Chương 108: The Enemy's Unencrypted Source Code

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 23 — 09: 45 AM [Location]: Royal Rosas Club · Tactical Briefing Room The VOD advanced to the main event: KOF Singles Relay. [KOF Round One.] Following Greed Umbrella's standard rotation, Cecilia took the vanguard. Pale Court sent Bixie. Their strategy was transparent: use the Fire Dragon Mandate holder to force a brutal, head-on firefight and trade their penalized Vice-Ace for the opponent's undisputed Ace.

Against a battle-forged monster who had spent the qualifier circuit sweeping 1v3s, there was no "war of attrition." Bixie's apocalyptic frontal bombardments hit nothing but phantoms and hyper-precise spatial distortions. Bypassing the roaring sea of fire entirely, a surgical dimensional blade cleanly severed Bixie's head. Score: 2: 0, Greed Umbrella leading. [KOF Round Two.] With their Vice-Ace harvested, Pale Court deployed their Core Control: Roxanne.

Knowing she couldn't out-duel the Wellington Heir in a straight fight, the Ghost Witch opted for the most infamous strategy in Witch dueling: she parked the bus. Formally classified as the "High-Intensity Defensive Counter-Attack," the tactic involved hiding inside a sickeningly thick turtle shell of heavy-duty Abjuration and Conjuration spells, shamelessly launching cheap, harassing strikes to meticulously whittle away the opponent's mana, stamina, and sanity.

Cecilia's physical conditioning was impeccable, but Roxanne's determination to play dirty was so unrelenting that the mud-wrestling nightmare quickly devolved into a seemingly endless marathon. In the briefing room, the tactical VOD had been playing at normal speed for exactly ten minutes. Everyone around the mahogany table looked physically ill.

"Nino," Alucard finally spoke, aggressively rubbing her temples.

"How much longer does this exact phase last?" Nino glanced at the VOD's master timeline.

"Two hours and fifty minutes." Rhode stared at the screen, her crimson eyes glazed over.

"Roxanne's endurance game..." Rhode muttered hollowly.

"It outlasts any woman I have ever known." Hathaway squinted at her cousin. She was ninety percent sure Rhode was making a dirty joke, but she simply couldn't prove it in a court of law.

"Skip it," Tasia ordered, her voice carrying a rare trace of exhaustion. Nino ruthlessly dragged the progress bar to the end. At the three-hour mark, Cecilia's defensive matrix shattered. A shadow-spike pierced her chest, and she dissolved into white light. Roxanne had won through sheer biological unfairness. As a Ghost Witch caught permanently between life and death, her endurance threshold fundamentally eclipsed that of a living human Witch. Hathaway let out a quiet breath of professional respect.

In competitive dueling, "shameless" was the highest compliment. Roxanne had done her exact job. Score: 2: 1. And their next step was the Captain. Wei Changqing entered the arena. The low-profile captain took Cecilia's place, stepping onto the field to face the heavily depleted Roxanne. In the opening 3v3, Wei Changqing had demonstrated an unusual, lethal mastery of Holy Light spells. Roxanne, a mutated Ghost who consumed positive energy as sustenance, was the theoretically perfect counter.

It was basic elemental countering. Clean and correct. The match began. Wei Changqing did not use a single Holy Light spell. Instead, she began rapidly stacking a series of cheap, unglamorous low-tier evasion buffs: [Displacement], [Blur], [Mirror Image]. Through precise, terrifying micro-management, the quiet captain wove these unremarkable spells into a nauseating high-Save, high-Evasion defense system. Then, a sequence that made Roxanne's mud-wrestling look positively honorable unfolded.

"Pay attention to her mana flow," Nino said, bringing up the Spell Differential chart on the monitor. In the footage, every time Roxanne launched a wide-AoE bombardment, Wei Changqing used miraculously minimal footwork to sidestep the burst. And every time Roxanne's attack registered as [Save Successful] or [Evasion Successful], the system showed Wei Changqing automatically tossing a low-tier interference spell back at the Ghost Witch. Instantly. Costlessly. As a passive byproduct of not being hit.

"A specialized, unidentified class feat— [Evasion Casting]," Nino stated, her voice carrying the gravity of encountering a biological anomaly.

"As long as she maintains that compounded probability threshold, she automatically returns fire without spending a single drop of offensive mana. She steadily accumulates a massive spell differential lead every second she breathes." Alucard frowned deeply at the flashing data panels.

"This is basically cheating." Hathaway stared at the scrolling stream of MISS and AUTO-CAST prompts on the tactical monitor, feeling a distinct vein throb in her forehead. Since transmigrating, she had witnessed her fair share of horrifically overpowered Witch mechanics. She had seen Tasia's perfect biological invincibility and Rhode's apocalyptic dark flames. You died, but you respected the math. But Wei Changqing's build?

Hathaway felt a profound, visceral urge to find whoever coded this specific class feat and strangle them with their own keyboard cable. An evasion tank that automatically punished the attacker for missing was the most fundamentally toxic, anti-gameplay loop imaginable. It was worse than cheating. It was psychological torture. Roxanne's attacks registered against the gentle captain as an endless, suffocating string of MISS prompts.

And once the spell differential was stacked to an exaggerated, critical threshold— If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Wei Changqing finally moved. She dropped her passive posture and revealed a raw mana reserve so domineering it stunned the briefing room into silence. Primitive, violent [Conjuration]. Physical compression. Brute force. Like a fleet of invisible heavy bulldozers.

Riding her astronomical mana advantage, she executed the entirely drained Roxanne without a shred of suspense or ceremony. Score: 3: 1. Greed Umbrella held match point. Left with no alternative, Pale Court's final trump card took the field personally. Eve Hawkins. She drew her light sword. Ghost Witch close-quarters combat was infamous across the Inner Sea. Eve Hawkins had invented it.

Closing the distance in a fraction of a breath, she displayed a suppressive power that had nothing to do with mana—frame-perfect strikes that overloaded Wei Changqing's evasion triggers faster than they could reset. Within melee range, the build's processing limit hit its ceiling. Wei Changqing fell. But her mission was complete. Because after securing the kill, Eve Hawkins was covered in vicious curse stacks and magical trauma, her mana reserves depleted by more than half. Score: 3: 2. Greed Umbrella still led.

A golden figure stood up from the Greed Umbrella bench. Flandmira. Faced with an Eve Hawkins who simply lacked the stamina or the health pool to close the distance for another melee charge, Flandmira's answer was exceedingly simple, and exceedingly brutal. Saturation bombardment. Pure, zero-blind-spot, high-tier carpet bombing. Hathaway leaned back in her chair. No mechanics. No micro-management. Just swiping the credit card until the server crashes.

The heavily injured progenitor of Ghost swordsmanship never got another chance to swing her blade. Amidst a sky-filling barrage of absolute-zero ice, snow, and Evocation explosions, Eve exhausted her final reserves and dissolved into white light. 4: 2. [Greed Umbrella], playing the role of an impossible dark horse, swept the former Grand Witch's team and announced their advancement. The instant the match concluded, the arena broadcast cameras cut astutely to the Greed Umbrella bench.

Maria and Karula were sitting quietly. Throughout the hours-long, roller-coaster, brutally decisive Regional Finals, these two individuals had not moved from the bench for a single millimeter from start to finish. Facing the high-definition broadcast camera, Maria slightly tilted her head. Pale white-gold hair caught the arena spotlights, framing sharp, androgynous features and amber eyes that crinkled with an effortless, innocent warmth.

It was a flawlessly magnetic smile—a creature who looked entirely, perfectly at home inside the lens. Hathaway looked at that smile. Alice's manuscript intruded.

"Pale gold spills across Cecilia's sweat-drenched collarbones. Against the ruined sheets, the Saint trembles, her wrists pinned above her head in an iron grip.

"Right as another choked sob tears from Cecilia's throat, Maria stops.

"The predator leans down, pressing her cheek against the Saint's flushed skin. Below, her grip remains ruthless, pinning the Saint open to the air. Above, her breathing abruptly fractures—a shallow, ragged hitch."'Cici...' Maria whimpers, her breath ghosting over Cecilia's parted lips.

'Take pity on me.'

"For a beat, there is only silence. Then, the sobbing in Cecilia's throat simply cuts out.

"She forces her trembling body into a dead, unnatural stillness. Her wrists remain nailed to the headboard, but she lifts her exhausted face an inch from the pillow.

"Meeting that amber gaze, she offers up her bitten lips to kiss away the fake tears." Click. Alice's manuscript had handed her the decryption key. Acting. Maria's public registry listed Marigold Bay as her birthplace. Hathaway had been looking in the wrong database entirely. Not combat registries. Not academic records. She needed to search the cinematic archives. And there it was. Both parents were A-list actors.

Maria herself had debuted as a child star—an extraordinary talent, a massive sensation, a genuine prodigy. Then, at the zenith of her debut, she had simply vanished from the screen. Not another film. Hathaway had spent an hour last night scouring those buried entertainment archives just to dig up a fragmented clip of that single movie. In a heavily magnified close-up, a very young Maria stood with tears in her eyes, yet smiling bravely. A textbook, weaponized vulnerability.

And the professional smile currently deployed for the international broadcast camera. They were identical. Even the arc of the lips and the light refraction in the amber eyes were accurate to the micrometer. Her acting really is good, Hathaway thought quietly. Always has been. Then, at the edge of the camera frame. Karula. She wasn't performing for the camera the way Maria was. Her posture was extraordinarily elegant and relaxed—an innate, suffocating nobility, the kind that came from blood rather than training.

As the lens zoomed in, Karula merely tilted her head, shooting the camera a lazy, disdainful glance from those deep purple eyes. In that singular glance, a cold, ruthless edge flashed across her features. A beauty so sharp it triggered a primal biological warning. Beyond the lethal arrogance of a top-tier Witch, she radiated the serene, terrifying composure of a fanatic who had successfully locked her ultimate obsession in a cage. Alice's manuscript had documented the exact night the Blood Pact was born.

There was no grand altar. Just a dying campfire outside a collapsed ruin they had barely survived. It was Karula who had first smiled, looked across the flickering flames, and unabashedly vocalized the morbid, suffocating greed gnawing at the four of them. But she wasn't the architect.

The very second Karula proposed a chain of mutually assured destruction, Captain Wei Changqing had simply smiled her gentle, domestic smile, reached into her ash-stained robes, and unfurled an immaculately constructed, infinitely complex soul-binding curse into the firelight. She had been sitting silently in the dark for abyss knows how long, the loaded gun already in her hand, patiently waiting for someone else to hand her the perfect excuse to pull the trigger.

Hathaway could almost hear the languid, smiling whisper from Karula that must have sealed the pact that night.

"No one gets to walk away. Whoever betrays this... we all die together." The VOD camera panned slightly, drifting toward the very edge of the Greed Umbrella bench. It caught the substitute. Victoria Wellington. Hathaway's breath hitched, a sudden, sharp ache catching in the center of her chest. She looked exactly the same. Calm, flawless, radiating that signature, aristocratic winter chill.

She sat at a meticulously negotiated, agonizing distance from the rest of the team: far enough away to visually declare she was strictly not part of their sick, airtight ecosystem, yet close enough that she undeniably still belonged there. Hathaway leaned forward a fraction of an inch. She just wanted to look at her. Just for a second longer. She watched the rigid, painfully locked line of Victoria's shoulders. Slowly, Hathaway's own hand lifted from her lap.

Her fingers hovered in the empty air above the holographic projection. Her hand drifted toward the image of that impossibly tense spine. Her palm opened slightly—a quiet, instinctual gesture of offering a warm place for an exhausted girl to finally rest her weight. But the international broadcast director didn't care about a substitute. The camera swept past with cruel, careless speed, snapping abruptly back to the center of the arena. Victoria vanished from the screen.

Hathaway's suspended hand caught nothing but empty air. She slowly sank back into her chair, her eyes lingering on the now-vacant space on the projection. The briefing room was perfectly warm, but for a long moment, Hathaway could vividly feel the phantom draft of winter air brushing past her shoulder. The playback ended. The light from the holographic screen dimmed, casting the briefing room into shadows. In that heavy silence, Alice Varro's smug, hypnotic voice echoed in Hathaway's memory.

"Empathy is not a tactical variable. The narrative is locked." Alice had built a beautiful, psychological cage. The maniacal author had tried to inflict the ultimate debuff: Cassandra's Paralysis. She wanted Hathaway to sit on the bench, suffocating on the tragedy of the Wellington sisters, watching her team walk into a meat grinder. And for a brief, agonizing moment, staring at Victoria's rigidly locked spine, Hathaway had almost let the debuff stick.

But as the phantom winter chill lingered in the room, something else flared in Hathaway's chest. A very familiar, highly clinical irritation. Alice is a Witch. Witches don't believe in predetermined narratives. They use high-yield explosives to tell "inevitable tragedy" to go screw itself. The entire "tragic prophet" routine was a bluff. A narrative trap set to gaslight her into emotional submission. Hathaway's suspended hand slowly curled inward, locking into a tight, white-knuckled fist.

Unfortunately for Alice, Hathaway wasn't a literary critic. She was a game designer. Knowing why a monster is weeping might not change the velocity of its claws, Hathaway thought, the razor-sharp logic of a tactician entirely overriding the phantom chill. But it tells you its exact aggro mechanics. It exposes its behavioral loops. It shows you the precise psychological hitbox you need to exploit to make the monster miss. Alice thought she had handed Hathaway a sealed, beautiful tragedy. She hadn't.

She had handed a professional game designer the unencrypted source code of the enemy's AI. Hathaway lifted her head, her gaze sweeping past the darkened monitor and locking onto the unyielding, battle-ready figures of her teammates in the briefing room. The script wasn't locked. It was just waiting to be violently rewritten.