Chương 156: Chapter 141: May the Substitute Bench Remain Outside the Blast Radius

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 36 — 2: 10 PM [Location]: The Crown of Ovelia · Spirit Sea Venue · Eastern Courtyard Hathaway was still kneeling. The procession had moved on. The Conqueror's gravity had redistributed itself across the courtyard, the Inner Sea's strongest resuming their natural orbits, the banquet hall's social machinery rebooting from its forced shutdown. But Hathaway's motor functions had not received authorization to do the same. Her knee remained locked to the cold Anser marble.

Her mind was stuck at the exact timestamp where the Host had acknowledged her attendance. The Unending Feast. The private promise, spoken to a mirror in a dead language. Heard by something that had no business hearing it. A hand closed firmly around her elbow. Not a tap. A grip, steady and entirely physical. Hathaway's lungs remembered their function. She gasped, and the ambient noise of the Eastern Courtyard rushed back in like water filling a vacuum. Tasia was beside her.

The golden-haired twin's gaze remained fixed straight ahead. She applied a steady, upward pressure, lifting Hathaway back to vertical with the effortless, terrifying authority of a Dragon Witch whose muscle density operated on an entirely different evolutionary scale than that of a human Witch.

"She is no longer looking." Five words, spoken into the air ahead of them. Not at Hathaway. Just into the space between them, where they could land or not, as they chose. Hathaway's legs were the consistency of wet sand, but they held. The two of them began the walk back to the Royal Rosas table. The silence between them was thick. Somewhere in the middle of that distance, in a natural lull in the surrounding conversation, Tasia spoke again.

Her voice carried the specific, unhurried cadence of someone reciting a document they had long since memorized.

"Not everyone has the opportunity—or the qualifications—to pull a spell personally written by Ovelia from the grand spell library of the Inner Sea." Hathaway's breath snagged. Qualifications. Her analytical engine, which had been running on fumes since the Conqueror's hem stopped being visible, performed an emergency restart. It pulled up the raw data of her current terror and ran a logic check against the premise. What exactly is the shape of this fear? I never had the chance to refuse.

My causality was entangled before I opened my eyes. The game was rigged from the title screen. But her developer brain, shaped by six years of industry crunch, thousands of hours debugging logic, and a lifetime of pressure-testing premises before accepting them, was constitutionally incapable of taking that at face value. The real question wasn't, Did I have the option to refuse? The real question was: If I had been given that option... would I have taken it? Her memory accessed the archive. Day One.

The Cloud Suite. Before Victoria. Before the tournament. Before the qualifiers and [Cold Justice] and the banquet. The moment she had woken up in a body that could bend gravity, felt mana surge through her veins for the first time, looked at an impossible physics engine running natively on reality itself, and whispered into an empty room:"Best bug I've ever encountered." That judgment had been older than her fear. Older than everything.

It was the foundational, baseline read, rendered before any other emotion compiled. If the First Seat had materialized in that room on the first morning and offered a one-way ticket back to Earth, Hathaway thought, her boots steady on the Anser marble. Back to spreadsheets. Back to crunch. Back to a universe where mana is a number in a file and not something that sings when it moves through you. Would I have taken it? No. She hadn't been kidnapped. She had RSVP'd.

The suffocating horror of the Unending Feast didn't evaporate with a cheerful oh, it's fine then. It dissolved into something stranger and quieter: a grudging, reluctant acknowledgment. A nod extended to a Conqueror who had simply seen straight through her. Ovelia had just been right. By the time Hathaway sat down, the phantom weight was gone. Clink. Clink. Clink.

A crisp, clear sound sliced through the ambient noise of the courtyard, carrying the specific quality of precision glassware wielded by someone who understood theatrical timing. On the second-floor balcony overlooking the Eastern Courtyard, a Witch in an immaculate black evening gown held a silver spoon against a goblet of pale champagne. She looked down over the assembled hierarchy of the Inner Sea with the radiant composure of someone who had survived this exact moment before and fully intended to enjoy it again.

Elsa Stern. League President.

"Thank you all for joining us," Elsa's voice projected outward with practiced, magnetic ease.

"Welcome to the official group draw ceremony for the 2004 World Witch League Grand Masters Tournament—""BOOOOOOOO!" Hathaway's hands flew up to cover her ears. A wall of sound erupted from the floor of the Eastern Courtyard. Not scattered. Not polite. A unified, chest-rattling, industrial-grade chorus of boos that hit the balcony like a siege weapon. She whipped her head around.

To her immediate left: Nino had looked up from her datapad and was delivering a flat, mathematically precise boo, her expression entirely unchanged. Tasia was booing with the focused, unhurried commitment of someone completing a known obligation. Alucard contributed a hollow, exhausted rasp, delivering her boo with the soul-crushed compliance of a corporate employee participating in a mandatory team-building exercise.

Bella had both hands cupped around her mouth for maximum acoustic output, incorporating full velvet-cape deployment for visual support. Rhode had bypassed vocalization entirely and was flipping the President of the League a comprehensive double-bird alongside a piercing, ear-splitting whistle. Hathaway spun to look at the wider courtyard. Irene, the moral compass of the Inner Sea, was booing with the composed satisfaction of a woman who had already run the numbers.

Sonia, slumped in her chair like an exquisitely dressed corpse, didn't even open her eyes; she merely parted her pale lips and exhaled a microscopic, raspy sigh roughly shaped like a "boo"—a sound so faint it still managed to trigger the survival instincts of three nearby Moon Spring Lantern Cats, sending them rolling into tight defensive spheres. Heidi was booing with the specific aristocratic disdain of someone who considered it a civic duty.

Marianne Horton maintained her permanent spring-breeze smile and contributed a perfectly modulated, impeccably enunciated boo. Hathaway lowered her hands from her ears. Mandatory cultural QTE. Her tactical processor filed the classification. This isn't a riot. It's a ritual. On the balcony, Elsa Stern did not look remotely offended. Her smile only grew brighter. She absorbed the wave of concentrated hostility with the glowing satisfaction of a pantomime villain who knew exactly how loved she was.

She raised her goblet high above her head.

"First," Elsa's voice boomed through the dying echoes.

"Let us praise the League. And let us praise the Witch's blood within us." The booing cut off like a severed wire. Thousands of glasses rose. The hostility evaporated, replaced by something resonant and deep.

"Praise the Witch's blood!" Hathaway raised her wooden mug. She looked at the pale, luminous liquid inside it.

"Praise the Witch's blood," she murmured, and drank. The Frostmead burned pleasantly down her throat. The last lingering phantom weight settled into something quiet and permanent in her chest. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. On the main stage below the balcony, the draw apparatus hummed to life.

"To ensure absolute, unquestionable impartiality," Elsa announced, gesturing to a velvet pedestal at center stage, "please welcome our very special guest drawer... the illustrious Faust!" A [Lucky Lantern Cat] bounded onto the pedestal. Hathaway's eyes locked onto the creature. There were fewer than fifty documented Lucky Lantern Cats in the entire known world. The creature was magnificent. Its primary coat was a rich midnight black, so dense it absorbed the stage lighting entirely.

But the tips of its large ears and the whole of its extraordinary, fox-like tail shimmered in pure, spun gold. Its belly and enormous paws were snow-white fluff, giving it the satisfyingly plump, wealthy silhouette of something that had never in its existence experienced financial anxiety. Long, aristocratic whiskers. Luminous, entirely self-possessed eyes. But as the cat padded forward on the velvet cushion, Hathaway caught the detail that made it legendary. Three physical legs.

Where the fourth should have been, a construct of pure, glowing white ectoplasm materialized seamlessly. A spectral paw, fully functional, humming with dense spiritual energy. Faust, her database supplied. From Faustus: lucky. Also the doctor who made a deal with the devil. Both meanings apply. Her gaze found Mephisto at the [Salt Shepherds] table. Mephisto over there. Faust up here.

The universe randomly reconstructing classic German literature solely to inflict psychic damage on the only person in the room who gets the reference. Faust let out a cheerful, resonant trill. She raised her glowing spectral paw and batted it experimentally at the empty air above the stage. Vzzt. Spatial ripples distorted the air.

The spectral paw reached directly into the fabric of the Spirit Sea's localized dimension, fished around with the focused determination of someone who knew exactly where they had left something, and batted a glowing spherical orb out into the physical world. It shattered into light, projecting team crests in massive holographic letters above the courtyard. The draw moved with merciless efficiency. [Group A]: Golden Iris, Sunshine Pals, Salt Shepherds.

At the [Golden Iris] table, Irene maintained her flawless, serene smile. In the far corner, Paddy and Adeline exchanged a look, their faces immediately lighting up with the bright, terrifying cheerfulness of two entities fully committed to causing maximum, uncontainable chaos. Whatever Irene wants with the Sunshine Pals, Hathaway realized, watching the invisible lines connect across the room, it's going to have to wait in line. Because at the Salt Shepherds' table, Mephisto had just seen the draw.

The abyssal aura that Irene had so effortlessly dismantled violently rebooted. Mephisto slowly turned her head toward the far corner, locking onto Adeline. The smile that spread across her face was so completely devoid of mercy it practically violated the League's terms of service. She hadn't just drawn a group stage opponent. She had just been handed a legally sanctioned, globally broadcast permit for first-degree murder. Hathaway's gaze tracked just slightly to the right of the abyssal entity.

Standing right next to Mephisto was Madame Vosh. Her entire nervous system performed a brief, involuntary shutdown. Hathaway silently clasped her hands together beneath the table. She was looking at a contained ecosystem of absolute, concentrated toxicity. Her tactical processor weighed the abyssal vengeance and the financial scammer against the sheer, uncontainable devastation of Paddy and Adeline. The resulting calculus took less than a millisecond. Please.

I am begging the universe, Hathaway prayed with the fervor of a true zealot. Let Golden Iris and Salt Shepherds form an emergency tactical coalition. Let the rational adults unite to mathematically eliminate Paddy and Adeline. The deep-sea horror and the fraudster qualify. Quarantine those two right here. Do not let them anywhere near our bracket. [Group B]: Steam Saints, Absolute City, Gilt Spire. At the edge of the courtyard, Heidi Lucent raised a heavy crystal tumbler of amber whiskey.

Her eyes sliced straight across the hall, finding Lin Zhaojun. With the brackets drawn and their respective teams cleanly separated from a round-one collision, the immediate violence had to be postponed. Hathaway watched Heidi down the whiskey in a single, smooth, aggressively provocative motion. The physical translation of the gesture was unmistakable: I'll kill you in the knockouts. Across the room, Lin Zhaojun's lips curved into something razor-edged.

She raised her pale green absinthe, held the eye contact, and drained the glass completely. Invitation accepted. It was a textbook display of epic, high-stakes tournament rivalry. But Hathaway's attention was hijacked by the other two names in the group. At the [Gilt Spire] table, Camilla stood, her exquisite features set into a mask of regal, untouchable determination. At the [Steam Saints] table, Famia Schüder met her eyes with the romantically dense stoicism of a neutron star.

Flanking Camilla, Vessar and Phet were practically vibrating with barely leashed bloodlust, clearly calculating the fastest orbital strike trajectory to dismantle the Second Seat. If I didn't know the lore, Hathaway thought, her expression going perfectly flat. I might actually believe this was a blood feud. Instead of an unrequited crush bringing her own anti-aircraft batteries to a romance stat check. [Group C]: Fey Star, The Unscripted, The Laureates.

Hathaway's tactical processor locked the first advancing seed. [Fey Star]. She knew the lore: Allison had a documented history of surrendering the moment her vanguard fell. But Hathaway no longer harbored the delusion that it was out of weakness. The Conqueror simply hadn't encountered a board worth her attention. Until the draw revealed the possibility of a rematch. Across the courtyard, Josephine Durant absorbed the holographic bracket.

A soft, helpless smile touched her lips, followed immediately by a spark of delight. It was the exact look of someone realizing they were about to be dragged back into an old, familiar war. She lifted her gaze, looking across the hall toward the Fey Star table. Allison met her gaze. The "social Aspect" tilted her head, a flicker of profound, dangerous amusement sparking in her starry eyes, quietly acknowledging the silent invitation of her old rival. Then, Akkukataya took exactly one half-step forward.

It was a microscopic adjustment, but it cleanly, deliberately severed the line of sight between her Sovereign and the Scarlet Fox. She simply adjusted the collar of her heavy black greatcoat with the chilling, flawless grace of a Godfather and offered a polite, gentlemanly smile across the courtyard. Hathaway read the physical broadcast. You don't get to play with the King. Which meant [The Unscripted] and [The Laureates] were about to fight a zero-sum bloodbath for the single remaining slot.

Across the courtyard, Marlena was already projecting concentrated, weaponized killing intent toward Tabitha, who merely returned the glare with a serene, highly calculated smile. Hathaway winced internally, recognizing the uncompromising stakes. Marlena isn't fighting for tournament points. She is fighting a desperate defense against a hostile family takeover. If Tabitha takes this slot, she is absolutely going to use the post-match interview to legally propose to Blanche on international television.

The post-match restoration budget for whatever arena hosts that crossfire is going to require a separate line item in the League's insurance policy. By the time Group C was locked, every Witch in the courtyard had already done the math. There were only three names left on the board. Faust didn't even need to draw. The spectral cat simply batted the air one last time to make the inevitable official. The spatial ripples flared gold. The final letters materialized above the courtyard.

[Group D]: Greed Umbrella, Royal Rosas, Relentless. A low, aggressive, feral murmur rippled through the Eastern Courtyard. It was the vibrating hum of a colosseum audience that had just watched the heavy iron gates lock behind the gladiators. The sheer, catastrophic weight of the bracket settled over the banquet hall. Milan'thir and Holheim. A millennium-old blood feud, mathematically locked into a collision course in the very first stage.

The established dynasty against the most terrifying dark horse of the decade. The Group of Death, guaranteed from round one. At the Royal Rosas table, Rhode let out a single, quiet, extremely satisfied sound. She stood up. She simply looked across the vast expanse of the Eastern Courtyard and found her target with the precision of a heat-seeking missile. She locked eyes with Cecilia Wellington. Rhode raised her right hand. She drew her thumb, slowly and deliberately, straight across her own throat.

Then she uncurled her index finger and pointed straight up toward the glittering mineral canopy of the Spirit Sea sky. I'll be waiting for you in the air. Beside her, Bella refused to let a perfectly good declaration of war go to waste. The resident chuunibyou stepped forward, matching her cousin's aggressive frontline geometry. With a sharp, immaculate snap of her wrist, Bella swept her heavy velvet cape back. The dark fabric billowed out like the wings of a raptor before settling heavily around her boots.

She raised her left hand, pressing two fingers elegantly against the edge of her lace eyepatch. Her single uncovered eye locked onto the Wellington heir, gleaming with absolute, theatrical fatalism. Her lips moved, shaping a deliberate, highly stylized decree that Hathaway read with painful clarity. The Abyss has reserved a seat for your twilight. Hathaway closed her eyes. Rhode: street execution. Bella: gothic tragedy. The Ludwig Vanguard had just filed a stereo-surround death warrant on international broadcast.

Ludwig genetics. Optimized entirely for provocation. Zero stat points to self-preservation. Across the no-man's-land of the banquet hall, Cecilia Wellington's ocean-blue eyes remained perfectly, terrifyingly calm. She didn't sneer. She didn't return the gesture. She simply raised her right hand, resting it on the curved handle of the closed black parasol she had carried since her arrival. Clack. Clack. Two crisp, resonant sounds, carrying through the ambient noise with eerie acoustic precision. Variant Staff.

Hathaway's tactical database confirmed the classification before the echo faded. Parasol-blade. Localized execution device. Rhode paused. One fraction of a second. The acoustic signature of a weapon being primed registered. Then, the red eyes behind her welding goggles blazed to life. Her grin spread wide and feral, exposing a terrifying row of predatory white teeth.

"Good... Wellington," Rhode breathed, her voice vibrating with pure, fully activated appetite.

"You've successfully whetted my hunger." Hathaway's gaze swept across the rest of the Greed Umbrella. Wei Changqing's warm, ambient smile deepened into something resembling profound, funereal pity. Karula's fingers stopped tracing her amethyst ring, her deep purple eyes casually logging the Ludwig Vanguard as a confirmed, scheduled casualty. Maria's idol-grade warmth had completely evaporated, leaving behind the chilling impatience of a lead actress waiting for an expendable extra to finish their doomed monologue.

Flandmira simply adjusted her cuffs, her colorless diamond flashing with the cold, absolute finality of a closed coffin lid. They weren't looking at Royal Rosas like a rival team to be fought. They were looking at them like an administrative cleanup task that had already been completed. Hathaway slowly turned her gaze away from her rabid cousins. Past Cecilia. Past the formation of apex predators with centuries of grudges neatly concentrated into a single group bracket.

Her eyes found the edge of the Greed Umbrella's formation. Victoria was looking back at her. Pristine white gloves. Perfect posture. The expression of someone observing an extremely dangerous natural disaster from a distance they had calculated to be technically safe, while fully aware the margin of error in that calculation was significant. Two substitutes. Separated by the width of a banquet hall and two opposing banners that had arrived at the same group without consulting either of them.

They looked at each other in perfect, silent understanding, united by the profound, exhausted solidarity of the only two sane individuals trapped in a bracket of bloodthirsty maniacs. Whatever happens, the shared look communicated across twenty yards of warzone. May the substitute bench remain outside the blast radius.