Chương 94: The Glass Cannon's Patch Notes

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 4, 10: 15 AM [Location]: Grand Masters Regional Qualifier · Six-Part Miniature Arena A standard Eight-Part Arena was supposed to span tens of miles, with eight artificially maintained biomes lovingly designed to kill you in eight distinct regional cuisines. Desert. Snowfield. Swamp. The full lethal tour. This Qualifier variant had cut the extreme weather options—no Desert, no Snowfield—leaving a highly compressed six-biome deathmatch. Budget apocalypse.

Standard league rules: one arena minute for every three outside. Hathaway had already decided which one she cared about.

"Yenna," Hathaway said, her eyes already scanning the far side of the field.

"You know [Summon Monster], right?"

"They're all radishes... the audience is just radishes..." Yenna murmured, her golden fox ears drooping, her three tails drifting aimlessly behind her like forgotten laundry.

"Huh? What did you say?"" [Summon Monster]," Hathaway repeated, enunciating every syllable. Beside them, Rina's ruby eyes lit up with weaponized enthusiasm.

"The club's summon vault! Can we pull a batch of super demons? Twenty, thirty Legendary Fiends, just—" No. In an actual war, summoning thirty Legendary Fiends was a casual Tuesday for any of them. But this was a regulated duel. Under Witch Authority tournament rules, every active summon sequestered a strict, unyielding percentage of the caster's maximum mana pool until the creature was destroyed and the mana slowly refunded.

To field a dozen Legendary Fiends under these restrictions without instantly crippling your own combat output required the bottomless bandwidth of a Grand Witch. They were very much not Grand Witches. Yenna blinked, the absurdity snapping her halfway back to consciousness.

"Then what are we summoning?" One second of genuine calm. Then her ears pinned flat.

"What are they summoning?" Hathaway abandoned all hope of nuanced tactical synergy and issued the only command that required zero cognitive load.

"Skeletons. Mass summon skeletons." When in doubt: high volume, mixed elite and fodder, versatile range. The AK-47 of summon strategy.

"Skeletons..." Yenna repeated, beginning to channel mana with trembling hands.

"OPENING MATCH—BEGIN!!!" The Red Dragon commentator's roar hit the arena like a physical force. The barrier dissolved. In that exact millisecond, Hathaway caught a sensation just past the fading shield. She felt the enemy's mana swell, rapidly mutate into a violent peak, and detonate. Directly above them, the sky tore open. A torrential rain of fire poured down—brilliant, fleeting like light motes, yet dazzling like a cluster-bomb of fireworks.

Beside her, Yenna was already gathering massive amounts of mana, dragging skeletons out from Royal Rosas's cannon-fodder vault. Hathaway raised her palm toward the sky. No spell model. No incantation. She simply seized her mana—all of it, as much as she needed—and compressed it into a wall. The fire rain hit the barrier and dissolved. No explosion, no sound, no impact tremor. Just her mana — dense, unreasonable, too much of it — absorbing the apocalypse the way a mountain absorbs rain.

Deeply inefficient, she noted distantly. But mana is the one thing I have too much of. But the attack carried secondary effects. A massive wave of malicious, disruptive mana washed over them, scrambling their senses and inducing a severe, heavy-headed dizziness.

"Covering fire!" Yenna gasped, fighting through the debuff. Rina clapped her hands together. White mist surged from her body, clinging tightly to the ground. Translucent, crystalline energy in shades of red, gold, and blue was rapidly drawn up by the mist. [Leyline Casting]. She unleashed a roaring thunderclap. Visible blue sparks detonated violently within the enemy formation across the field.

This towering blue lightning strike caused immediate chaos among the Iron Compass Witches, shattering the suffocating debuff lock that had been suppressing Royal Rosas's casting. Her mind clear, Yenna dumped hundreds of summoning spells without pausing. In a flash, the area around them was packed with an undead army. Skeleton Swordsmen, equipped with standard shields. Qualified frontline fodder. Skeleton Spearmen, equipped with heavy tower shields. Anti-cavalry response. Skeleton Shooters...

equipped with fully automatic Calvi Model-19 assault rifles, complete with three underbarrel grenades, providing suppressive fire. Why not Skeleton Archers? Because imbuing a pile of bones with the complex dexterity required to nock, draw, and aim a bow cost exactly five times more mana than simply teaching it to pull a trigger.

Furthermore, in the Witch industrial system, the market price of a single longbow and a leather quiver of a hundred arrows could buy five Calvi-19s, three thousand rounds of ammunition, and complimentary spare magazines directly from the manufacturer. Just as the summons armed their rifles, Iron Compass moved. A cheap, sprawling frontline of Orcs and Goblins churned forward in a green wall.

Behind that tide, the three Iron Compass Witches mounted their brooms simultaneously, flooding their mana-engines to maximum output to bypass their own infantry. A Zerg Rush. The three enemy Witches unleashed a coordinated triple-barrage of [Fireball] and [Acid Mist], obliterating more than half of Yenna's Skeleton Swordsman vanguard in a single pass. Hathaway didn't move. The skeletons were taking heavy losses against the Orcs and Goblins.

Forced to transition from artillery to commander, Yenna had to personally micromanage the undead phalanx just to keep the frontline from collapsing. Yenna: anchored.

"Leave it to me! I'll snipe them!" Rina declared, enthusiastically raising her battle staff to aim at the incoming broom riders. But the moment she spoke, the enemy summoner played her second card. Three [Manticores] erupted from a mid-air summoning circle, dove straight from the sky, and bypassed the infantry to strike directly at Yenna's completely exposed flank. Rina's [Anomalous Probability] was a selfish algorithm. It protected exactly one person: Rina.

When the Manticores bypassed her entirely to target Yenna, her passive ability had nothing to work with. Iron Compass had aimed at the gap and accidentally found the one vulnerability Rina's passive couldn't cover. Lucky shot. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it To stop Yenna from being decapitated while managing the skeleton line, Rina abandoned her sniping stance and threw herself into the Manticores' flight path, wildly waving her battle staff to pull aggro.

Rina: anchored. Which left Hathaway standing alone in the backline, watching three broom-riders plunge from the sky toward her at Mach speed. Three intact Witches. One of her. By every metric of Witch combat geometry, this was a mathematical execution.... You think you can decapitate me? The corners of Hathaway's mouth curved upward. Do I look that weak to you? Bella's whisper surfaced from somewhere, unbidden: Use your madness. She narrowed her eyes.

The absolute, violent override that had flooded her in the Decision Room—the one that made zero distinction between a monster and a fellow Witch—surged through her veins. She had let this manic, blood-drunk high consume her once before in the hunting reserve. But not today. This was a tactical arena. She grabbed the reins of the madness, compressed it, and held. [Amora's Analytic Vision] engaged. Three brooms dissolved into engineering schematics. Mana-alloy chassis.

Anti-vibration lattice running the full length of the frame. High-torque mana engine bolted to the rear housing. Anti-magic shielding layered over every surface she would have hit on instinct. High-end loadout. Fully armored. Someone spent real money on their equipment manager. But magical physics was still physics. To push a heavy mana-alloy chassis to Mach speed, the engines needed to breathe. The anti-magic shielding had a deliberate, unavoidable gap at the rear: the three-millimeter exhaust vents.

The manufacturer's manual probably classified this as "negligible risk under standard combat conditions." The outward kinetic pressure from the exhaust was so violently strong it acted as a physical wall, blowing away any incoming offensive spells before they touched the vents. A self-sealing vulnerability — untouchable by anyone who lacked the mana density to punch through the pressure. Hathaway's reservoir was not something that model had accounted for. She raised [Silver Star]. Not at the Witches.

At that exact three-millimeter gap. [Empower]. [Shatter]. She seized her mana and rammed the spell straight up the exhaust pipes against the outward thrust. CRACK—!!! Three simultaneous impacts. The engines choked on their own backpressure and seized. The chassis were still doing Mach speed. The mana-alloy snapped. Three Witches with terrifying reaction speeds. The exact millisecond the frames went, they bailed—barely. Dust drifted down in silence. In mid-air, three short-wands snapped out. [Feather Fall].

The Iron Compass trio drifted to the ground, fanning into a spread thirty meters out.

"Careful! Her base mana density is completely abnormal!" The lead Witch landed with her staff raised, a bead of cold sweat at her temple. Hathaway recognized the eyes—fast-attack focus, duelist calibration. The ace. Nino's pre-match description surfaced: Little Lin Zhaojun of the White City. She was a highly technical, fast-attack Witch who specialized in using deep illusions to bait out high-value spells from hostile casters.

Her core defensive mechanic was [Duelist's Guard] —counter incoming magic as a bonus action. Hathaway's mouth twitched. No wonder she got that nickname. Her entire spell list is literally just a degraded, budget version of Lin Zhaojun's loadout. For this girl to earn a title mimicking the Millennium Sovereign, she definitely had genuine skills. But as a brute-force glass cannon with a notoriously shallow spell pool and absolutely zero finesse, Must be nice. She stared at the technical Witch.

Having enough finesse to actually cast a decent illusion. Show-off.

"Weren't you trying to execute a decapitation strike?" Hathaway asked, her voice entirely level despite her internal grumbling.

"You should probably hurry."

"Three against one. What is there to hesitate about?" She took one slow step forward. The ace's reaction proved she'd earned her nickname. The moment Hathaway raised [Silver Star], she read it: Tier-4 Evocation, Empower signature, Penetration vector—cannot be tanked. Counter. [Duelist's Guard] triggered. A bonus action sacrificed, a precise counter-field snapping into existence. Hathaway's Empowered [Conflagration] hit it and detonated in midair, washing the arena in dispersed thermal light.

Simultaneously, the formation split with surgical precision. [Mirror Image] flooded the center lane—three identical figures filling the space where the ace had been standing. The second Witch closed hard on the left flank, forcing a melee threat. The summoner dropped to the deep right, raising her staff to begin chip damage. A triangle. Near-range pressure, mid-range illusion control, long-range attrition. Classic artillery-hunting geometry.

Designed for a stationary glass cannon who had no choice but to stand still and bleed out. They'd studied the right boss. They hadn't checked the patch notes. She burned triple mana cost, and [Anti-Spell Domain] detonated outward from her body—a dense, blinding sphere of extreme magic resistance. The flanking Witch's incoming spell dissolved into harmless static the moment it touched the perimeter. The ace and the flanker halted mid-cast in perfect unison. Their casting stances dissolved.

Two high-frequency force-daggers whispered from their sheaths. A pure artillery caster deploying an Anti-Spell Domain is suicide, Hathaway's game-designer brain read from their movement. Walking into melee because they think I can't survive it. In the same breath: [Amora's Dimensional Jump]. Their script read: The glass cannon kites backward to survive. Hathaway materialized directly in front of the exhausted summoner at the rear of the triangle. Distance: half a meter. The fastest response came from the ace.

She burned her own [Dimensional Jump] without hesitation, reappearing between Hathaway and the summoner. Inside the [Anti-Spell Domain], the ace's illusion toolkit was crippled. But she was a close-quarters specialist, and Hathaway was a glass cannon who, by all reasonable assumptions, had never touched a melee weapon in her life. It was the right read. It was completely correct. It was also the last accurate assumption she made. Hathaway didn't cast.

She simply swung the heavy, solid-silver barrel of [Silver Star] down like a blunt mace, fueled by the sheer, terrifying kinetic output of her mana reservoir. The strike carried the oppressive weight of a dragon's tail swipe. The ace caught the mana signature a fraction of a second out, flooded her nervous system — and guessed wrong. The strike tracked it—whistling past her elbow by less than a millimeter. She rolled beneath the crushing swing and thrust her force-dagger at Hathaway's throat.

She'd been reading a retreat, Hathaway caught from the angle of the thrust. Wrong. Her eyes went cold. Instead of dodging, she lowered her stance, let the dagger graze her shoulder, and slammed her empty left hand forward—clamping down on the ace's wrist like a hydraulic press. Using the duelist's own forward momentum as a pivot, she hurled the ace bodily into the summoner who was still scrambling to retreat. CRUNCH.

The summoner hit the ground with the ace's weight behind her and the kinetic mass of Hathaway's mana-reinforced grip behind that. The summoner's Resurrection Stone blazed white, instantly pulling her crushed body from the arena. With her elimination, the three Manticores lost their anchor and scattered into mist. The ace survived the collision. She rolled out of the dirt, battered but alive, just as the [Anti-Spell Domain] faded.

"Support!" Yenna's voice cracked over the comms. Freed from the Manticores, Yenna and Rina turned their fire on the remaining Iron Compass flanker. A geometric beam of golden light pinned the flanker to the ground, followed by a localized thunderstrike from Rina that triggered the second Resurrection Stone. Three versus one had become one versus three. The ace was entirely alone. For the next forty seconds, she refused to go down.

Battered, her ribs bruised and her mana half-spent, the Little Lin Zhaojun dodged, parried, and wove through the combined assault of Yenna's skeleton remnants and Rina's elemental barrages—precise, adaptive, burning every last technical advantage she had. Saving mana was meaningless now. Pushed to the absolute brink, the ace poured every last drop into a suicidal gambit. [Shadow Walk]. The ace dissolved into the arena's shadows.

A sharp instinctual spike of lethal threat hit the base of Hathaway's skull before she could consciously process it. The ace materialized directly behind her, a condensed, armor-piercing [Void Touch] glowing violently on her fingertips—a spell designed to bypass shields and execute the target on physical contact. Hathaway didn't even turn around. The madness in her blood peaked, cold and absolute. She simply tossed [Silver Star] into the air and snapped her fingers. VMMMM—!!! The heavy silver wand didn't fall.

Seized by a brutal surge of telekinetic mana, it reversed direction mid-air and shot backward like a railgun slug. Before the lethal touch could land, the blunt end of [Silver Star] slammed into the center of the ace's chest, driving a shockwave of pure thermal evocation straight through her spine. The ace's Resurrection Stone blazed with blinding intensity, dissolving her from the arena. Hathaway calmly raised her hand and caught the returning wand. Royal Rosas took the 3v3 in exactly one minute and forty seconds.

The Little Lin Zhaojun of the White City lasted the final forty of those seconds—which, given that she was fighting a 3v1 with her support eliminated and her mana half-spent, was genuinely impressive. Walking back to the prep zone afterward, Hathaway turned the sequence over in her head with the satisfied detachment of a game designer reviewing a playtest report. Iron Compass had done their homework.

They had identified her build, studied the kill-chain, and built a formation specifically designed to neutralize a stationary, long-range glass cannon with a famous three-hit fire combo. They had researched the correct boss. They had failed to check whether the boss had a Phase Two. She filed it under patch notes for next time and went to find Rina, who was enthusiastically explaining to Yenna why the third Manticore had willingly walked into a wall.