Chương 174: Chapter 156: The Only Team Who Actually Showed Up to Play the Game

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 40 — 10: 00 AM [Location]: The Crown of Ovelia · Spirit Sea Venue · Eastern Courtyard On the second-floor balcony of the Eastern Courtyard, Elsa Stern raised her champagne flute and beamed at the assembled competitors with the radiant composure of someone who had been looking forward to this moment since breakfast. Hathaway was ready.

Her eyes felt like they were lined with fine-grit sandpaper, and her tactical processor was currently running on a dangerous mixture of residual adrenaline, deeply questionable caffeine intake, and the profound, spiritual exhaustion of someone who had spent the last fourteen hours locked in a marathon grind from F-Rank to C-Rank. She had wrestled with aerodynamic physics engines until the virtual canyons turned gold with simulated sunrise. The physical world currently felt slightly lower-res than her monitor.

Sitting among the Royal Rosas delegation in the familiar cool of the Spirit Sea canopy, fighting the urge to blink too heavily, she inhaled, braced her diaphragm, and contributed a sustained, fully integrated boo alongside the rest of the assembled witches. Not one syllable of hesitation. Not a trace of first-timer uncertainty. It was, she recognized, extremely cathartic.

The mandatory cultural quick-time event she had fumbled through the first time had, on a second pass, become exactly what it was supposed to be: a ritual that reset her stress levels with the clean efficiency of a forced reboot.

"Praise the Witch's blood!" She raised her crystal flute and drained the green fungus sparkling wine in a clean, single pull. The vintage was sharp, carrying a slight earthen bite, but it bloomed on the tongue with the unmistakable sweetness of a wild strawberry. She set the glass down in complete satisfaction. On the main stage, Lady Sonia stepped forward to officiate as guest drawer.

The Grand Witch was clutching a massive, freshly tapped green coconut in both hands, hydrating with the focused, economical determination of someone who had arrived with a strictly limited social budget and intended to spend every unit of it on not making eye contact. She looked as though she had already calculated the minimum number of words required to get through this ceremony and committed to that figure in advance.

While Sonia turned her head to exchange a brief, obligatory pleasantry with Elsa, a shadow moved on the velvet pedestal. Faust materialized beside the coconut with the liquid silence of a career professional. The Lucky Lantern Cat's spectral paw extended with surgical precision and quietly bored a neat secondary hole into the side of Sonia's coconut. A standard feline bamboo straw appeared from somewhere and slid into the breach with practiced efficiency.

Faust sealed her lips around it and began drinking, both cheeks hollowed, golden-tipped tail swishing in deep, illicit contentment. Meow-ow-ow, Faust purred against the straw, her luminous eyes half-closed in the expression of an entity experiencing maximum satisfaction. Three tables away, at the Golden Iris delegation, Irene glanced toward the pedestal.

Her gaze moved from the coconut to the cat, registered the brewing scene with the serene patience of a woman who had encountered worse things on a Tuesday, and returned to her own glass. The faintest, most indulgent smile crossed her lips. She did not comment. Grand Witches did not argue with lucky cats. This had simply never, in the documented history of the Inner Sea, ended well for the Grand Witch. Sonia finished her exchange with Elsa and turned back. She looked at her coconut.

She looked at the cat, which was still drinking and making absolutely no attempt to appear innocent. Sonia closed her eyes. The sigh that followed seemed to drain approximately one calendar year off her lifespan. Without a single word of protest, she surrendered the coconut entirely, nudging it nervously across the pedestal so the creature could use it as a seat.

Faust immediately climbed on top, planted herself with considerable dignity, and continued drinking through the straw she was now sitting directly adjacent to.

"You look like a lantern cat on a tropical holiday," Sonia murmured, her tone carrying the hollow, effortful quality of someone attempting sarcasm from a position of complete tactical surrender.

"Do you... do you require a parasol and tanning oil? To complete the ensemble?" Lantern cats did not possess the cognitive architecture required to parse the desperate sarcasm of an introvert. Faust's luminous eyes went wide. She lifted her head from the straw.

"Tanning oil! Cat wants! Give to cat now!" Sonia looked at the creature. She looked at the courtyard. As a Grand Witch, executing a smite protocol against the League's official mascot on international broadcast was not a viable option. Left with no remaining tactical choices, she simply gave up. She reached out, gave the plump, glowing white belly a single, deeply defeated pinch, and addressed the hall.

"The draw begins." Faust, entirely untroubled by the pinch, took one final aggressive slurp of coconut water and batted her spectral paw into the localized dimension. Spatial ripples flared gold. The first holographic matchup materialized above the Eastern Courtyard. [Golden Iris] vs. [The Laureates] Hathaway immediately looked across the hall toward [The Laureates]. Josephine Durant was watching the holographic projection. A smile had touched the Scarlet Fox's lips, and it was not a heroic smile.

It was tight, complicated, and quietly miserable in a way that had nothing obvious to do with tactical calculation. Hathaway's processor ran a quick read on the expression and produced a clean, satisfying conclusion: When a hero of that magnitude smiles like that, it means something specific. The quiet, clear-eyed acceptance of a veteran who understands the full weight of her own history. Across the courtyard, Irene looked at the bracket. The smile that crossed Irene's face was not her usual expression.

The warm, sunlit gentleness bled out at the edges, shifting seamlessly into something considerably heavier. More deliberate. Hathaway felt the back of her neck prickle. She had seen a variation of that exact expression once before: the catastrophic, gravity-warping smile she had once seen Irene unleash in this same courtyard. That was the 'I am going to vaporize you' smile, Hathaway's tactical processor cross-referenced frantically. This is not that. She isn't angry.

This is the smile of someone who has just drawn the exact card they wanted, and is contemplating the most devastating way to play it. She looked back at Josephine, expecting the Unyielding Banner of Casendiara to meet the provocation with open-handed, unbreakable resolve. Josephine saw the smile. And took a half-step backward. Hathaway's analysis stopped compiling mid-sentence. She stared at the woman who had faced Ovelia six times and never once stepped back. Four days ago. This exact courtyard.

Josephine walked over to Irene with unfeigned, genuine delight. And now she is physically retreating from a smile? That single retreat brought her exactly shoulder-to-shoulder with Marianne Horton. Beside the Scarlet Fox, Marianne turned her head. The Fourth Seat's signature spring-breeze smile remained flawless, completely undisturbed by the sudden spike in atmospheric pressure. Marianne simply gave Josephine a look. Hathaway caught the exchange and immediately attempted to parse it.

The query returned a null value. Whatever Marianne had just transmitted, the contents were entirely encrypted. Josephine met Marianne's gaze. A beat passed. And then, marginally but unmistakably, the tight, miserable tension in the Scarlet Fox's expression loosened. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Hathaway looked at Josephine's expression again.

Without the epic-lore overlay filtering her read, the smile no longer looked like the quiet acceptance of a warrior meeting her destiny. It looked, uncomfortably, like a woman who had booked a guided group tour, realized she was the only one on the manifest who knew how to read a map, and had just been silently reminded by the person next to her that they were, in fact, still going on the tour. Hathaway filed the data point, assigned it a large, unresolved flag, and moved on. Faust swatted the second sphere.

[Fey Star] vs. [Steam Saints] For the past several minutes, the two Plumed Dragon Witches at the Sunshine Pals table had been watching Irene. Their body language carried the quiet, unfulfilled restlessness of predators waiting outside a closed hunting ground: patient, controlled, but fundamentally dissatisfied with the temporary barrier. When the second hologram resolved, they didn't look at it. But Famia Schüder did. The Second Seat's reaction was immediate and completely unguarded.

The Black Emperor of the Abyss, who had spent the entire group stage radiating the grinding energy of a competent executive locked in a 1v5 performance review cycle against four teammates who seemed to have confused "existing in her general vicinity" with "contributing to the mission," looked at the holographic letters and practically vibrated with relief. After weeks of mandatory, unilateral overtime, she had finally been handed a legitimate work order.

At the Fey Star table, Akkukataya's polished, gentlemanly smile flatlined. Hathaway watched the temperature around the knight drop to something well below operational baseline. The hostility was not tactical. It was biological: the deep, bone-level revulsion of a cat looking at a particularly enthusiastic dog that had somehow materialized in what was clearly, ancestrally, unambiguously cat territory. Akkukataya's pentagram irises cut to Allison. Allison did not look at Famia.

The Conqueror's gaze swept the courtyard with the languid, proprietary ease of someone surveying a familiar landscape. It drifted past the Steam Saints entirely and continued on. Hathaway's processor logged the absence, tagged it with a question mark, and set it aside. Akkukataya saw her Sovereign completely ignore the Second Seat's existence.

The flatline on the knight's face dissolved instantly back into a smile, upgraded with a layer of profoundly weaponized superiority, the face of someone who has just received a very satisfying confirmation. She settled back in her chair. She didn't notice you at all, Akkukataya's posture broadcast. Across the courtyard, Famia Schüder caught that broadcast. The Second Seat's eyes locked onto the knight. The Black Emperor did not look intimidated. She did not look disheartened by Allison's dismissal.

She looked exactly like a highly disciplined, rigorously trained German Shepherd staring at an excessively clingy, territorial housecat. The sheer, overwhelming biological urge to bite the creature to death was visibly restrained only by a fundamental, overriding loyalty to the cat's owner. But behind those stoic, unyielding eyes, a tactical processor was clearly already drafting a comprehensive, fourteen-step operational blueprint on how to quietly, legally, and permanently lock the cat outside the house.

Hathaway watched that stare, coming from a woman who, just two days ago, had systematically dismantled the Seventh Seat of the High Council with the emotional availability of a spreadsheet. Hathaway thought of the twenty-eight-minute duel Famia had filed as Unscheduled Overtime Task #4. Her soul wailed, a sudden, retrospective grief for the Hortania Sovereign washing over her. A collapsed star?! She's a homing missile!

There is no romantic density, Camilla, it's simply a matter of whether she actually loves you or not! Faust struck the third sphere. [Greed Umbrella] vs. [Sunshine Pals] A reserve of schadenfreude had been accumulating in Hathaway's chest since the moment the knockout brackets opened. When the holographic text resolved on the Greed Umbrella name, that reserve had started pressurizing. The karmic accounting was finally coming due.

Then Paddy and Adeline turned their heads away from Irene, found the Greed Umbrella table, and smiled. The schadenfreude died. Not gradually. It went from pressurized to zero in a single frame. Whatever look the two Plumed Dragon Witches turned on the Holheim delegation was not a competitive look. It was not even hostile in any recognizable standard definition of the word. It was a slow, sweeping dissection.

Their eyes dragged across the Greed Umbrella roster with the terrifying, invasive patience of two entities who had already mentally unbuttoned their opponents' defensive architecture and were taking preliminary measurements. Just catching the peripheral edge of that gaze from fifty yards away sent a shudder of profound secondhand horror crawling down Hathaway's spine. Nobody deserves that. Nobody. Not even them. Across the hall, the Greed Umbrella met the gaze.

Karula and Maria met it with the lazy, dangerous interest of apex predators who had not yet reached the part of the evening where the main course arrived. Flandmira's lip curled slightly, her expression carrying the distinct, aristocratic distaste of someone evaluating an unsanitary pest. Wei Changqing watched her own teammates bristle with violent anticipation, a faint, deeply indulgent smile at the corners of her lips.

Cecilia Wellington sat among them and merely looked back with the absolute, tranquil, suffocating stillness of the deep ocean. Oh my god, they think they're the boss encounter. Hathaway scanned back toward the Sunshine Pals table. She found Lily Cable. Lily was looking at the Greed Umbrella delegation. The look of a civilian watching a tourist ignore a Beware of Leopard sign and walk confidently into the tall grass. She raised her glass toward the Holheim delegation. Barely a movement. Not a toast.

If the woman who wrote 'A Mathematical Proof That Adeline Is Absolute Trash' is offering you a pre-emptive moment of silence, you are already dead. Hathaway's eyes moved to the edge of the formation. Victoria Wellington stood perfectly upright, spine immaculate, expression composed into something that revealed nothing at all. But Hathaway caught the microscopic slack in Victoria's shoulders as that violating stare swept over her. I am a substitute, that stillness said, with a precise, deeply contained relief.

I am legally, officially exempt from this containment breach. Hathaway looked at her roommate. She looked at the bristling Greed Umbrella roster. She looked at Paddy and Adeline. I retract my pity. You are all completely unhinged and you absolutely deserve each other. May Ovelia have mercy on the referees. Faust reached into the localized dimension one final time. [Absolute City] vs. [Royal Rosas] Across the vast Anser marble courtyard, Liandra Milan'thirskaya did exactly what she had done at the opening banquet.

But the Royal Rosas bench did not raise a silent glass this time. Beside Hathaway, Alucard's hands were flat on the table, pressed down with careful, deliberate control. The knuckles were white. The hollow, practiced resignation that usually comprised the Archon's entire waking personality was completely gone.

Something considerably older and less patient had replaced it: the specific, incandescent fury of an elder sister who had been maintaining a very strict schedule of doing absolutely nothing about this situation, and had just found that the schedule had expired without her permission. The lethal mana pooling around Alucard's chair was barely there, barely visible, and entirely serious. We have entered the family judicial proceedings.

Two seats over, Tasia sat with the still, resigned composure of someone who had already completed the math, accepted the result, and was now simply watching the algebra play out in real time. Further down the hall, at the Golden Iris table, Heidi Lucent was also looking at the Absolute City delegation. During the opening banquet, Hathaway had watched Heidi and Lin Zhaojun share a violently provocative toast: a razor-edged, whiskey-and-absinthe promise to slaughter each other once the brackets converged.

But there was no raised glass today. No homicidal anticipation. Heidi just looked at Lin with the heavy, isolating letdown of a hunter who had spent years sharpening her blade for a mythic beast, only to realize the creature sitting across the courtyard was just a ghost wearing its name. Lin Zhaojun did not look back at her. Rhode's red eyes were fixed directly on Lin Zhaojun. The founder of the Millennium Dynasty sat at the Absolute City table with the posture of someone carrying a specific, invisible weight.

Lin Zhaojun sat with all of it, not loudly, just present, the way a person carries something they already know everyone in the room is aware of. Rhode looked at her with no sympathy whatsoever. Not the aggressive, competitive hunger of a rival savoring a collapse. Something harder and far more personal: the look of someone who had known this person for long enough to have zero patience remaining for the performance of defeat.

Explode, Rhode's eyes demanded, across twenty yards of Anser marble, without a single syllable of negotiation. I know exactly what you are. Give me that. Lin Zhaojun looked back. She didn't smile. Something shifted in her. A sleeping lion waking up was the first comparison Hathaway's processor reached for, but she immediately marked it as inaccurate. It was just the lion's ear rotating, very slightly, toward a sound it had not yet decided to acknowledge.

Whatever that is, Hathaway noted, filing the observation, it was not there this morning. She took a slow step backward. She looked at the four glowing holographic brackets suspended beneath the Spirit Sea canopy. She looked at the assembled delegations surrounding her, everyone locked onto their respective targets with the focused, personalized intensity of people who had come here to settle something.

Her developer brain ran a final diagnostic on the room's networking architecture and produced its report: A former Fifth Seat in visible retreat from a sadistic smile. A Second Seat vibrating with relief at finally receiving a legitimate work order. An elder sister's patience schedule, quietly expired, one twin already resigned while the other reached for the enforcement manual. This social circle is a complete and irredeemable mess. She looked at the banners.

The Grand Masters Tournament had been established as the ultimate expression of inter-district competition: the Inner Sea's equivalent of the Olympics, where the greatest Witches in the world gathered to defend regional pride through legitimate, fully sanctioned tactical excellence. Not a single person in this courtyard was fighting for their district. Hathaway's eyes drifted, almost involuntarily, back to the Greed Umbrella delegation.

Karula was pointing at the newly finalized holographic bracket, making a casual, entirely game-related comment to Maria, who laughed. Wei Changqing was standing with her arms loosely crossed, projecting the calm, relaxed focus of a captain reviewing a tournament schedule. Flandmira and Cecilia were simply watching the main stage, looking exactly like people who had shown up to a competitive sporting event strictly to participate in the sport. They weren't transmitting encrypted threats to former battlefield rivals.

They weren't suffering from unaddressed psychological trauma triggered by someone standing three tables away, nor were they actively restraining themselves from murdering a romantic competitor. Hathaway stared at them. Sweet merciful matchmaking, she thought, a profound, slightly hysterical clarity settling over her. They are the only team in this entire building who actually showed up to play the game.