Chương 106: The Monster Registry, or: The Unimaginable

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 22 — Grand Finals, 05: 00 PM [Location]: Open Sea · Grand Masters Regional Qualifier Venue The remaining matches were an execution, not a duel. Mare Brume's last two elite starters stepped onto the ruined grassland carrying the blueprint Elysia had written in her own blood: orbital kite, safe-zone geometry, centrifugal drag. They knew the math. On the bench, Hathaway gripped her knees, actively bracing for the inevitable Shounen reverse-sweep.

She waited for the golden aura of "Inherited Will." She waited for the tragic flashbacks to kick in, and for the power of friendship to miraculously boost the remaining roster's mana pools by 300%. But as it turned out, the Power of Friendship did not patch your physical frame data. Without Elysia's terrifying reaction speed, without the raw, monstrous mechanical execution of a true Vice-Ace threading her casting frames through razor-thin margins—the orbital geometry collapsed the moment Tasia moved.

She didn't bother with spatial cages this time. She crossed the arena faster than their kinetic vision could track and dismantled them before their spells left their staffs. 1v2. Clean. Hathaway let out a profound, shuddering breath, sagging against the backrest. The immutable laws of reality and stat-checking had held firm. The meta-narrative crisis was averted. The Raid Boss had simply, efficiently wiped the rest of the party. When the final buzzer sounded, there were no cheers on the Royal Rosas bench.

No one leapt into anyone's arms. To the veteran monsters on this team, advancing to the Main Tournament was basically their factory setting. Even with the genuinely alarming variables Alice and Elysia had introduced, the result had never been in question. The mood was mostly the satisfaction of a work shift that had run twenty minutes long finally, mercifully ending. [Time]: 08: 00 PM [Location]: Royal Rosas Club · Victory Banquet The long table held an extraordinary centerpiece: [Angel Steak].

Hathaway stared at the cut of meat glowing faintly on her plate. It radiated a soft, holy luminescence. As a former Earthling who understood exactly what she was looking at, she set her fork down. Rhode solved this problem by shoving a piece directly into her mouth. The texture was impossibly tender—practically dissolving—while oozing a rich, sweet, deeply savory juice that intensified with every chew. Even more absurdly, as it settled, she felt a soothing coolness wash through her eyes. The world sharpened.

The steak carried a passive buff. She was eating the vision upgrade. All moral philosophy evaporated. She devastated three entire plates before her stomach formally registered a protest. [Time]: Late Night, 10: 30 PM [Location]: White City · Ludwig Estate The moment she pushed open the front door, a blinding sweep of crimson light seared her retinas. Margaret stood in the foyer, eyes blazing at a full 180 lumens.

She was radiating the unhinged, apocalyptic joy of a gambler who had just watched her absolute favorite horse trample the rest of the track. Levitating above her head were three life-sized, high-fidelity illusory projections of Hathaway, looping synchronized highlights from the regional finals. Except Hathaway hadn't played a single second in the finals. Hathaway stared at the projections. One was a ten-minute loop of her drinking water from a paper cup.

Another was her staring blankly into space during her existential crisis. The third was her burying her face in her hands in absolute despair. The official broadcast feed hadn't shown any of this. Margaret, sitting in the VIP skybox, had spent the entire match ignoring the field. Instead, she had deployed a military-grade, telephoto reconnaissance crystal to personally film a six-hour, multi-angle documentary of her daughter warming the bench, rushed home, and compiled the synchronous "highlights" on the way.

"My brilliant, undefeated—""Marge. The neighbors can see the bench-cam through the skylight." Anna drifted into the foyer, wiping down the disassembled bolt assembly of a heavy anti-materiel rifle with a microfiber cloth. She calmly reached up with her free hand and snapped her fingers. The three giant Hathaways short-circuited into a shower of harmless red sparks, instantly clearing the airspace.

"Congratulations, sweetheart," Anna said pleasantly, holding the polished gun part up to the light to inspect the craftsmanship. Before Hathaway could respond, a cool, localized weather front hit her left knee. She looked down. Rory clung to her leg like a highly determined barnacle. The two-month-old Siren Witch had already outgrown the helpless infant phase with terrifying magical efficiency. Her azure eyes, still swirling with crushed ice, looked up with profound, absolute focus.

Rory took a deep breath, marshaling her newly acquired linguistic arsenal.

"Sis-ter," Rory announced, her milky, earnest voice ringing out clearly. She patted Hathaway's knee with a cool little palm, her expression incredibly serious.

"Play. With Rory. Now. Please." The sentence structure was basic, but the demand was absolute. The living room went dead quiet. Margaret collapsed onto the imported velvet sofa like a puppet with its strings cut. The blazing crimson light in her eyes extinguished entirely, replaced by the dull, hollow stare of a Victorian ghost who had just watched her estate burn down.

"A multi-syllable imperative," Margaret whispered to the ceiling, her voice trembling with absolute devastation.

"A verb. A prepositional object. A temporal modifier. A polite closer.

"I spent three hours yesterday trying to coax her into saying 'Mama,' and she looked me dead in the eye and clearly enunciated the word 'No.' But for you? She constructs complete sentences." Anna slid the bolt assembly back into the receiver with a satisfying, heavy mechanical clack.

"You push too hard, Marge. The baby respects boundaries." If she didn't have a critical task ahead of her, Hathaway would have spent the entire night on the couch letting Rory demolish her at whatever game a two-month-old Siren Witch considered fair. She couldn't. She hardened her heart, scooped Rory up for one brief, deeply inadequate hug, and then handed the very reluctant baby over to Anna amid a chorus of highly articulate protests. She retreated to her room and locked the door.

She walked to her desk and set the manuscript down. The Blind Scholar: Sleepless Nights Under the Umbrella. She opened it. [Time]: Summer Break, Day 23 — 09: 00 AM [Location]: Royal Rosas Club · Tactical Briefing Room Hathaway sat at the conference table looking like something that had been dredged out of a canal. Of course.

No sane person could get through three hundred pages of extraordinarily explicit, trauma-bonded psychological erotica while simultaneously cross-referencing public archives to peel back the actual, horrifying truth underneath—and then sleep. The two activities were mutually exclusive with unconsciousness. But the tournament didn't care. All twelve regional qualifiers had concluded yesterday. Today's meeting had one topic: the teams now converging on the Main Tournament.

Hathaway's private label for this exercise: The Cosmic Monster Registry. She nursed her coffee and listened to Nino's rapid-fire scan. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. District 12, Nordenheim. Relentless —an entire roster of retired Void Legion veterans. District 11, Marigold Bay. The Unscripted —led by the 6th Seat, Malena. District 9, Marenia. Salt Shepherds —multiple Arch-Witches confirmed.

"District 6, Favania." Nino paused. Her expression did something deeply indescribable.

"The Steam Saints. Led by the 2nd Seat, Famia Schüder.

"Schüder is the sole tactical threat on this roster. As for the other four—they are currently conducting live field research on the viability of full-body mechanical integration. The sample size is four. The methodology is unorthodox." Even Hathaway, operating at approximately thirty percent cognitive capacity, looked up. Standing behind Famia Schüder on the screen were not humans. They were four pieces of heavily armed, sentient factory equipment. The aesthetic whiplash was absolute.

Hathaway's game-designer brain clocked the logic in about two seconds—the thermodynamic cycle of steam compression and release was structurally identical to the mana accumulation-and-burst cycle. Why bother dodging when you can just be a factory? Theoretically sound. Academically impeccable. Four fully licensed, walking water-boilers had just clocked in for their shift at a high-fantasy deathmatch. Rhode leaned forward, squinting at the screen in pure disbelief.

"Are they trying to speedrun their way into the Galaxy Brain Cup?"

"They're certainly dressed for the commentary desk," Alucard muttered, taking a slow sip of her tea. Hathaway nodded in profound, silent agreement. The Galaxy Brain Cup —officially named the Arch-Witch Elimination Special Invitational, but universally known among the pros as the Commentary Cup.

It was an infamous side-tournament reserved exclusively for Arch-Witches who were eliminated in the very first group stage—a graveyard for apex predators who refused to read the patch notes, invented a flawlessly logical but completely unplayable tactical loadout, got brutally out-scaled by reality, and were subsequently handed a commentator's microphone to cast the rest of the tournament in tears.

Witches didn't ship with corrupted firmware—but as the four walking industrial steam-valves on the screen clearly demonstrated, terminal theory-crafting hubris was far more fatal. Nino, entirely unfazed by the aesthetic nightmare on the screen, simply swiped to the next page. District 5, Hortania. Gilt Spire —led by the 7th Seat, Camilla the Philosopher King, with two holders of the Mandate of the Fire Dragon providing the actual teeth.

"District 10, Lectania." Nino pulled up the roster." The Laureates. Former 5th Seat Josephine Durant, 4th Seat Marianne Horton, holder of the Axiom of the Water Dragon, Tabitha, the biographer Alisha, and an elite ex-intelligence-service Witch." Hathaway's spine straightened. The Scarlet Fox of Casendiara. When she had first inherited the original Hathaway's offensively expensive, all-SSR "Anti-Synergy Council" deck, Josephine's 9-star card had been nothing more than a massive, unplayable early-game brick.

But the moment her monowheel patent royalties cleared, Hathaway's inner game designer had ruthlessly taken over. She had finally purchased the necessary infantry and utility spells, optimizing her collection into mathematically flawless, tier-one support decks around her favorite cores. And now, Hathaway was going to watch her orchestrate that lethal checkmate in a live tournament.

"A formidable roster," Nino noted, completely missing the fan-girl awe radiating from the substitute seat.

"But not today's primary focus." The screen flickered.

"District 7, Fusang. Absolute City." Rhode leaned back in her chair, a sharp, purely belligerent smile breaking across her face.

"I hope she hasn't rusted too badly." Nino didn't look up.

"Twelve months off. Two attempts at the A3. Still failed. The ring rust is the least of her problems." It was textbook trash talk. The mandatory pre-tournament disrespect. But Hathaway scanned the room and noticed what was actually happening beneath the casual trash talk. It was the synchronized, physiological shift of an entire squad of apex predators recognizing that the ultimate Raid Boss had just logged back into the server.

Nino had delivered the verbal jab flawlessly, but her fingers were already flying across the console, silently queuing up Absolute City's regional VODs for priority processing. Alucard had stopped her exhausted slumping; she was sitting dead-center, her eyes narrowing as if her muscle memory was already calculating parry timings. Bella had entirely dropped the melancholic gothic poet routine, her glowing crimson eye locked onto the projection with a predatory, unblinking focus. And Tasia.

She was perfectly still, staring at the holographic image of Lin Zhaojun with the absolute stillness of someone who had memorized every centimeter of a battlefield and was now watching it redraw itself. Because a duel was not a written exam. The failing grades on her academic transcript didn't erase a single ounce of the phantom pain she had left in the muscle memory of every veteran at that table.

"District 3, Caroshadel." Nino flipped the screen, her voice tightening just a fraction of a degree." Sunshine Pals." Hathaway sat with her hands folded tightly on the table. She didn't need Nino to pull up the stats. Every Witch with a pulse had seen the front-page headlines that morning. During yesterday's regional finals, an illustrious, highly respected Arch-Witch had faced Paddy.

In the middle of a high-stakes exchange, the Arch-Witch had been stealthily stabbed in the kidney by an incredibly underhanded, unidentifiable method. The resulting physiological shock had caused her to lose bladder control.

On live international broadcast. In front of hundreds of thousands of spectators. The competitor had reportedly suffered an instant, catastrophic loss of the will to live, fled to the Underworld before the post-match interview, and was currently refusing all summons to return to the realm of the living. Bella visibly recoiled. She pulled her heavy velvet cloak tight around her head like a terrified child hiding under the covers, her glowing eye wide with genuine horror. Tasia quietly looked away from the screen.

Not at the floor—away, as if the projection itself was cognitively hazardous to look at directly. The teacup in Alucard's hand trembled slightly. She set it down with great care. No one asked the question they were all privately computing: If we draw them in the bracket... who goes out there? In that precise moment, Hathaway closed her eyes for one full second. Substitute. She had never loved a word more in two lifetimes. The mental image of Rhode standing in front of Paddy surfaced unbidden.

Hathaway severed the thought immediately. No. Do not look at it. Do not process it. That is not your problem. The bench is a mercy. Nino flipped to the next page. She had nothing further to say about it.

"District 8, Ailuronia. Fey Star." Nino tapped the screen.

"Akkukataya anchors. Ovelia sent an Aspect this year. The social one. Allison." An Aspect. In theological terms, a literal, living fragment of the First Seat's own soul. In Hathaway's developer terms: a walking piece of the server admin's source code, downloaded into a physical vessel with localized god-mode privileges. The mere mention of one should have triggered an immediate, full-facility evacuation protocol. Instead, the tension in the room dialed back half a degree.

Everyone understood the calculus: Allison had the lowest combat desire of any of Ovelia's Aspects. If Akkukataya went down, or the match tipped sideways, Allison would wave the white flag rather than risk chipping her pristine manicure. Possible reasons for surrender included but were not limited to: the arena humidity threatening the volume of her ear-tufts, an absolute refusal to get soot in her meticulously brushed tail fur, or it simply being the hour of afternoon tea. No one said easy win.

Akkukataya was still Akkukataya. Ovelia's "social Aspect". In any rational classification system, that phrase should not make a room full of top-tier Witches breathe easier. It was roughly equivalent to saying a continent-level nuclear deterrent had a very laid-back personality and refused to deploy in bad weather because of the frizz.

"Finally." The holographic light intensified.

"District 4, Casendiara. Golden Iris." Tasia's posture shifted. The absolute, statuesque stillness she had reserved for Lin Zhaojun morphed into something heavier. Her grey eyes locked onto the projection with the suffocating, unyielding tension of a challenger facing the reigning Boss. Nino's hand hovered over the tactical console. She didn't tap the screen to cycle the data.

Her eyes tracked across the roster projection—stopping first on the face of Heidi, shifting briefly to the Sovereign of Avarice, Irene, and then snapping right back to Heidi. Her gaze anchored there, dead and unmoving. Rhode let out a low whistle.

"Irene's form this year is even sharper than during the dynasty era." Not a warning. Pure competitive hunger. Hathaway looked at the woman on the screen. Her perception of Irene was a multi-car pileup of contradictory data. The ruthless economic idol. The suffocating apex predator. The unreadable silhouette at the center of a sprawling psychological possession-fantasy. The cold, omnipotent network provider. She had tried to stack them together to build a functional tactical profile.

But layer upon layer, they just cancelled each other out. The terrifying part wasn't that Hathaway had too much disjointed information. It was that every layer she possessed was paper-thin. Even in Alice's three hundred pages of meticulous, explicit dissection, Irene had somehow remained entirely opaque—a gravity well that only ever reflected the desires and destruction of the people caught in her orbit. Irene hadn't needed any lenses.

She had simply stood in front of Hathaway for three minutes in a hallway and effortlessly read her down to the marrow. That sensation of being completely, flawlessly understood had felt like a bizarre kind of intimacy at the time. Looking at the cold, unyielding projection on the tactical monitor, Hathaway finally recognized it for what it truly was. It wasn't intimacy. It was the most precise, weaponized kind of asymmetry. She understood why Golden Iris had overtaken Absolute City as the tournament favorite.

She understood it rationally. Lin Zhaojun was the Millennium Sovereign, the record-holder, the one who had ended Irene's eleven-year dynasty on an open battlefield. She had seen those records. She knew Irene bled. And yet. She tried to build the simulation in her head. Irene Berenice Habsburg, losing this tournament. The image wouldn't load. Not because there was no precedent.

Because when that woman stood in a room—or on a screen, or in a hallway, or in your thoughts at 3 AM while you were reading someone else's version of her—your bones refused to accept the concept of failure descending on her. It wasn't a conclusion derived from data. It was something left behind by three minutes in a corridor, something that had sunk below the verbal layer and taken up permanent residence in her gut. She doesn't lose. Hathaway recognized the thought.

And then, a half-second later, she recognized the danger of it. If you walked onto the battlefield already certain the Raid Boss was unkillable, you had already handed them the win. She set her coffee cup down and said nothing. Fortunately, Golden Iris wasn't the final slide.

"District 2," Nino said. Her voice dropped, taking on an entirely different, almost metallic weight.

"Holheim." Nino tapped the console. A black umbrella materialized on the holographic display.

"The Greed Umbrella." Hathaway leaned back in her chair. Her heart began to hammer a slow, heavy rhythm against her ribs. This was the third time they were analyzing this team. Twice before, they had meticulously built and debated seemingly flawless tactical profiles of Cecilia Wellington's mathematically impossible 1v3 suicide-carries. And now, they were about to incinerate it. Again. Nino didn't immediately begin her analysis.

The unflappable tactician simply stood there, staring at the freshly updated data projection with an expression so profoundly bizarre it defied description. It was the look of a mathematician who had just watched two plus two equal a color. Around the table, the veterans' posture changed. Tasia leaned forward. Rhode's casual belligerence vanished.

Hathaway sat quietly in the substitute's chair, watching her elite teammates stare at the screen with the careful, calibrated unease of people who suspected the cage held something worse than one exhausted lion. They had no idea. She took a slow breath. Finally, she thought. Here we go.