Chương 131: Chapter 130: A Squad of Violently Closeted Irene Stans

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 36 — 10: 50 AM [Location]: The Crown of Ovelia · Spirit Sea Venue · Eastern Courtyard Across the vast Anser marble courtyard, surrounded by the greatest Witches in the world, the Milan'thirskaya sisters found each other. None of them spoke. Liandra did not cross the floor. She simply stood where she was, her translucent, shattered-glass grey eyes sweeping the room before stopping, deliberately, on the Royal Rosas delegation. Hathaway intercepted the look.

This was the youngest Milan'thirskaya. The only one she had no intelligence file on, no direct experience with, no framework for. Looking purely at the facial architecture, Liandra's contours were sharper and more untamed than Tasia's or Alucard's. Tasia was clean sky after rain; Alucard was the weight of an overcast evening. Liandra's eyes evoked something else entirely: the piercing, hostile vigilance of a lone wolf pup separated from the pack, standing at the tree line, teeth bared at nothing in particular yet.

If you looked past the suppressed draconic traits and ran a comparison, Liandra bore a much stronger resemblance to their eldest sister, Ash, than either of the twins did. Then, having verified the location of the two monsters who shared her bloodline, Liandra simply looked away. No lingering. No emotion. Just a clinical dismissal. Tasia and Alucard said nothing. Having received the look and the dismissal, they simply raised their glasses in unison and, in perfect, synchronized silence, drained their champagne.

The silence did not last long. The structural physics of a Grand Masters banquet simply did not permit extended vacuums. The venue was still the venue. The Spirit Sea still erupted its crimson flowers overhead. The Moon of the White City had arrived. Heidi Lucent. She wore a structured gown in silver-white and deep abyssal blue. She required no announcement.

The moment she stepped through the arch of Anser bones, the particular aura of the White City's apex aristocrat began reorganizing the immediate social geometry of the room, and every Witch within ten meters felt the shift before they consciously registered it. Heidi moved through the upper tier of the crowd with flawless, unhurried precision, exchanging the kind of beautifully calibrated pleasantries that contained entire political arguments within the inflection of a single syllable.

She spoke with Famia Schüder, offered Camilla a nod of genuine collegial respect, and traded a few brief words with Marlena. When Heidi's gaze crossed Blanche's, something interesting happened to the air between them. It was the instantaneous, silent recognition of two supreme narcissists locking onto each other's frequency. Heidi's tolerance for other people was notoriously finite, calibrated by a ruthlessly aesthetic calculus, and Blanche, whatever else she was, was a face that cleared any bar.

Blanche, in turn, harbored obvious warmth toward Heidi. The reason was equally simple: Heidi was beautiful. For someone who likely experienced a small existential crisis looking in any mirrored surface, that was a significant recommendation. Several meters away, Nino had not moved. She was holding her coffee and staring directly at Heidi, with the focused precision of someone reading a critical document. Her jaw. Her posture. The angle of her shoulders. The position of her free hand.

Every other part of her was engaged in an elaborate, full-body performance of complete, unshakeable indifference. The performance was comprehensive. It was also, comprehensively, unconvincing. Hathaway's mouth twitched. Professor, she screamed internally, the tsundere route always leads to a bad end. You are actively sabotaging your own playthrough. At this rate, your True End is going to run off with that terrible actress. Heidi concluded her peripheral greetings. She located Nino. She located Hathaway.

Naturally, she also located Lin Zhaojun, standing casually with Rhode. A small, measured smile touched Heidi's lips. She walked over.

"Good morning, Nino," Heidi greeted her with a light, easy tone. It was the practiced warmth of a younger sister who knew exactly how to smooth her sibling's ruffled feathers, paired with the surgical, deliberate tease. Nino's elaborate architecture of indifference collapsed instantly. She stiffened, her grip on her coffee cup tightening so violently her knuckles went white, and managed a curt, painfully over-enunciated hiss: "It is Sister."

Heidi's smile simply deepened, letting Nino's predictable, defensive flare-up hang for exactly one devastating second before extending the same polished courtesy to Tasia and the rest of the Royal Rosas delegation. Then her gaze found Hathaway. The Tenth Seat offered a single, conspiratorial wink. Mouthed one word. Photos. Hathaway's spine went rigid.

The memory of mashing the shutter button fifteen times while an utterly smug, mildly intoxicated Nino finished off Heidi's bamboo tube bloomed with perfect, terrible clarity. She forced a polite smile and took a very pointed sip of her drink. Of course, Heidi's impeccable social sweep contained one glaring, deliberate omission. She let her gaze pass directly over Lin Zhaojun as if scanning an empty portion of marble flooring. Lin swirled her glass. She tilted her head forward a precise, measured degree.

"Did you forget to bring a plus-one today, Grand Witch?" Everyone in the Inner Sea knew Heidi had the aesthetic standards of a tyrant and the patience of an aristocrat who had never had to compromise on anything. Finding a plus-one who met her threshold for social events was statistically intractable. Heidi did not turn her head fully. She offered Lin a cold, clean profile.

"Thank you for your concern, High Witch." The temperature between them compressed to absolute zero. Then they both looked away, simultaneously, with the mutual, wordless contempt of two cats who had been left alone in the same room and reached a détente of total mutual ignorance. With the potential diplomatic catastrophe successfully deferred, Hathaway's tactical module quietly spun back up. Anita. The media had been running Anita as the definitive Strongest of the New Generation for the past three months.

Her competitive instinct had been filing a quiet, running grievance against it since she first encountered the claim. And now she needed a visual threat assessment. She scanned the crowd. Found warm orange-brown hair. Pale honey-brown eyes. Anita was standing at the base of a marble relief, staring at someone with the absolute, unfiltered devotion of a clingy toddler waiting for a gold star on her forehead. Every other stimulus in the courtyard had apparently ceased to exist. Hathaway tracked the line of sight....

It was Letitia. The coach of [Golden Iris] was currently engaged in what appeared to be an unfathomably deep, high-level tactical summit with Su Jingran, the head coach of [Absolute City], under the ribcage of an Anser behemoth. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. The Witch dueling circuit had a notoriously vicious piece of industry lore:"Absolute City's Su Jingran has exactly one skill, and that skill is ordering takeout. Letitia can't even manage that."

Su Jingran fielded a roster of four Arch-Witches, including Lin Zhaojun. Letitia, whose principal talent was standing in the correct location while the universe arranged favorable outcomes around her, had once had Irene on her roster. Seeing them conferring solemnly under the Anser ribcage, Hathaway blinked. Ah. The founding mothers of the legendary Mascot Coach Meta. Watching the two of them discuss tactics was probably the strategic equivalent of watching two lantern cats meow at each other.

As Hathaway watched, Letitia slowly raised a hand and placed it lightly on Anita's orange-brown hair. She rested her palm there with the serene, mysterious grace of a prophet bestowing a blessing, her lips moving to deliver what was clearly a slow, philosophically hollow riddle meant for the girl to 'enlighten herself.' Anita leaned into the cryptic head-pat.

Her honey-brown eyes went soft and bright with the simple, unguarded dependence of a baby duckling that had firmly imprinted on the very first person who fed it. Hathaway took a slow, expressionless sip of her champagne. What is going on. She stared. The AI pathing on this NPC is completely broken. My generation's ultimate rival looks... fundamentally unintelligent. Before she could finish processing this disappointing conclusion, the quality of attention in the courtyard changed.

Not the measured, aristocratic alertness that Heidi's arrival had produced. Something warmer. Something that didn't calculate. The Sun walked into the courtyard. Every competitive calculation, every tactical scan, every running count of grudges and feuds: zeroed out in a single second. She wore a tailored white formal suit, immaculate to the millimeter, and over it, a heavy coat bordered in gold thread with a sun crest embroidered at the chest. It was draped over her shoulders. There was nothing casual about it.

It rested there with a mathematically precise, faintly oppressive symmetry. Every fold of the fabric hung exactly where she permitted it to hang. She did not allow gravity to make decisions on her behalf. How to describe the sensation of seeing Irene again? Her beauty was not the system-crashing, blood-pressure-obliterating impact of Blanche. It was something categorically different. It was glory.

When Hathaway had first stepped into this courtyard, she'd used "Rome" to describe the weight and grandeur of the Anser ruins. But Irene's presence in the room rendered that comparison retroactively absurd. Everything the dead Empire had carved in marble and bronze to announce its own historical greatness looked bleak and small in comparison to one living person standing in a gold-trimmed coat. Irene crossed to Famia Schüder's cluster first. That was when Hathaway noticed the difference.

When Heidi had moved through the Grand Witches earlier, the atmosphere had been what it always was between peers of approximately equal standing: carefully calibrated, subtly politicized, formally warm. The collegial register of power meeting power. When Irene approached, the telling indicator wasn't the Grand Witches. It was the monsters standing next to them.

Phet and Vessar, the two entirely amoral Legendary Dragon Witches who only genuinely reacted to Camilla, who directed sustained killing intent at Famia, who had registered Marlena and Heidi as ambient background furniture, shifted their stances. They took the initiative. They stepped forward and greeted Irene with polite, familiar warmth. They called her by her middle name. Berenice. Alisha's face lit up. The biographer raised her champagne glass toward Irene with both hands.

"The historical record of this morning was going to be dreadfully boring until you walked in! Your arrival officially completes the masterpiece. Cheers! May you always be happy, may the wine in this glass—" She stopped. The guileless, grinning energy evaporated.

The air around Alisha underwent a surgical transformation: the guileless warmth was overwritten by something composed and aristocratic and slightly dangerous, an elegance with real weight behind it, the kind that belongs to someone who has read the ancient texts in their original language.

"... make you rejoice and be glad," Alisha continued, her voice dropping into a cadence that felt like a prayer from a civilization you'd never heard of.

"May you step forth and find your blessings. May abundant loving-kindness be yours, for all generations." She blinked. The elegant, imposing woman deflated instantly, like a balloon that had decided it was done. Alisha snapped back to her baseline goofy grin, bright and guileless. Hathaway's threat-assessment module spiked, then flatlined in sheer confusion. What in the name of the abyss was that? Did the golden retriever just channel an ancient deity?

The question was still loading when Hathaway caught Blanche watching. If Blanche meeting Heidi had been the mutual, appreciative recognition of two narcissists locking onto each other's frequency, Blanche meeting Irene was something else. Her hood was firmly in place, but Irene, moving toward the group, could see her face directly. Irene's expression did not change. Her smile remained exactly what it had been. Serene, warm, entirely unbroken.

She conversed with Marlena naturally, her gaze passing over Blanche's face without any visible evidence of the impact landing. Hathaway watched this happen. She knew for a biological fact what looking at Blanche's face did to a cardiovascular system. It wasn't a suggestion; it was an autonomic override. Irene was flesh and blood. She was not immune to basic biology. Which left only one terrifying conclusion. Her heart is racing. Hathaway stared at the Fifth Seat's flawless smile.

She just isn't letting anyone see it. Irene moved through the courtyard. The Witches practically fell over each other to greet her, voices laced with the specific scrambling sincerity that wasn't for her title or her seat or her tournament ranking. It was for her. These proud, imperious apex predators called out to her: not Lady Irene, not the Fifth Seat, just Irene or Berenice. And Irene answered every single one, unhurried, with a smile that had the same temperature for all of them.

She paused briefly by [Golden Iris]. Letitia offered a slow, profound nod, her expression cloaked in that same masterfully hollow serenity. But Hathaway's eyes locked onto Anita. The purportedly fearsome rival, the girl Hathaway had just mentally diagnosed as fundamentally unintelligent, went rigid. The soft, dependent duckling vanished. Anita stared at her captain with breathless, fanatical worship. Irene offered her young teammate a single, approving smile, and gently straightened the girl's collar.

That was all it took. Hathaway watched Anita's posture shift, her ambient mana settling into something dangerously sharp and completely focused. Okay, Hathaway corrected her internal notes. She isn't dumb. She's a zealot who was just waiting for her god to arrive. That is significantly worse. Heidi, as Irene approached their section, stepped naturally forward to meet her. The Tenth Seat maintained her composed, aristocratic reserve. Her eyes were shining.

Beside her, Lin Zhaojun didn't even bother to straighten her posture. She simply offered a relaxed, sharp-cornered smile—the easy, unbothered greeting of a fellow apex predator.

"You look like you're in good shape. Looking forward to our match." Irene returned it with equal warmth.

"I'm looking forward to it, Zhaojun." Then she turned to Hathaway. Her tone shifted. Not colder, not more formal. Just more personal, the way a conversation changes when it becomes about something specific rather than something general.

"I received a letter from the lowland school district at Maren's Ford three weeks ago." The beauty mark near her eye shifted fractionally as her smile deepened.

"Their students can reach the city school without the morning ferry now. Attendance is up. The letter was from an eight-year-old who wanted to know if you were going to build an even faster one." Hathaway's heart, completely against her will, kicked hard against her ribs. She was fully aware of the danger. She understood, on every analytical level available to her, that being warmed by this particular sun was not a neutral experience.

Yet she was sinking into it anyway, helplessly, like a moth that knows exactly what the light is and flies toward it anyway.

"I—" She heard her own voice come out small. The cold, sarcastic game designer who usually narrated her internal monologue had encountered a fatal exception and died on the spot.

"I'll consider it. Thank you." The stumble left her mouth before she could catch it. Her jaw tightened. She looked down the line of her team, desperately seeking solidarity. She needed the cold, guarded cynics. The team who had treated Irene's name like a financial black hole and an incoming tactical nuke. She needed to see a united front. A collective expression that translated roughly to: Damn it, she is so charming. But I refuse to be another weak-willed casualty. Hold the line.

Instead, Hathaway witnessed a collective, catastrophic failure of character consistency. Rhode, the arrogant Vanguard who had demanded proof of Hathaway's contract with bulletproof suspicion, was currently running a hand through her hair. It was a perfectly smooth, aristocratic gesture. It was also, undeniably, a frantic, subconscious attempt to fix her bangs before Irene looked at her. Beside her, Bella was adjusting her eyepatch.

She was doing it with profound, dark majesty, as if aligning her mystic vision with the cosmos to withstand the radiance. But Hathaway had spent enough time with the Chuunibyou to know that the eyepatch was already perfectly aligned. She was just fidgeting because her hands didn't know what else to do with the overwhelming proximity of her idol. Alucard stood rigidly straight.

The terminally exhausted Archon, who had coldly dissected Irene's "tether" contract like a threat-assessment diagnostic, maintained her usual dead-inside, corporate-slave emptiness. But her shoulders were squared, and there was a microscopic tremor of absolute, suppressed reverence in her posture. She looked exactly like an overworked mid-level manager who had just realized she could use the company expense account to meet her lifelong idol, and was desperately trying to maintain a "strictly business" facade.

Then there was Tasia. The serene, patient twin who had warned Hathaway that'not everyone gets to simply find themselves in her way.' Tasia simply raised her glass with flawless, unhurried poise.

"A beautiful morning, Berenice." Hathaway's brain stuttered. Did you just drop the title and use her intimate middle name with zero hesitation? And finally, there was Nino. As Irene offered the Professor a polite, genuine greeting, Nino's expression underwent a micro-process that Hathaway would remember for some time.

It was the face of someone who had just realized, at the worst possible moment, that she had no logically sound reason to hate this person, yet was absolutely, stubbornly committed to maintaining hostility anyway. Her ears burned red as her defenses actively crumbled in real time from the sheer, unreasonable force of the target's charisma. Nino was fighting a desperate, losing war against her own nervous system. Hathaway went still. The realization arrived with the weight and precision of a falling anvil....

We are Royal Rosas. The apex of White City elitism. The proud, geographically bigoted 'Old Money' aristocrats who classify everyone outside the city limits as provincial nomads, and who only grudgingly treat Irene as an 'Honorary Citizen' on a good day. And yet, looking at them now... Is my entire team just a squad of violently closeted Irene stans aggressively hate-following their own idol?