Chương 170: Interlude: The Culinary Philosophy of Overwhelming Artillery

[Time Span]: Spring 1999 [Location]: Minothnago Academy · Nebelhafen Commercial District The aftermath of the [Lake of the Nocturnal Kin] did not result in Cecilia Wellington fleeing Flandmira's research group. To the absolute bewilderment of the Minothnago student body, it achieved the exact opposite. Top-tier Witches possessed regenerative capabilities that rendered conventional medical treatment largely decorative.

Cecilia's "severe spinal injury", which had set the academy's rumor network on fire just twelve hours prior, had already mended cleanly beneath the skin. The private recovery room smelled aggressively of chili oil, numbing spice, and boiling broth. A portable, heavy-duty induction stove had been commandeered and placed directly on the rolling medical tray. A massive, split-pot hotpot was at a violent, rolling boil.

Cecilia, dressed in a comfortable academy lounge-set, was sitting cross-legged on the hospital bed, expertly using long chopsticks to dip thinly sliced marbled beef into the spicy broth. Her complexion was radiant. Flandmira, pacing the length of the small room while holding a small bowl of dipping sauce, was in the midst of a profound, impassioned defense of her own cursed existence.

"The fundamental error in our methodology," Flandmira declared, her silver eyes burning with the absolute, unshakable conviction of a zealot who had just experienced a religious epiphany, "was miscalculating the baseline equilibrium of reality." Maria, leaning against the infirmary door with her arms crossed, closed her eyes and let out a long, exhausted breath. Here we go.

"Think of it like adjusting a broth," Flandmira said, gesturing elegantly with her sauce bowl.

"If the flavor is too mild, you add more chili. If it is too spicy, you add more stock. It is a simple equation of balancing force. The rift at the lake did not expand because the anomaly was exceptionally dangerous. No. The crisis has always been exactly this scale. The universe is a constant." Flandmira stopped at the foot of Cecilia's bed, leaning forward, her golden hair spilling over her shoulders.

"The issue, Cici, is not that the danger was too great. It is simply that our firepower was insufficient." Maria rubbed her temples. That is the most deranged, statistically blind diagnosis of a localized apocalypse I have ever heard. Your passive luck field literally mutated the spatial boundary, Flandmira. We were fighting for our lives.

"If the crisis threatens to overwhelm us," Flandmira concluded, stabbing her chopsticks into the air for emphasis, "the only logical, scientific response is to disproportionately multiply our raw damage output until the anomaly is completely suppressed by overwhelming artillery."

It was a terrifying synthesis of logic: an unholy amalgamation of 'the sheer power of belief,' a deeply ingrained phobia of insufficient firepower, and the culinary philosophy of just adding more chili to the broth until the problem goes away. Cecilia looked at Flandmira. Cecilia had spent three years in the suffocating, hyper-calculated political crucible of the Yggdrasil Academy. Every interaction was a chess match. Every variable, a potential assassination attempt.

To hear someone condense something that had been eating geography into'we simply didn't shoot it hard enough' was, to Cecilia, a breath of unimaginably fresh, completely unhinged air. Cecilia nodded earnestly, dropping the cooked beef into her bowl.

"That makes perfect sense." Maria stared at the ceiling and seriously considered requesting a room transfer. We are all going to die.

"We just need to expand the party," Cecilia added thoughtfully, her ocean-blue eyes reflecting a quiet, strategic calm.

"I have two people in mind. They are exceptionally capable." The recruitment pitch took place two days later, under the shade of the ancient oak tree in the campus courtyard. Cecilia placed the official research group registration form on the stone table. Karula looked at the paper. Then at Cecilia.

"A direct spinal hit," Karula said. Her voice was quiet, smooth, and fatally cold.

"For a blonde liability you met three weeks ago."

"Flandmira is not a liability," Cecilia replied gently.

"Her casting is incredibly precise. We simply lacked the proper aerial coverage to monitor the expanding perimeter." Karula's deep purple eyes met Cecilia's. She didn't argue. Arguing required effort, and Karula had long ago realized that effortlessly demonstrating what others could not do was far more effective than debating it. She reached out and took the fountain pen from the table. Her movements were languid, precise, completely unbothered.

"If I am not controlling your airspace," Karula said, her tone perfectly flat as she signed her name with a flourish of immaculate, aristocratic calligraphy, "you are going to get yourselves permanently liquidated before midterms. I despise structural incompetence." She slid the paper across the stone table toward Wei Changqing. Wei Changqing did not immediately pick up the pen.

She looked at Karula—who had just seamlessly disguised a possessive, territorial rescue operation as a cold administrative critique—and then at Cecilia, whose serene, self-sacrificial tendencies were officially a documented hazard. Finally, she considered Flandmira, the notorious disaster magnet whose passive luck field was a verifiable statistical anomaly. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Wei Changqing's analytical engine ran a rapid risk-reward assessment. If left to their own devices, the mortality rate of this group approached one hundred percent. However. Wei Changqing was a folklore scholar. She was fascinated by the occult, the bizarre, and the unexplained. In the Inner Sea, the First Rule of Anomalies was absolute: Whenever something incomprehensible happened, it was always a Witch doing something unhinged.

According to the campus archives, Flandmira's passive luck mechanism functioned as a flawless homing beacon for every forgotten, highly illegal, reality-warping Witch experiment left lying around the district. To a normal student, Flandmira was a walking hazard. But to a folklore scholar, she was a primary source goldmine.

Furthermore, Wei reasoned calmly, adjusting the cuff of her sleeve, if I do not join to provide structural crowd-control and logistical anchoring, Karula will undoubtedly alienate every other student on campus, and Cecilia will exhaust her mana pool trying to shield them from the ensuing fallout.

"The academic benefits of firsthand exposure to high-tier anomalies are undeniable," Wei Changqing said smoothly. She picked up the pen. With elegant, flowing strokes, she signed her name beneath Karula's.

"I suppose my schedule can accommodate this," Wei added, her tone the picture of scholarly detachment.

"It is always prudent to have at least one functional adult on the roster." To celebrate the official, finalized formation of their five-person research group, Flandmira insisted on hosting a banquet. She booked a private dining room at one of the most exclusive, opulent restaurants in the bustling downtown commercial district of the city. For one evening, the crushing weight of the Inner Sea's politics, the looming shadow of the Wellington name, and the whispered rumors of the academy simply ceased to exist.

The ambiance was perfect. Warm, golden lighting spilled across crystal chandeliers. The table was laden with roasted delicacies, tiered seafood towers, and delicate pastries. Glasses of sparkling cider and light wine clinked together in a continuous, cheerful rhythm. Flandmira was practically glowing. Her silver eyes were bright. She finally had it.

After semesters of isolation and terrifying survival scenarios, she had achieved the ultimate collegiate dream: a fully staffed, perfectly balanced, normal five-man study group. Maria sat quietly, nursing a glass of wine, her usually cold amber eyes softened by the ambient warmth. Karula spent the entire evening aggressively arguing with Wei Changqing about optimal broomstick aerodynamic angles, though she had consumed three distinct servings of dessert that Wei had "accidentally" ordered by mistake.

Cecilia sat in the center of it all. She watched Flandmira laugh at a dry, deadpan remark from Wei. She watched Karula roll her eyes and steal a strawberry from Maria's plate. Cecilia took a slow sip of her drink. The drowning dark of the past year felt, for the very first time, like it was receding behind a heavy, soundproof door.

At midnight, glowing with the warm buzz of good food and excellent company, the five of them stepped out of the private dining room and walked down the plush, carpeted hallway toward the elevators.

"I'm telling you, a forty-five-degree descent angle sacrifices too much lateral maneuverability," Karula was saying, gesturing with her hands.

"Only if your foundational stabilizing runes are poorly calibrated," Wei replied smoothly, pressing the elevator call button.

"Which, given your reliance on brute-force acceleration, they likely are." Ding. The polished brass doors of the elevator slid open. Soft, inoffensive elevator muzak drifted out from the brightly lit, mirrored interior. They stepped inside. Wei pressed the button for the ground floor. The brass doors slid shut. The quiet hum of the descent began. Cecilia leaned against the mirrored back wall, closing her eyes for a brief moment, letting the comfortable exhaustion of the evening wash over her.

Flandmira was humming a light opera tune under her breath. Ten seconds passed. Fifteen seconds. Maria's eyes slowly opened. The amber irises glinted. Twenty seconds. For a premium elevator in a luxury commercial building descending from the seventh floor, the transit time had just exceeded the physical architectural limits of the structure. The soft, inoffensive muzak playing from the ceiling speaker gave a sudden, violently distorted pop.

The tempo slowed, dragging the cheerful melody down into a deeply warped, atonal frequency that vibrated directly against their teeth. Karula stopped talking. She stared at the digital floor indicator above the door. The glowing red numbers had stopped displaying integers. B2... B3... B4...

"This building," Wei Changqing said, her voice dropping all traces of scholarly debate, plunging instantly into sub-zero tactical assessment, "only has three basement levels for parking." The digital display flickered. B8... B14... B27... The golden light inside the elevator flickered, buzzed, and died. It was instantly replaced by the sickly, stuttering glow of a single, blood-red emergency bulb. The pristine mirrored walls rippled, the reflections distorting into something dark and wet.

The unmistakable scent of rusted iron and stagnant, ancient water flooded the enclosed space. [The Vanishing Elevator]. The warm, cheerful atmosphere of the university celebration evaporated in less than a millisecond. In perfect, terrifying synchronization, the posture of all five Witches shifted. Cecilia's eyes snapped open, blazing with the overwhelming, gravitational weight of the Wellington heir. Maria's short wand slid from her sleeve into her palm.

Karula's amethyst ring hummed with aggressive, lethal purple lightning. Wei Changqing's stance locked into a rooted, immovable foundation. Flandmira raised her kidskin-gloved hands, the air around her immediately warping with heavy artillery vectors. The doors gave a rusted, agonizing groan. The five apex predators of Minothnago Academy stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the blood-red light, wands drawn, eyes locked on the expanding gap.

[The Witch Authority - Archival Division] [Incident Report #1999-04-12] Anomaly Classification: [The Vanishing Elevator] Influence Factor: 4. 8 (Critical-Class) Required Response Protocol: Deployment of one Grand Witch (High Council combat threshold) or a Witch Hunter squad. Location of Manifestation: Prime Commercial District, Downtown Nebelhafen. High-density civilian zone. Investigator's Notes: Initial assessments suggested a deliberate, weaponized spatial trap.

Further forensic analysis has revealed a chain of events so profoundly irresponsible it borders on the miraculous. Mana residue indicates an unidentified Plumed Dragon Witch was dining in the restaurant's hotpot section. Apparently struck by sudden academic inspiration, she illegally unpacked her research equipment directly at the dining table. A high-grade curse sample leaked into the environment. The contamination spread to a decorative wall painting, inducing spontaneous mutation.

The mutated painting devoured a pre-existing, unreported minor spatial anomaly within the establishment: [The Non-Existent Corridor]. Note: The [Non-Existent Corridor] had gone unreported for months because previous Witch patrons simply assumed the mind-bending spatial distortion was a premium, immersive sightseeing service. The fusion of the cursed painting and the corridor resulted in the 4. 8 Critical-Class labyrinth: [The Vanishing Elevator].

The entity finished its 'digestion' period and became fully active on the exact day the involved personnel stepped inside. Addendum: The anomaly arrived pre-neutralized. No Witch Hunter deployment necessary. Involved Personnel: - Cecilia Wellington / Wei Changqing / Karula Corvin / Maria Moreau / Flandmira Malherbe (All five: Minothnago Academy, active enrollment) Administrative Action: Five university students dismantled a 4. 8 Critical-Class labyrinth in a civilian elevator without casualties.

Priority-1 Personnel Observation Flag triggered. Profiles forwarded to Recruitment and the Special Operations Division for long-term tracking.