Chương 24: How to Lose Five Layers of Hell for a Single Pork Rib

[Time]: Day 4 of Enrollment, 08: 00 AM [Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · Dormitory [Golden Bough] · Room 302 When Hathaway opened her eyes, she wasn't greeted by the familiar, damp ceiling of her rented apartment on Earth. Instead, she was drowned in light. She didn't reach for a smartphone to check the time. Her hand instinctively shot under her pillow. Her fingers brushed against a smooth, textured surface. Cold foil, warming rapidly under her touch.

A faint hum of mana responded to her skin—the [Mana Lock] she had set last night. [The Witch of Eternal Slumber · Ovelia] It was still there. It wasn't a fever dream induced by studying too hard. Her mother really did bet a villa, cheat a Luck Witch, and teleport this treasure across space just to make her happy. Hathaway let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. She tapped the card twice—a secret handshake between conspirators—and slipped it into the pocket of her silk pajamas before pushing herself up.

She walked barefoot to the massive floor-to-ceiling window. Outside lay the White City. The capital of the First District. The greatest Hive City in the Inner Sea of Stars. It was a majestic archipelago of Floating Islands drifting in a sea of golden clouds. The entire city was constructed from "Star-White Marble." It didn't just reflect light; it amplified it. Crystal spires connected the islands via gravity-defying bridges, weaving a web of light across the sky. It was beautiful. It was majestic.

And it was incredibly Arrogant. Hathaway pressed her hand against the cool glass, squinting at the grandest island floating at the zenith of the city. On that island stood a spire that pierced the atmosphere like a spear of judgment. That was [The Palace of Rex Mundi]. The ancient seat of the Milan'thirskaya Family. Even from here, she could feel the weight of their family crest: [The Prime Prism & The Void Dragon]. Their motto echoed in her mind:"Astra Sunt Lateres." (The Stars are merely Bricks.)"How pretentious," Hathaway whispered. They claim to turn Chaos into Order. They claim to sit on the Throne of the World. But then, a terrifying piece of trivia from the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Witches popped into her mind. Chief Witch Ovelia—the very Witch on the card in Hathaway's pocket—hated this city. She hated the light pollution of the White City. She said it disturbed her sleep quality. So, what did she do? She didn't ask the Milan'thirskaya family to dim the lights.

She went back to her own domain and built a 1: 1 Replica of the [Palace of Rex Mundi]. Theoretically, copying the Royal Palace was a declaration of war. Every Milan'thirskaya Witch had a duty to defend the dignity of their ancestral throne with their lives. But faced with this blatant usurpation? They pretended not to see it. Not because Ovelia was cute, but because she was The Conqueror. She was the woman who had physically trampled the Throne of the World King. That war changed everything.

The history books didn't go into detail about the "humiliation," but the result was clear: The proudest family in the First District had swallowed their pride. They let the "Fake Palace" float in the sky as an eternal reminder of who really owned the stars.

"Stars are bricks?" Hathaway chuckled, looking at the blinding spire of the Palace.

"Well, Ovelia used your bricks to build a better house. And you didn't dare to say a word." But then, a memory from four days ago surfaced, breaking the solemnity. She remembered Alucard, the current descendant of that "World King" bloodline, one of the Twin Empresses of this glorious city. Sitting in a greasy corner of a hotpot restaurant. Chewing on a Ghost Skull Pepper to stay awake. Dark circles under her eyes.

"If you don't pay the fine, go run on the Hamster Wheel for 72 hours." The grand, terrifying image of the White City suddenly felt... Real. It wasn't a JPEG background in a game anymore. It was a place where "World Kings" had their heirlooms stolen by the Witch of Eternal Slumber. It was a place where Empresses ate spicy food to relieve the stress of maintaining a fake throne.

And somewhere in that blinding archipelago of islands, inside a manor that probably had a "For Sale" sign on the garage, lived Margaret and Anna. They were probably hungover right now. Or maybe planning their next chaotic investment. But they were there. Hathaway looked at the sprawling white metropolis, and for the first time, she didn't feel like a tourist. This is my turf, she thought. My mothers are down there. The fake throne is down there. This is my home.

The warmth of the epiphany faded as soon as her stomach growled. [System Alert: Caloric Deficit Critical.] [Brain Function at 60%. Feed me.] Hathaway sighed, turning away from the window. She washed her face (no nosebleed today, thank the mana), changed into a fresh set of lounge wear, and opened the door to the first floor. The moment she stepped out, the temperature dropped ten degrees. She went from the "Sunny Penthouse" to the "Vampire Crypt."

Downstairs, the curtains were drawn tight to block out the "annoying sun." The room was submerged in [Silent Black].

"Teacher?" Hathaway called out tentatively. Silence. The high-backed chair was empty. The floating tea set was gone. 09: 00 AM. Right. Victoria had "Introduction to Magitech" at 8: 00. The "Model Student" was already in class. Hathaway walked down the spiral staircase to the alchemy station/kitchenette. Empty. No breakfast waiting for her.

"Independent study starts with independent survival," she muttered, opening the cupboard. It was mostly empty. But in the far back corner, coated in a thin layer of dust, sat a metallic gray box. [Academy Asset: Standard Emergency Ration - Type V] [For Deep Space / Inorganic Dimension Survival] Hathaway blinked. Right. The dorm comes with a survival kit. It belongs to the room, not Victoria. She picked up a packet. It felt heavy and dense. She tore open the silver foil.

Instantly, a rich, reassuring aroma of heavy cream and concentrated nuts filled the air. She took a bite. Crunch. Her eyes widened. It was... surprisingly good. It wasn't gourmet, but it was incredibly dense and satisfying. It tasted like a very thick, very rich pound cake that had been compressed into a brick. It was sweet, buttery, and unmistakably "High-Calorie." Of course, Hathaway realized as the warm mana filled her stomach. Witches would never tolerate bad food.

Even if they are stranded on a dead planet with no atmosphere, they refuse to eat dirt. They refuse to use the tasteless "Conjure Food" spell. This brick is the bottom line of their dignity.

"Function over form," she mumbled, taking another bite.

"It tastes like... safety. I love this world," she added with her mouth full, grabbing a glass of water. Holding the half-eaten biscuit, she walked over to the main desk. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. The book was still there. A1 International Standard: The Ruthless History. It sat there, heavy and ominous, the bloodstain from last night cleaned away by some self-cleaning spell. Hathaway sat down. She wiped the buttery crumbs from her fingers and opened it to Page 1, 900.

[Chapter 24: The Third Hell Crusade - An Analysis of Multi-Party Strategic Divergences] She read the text again.

"The disintegration of the Allied Front was primarily caused by the incompatibility of command protocols between the 2nd and 4th Districts..." The words were dry. Logical. Academic. Hathaway frowned. I know this is a lie. But without Victoria... I can't see the truth. She felt a wave of frustration. Yesterday, under Victoria's guidance, every sentence felt like a revelation. She saw the blood, the greed, the arrogance behind the words. Today, alone, the book was just a book.

A boring, thick, impenetrable wall of text. I'm still blind, Hathaway realized, slumping back in the chair. I have the eyes of a Witch, but I still read like a Human. Click. The sound of the front door unlocking cut through the silence. A sliver of blinding white light from the hallway sliced into the dark room. Hathaway squinted against the sudden glare. A silhouette stepped in, closing the door and plunging the room back into comfortable darkness. Victoria Wellington had returned.

She was dressed in a long, elegant black dress with intricate silver lace at the cuffs and collar—a style that screamed "Old Money Necromancer" but was clearly high-end private fashion. She held a stack of books in one arm and a paper bag in the other. She paused near the entrance, standing still in the gloom. She didn't speak immediately. Her head tilted slightly, her gaze sweeping over the desk. Hathaway tensed up. Even though she knew Victoria had poor eyesight, she felt like she was being scanned by a radar.

Victoria's gaze lingered on the massive open History Book, then shifted to the wide spread of the Alchemy Charts, and finally settled on Hathaway's hand, which was still twitching rhythmically from the rune exercise. Victoria let out a long breath. It sounded like a sigh. But to Hathaway's ears, it didn't sound like disappointment. It sounded strangely like... relief.

"Reading history. Checking charts. Constructing runes. And biological maintenance." Victoria listed the items calmly, her voice echoing in the quiet room.

"Four parallel actions." She walked over, her heels clicking on the floor.

"Thank the Void," she murmured, her tone dripping with her signature sarcasm.

"I was beginning to worry that the Ludwig bloodline had actually devolved into single-celled organisms. It seems your brain is not decorative after all. You finally figured out how to switch on the hardware." Hathaway swallowed the last chunk of the ration block, dusting the crumbs off her lap.

"It felt... natural," she admitted, rubbing her temples.

"Like remembering how to breathe. I stopped trying to 'focus' and just let the threads run. But the text itself... it's dense. I can parse the logic, but I lack the context." Victoria's expression softened imperceptibly.

"That is expected. You are running a high-end Operating System on a formatted hard drive. Filling the database is what the next 28 days are for." Then, she stopped. She leaned in, her nose wrinkling slightly as if she had smelled something offensive.

"And you are fueling this high-end OS with... that?" Hathaway looked at the silver wrapper in her hand.

"The ration pack? It's actually really good," Hathaway defended.

"It tastes like concentrated pound cake. Very efficient."

"It smells like Desperation," Victoria corrected her, staring at the wrapper with genuine aristocratic disdain.

"That is the Void Survival Block." She looked at Hathaway, then gestured at the luxurious room around them.

"Hathaway, we are in the Golden Bough. We are in the heart of the White City. You are surrounded by three hundred artisan bakeries. That brick is designed for when you are stranded in a dimension made of acid rain. Eating it here? It is... tragic. It is like watching a billionaire dumpster diving because he forgot his wallet." Thud. Victoria tossed the paper bag she was carrying onto the desk. It slid across the wood and hit Hathaway's hand.

"Eat this."

"What is it?" Hathaway peeked inside. A warm, complex aroma of roasted nuts, fermented wheat, and subtle fruitiness wafted out.

"I bought too much. The bakery has a minimum spend for the VIP line," Victoria lied smoothly, her face completely expressionless.

"Put that block of 'Castaway Food' down. It's depressing me. You are not stranded in the Void. You are my student. Act like one." Hathaway stared at the bag. She noticed the gold-leaf logo stamped on the side: The Gilded Oven. Wait. Hathaway's eyes widened. She had read about this place in the campus guide. It was the most expensive bakery in the district. You needed a reservation just to buy flour. Leftovers? Minimum spend? The bag is still warm. She clearly queued for this. Hathaway didn't expose the lie.

She just felt a different kind of warmth bloom in her chest.

"Thanks," she whispered, grabbing the pastry. She took a bite. Crunch. If the Void-Ration was a sugar bomb, this... this was Divine Revelation. The crust shattered into a thousand layers of impossible crispness. Inside, the dough was airy, soft, and moist. But it wasn't just the texture. A burst of rich, warm mana flooded her mouth. It tasted like sunlight trapped in butter. It tasted like a lazy Sunday morning condensed into a flavor. The fatigue in her brain didn't just fade; it was washed away by a golden tide.

"Oh..." Hathaway let out a soft sound, her eyes widening. The biscuit was Fuel. This was Art. Victoria ignored the reaction, though Hathaway swore she saw the corner of her lip twitch upwards. She sat down on her high-backed chair, crossing her legs elegantly. She pointed a pale finger at the open history book.

"You read the text?" Victoria asked, switching back to 'Teacher Mode'.

"Yes." Hathaway swallowed another bite of the Golden Croissant, feeling the warm mana settle in her stomach.

"It talks about 'Command Protocol Incompatibility' and 'Resource Allocation Friction'."

"Boring, isn't it?" Victoria smiled. It was that terrifying, teacher-like smile again.

"That is because you are looking for a 'Tragedy'. But History, Miss Ludwig, is rarely a Tragedy." Victoria leaned forward, her eyes gleaming in the dark.

"It is almost always a Farce."

"Listen carefully, Hathaway. The war did stop because of Internal Conflict. But forget what the textbooks say about 'Strategic Divergences'." Victoria took a deep breath, looked at the history book with a mix of disgust and amusement, and dropped the truth bomb:"The Spark—the actual thing that lit the powder keg—wasn't some complex 'Incompatibility of Command Protocols'. It was a single order of [Charcoal-Grilled Devil Ribs]." Hathaway blinked, the croissant halfway to her mouth.

"... Huh?"

"At that time, the Allied Witch Forces had already flattened the first three layers of Hell. Lady Josephine and Lady Don were on a killing spree, ready to breach the fourth layer. Just then, a small logistical error occurred. A Witch from Casendiara (4th District) got hungry. She was too lazy to queue at the supply depot, so she swiped a lunchbox that a Holheim (2nd District) Witch had left on a table." Hathaway's mouth twitched.

"... Just because of... a lunchbox?"

"Never underestimate a Witch's obsession with food, especially when she's blood-crazed on the battlefield." Victoria sneered.

"When that Holheim Witch found her lunch missing, she instantly tilted. Without a word, she whipped out her staff and blasted the Casendiara thief with a [Maximized Pyroblast]."

"And then?"

"And then, the Holheim Witch won. She beat the thief into the dirt." Victoria shrugged.

"Justice was served, momentarily."

"But that was the problem. You have to remember, Hathaway, at that time, Casendiara was the home of Two Grand Witches. They were the 'Golden Generation'. They were arrogant beyond measure." Victoria's eyes narrowed, describing the ensuing chaos.

"A squad of Casendiara Witches saw their comrade lying on the ground. Did they ask,'Did she steal your lunch?' No. They only saw a Holheim Witch standing over a Casendiara Witch. So, they swarmed her. Five against one. They beat the innocent victim senseless, simply because 'No one touches a Casendiara'."

"This bullying victory made their egos explode."

"Standing in the corpse-filled Hell, with their boots on the poor Holheim victim's head, the Casendiara squad started singing the Fourth District's Battle Hymn..." Victoria mimicked the melody, a solemn, operatic tune:"🎶 Casendiara Never Falls... 🎶""While singing the high note, they looked to the left and saw the trenches of their hereditary enemy, Caroshadel (3rd District). They were high on adrenaline. They felt invincible.

So, while they were at it, they charged over—still singing, still wiping sauce off their faces—and beat up the Caroshadel Commander too, just for fun." Hathaway was dumbfounded.

"... What kind of unhinged, bully logic is that?!"

"That is a Witch." Victoria spread her hands.

"It set off a chain reaction. The Holheim troops saw their own getting bullied, so they jumped in. The Caroshadel troops saw their Commander getting pummeled for no reason, so they swarmed. The Milan'thir troops were just watching the show, caught a stray spell, and decided to join the riot too."

"Ten minutes ago, everyone was comrades-in-arms. Ten minutes later, the entire Hell Frontline turned into a Battle Royale. Forbidden spells flew everywhere, limbs flew everywhere (though they would regenerate). Everyone was fighting everyone." Victoria pointed to the five missing layers of Hell on the map.

"The Devils were dumbstruck. They had never seen anything like this in their immortal lives—the invaders had clearly won, but suddenly started frantically killing each other. So, the Devil Lords made a decisive call: They pulled a lizard maneuver and dropped their tail to survive."

"They threw the 4th Layer at us as a battlefield (a meat bone), then severed the coordinates and literally ghosted the entire universe, taking half of Hell with them as severance pay." Victoria closed the book. She traced the border between District 3 and District 4 on the map, her eyes darkening slightly.

"Five whole layers of Hell. Gone. Ostensibly, it was because of a bite of food and a song." Victoria paused, her voice dropping to a murmur that only a sharp student would catch: "But a spark is harmless, Hathaway. Unless the room is already soaked in gasoline." She tapped the book cover decisively.

"The result is what matters. The Devils escaped, and we lost everything." Hathaway sat there, processing the sheer absurdity of it. But as the story settled, her [Thread D: History Processor] began to whir. She closed her eyes, accessing the raw text she had memorized earlier. Search Query: Casendiara. Timeline. [Data Found] Event A: The Third Hell Crusade (The Lunchbox Incident). Date: Year 1920. Event B: The Ovelia Unification War (Chapter 12). Date: Year 1939. Hathaway's eyes snapped open.

She looked at Victoria, her expression twisting into disbelief.

"Teacher," Hathaway said slowly.

"The book dates the Hell Crusade to 1920. And the Ovelia War... where the Capital of Casendiara surrendered without casting a single spell... was in 1939." Hathaway did the mental math instantly.

"That is a 19-year gap. For a long-lived species like Witches, 19 years is nothing. It's barely a nap." Hathaway's voice rose an octave as the realization hit her.

"That means the Witches who surrendered to Ovelia... are the EXACT SAME PEOPLE who started a civil war in Hell for a lunchbox?! How?!" Hathaway pointed at the book, outraged by the hypocrisy.

"In 1920, they were so fierce they beat up Demons and allies alike, singing about how they 'Never Fall'! But 19 years later, when Ovelia knocked on the door, they opened the gates faster than a convenience store?! Where was their 'Battle Hymn' then? Where was their 'Lunchbox Courage'? Did they spend all their bravery on that one pork rib?!" Victoria stared at Hathaway, her expression a mask of flawless, academic calm. She simply nodded, as if Hathaway had just successfully recited the alphabet.

"Correct." Victoria took a sip of tea.

"You finally connected the dots. I was wondering how long it would take you to notice that. But this is the 'Charm' of the Fourth District," Victoria said with biting sarcasm.

"They are Flexible."

"When the enemy is a Demon (who has resources) or an Ally (who won't actually kill them), they are the bravest warriors in the galaxy. But when the enemy is Ovelia (who will actually wipe them out)..." Victoria shrugged elegantly.

"They suddenly remembered that they are peace-loving pacifists. Josephine fought to the death because she was an Idealist. But her people? They were Realists. They realized that surrendering to Ovelia meant they could keep eating ribs. Fighting Ovelia meant becoming the ribs." Hathaway held her head.

"That... is shameless."

"This is Politics, Hathaway." Victoria's eyes gleamed with a cold wisdom.

"Sometimes, 'Madness' is just a strategy to grab resources. And sometimes, 'Cowardice' is just a strategy to preserve them."

"But you are right to be disgusted." Victoria pointed a condemning finger at the empty space on the map.

"Because their 'Flexibility'—and their failure to control the chaos they started—cost us the greatest treasure in history."