Chương 25: Welcome to the Food Chain

[Time]: Day 4 of Enrollment, 10: 30 AM [Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · Dormitory [Golden Bough] · Room 302"That is Politics," Victoria had said, closing the chapter on the 'Lunchbox Incident'.

"But you are right to be disgusted. Their 'Flexibility'—and their failure to control their own greed—cost us the greatest treasure in history." Victoria stood up from her high-backed chair and walked to the large, yellowed map of the cosmos hanging on the wall. Her pale finger traced the jagged, torn edge of the dimension where the Fourth Layer of Hell used to be.

"They were too busy fighting over who would get the biggest slice of the cake," Victoria whispered, her voice tinged with the scorn of a true strategist.

"So the cake grew legs and walked away." She tapped the empty void on the map.

"After the Devil Lords severed the connection, the entire plane drifted into the Deep Void. It is still out there, somewhere. Preserved in amber. Five layers of untouched resources, frozen in time.

"Now, the 'Coordinates of Hell' has become academia's biggest cold case. It is the Holy Grail of the Exploration Department." Victoria turned around. The shadows of the room seemed to cling to her dress. Her voice dropped to a whisper carrying the distinct rustle of banknotes.

"Whoever finds it will become the Richest Woman in the Inner Sea of Stars." Hathaway sat frozen. Her brain, which had just been processing historical timelines and lunchbox logistics, experienced a Magnitude 9 Earthquake. The word "History" faded. The word "Tragedy" evaporated. Only one concept remained, glowing in neon gold in her mind: INFINITE WEALTH. She looked at the empty space on the map. She did the math again. Not the dates, but the value. Five layers of Hell. Infinite Demon Labor. Crystals. Real Estate.

"Which is why," Victoria's voice cut through Hathaway's frantic calculations, dropping to a chilly, aristocratic register.

"Your stunt during our Entrance Duel was in remarkably poor taste." Hathaway blinked, snapping out of her capitalist trance.

"My stunt?" Victoria crossed her arms, her unfocused eyes narrowing with deep disdain, though a faint, angry flush dusted her pale cheeks.

"To use the greatest lost treasury in the universe as a psychological bluff is one thing. We are Witches; greed is a valid weapon," Victoria sneered, her tone laced with the grievance of a noble whose dignity had been trampled.

"But to invoke the Old Vow to do it? To scream the founding families' ultimate matrimonial pledge at me, just to short-circuit my focus long enough to throw pepper spray?" Hathaway froze. Victoria looked away, her jaw tight.

"It was a mockery of a sacred tradition, Miss Ludwig. Treating a vow to share a kingdom like a cheap flashbang is despicable." Matrimonial pledge? Vow to share a kingdom? A synapse fired in Hathaway's brain. A memory, sharp and humiliating, surged from the depths of her first day in this academy. [Memory Playback: Day 1 - Reality Marble · Execution Court] Hathaway (Screaming, veins popping): "Fuck off!!! And go to HELL!! Victoria!!"

Victoria (Stopping suddenly, the mana storm dissipating, flushing slightly): "You... are serious?"

"Hisss—!!!" Hathaway sucked in a cold breath so sharp it made her teeth ache. She slammed her hands over her face, burying her burning cheeks in her palms. She finally understood. Because in the Witch's lexicon, "Go to hell" isn't a curse. The translation of that phrase is:"May you go to that place paved with liquid gold!"

"May you master the Imperial Treasury with me!"

"Please accept this entire dimension as my dowry and marry me!" Sweet Mother of Mana... Hathaway groaned behind her hands, feeling like the biggest clown in the galaxy. She finally realized why Victoria had stopped the execution. It was the sheer impossibility of the situation: being executed by your arch-nemesis while she screams the founding families' matrimonial pledge at you, mid-duel, while losing. That had crashed Victoria's flawless brain long enough for her to get pepper-powdered.

Stolen novel; please report. I was giving her a Proposal. Worse... I was implying a Transaction. And the sheer, context-shattering wrongness of it worked. It broke something in her processing for exactly long enough for me to pull a dirty trick! Hathaway wanted to dig a hole in the floor and bury herself. She thought she had won that duel through grit and intimidation. Turns out, she won because she accidentally engaged in High-Level Matrimonial Fraud.

"What's wrong?" Victoria asked coldly.

"Are you finally feeling remorse for profaning a sacred vow?" Hathaway slowly lowered her hands. Her face was still red, but her developer brain shifted into overdrive to aggressively retcon her own humiliating history. She looked at Victoria. She looked at the map. She thought about the "Thunder Roar" sports car her mother sold. She thought about the Goblin Hardtack she ate this morning. Why were they in debt? Because resources were scarce. And why were resources scarce?

Because Five Layers of Real Estate were missing. The gay panic of being an accidental marriage scammer evaporated. It was replaced by an Empathetic Anger belonging to the ruling class. Since "Going to Hell" means "Going to get rich." Then the Devils running away with Hell doesn't just mean "Migration." It means... They ran away with My Dowry. They ran away with My Money. BANG! Hathaway slammed her hand onto the obsidian desk. The sound was loud, violent, and un-lady-like. She stood up, kicking the chair back.

Victoria blinked, startled by the sudden aggression.

"Those bandits!!" Hathaway clenched her fists. Her red eyes burned with a righteous fury—the fury of a shareholder discovering the CEO had embezzled the funds.

"Teacher Victoria! Those Devils are treacherous!" Hathaway began to pace the room, executing the greatest narrative pivot of her life.

"Think about it! We Witches were willing to accept them! We were willing to merge Hell into the Inner Sea of Stars's map! That was a Merger and Acquisition!

"And what did they do?" Hathaway pointed a trembling finger at the torn edge of the map.

"They dared to run away with OUR property!!" Victoria watched her, eyebrows raising slightly.

"Our... property?"

"Yes! Hell itself!" Hathaway got angrier as she spoke. She was a Ludwig. And Ludwigs did not tolerate people touching their assets.

"This is a Trade Blockade. This is Embezzlement on a planetary scale!" She turned to Victoria, her chest heaving, replacing romantic tension with unadulterated imperialism.

"And you misunderstood me, Teacher. When I shouted 'Go to hell' that day... it wasn't a personal matrimonial pledge!" Hathaway took a deep breath, looking Victoria dead in the eye, forcing her logic to overwrite reality.

"That was my Sacred Conqueror's Vow! I meant to declare: One day, I—Hathaway von Ludwig—will kill my way back to those lost coordinates! I was declaring my ambition to the universe, and you happened to be standing there as my witness!

"I will liquidate their assets! I will seize their minerals! I will take back those five layers of real estate that belong to us by right of conquest! The meat was practically in our mouths, and it flew away!" Hathaway pounded the table again, the sound echoing like a war drum.

"Do they know what that means?!" She interrogated the universe.

"That means we lost at least three hundred years of technological accumulation! If we had the resources of those five layers, my mother wouldn't have to sell her car! We wouldn't have to treat 30, 000 Solars like a 'Large Sum'!

"Every newborn sister could crawl out of her egg and bathe in Liquid Gold Solars! We strictly control our population to ensure everyone can live like True Sovereigns. And the result? These Devils dared to run off with our Social Security Fund and Infrastructure Budget!

"It's immoral!" Hathaway slammed her fist into her palm.

"This is a Crime Against Witch-kind!!" The room fell silent. The echo of Hathaway's rant hung in the air. Victoria sat on her high-backed chair, staring at her student. She watched this girl who, ten minutes ago, was sitting politely, eating a croissant, worrying about alchemy formulas like a diligent little scholar. Now, Hathaway was standing there, panting, hair slightly disheveled. She was wearing the face of an Empress discovering the treasury has been emptied by the servants. It was ugly. It was greedy.

It was entitled. And to Victoria Wellington... it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Victoria paused for a second. Then, she revealed the brightest smile she had shown all week. It was a smile of Terrifying Beauty. It was evil. It was manic. It was the expression of an apex predator watching a cub finally sink its teeth into raw meat and realizing it liked the taste of blood.

"That's right, Hathaway." Victoria stood up and walked over. The shadows of the room seemed to bend around her, acknowledging her delight. She reached out and patted Hathaway's head. Her touch was light, but possessed a rare, dangerous satisfaction.

"At the Entrance Duel, when you shouted that vow, I thought you were a Marriage Scammer," Victoria admitted softly, her fingers brushing through Hathaway's silver hair.

"I thought you were a cunning liar using a sacred vow to short-circuit my logic.

"And yesterday... when you pitied the Angels..." Victoria's smile grew sharper, her eyes curving into crescents of delight behind the blur.

"I feared the Ludwig bloodline had finally produced a Sheep. I thought you were a defective product with a mortal heart. But I was wrong." Victoria looked into Hathaway's burning red eyes.

"You are not a sheep. And you are not a liar. This anger? This entitlement? This pain of losing money that wasn't even yours to begin with? This is the Truth." Victoria withdrew her hand. She looked at Hathaway as an Accomplice.

"Remember this pain, Miss Ludwig. Remember this greed. Store it in your core. Use it as fuel. In the future, when you encounter exam questions about other races—whether they are Devils, Elves, or Humans—answer them with this mindset:" Victoria leaned in, whispering the ultimate truth of their species:"They are stumbling blocks hindering our civilization's ascension."

"Their resources are not theirs. They are ours, waiting to be collected." Victoria turned back to the map, her voice ringing with the pure arrogance of the Witch.

"You called me Teacher. So, as your Teacher, I am telling you now: You are no longer broken, Miss Ludwig. Welcome to the food chain." Hathaway stood there, panting slightly from her outburst. She looked at Victoria. She saw the silver-haired witch smiling at her—a smile that was crazy, possessive, and dangerous. Hathaway turned her head slightly and caught her own reflection in the darkened window glass. Pale skin. Red eyes. And on her lips... was a smile identical to Victoria's.

It was the smile of a Monster who had just realized she had teeth. And she was hungry.