Chương 208: Chapter 187: A Financially Sponsored Holy War

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 50 — 8: 25 AM [Location]: Blazing Day Plains · Palace of the Eternal True Sun The griffin carriage breached the boundary of the folded space with a sensation resembling a sudden drop in cabin pressure, followed immediately by the visual equivalent of a flashbang detonating against the reinforced glass window. Hathaway looked down. The Palace of the Eternal True Sun obliterated its environment.

The sprawling complex sat in the center of the Blazing Day Plains like a captured star that had slammed into the earth and decided to stay. The walls appeared to be masonry assembled from compressed, solid-state photons. The palace projected tens of thousands of lumens of blinding gold-crimson illumination directly into the daytime sky, bleeding into the surrounding cloud layer until the entire sky burned with the hues of an apocalyptic sunset.

She picked up the heavy, pitch-black industrial welding goggles Rhode had silently deposited in her lap during the carriage ride and strapped them firmly over her eyes. I am eighteen years old, she compiled, adjusting the strap. I still need my retinas for alchemy. The carriage touched down on a plaza paved in solid sunstone. She stepped out and followed Rhode toward the entrance.

The main doors rose thirty meters overhead, cast from a single, unbroken expanse of unalloyed gold, embossed with the roaring lion crest of the Ludwig bloodline. Hathaway stopped in front of them. Her developer brain, which had spent the entire previous evening agonizing over the total evaporation of her liquid assets, performed an involuntary assessment of the available precious metal. If I cast a localized fracturing matrix along the lower hinge, would anyone notice a missing two-pound chunk?

It's a thirty-meter door. The engineering tolerance for missing mass must be statistically significant. Her right hand had already lifted, moving entirely independent of her conscious will, and pressed flat against the warm gold. Before her fingertips could locate a structurally compromised seam, the thirty-meter golden slabs parted in absolute silence. Rhode marched through without breaking stride. Hathaway withdrew her hand, stuffed it into her coat pocket, and hurried after her cousin.

The moment she crossed the threshold, an acoustic phenomenon washed over her: a solemn, holy, choral resonance swelling from every direction simultaneously. Hathaway looked around for the orchestra. There wasn't one. The palace possessed its own ambient soundtrack, hardcoded into the structural wards to ensure visitors felt an appropriate sense of divine insignificance. The grand hall was perfectly circular and vast, supported by dozens of towering pillars each crowned with a basin of roaring, eternal flame.

At the exact center, elevated on a multi-tiered dais, sat five ornate thrones. Hathaway's gaze swept the chamber and immediately locked onto a solitary figure sitting quietly off to the side of the dais, completely still. Bella. In a family tribunal regarding my romantic choices, I have zero confirmation whether the Chuunibyou is currently categorized as a friendly unit. Rhode kicked out a heavy chair at the base of the dais and threw herself into it, crossing one leather-clad leg over the other.

Hathaway found the adjacent seat and sat with her spine impeccably straight. She turned her goggled eyes toward the thrones. In the center seat sat Matriarch Wilhelmina. She wore a sweeping gown woven from flowing magma-silk, the fabric shifting with internal heat. A veil of spun gold obscured her lower face. Her eyes were tightly shut, presumably because keeping them open constituted a localized atmospheric hazard, and both hands rested over a heavy ceremonial scepter.

Every micro-adjustment of her posture radiated a highly curated melancholy: the specific aura of a consummate self-curator, communicating, I bear the crushing weight of the sun upon my shoulders, I am exhausted by the burden of my own incandescent majesty, yet I remain tragically beautiful. To her right sat Elder Frederica. She was dressed in a formal gown aggressively militarized with functional plate-armor accents.

Perched on her shoulder was a phoenix constructed entirely of white-hot living fire, currently preening its wing feathers. Frederica was staring into a crystal goblet of red wine with the desolate, thousand-yard gaze of a veteran who had seen empires rise and collapse and found them all unremarkable. The wine in the goblet was at a rolling boil. Hathaway only registered those two distinct character designs because the remaining three Elders were not currently rendering as human beings.

They were overlapping spheres of weaponized magical output. One radiated a gradient of pure gold. One was a violent sunset red. The last was outputting a supernova-white glare so concentrated that Hathaway's industrial goggles were actively working to filter the UV radiation. She sat in her chair, gripping the armrests, and compiled one irrevocable update to her geopolitical database.

These terrifying pillars of the bloodline had simply acquired the administrative budget to fully actualize their Chuunibyou aesthetics. Matriarch Wilhelmina slowly, dramatically opened her eyes. Bzzzt— Despite her obvious, trembling attempt at restraint, two concentrated beams of pure ruby-red thermal energy shot from her irises like industrial cutting lasers. They struck the indestructible marble floor mere inches from Hathaway's boots, instantly boring two smoking, glowing craters into the stone.

Wilhelmina snapped her eyes shut.

"... Hathaway." Her voice rolled through the hall: ethereal, booming, layered with a built-in acoustic reverb that harmonized with the invisible choir still chanting in the building wards.

"We have been monitoring your development. You are the pride of our lineage. Though your eyes do not emit photons, the bearing you have demonstrated is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the authentic, pureblooded essence of a Ludwig." Wilhelmina drew a sharp, theatrical breath and clutched a hand over her heart.

"Say no more, child! We have summoned you here today to perform an exorcism!" Hathaway's jaw dropped. The diplomatic protocols she had been carefully loading since the carriage departed derailed instantly.

"What exorcism?!" she blurted.

"What kind of demon could successfully possess an Arch-Witch baseline?!" Elder Frederica lowered her boiling wine glass and let out a heavy, tragic sigh.

"Foolish child. You have clearly been brainwashed. Have you forgotten? The Wellington Mystic Eyes possess the inherent capacity for deep hypnosis, the displacement of memory heat-maps, and the forcible rewriting of common sense." Hathaway's processing threads ground to a violent halt. That exact combination is directly sourced from the R-18 explicit tags of Alice Varro's serialized fanfiction.

Has the mental pollution of Mistfall City's smut industry breached the highest echelons of the Ludwig administrative council?! To think, Hathaway processed, a strange, involuntary awe assembling itself beneath the horror, that Cecilia and Victoria possess a genetic weapon capable of catastrophic mind-break, yet they only use it to read mana flow and calibrate reagent matrices. Their moral fortitude is genuinely astronomical. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

She shot a desperate, SOS glance at Rhode. Rhode dropped her crossed leg, leaned forward, and scoffed, a sharp, abrasive sound that cut cleanly through the invisible choir.

"Are you all going senile, spouting this kind of nonsense?" Rhode demanded, adjusting her sunglasses.

"Even with your eyes shut, you should be able to read her mana signature. Her cognitive architecture is completely lucid." A pause, her lip curling.

"Even if her taste in women is a catastrophic structural failure, her mind is her own." Wilhelmina's brow furrowed sharply.

"Rhode! You do not have the floor! You unfilial wretch, are you actively trying to end my immortal life through sheer exasperation?!" Rhode snorted, folded her arms, and said nothing more. Wilhelmina turned her shut-eyed face back toward Hathaway.

"My dear niece, you must wake up. The women of the Wellington bloodline are structurally defective. They are not suitable partners for anyone—" Elder Frederica stood. With a sharp flick of her wrist, she deployed a massive, ancient scroll. The parchment cascaded down the dais steps, unrolled across the marble floor, bumped against Hathaway's boots, continued past the chairs, and finally pooled in a massive pile against the thirty-meter gold doors. The surface was packed with microscopic, densely written text.

"Behold!" Frederica's voice boomed off the pillars.

"The historical logs! The ironclad, incontrovertible record of their crimes!" Hathaway leaned over and squinted through her goggles at the text near her boot. Year 1952, Month 4: Encountered Isolde Wellington on the battlefield. She referred to our glorious radiance as 'light-polluting nouveau riche.' Hathaway blinked. Is there an empirical flaw in that assessment? It reads like a highly accurate environmental audit. She kept reading.

Year 1963, Month 9: Cornelia Wellington aggressively seized our preferred seating assignment at the Apex Gala. Year 1978, Month 6: Deployed [Ovelia's Evil Lantern Cat Sunflare Burst] in the field. Adara Wellington walked out of the blast radius unscathed and said: "Is that all? You are not worthy of Her gift." Hathaway stared at the words Adara Wellington had spoken.

"You are not worthy of Her gift." That is the proprietary jealousy of a fanatic. The Wellingtons had sworn fealty to Ovelia at the dawn of the war. They were her earliest, most devoted zealots. To them, the latecomer Ludwigs being handed this specific spell was a personal desecration. A sudden, localized panic overrode her historical analysis. If I acquire this spell, how is Victoria going to look at me when I use it?

Is my girlfriend going to look at my ultimate ancestral trump card and sneer at my sloppy blast radius?! Frederica watched Hathaway's neutral expression and snapped her fingers. The [Book of Grudges] levitated an inch off the floor. A specific entry flared with furious, pulsing gold directly before Hathaway's face. Year 1987, Month 3: Mirena Wellington saved my life without my consent, then demanded I offer my hand in marriage as repayment. Hathaway sucked in a sharp, cold breath. That one is indefensible.

That is a legitimate, server-level blood feud. They went out of their way to save your life, she thought, a strange, unauthorized warmth surfacing against her logic. Just so they could earn the right to insult you. That is abhorrent. But it is also, inexplicably, kind of cute. She shook her head and kept scanning. A name snagged her attention. Year 1995, Month 7: Wilhelmina stated that Cecilia Wellington is stronger than me. I am logging this grudge. I will remember it.

"Aunt Wilhelmina," Hathaway said carefully.

"There appears to be a grudge entry here that states—" She read it aloud. The absolute, dignified solemnity of the Palace of the Eternal True Sun shattered. The three unnamed Elders, who had been maintaining their immaculate blinding halos throughout the proceedings, suffered violent, catastrophic fluctuations, their auras expanding and contracting in rapid, unstable bursts before forcibly locking back into controlled spheres. Wilhelmina's eyes flew open.

Two ruby-red cutting lasers lanced directly across the hall, tracking straight for Rhode's face. Rhode casually reached up, adjusted her sunglasses, and let the beams scorch the chairback.

"What?" Rhode threw her hands wide.

"Are you telling me I don't have the administrative clearance to log a grudge?"

"That was an entirely separate operational context!" Wilhelmina roared, her divine reverb glitching with fury.

"I was utilizing her performance metrics to motivate you! I was not issuing a formal endorsement of the Wellington bloodline!"

"She's the Heir, I'm the Heir!" Rhode snapped back, refusing an inch.

"If I parse out with lower base stats than her, how is this family supposed to maintain its market dominance?! Are we supposed to quietly accept that?!" Wilhelmina's hand tightened on her scepter.

"ENOUGH!" The shockwave echoed through the circular hall. Hathaway flinched in her chair. This is it. She's going to deploy executive authority. Forcible relationship termination incoming. Wilhelmina turned the full, heavy weight of her veiled gaze toward Hathaway.

"My dear niece," Wilhelmina said, the divine reverb entirely absent, replaced by the raw, exhausted tone of a woman who had been carrying the sun for too long.

"Your Aunt is begging you. Just give me a number. How much capital is required for you to terminate your relationship with that woman?" Hathaway's internal abacus froze. Is the ceiling uncapped? Her rationality and her emotional core slammed the emergency brakes simultaneously. No! This is not a financial transaction! She stared at her aunt in genuine bewilderment. What is happening. Standard dramatic logic: the powerful family buys off the weaker love interest.

But if I am the weaker love interest, the checkbook should be arriving from the Wellington direction. And if I am the powerful one, why is my own family running this play on me?! Wilhelmina reached into her magma-silk robes and produced a solid gold bar. She slapped it onto the armrest of the throne.

"I don't want to hear it."

"Aunt Wilhelmina, I assure you, no amount of added liquidity will resolve—" Wilhelmina raised a finger toward the entrance.

"Niece," she said, with the terrifying calm of someone who had just confirmed her own liquid assets.

"You nod your head right now, and Auntie will personally melt down those thirty-meter gold doors and hand them directly to you." Hathaway sealed her lips shut. She did not dare produce another syllable, gripped by the entirely rational fear that if she declined again, her aunt was going to sign over the deed to the entire Palace of the Eternal True Sun just to close the ticket. From the edge of the dais, Bella finally rose. Her voice cut through the hall, saturated with maximum theatrical gravity.

"Matriarch of the Eternal Flame! The profane currency of mortals cannot purchase sovereignty over the cosmic tapestry! Your un-awakened eyes have utterly failed to pierce the abyssal depths of my blood-kin's grand machination!" She stepped forward, throwing both arms wide. Her single uncovered eye blazed with the fanatical, incandescent zeal of a Chuunibyou who had just successfully patched a gaping plot hole in her own worldview.

"It is the ultimate karmic subversion of their cursed lineage!" Bella proclaimed to the vaulted ceiling.

"So long as the cosmic vessels forged of their union bear the Crimson Crest of Ludwig, the Wellington dynasty shall be reduced to mere incubators for our supreme dominion! They shall nurture the very seed of their own eclipse!" Hathaway's jaw unhinged. The blinding mana halos surrounding the three unnamed Elders instantly dissipated, revealing three stunned, buffering Witches. The entire dais stared at Bella in synchronized, unmoored shock. Why. Hathaway screamed in the privacy of her own skull.

How did we fast-forward the progression tree directly to genetic legacy?! We have been officially dating for less than one fiscal week! How did a child get compiled into the runtime environment?! She desperately wanted to intervene. But Wilhelmina was already looking at her with an expression of enormous, churning complexity. The Matriarch struggled with the variables for a long, agonizing moment.

"A Ludwig..." Wilhelmina muttered, the syllables rolling carefully over her tongue.

"... victory?" Hold the line! Hathaway begged, telepathically and entirely without hope. Maintain your ancestral skepticism! This logic is completely insane! Elder Frederica shot out of her throne, both armored fists raised to the ceiling.

"YES!" Frederica roared.

"THAT IS A LUDWIG VICTORY!" She bounded down the dais steps, seized Hathaway's hand, and pumped it up and down with ferocious, martial enthusiasm.

"Good child! We are opening a new, entirely dedicated page in the family genealogy just for your strategic achievement!" On her shoulder, the fire phoenix reared back and blasted a pillar of celebratory flame toward the dome. Rhode's sunglasses slid down her nose. She shoved them violently back up.

"I REFUSE TO ACCEPT THIS! I absolutely refuse to look at a single Wellington face at the wedding reception!" She took one step back from children, Hathaway processed, her soul quietly evacuating her body, and the fallback position is still the wedding. Wilhelmina raised a hand, asserting a sudden, rational calm.

"Now, now. It is far too early to be discussing these logistical details..." Finally. A functioning adult. The Matriarch has reengaged her logic parameters. At least the head of the Ludwig family retains her sanity. Wilhelmina descended the dais steps. She stopped in front of Hathaway, took her hand, and pressed the gold bar firmly into her palm. It was a standard Witch Authority reserve bullion bar. Market value: 560, 000 Solars.

"We are going to fully fund your development," Wilhelmina declared, her voice burning with fierce, competitive zeal.

"We will cultivate you into a Witch of such unassailable excellence that those Wellington bats won't have a single line of code to complain about. We will make sure they know, down to their bones, that they are the ones who married up." She clapped Hathaway heavily on the shoulder.

"Your advanced educational expenses are fully subsidized by the Main House treasury. Consider this the initial installment." Hathaway stood perfectly still, clutching 560, 000 Solars against her chest. This, her developer brain registered, as a profound, transcendent peace washed over her entire operational framework, is without question the most beautiful sentence I have heard in either of my lifetimes.