Chương 82: A Neurotoxin Disguised as a Condiment

[Time]: Day 49, Saturday, 09: 00 AM [Location]: Dormitory [Golden Bough] · First Floor The Artisan Wing of the Royal Rosas Club operated at terrifying, premium-tier efficiency. By Saturday morning, a matte-black temperature-controlled case was sitting on the dormitory console, resting on a bed of crushed dark velvet. Inside: Hathaway's first piece of genuinely crafted loot. It was a mosaic of pale-gold Palebone Dragon scales, every ivory-white gradient edge preserved exactly as threatened-for.

A cloak with an inner lining of deep ballistic-weave that draped over one shoulder and caught ambient light with a soft, opalescent gleam. It did not look like armor. It looked like high-end couture. Hathaway put it on. Spent three full minutes in front of the hallway mirror adjusting the fall across her collarbone. Smoothed her expression into a mask of complete, casual indifference. Then walked into the living room at what she privately classified as strategic deployment speed. SSR-tier drop. Out-of-print.

Exclusive cosmetic. This is the item that carries the entire build. The gothic mausoleum had made its usual grudging concession to the living. Heavy velvet curtains fully drawn against the morning sun—very Holheim—but a series of warm amber sconces now lit along the walls, casting the kind of glow found in prestigious old libraries. Victoria sat on the sofa, spine perfectly upright, cup of black tea balanced on gloved fingers. More accurately, she was staring at Hathaway. SWISH.

Hathaway pivoted on her heel and the cloak carved a luminous arc through the amber light. The pale-gold scales caught the sconces and threw them back harder, filling the room with pearlescent shimmer. She held the pose. Chin up. Right hand at collar. Eyes performing the most sophisticated version of bored and casual she had in her repertoire.

"The logistics team sent over the harvest from Friday," Hathaway announced, landing somewhere between veteran adventurer unbothered by material rewards and vibrating with anticipated validation.

"The tailoring is decent, I suppose." Hathaway waited for the praise. Then, approximately three seconds into the silence, her brain caught up with reality. Right. She had just executed a high-fashion runway pivot for a woman with 1, 200-degree uncorrected myopia. To Victoria's Mystic Eyes, Hathaway was a beautifully structured flow of deep burgundy mana. But the non-magical cloak was just a vaguely human-shaped smudge of blinding, white-gold pixels aggressively pivoting in the middle of the living room.

Unable to parse the aesthetics of a blur, Victoria's brain bypassed fashion entirely and defaulted to the one metric she could analyze: materials science.

"The scale distribution is far too loose." Her tone was the academic equivalent of a cold scalpel.

"Against any kinetic impact above Tier-Three, its physical resistance is fundamentally indistinguishable from wet paper. Its magical resistance will, at best, deflect low-level illusions and minor mental interference.

"Its practical combat value is abysmally low. It is, in the technical parlance, vendor trash."

"But it looks gorgeous." Hathaway retorted loudly, puffing her chest with the absolute pride of someone who has found the most beautiful piece of equipment in the entire game and categorically refuses to swap it for anything with better stats. Armor stats are temporary. Drip is eternal. You min-maxing meta-slaves will never understand the romance of the cosmetic endgame. Victoria looked at the proud white-gold blur bouncing before her.

Let out one very small, very quiet sigh—the exact sound of a weary owner watching their golden retriever proudly drop a very shiny, completely useless rock at their feet.

"... Indeed." Victoria took a sip of her tea, her tone calibrated to the precise frequency of aristocratic indulgence.

"If your goal is to leave behind a very sparkly silhouette in the instant before you are incinerated by a standard Fireball, then its visual effects are outstanding. As long as you are pleased with it." VICTORY. Hathaway's internal peacock unfurled every tail feather simultaneously. The single positive word in that entire clinical dissection glowed in her mind like a legendary item notification. She was smoothing the hem with the satisfaction of a woman who had won a debate she had mostly invented herself.

Victoria set her teacup down with a quiet precision that meant an administrative announcement was incoming.

"Additionally—I will be away from the academy for an undetermined period." The aristocratic register in her voice had raised by exactly one wall.

"Family matters requiring personal attention." Hathaway's hand paused on the cloak hem. Family matters. Her mind immediately flashed to the lab. To the precise moment Victoria's entire body had gone rigid at the casual mention of an eldest sister. To the specific quality of stillness that was not the ordinary kind. Her gossip radar lit up like a proximity alert. Her common sense pulled the emergency brake with both hands. This is late-game expansion DLC. Main questline territory.

I have a final project that hasn't even entered the concept phase, and my current noob stats are not equipped to touch a dark-fantasy noble family hidden arc. Entering that questline now is how a Level-1 character gets vaporized in the tutorial.

"Understood." Hathaway flashed a bright smile, her boundaries perfectly calibrated.

"Have a safe trip. If you need anything—I mean, I probably can't do much. But you can always send a message." Victoria looked at her. Something moved through those unfocused blue eyes—something that flickered for approximately two seconds before the aristocratic wall resealed without a trace. She stood. Smoothed the non-existent wrinkles from her vest. Adjusted one white glove.

"Focus on your final design project, Ludwig," she said.

"If I return to find you have been removed from Professor Nino's laboratory for failing to produce an original, patent-ready invention, I will feel profoundly embarrassed."

"It's barely nine in the morning! Isn't it too early to bring up life-shortening information?!" The precise click of Victoria's heels receded down the corridor and disappeared. The amber sconces continued their warm, steady glow. I'll keep the lights on, Hathaway thought. That's the least I can do. [Time]: Day 53, Wednesday, 23: 30 [Location]: White City · "The Velvet Choker" Nightclub The evening's damage had begun at the panoramic restaurant.

It started when Bella stood up, adjusted her eyepatch, and formally proposed descending into the neon abyss of the White City's most exclusive nightclub to "observe the nocturnal hunting rituals of the damned." The high-level rejections were immediate. Tasia, who had been staring pleasantly into the middle distance, took a full three seconds to process the invitation. She blinked, offered a remarkably gentle, almost domestic smile, and declined with the placid serenity of a creature simply too full to move.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Hathaway concluded the cosmic-tier slacker was now actively lagging, too lazy to even render real-time dialogue. Alucard walked away without looking back, carrying a potted experimental pepper plant whose soil was doing something quietly alarming. Nino snorted coldly, her eyes already reflecting the scrolling data of the newly published Grand Masters registration list, and stated she had preliminary threat models to compile.

Rhode, currently picking her teeth with a toothpick and visibly bored at the cellular level, shrugged and declared she was in. She then immediately received a private, lethal glare from her younger cousin.

"If you wear graphic beach tees and rubber flip-flops into a high-society establishment and shame the Ludwig name," Bella hissed, her Chuunibyou persona breaking just enough to reveal pure, patrician malice, "family law will be administered on the spot." Rhode clicked her tongue, but lazily agreed to go change. The invitation then fell to Hathaway, who was aggressively finishing the last of her seafood bisque.

"A Witch nightclub?" She wiped her mouth with a napkin.

"Ahem. Isn't that a touch early for a first-year freshman? I imagine there are activities that technically conflict with academy regulations—" Her mouth delivered this impeccably measured speech of reserved concern. Her body had already stood up. Her hands were straightening her cloak. Are you kidding me. A nightclub filled exclusively with beautiful Witches?!

If I don't go witness what the decadent social ecosystem of this civilization actually looks like, I am actively failing my obligation as an isekai protagonist! When they reconvened outside the building fifteen minutes later, Hathaway received the first critical hit of the evening before they had even left the premises. The resident street thug who exclusively operated in graphic beach tees and rubber flip-flops—apparently taking Bella's death threat seriously—had actually changed clothes.

Rhode was wearing a sharp, stiff-collared crimson coat, tailored to the aggressive geometry of her shoulders. The back was embroidered in dark gold thread: the Ludwig lion, roaring through a wreath of red and white roses, set against a faint silver background. Her normally chaotic silver hair had been slicked back into a clean undercut, a few loose strands left to fall across her forehead with the strategic negligence of someone who had spent twenty minutes on them.

A plain black leather choker sat against her collarbones. Her entire being radiated a lethal, casually predatory, androgynous energy. She looked exactly like a female Brad Pitt at peak form. It was bewildering. Bella, walking on her other side, had undergone an equally inexplicable transformation. The eyepatch remained. The Gothic Lolita layers were gone, replaced by a sleek black trench coat over a silk shirt with a complex lace cravat and a massive ruby rose ring on one pale finger.

She wasn't speaking—just walking, head slightly bowed, tall and slender, radiating the gravitational pull of someone who has suffered beautifully. The "Brain-damaged Eighth-Grader Syndrome" had, without changing a single gram of source material, become "Melancholic Gothic Aristocrat Poet bearing the tragic weight of her bloodline." Hathaway stared at both of them walking. How is this possible. You are the exact same people.

You are literally a delinquent who eats lollipops for breakfast and a girl who screams dramatically at trees. How does a wardrobe change make you look this devastatingly, illegally attractive?! When they stepped into the Velvet Choker, Hathaway took a deep breath and straightened her spine. I am a Ludwig too. She adjusted the pale-gold cloak across her shoulder with the confidence of someone who knew they were wearing an out-of-print cosmetic. Bring it on. Approximately ten minutes later.

Hathaway sat in the darkest recess of the booth, holding a glass of zero-proof sweet orange juice, her eyes as hollow as a dead fish. Yes, the club was exactly what she had hoped for. Dim neon in seven colors. Sub-bass vibrating in her chest cavity. The layered aroma of expensive cocktails cut with actual magical reagents. A dance floor packed with beautiful, powerful Witches representing a spectacular sample of the known lineage diversity. No, she was not the one experiencing it.

Rhode, leaning back against the velvet cushions with one arm stretched along the backrest, was in the process of making three different women laugh simultaneously. She wasn't even trying. She was simply existing at her current calibration settings and the results were geologically devastating. Bella, several feet away, had assumed a forty-five-degree melancholic ceiling-stare and was reciting something in what Hathaway tentatively identified as an Abyssal dialect.

Two Elven Witches beside her had tears running down their faces—the specific expression of people who cannot fully understand something and are certain they need more of it. The gorgeous older witches who drifted over one after another gave Hathaway a warm smile, called her cloak cute, and then asked for the same things. The name of the silver-haired one in the red coat. A folded cocktail napkin slid across the table. Could you pass this Bloody Mary to the brooding one with the eyepatch?

Tell her the recitation made me cry. Another napkin. Hathaway looked down at her hands. She was holding four cocktail napkins, each with a different set of contact numbers hastily scrawled in glowing magical ink. None of them were for her. I understand everything now. She pulled the vendor-trash dragon cloak tighter around herself like a thermal blanket. These two are not a street thug and a Chuunibyou. They are apex predators. The absolute lady-killers of this specific ocean.

And I—in this glittering hunting ground for fully realized adults—am not even a viable wingman. I am the non-threatening family mascot they brought along so they'd look more approachable. The girl people squish on the cheek and then hand their phone number to, to pass along. Outside, the bass kept pounding. Rhode threw her head back and laughed at something. Bella accepted a fresh glass without breaking her forty-five-degree gaze.

The distribution of aesthetic genetics in this family, Hathaway concluded, was a completely unfair, cosmically engineered scam. She took a long, meditative sip of her zero-proof orange juice, allocated two background cognitive threads, and began silently decoding the arcane matrix for the [Vodka Spray] spellbook. If I can't pull numbers at the club, she decided grimly, I am at least going to grind my skill tree.

[Time]: Day 56, Saturday, 14: 00 [Location]: Royal Rosas Club · Botanical Laboratory 3 The end-of-term project had officially graduated from abstract future anxiety to concrete threat currently occupying permanent residence in the back of Hathaway's skull. She tracked Nino's terminal signal to Botanical Laboratory 3, tucked into the deeper, heavily warded wing of the club.

Her logic was the flawless, impeccable reasoning of a desperate university student: Who better to provide the answer key than the examiner who designed the test? She needed an idea. She needed a gap in the market. And buried deep in her heart was a tiny, fiercely protected delusion—the hope that the resident academic tyrant might suddenly experience a catastrophic lapse in professional standards, take pity on her miserable existence, and blindly stamp a passing grade on a completely blank project proposal.

Was it statistically impossible? Categorically. But a person needs dreams to survive. Right? The blast doors hissed open. The air did not smell like a botanical laboratory. The air smelled like aerosolized violence. In the center of a pristine white-tiled lab sat a heavy brass cauldron. Boiling, viscous, magma-red oil churned inside it at a temperature that had no business existing in an enclosed space.

Bizarrely shaped peppers—in colors Hathaway categorized as threatening and specifically aggressive —bobbed and sank in the churning liquid. Sitting on one side of the table was Nino Lucent. White lab coat draped over her shoulders. A cup of hyper-bitter espresso cooling at her elbow. A marker in one white-gloved hand, scribbling across a floating botanical gene-sequence diagram with the focused, gleaming intensity of a researcher who has identified a flaw in reality and intends to personally correct it.

Sitting directly opposite was Alucard von Milan'thirskaya. She was holding a silver spoon. Expressionless, she scooped a purple, barbed pepper from the boiling oil and placed it in her mouth. The moment it crunched, a layer of cold sweat erupted uniformly across Alucard's forehead. The bloodshot veins spreading through her grey eyes were immediate and vivid. Her expression, beneath all of it, carried the specific quality of someone discovering a pain so precisely calibrated it functions as pure focus.

The Archon of the White City chewed. Calmly.

"The fundamental structural problem," Nino was saying, her eyes lit with the dark joy of a researcher handed unlimited materials and no oversight committee, "is that the Ghost-Skull's capsaicin chain breaks down upon contact with high-tier stomach acid. The intensity is significant, but the experience lacks commitment. The burn resolves too quickly.

"If we theoretically isolated the arcane heat-retention sequence from a Corrosive Mandrake root—Third Layer of the Abyss variety—and grafted it directly onto the capsaicin molecular chain..." Nino tapped a floating line of genetic code, a thin, cruel smile working its way onto her face.

"The resulting compound would not simply burn the tongue. It would bypass the standard digestive pain receptors entirely and interface directly with the soul cortex. The moment you consumed it, your soul would register the event as localized industrial combustion." She tapped the diagram once more, for emphasis.

"This would be a concept-level neurotoxin disguised as a condiment." Alucard covered her face with both hands. Let out a long, slow breath that sounded like someone discovering religion after thirty years of skepticism.

"Every single municipal deficit review meeting this fiscal year has been three hours of actively wanting to die," she said, with the reverence of someone who has just found their church.

"This is what I need. How quickly can you cultivate it?"

"If you authorize Class-A bio-hazardous soil clearance from the Deep Reserves," Nino replied, calm as a supply requisition form, "and countersign a waiver for potential structural damage to the greenhouse. Three days.

"Charge the funding to the municipal defense budget. Technically, we are developing a chemical deterrent."

"Granted," said Alucard, immediately.

"Every word of that." Behind the reinforced glass partition, Hathaway stood very still. One: an Archon who administers a city of tens of thousands, currently running cost-benefit analysis on soul-level capsaicin exposure as a productivity tool for budget meetings. Two: a researcher whose genius burns brightest when pointed at a problem no ethical committee has yet thought to classify as a problem.

She looked at the bubbling cauldron, which had just spat a droplet of oil that hissed against the steel table rim and left a small, dark mark. She thought about her invention project. Which remained resolutely, catastrophically blank. She quietly released the partition. She took two steps back. She closed the blast door with the careful, loving precision of someone who has witnessed something they were not meant to see and intends to pretend they never saw it.

Some gaps in the market, she decided, walking back down the corridor at a pace that technically wasn't a sprint but would have been difficult to distinguish from one, were better identified by a different inventor, in a different laboratory, on a different afternoon. Logged. Filed under: premium NPC content. Do not disturb during team-building exercises.