spells cleared, the full architecture of Irene's arrival became visible. Behind her, a jagged, tearing wound in the fabric of the void hung suspended in the grey nothing: the bleeding maw of chronological space itself, held forcibly open by massive chains of liquid-gold mana bolted into the edges of the tear, pinning the impossible doorway to reality. Even the Greed Umbrella could not fully mask their shock. Wei Changqing had anchored this space to nothing.

The ultimate spatial banishment: an excised void with no coordinates in the physical universe. Entrance from the outside was a mathematical impossibility. But the manner of Irene's arrival had bypassed foundational logic entirely. The paradox, Hathaway's developer brain screamed, the data flooding her cortex faster than she could parse it. The time paradox is happening right now. The space around the golden light was tearing itself apart. It was accelerating. It was decelerating.

The acceleration was perfectly, impossibly equal to the deceleration. Within that absolute relative stillness, time was flowing infinitely in all directions. When [Time Acceleration] and [Time Deceleration] were activated simultaneously within the same spatial field, the collision of both effects produced a hard contradiction the universe's physics engine could not resolve. Everyone within the field was immediately, tracelessly erased.

In Witch chronomancy, deploying both spells at once was universally classified among the Top Three Suicidal Actions. The other two were mostly theoretical. This one had the most experimental data, because in open melee, two Witches could independently decide to use a time spell at the same moment and simply pick opposite ones. A hunter closing its fingers around the throat of the'Time Wolfhound'.

Under the crushing, suffocating weight of Irene's mana pool, even a paradox that defied every operating law of the universe was forced to cease being a paradox.

"Mana is omnipotent..." The foundational axiom of Witch civilization arrived as physical fact: Irene had violated the terminal paradox to get here, and then single-handedly caught the synchronized firing sequences of five world champions on the other side of it. The expressions across the Greed Umbrella roster shifted into heavy, suffocating solemnity. The offensive auras did not re-ignite. Even Evangeline's flippant, theatrical posture retracted by a fraction of a degree. Irene turned her head toward Hathaway.

The terrifying, world-ending pressure surrounding her smoothed instantly into a gentle, grounding warmth.

"I trust you have been well, Hathaway," Irene said softly. The sheer, overwhelming security of a Game Master stepping into the lobby. She managed a frantic nod, forcing a single strained syllable past the knot in her throat.

"Thank you." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Irene offered a brief, quiet smile, then turned her golden eyes toward the Celestial Witch. A slight, measured nod.

"It has been some time, Evangeline." Evangeline placed one hand over her chest and executed a flawless, unhurried bow.

"Berenice. It is a regret the circumstances were so sudden. I was unable to prepare premium tea and pastries to host you properly." Hathaway's heart, which had just begun its descent from her throat, violently catapulted back upward. What is happening? Are these two actually on good terms?!

"Think nothing of it," Irene replied. She offered a bright, sunny smile. The warmth in it was genuine. Then the warmth vanished. Her expression settled into stone stillness, and the golden eyes above the smile became fathomless, dark pools.

"... After all, the last time you departed from my home, you were in such an unseemly rush, it causes me to reflect on myself quite often." A beat. Her voice remained soft. The softness made it worse.

"Did I do something worthy of ridicule? To cause a friend to disrespect me so profoundly: arriving at my estate without a formal letter of introduction, and leaving without so much as a word of farewell. You wounded me deeply, Tarnished Crow." Evangeline tilted her head. Her liquid-amethyst eyes drifted past Irene to look at Hathaway for a single, evaluative microsecond before returning to the Fifth Seat. She let out a soft, melodic sigh.

"You are still so exceptionally adept at playing with fools," Evangeline murmured. Irene offered a faint, shallow smile.

"You always examine what others have gained, Evangeline. Yet you never once look at what they hold on the betting table." Without waiting for a response, Irene turned her attention to the architect of the void.

"I must say, Cecilia," Irene said, her tone carrying the polite, unhurried cadence of a guest analyzing a drawing room.

"It is truly wonderful that I was able to arrive here in time." Cecilia stared at the intruder. The crystalline sweetness had bled out of her expression, leaving a profound, bone-deep exhaustion in its place. She let out a slow, heavy exhale.

"Sometimes," Cecilia said, "I truly wish you were not so kind-hearted."

"Perhaps," Irene replied gently.

"But I did not rush here out of kindness." Cecilia's ocean-blue eyes flickered.

"Then. What are your chips?"

"That," Irene said with absolute sincerity, "depends entirely on what it is you want." Cecilia looked at Irene. Her voice returned to the flat, mechanical cadence of a woman reading a grocery list.

"The specimen I wanted can no longer be made." Irene looked deeply into Cecilia's eyes. And then she laughed. A soft, airy sound. A wave of pure, freezing cold washed over Hathaway from crown to heel. If she survived this night with her sanity intact, she was going to develop a permanent, clinical phobia of beautiful women smiling at her. Cecilia did not break eye contact.

"Give me something that will ensure she can never leave." Irene snapped her fingers. The conceptual parameters of the sealed void shattered like cheap glass. Reality forcibly reasserted itself around them: the panoramic windows overlooking the dark city, the cobalt-blue crystal sofa, the living grass beneath their boots. [Location]: White City · The Wisteria · Greed Umbrella Suite Irene reached into her spatial inventory and withdrew a scroll: immaculate, heavy, never opened. She set it on the coffee table.

"A Time Contract," Irene said, her pace unhurried.

"Forged through the synchronized spellcasting of five Time Dragon Witches. If the terms inscribed upon it are breached, the violator will be subjected to sixty Legendary-tier curses, each carrying force equivalent to one personally released by Ovelia. The shortest duration of these curses is fifty years. The longest..." She merely smiled. Wei Changqing stepped forward, her expression carefully guarded. She asked to review the stipulations. Irene gestured to the table. Wei picked up the scroll.

As her eyes tracked the glowing ink across the parchment, her posture stiffened. When she finished, she slowly raised her head. She looked at Evangeline, and her eyes carried a complexity Hathaway had never seen in the Greed Umbrella captain, something shadowed and unresolvable moving beneath the surface. Wei turned back to Irene.

"This is a slave contract." Irene gracefully intertwined her fingers and rested her hands against her waist.

"I believe it is precisely the instrument you require." Evangeline's face had gone completely blank. For the first time since she materialized in the hotel suite, the veneer of aristocratic frivolity was fully breached. She looked profoundly, visibly nauseated. A line of cutting sarcasm got out anyway.

"I recall," Evangeline said, her voice precise and cold, "that the operational clauses of this specific variety of contract are permanently fixed at the moment of their forging. Is that not so?" Hathaway's developer brain seized. A slave contract. If this were designed for a foreign species or a lesser entity, deploying a Legendary-tier instrument forged by five Time Dragon Witches was a comical waste of resources. An artifact of this caliber existed for exactly one purpose: to bind a Witch.

To bind an entity up to the tier of an Arch-Witch. Why did Irene Habsburg just happen to have a blank Arch-Witch slave contract sitting in her personal vault? Every ounce of the security Hathaway had felt at Irene's arrival dissolved, replaced by a cold, creeping dread. The expressions across the Greed Umbrella shifted. On the far side of the room, Victoria's fingers twitched against her knee. A slave contract was the ultimate, unforgivable insult to the Witch species.

They were a race defined by their arrogance, beings who despised the gods, rewrote the laws of physics to suit their moods, and would not be owned. A Witch signing a slave contract was an event that did not exist anywhere in the historical record. And by signing it, Evangeline's political and social existence would be immediately terminated. The 236 Arch-Witches were the monsters elected by 4. 2 billion Witches to rule them. At the next election cycle, Evangeline would receive zero votes.

"Regrettably," Irene said calmly, "it is a failed product. But it serves its purpose here perfectly." No one in the room asked exactly what had made it a failure. Cecilia stepped to the table. She picked up the quill, coated the nib in her own mana, and signed her name on the Master's line without a microsecond of hesitation. She set the quill down and offered Irene a deep, formal bow.

"I am profoundly grateful. Should you ever require this favor returned, you have only to name it." Flandmira's initial shock had fully transitioned into vicious, unapologetic gloating. The rest of the Greed Umbrella absorbed the reality of the parchment. They looked at the scroll, and then at Evangeline, and they appeared, with a remarkable degree of unanimity, deeply satisfied with the arrangement. Victoria's pale eyes moved in a silent, continuous pendulum between her two older sisters.

Evangeline let out a low, hollow laugh.

"I see." She stepped forward.

"So this is the Door to the Non-Existent." Irene looked at her, the gold in her eyes sinking into an impenetrable abyss.

"It was you who chose to walk through it." Evangeline picked up the quill. With a sharp, elegant flourish, she signed her name on the Servant's line. The mana woven into the parchment flared, sealing the pact into the causal fabric of the universe. She dropped the quill and looked up at Irene with a mocking, razor-edged smile.

"And which door are you currently searching for, Berenice?" Irene did not answer. Hathaway stood in the center of the room, watching the surreal, impossible sequence of events finalize and lock into permanent reality. The adrenaline that had sustained her through nineteen hours of control-room vigil and one brush with absolute spatial death finally evaporated. The delayed emotional tsunami crashed over her, sweeping away the developer logic, leaving only a hollow, ringing exhaustion.

For some reason, in this exact moment, only one sentence echoed in the empty spaces of her mind. This matter is already under the Witness of the Keeper. She turned her head. She looked at Victoria. Victoria was already looking at her. The impossibly long night was finally over. Tomorrow was a new day.