Chương 209: Chapter 188: The Ludwig Scientific Method

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 50 — 8: 50 AM [Location]: Blazing Day Plains · Palace of the Eternal True Sun Hathaway stood frozen at the base of the dais. Her developer brain had achieved a state of pure, transcendent financial peace. The 560, 000-Solar gold bullion pressed against her chest radiated a warmth that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature, and she had allocated approximately one hundred percent of her available processing power to simply holding it.

The geopolitical implications of the Ludwig treasury declaring a financially-sponsored holy war against the Wellington dynasty could compile themselves later. For now, she was profoundly grateful to be a heavily subsidized participant.

"Excellent! Not a single microsecond to waste!" Wilhelmina's voice boomed off the circular walls, her magma-silk gown flaring as she pivoted with sudden, ferocious momentum.

"Niece! Keep up! We are heading directly to the family's sacred grounds!" The three unnamed Elders, who had spent the past twenty minutes existing as overlapping spheres of weaponized optical hazard, pulsed once, a synchronized farewell aimed at Hathaway, and dissolved back into the ambient light of the hall. Elder Frederica and Bella fell into step behind the Matriarch with the practiced, automatic obedience of soldiers executing a rapid deployment order. Rhode fell into step beside Hathaway.

Hathaway snapped out of her financial reverie and broke into a fast jog to keep pace. She was still jogging when Wilhelmina marched directly onto a circular runic array embedded in the polished marble floor. BOOM. A pillar of gold-crimson fire detonated from the runes, swallowed the Matriarch whole, and shot her through the ceiling wards. Frederica stepped onto the next array. BOOM. Bella swept forward, drew a deep, theatrical breath, raised both arms— BOOM. —and was atomized mid-pose.

Hathaway skidded to a halt at the edge of the scorch marks. The Ludwig family's internal transit infrastructure, she compiled, staring at the residual smoke curling from the launch sites, is a direct-fire ballistic artillery system. She had approximately three seconds to shove the bullion into her spatial ring before Rhode's hand connected with her back. The world became pure, screaming acceleration.

[Location]: Blazing Day Plains · The Sun Volcano The launch sequence deposited her onto solid rock with an unceremonious, heavy thud. Hathaway stumbled forward, throwing an arm up to shield her face. The environment had made a violent transition: instead of blinding gold marble, she was standing in a suffocating geological furnace, the air thick with sulfur and scorched iron, thermal pressure pressing against her skin with immediate, prickling intensity. She lowered her arm.

Looming before them was a geological leviathan of dark crystal and volcanic glass. The interior was alive, subterranean veins of churning magma visible through the semi-translucent facets of the naturally occurring crystal walls, their luminescence shifting and demonic, casting long shadows across the exterior slopes.

"The Sun Volcano," Rhode announced, stepping up beside her and adjusting her sunglasses with the composure of someone standing in a location that had never once approached comfortable.

"Technically dormant. It runs continuously as an internal forge, generating magma flows and refining Sun Ore, one of the most heavily restricted premium conductive metals on the global market." If Surtrina could see this, Hathaway noted, wiping a bead of sweat from her collarbone, she would unpack a picnic blanket. They launched into the air, riding the aggressive thermal updraft up the jagged incline. The heat intensified with every meter. They crested the rim of the massive caldera and hovered over the edge.

Below: a vast, churning lake of incandescent magma, its surface slow and heavy, massive bubbles swelling and popping with the viscous, concussive percussion of boiling stone. A family sacred ground. Her developer brain ran the data. What does that mean, exactly? A Sun Ore mining deed? Unrestricted access to a premium vein? That is an astronomical volume of generational wealth to hand over before breakfast. The Matriarch had already turned to face her.

The severity of the tribunal and the theatrical grandeur of the ceremony had evaporated completely. What remained was the precise face of a loving aunt offering the last slice of pie.

"My dear niece," Wilhelmina said, gently.

"Jump down." Hathaway's vocal cords disconnected from her operating system. She lowered her gaze to the churning lake of liquid stone, then raised it back to her aunt's beaming, affectionate expression. What is happening. Her logic engine threw a catastrophic exception. Is this an honor killing? Did I fail the tribunal after all? Are they planning to dispose of the evidence in a geological incinerator? The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Rhode leaned over the rim, studied the boiling surface with a critical eye, and then looked at Hathaway's frozen expression. Her brow furrowed in genuine, completely unfeigned confusion.

"What are you waiting for?" Rhode asked. Wilhelmina blinked. Her scepter came down on the back of Rhode's head with a resounding CLANG.

"I forgot the onboarding briefing!" Wilhelmina declared, turning back to Hathaway with an apologetic wave of her scepter.

"My apologies, niece. This caldera is a natural encounter site: it permanently elevates a Witch's baseline constitution, though the benefit is single-use per individual. The physiology adapts, and subsequent entries yield nothing." The Matriarch's expression shifted, settling into something simultaneously clinical and deeply, inexplicably pitying.

"You see, Hathaway. From the specific perspective of Witch biology... you are a premature baby." Hathaway's eye twitched. What? Margaret has never once mentioned any obstetric anomalies in my medical history.

"Physically, you are a functional adult," Wilhelmina continued, dismissing the semantic confusion with a wave.

"But your mana underwent a catastrophic mutation, vaulting you past every developmental stage between where you began and where you now stand. Under normal parameters, it takes a minimum of ten years, up to sixteen, for a Witch's mana to fully incubate and awaken the single most decisive variable for any practitioner who intends to operate at the absolute top of the field." She paused.

"A [Trait]." Hathaway raised a hand, slipping into academic inquiry mode.

"What is a [Trait]?"

"An innate structural gift," Wilhelmina said.

"The foundational currency of our species is mana. No matter how terrifying a Witch is, she requires a titanic mana pool to guarantee her sovereignty. But as you ascend into the High Witch strata and beyond, certain rare individuals manifest something additional in the structure of their mana itself. A [Trait]. In a fight between peers at the exact same tier, the Witch with a Trait holds an overwhelming, conceptually unfair advantage over the one without."

Rhode hooked a thumb at her own chest, a fierce, predatory grin spreading across her face.

"Take me," Rhode said.

"My Trait is [Rebound]. Every time I discharge a spell, the residual mana that would normally bleed off into the environment gets pulled back in and recycled. The casting action resets. Entirely passive, no activation cost, stacks cleanly with every metamagic feat I carry." Hathaway stared at her cousin. You are not a Witch. You are a resource-positive attrition engine wearing a face. She turned toward Bella, who was hovering at the crater's edge with her cloak billowing in the thermal updraft.

"And your Trait, Bella?" Bella's visible eye blazed with cosmic gravity. She threw her arms wide.

"Ah! You ask of the abyssal blessing etched into my very being! When the chronological river seeks to erode the mortal vessel, my cursed flesh rises in absolute defiance of entropy! I stand as the eternal monolith against the creeping—""Her Trait is [Ageless]," Wilhelmina interrupted. Her voice was entirely flat, carrying the specific weight of profound and inescapable disappointment.

"Literally just that." Bella's monologue collapsed mid-sentence. A violent crimson swept from her neck to her ears, and she redirected the remaining energy into a series of defensive, highly localized Chuunibyou incantations that failed to form coherent sentences. We have found it. The single most useless passive skill in the entire history of the server. Bella rolled a legendary-tier drop and received a cosmetic microtransaction. It is, honestly, the most Bella thing I have ever heard.

Wilhelmina placed a comforting hand on Hathaway's shoulder.

"Do not worry. Your Trait will not be a dead roll." The Matriarch's expression sharpened, her gaze cutting straight through Hathaway's physical form.

"I have a certain sensitivity for these matters of mana construction. Even though your mana is barely past the cradle stage..." Wilhelmina's voice dropped into something quiet and entirely serious.

"You carry the scent of a Grand Witch." Hathaway's heart dropped two centimeters and then rocketed back into her sternum. Grand Witch. Ovelia. Irene. Heidi. The apex of the species. A ceiling so impossibly distant she hadn't even dared to formally compile it into her long-term roadmap, more a fixed star on the horizon than a destination she could point to on a map.

"However," Wilhelmina continued, her tone sharpening with sudden, urgent momentum.

"Waiting ten to sixteen years for your mana to naturally awaken this Trait is unacceptable." Her eyes burned with the fanatical, unyielding zeal of limitless generational wealth confronting a solvable problem.

"Any problem that can be resolved by throwing money at it is not a problem! If we bury you in high-tier encounters and targeted environmental pressure, your mana pool expands, and your Trait accelerates its compilation. We cannot force it to finalize today. But we can push the progress bar significantly forward!" She leveled a finger into the boiling caldera below.

"You possess an anomalous conversion loop that transforms your physical constitution directly into maximum mana. This volcano provides weaponized environmental trauma in industrial quantities. It is the perfect farm!" Hathaway's jaw unhinged for the second time that morning.

"How do you know about my stat conversion?" Frederica crossed her armored arms with a scoff.

"Tasia made a specific trip to the main house to inform us. Premium material, she said, and it would be negligent to let the family remain blind to your development path." Tasia.

"... Okay," Hathaway managed. She stepped to the rim and looked down. The vertigo hit immediately. The thermal updraft from the magma lake pressed against her face like a standing wall of fire.

"Do I need any equipment? Fire resistance potions? A thermal warding matrix?"

"Just jump," Rhode instructed casually.

"Channel raw mana into your body: reinforce your skeleton, your tissue, every layer. Maintain that internal pressure as the sole barrier between you and the environment. That is the hardcoded prerequisite for the encounter to yield a stat increase." Hathaway stared at the boiling abyss.

"How, exactly, was this highly specific and completely suicidal activation condition originally discovered?" The four Ludwigs hovering around her went still. They looked at each other. Four faces swung back to Hathaway with identical expressions of mild, uncomprehending innocence.

"We jumped in," Wilhelmina said, in the patient, explanatory tone of someone describing a law of nature.

"And then we found out." Hathaway sealed her lips. Because they were Ludwigs. Jump first, query the damage logs later was the foundational operating system of the entire bloodline. Every geological hazard in a five-kilometer radius was simply an undiscovered encounter waiting for someone willing to tank the onboarding process, and the Ludwig family had been graciously providing that service, generation after generation, until the achievement unlocked. Hathaway took a long breath of scorching, sulfuric air.

She channeled her mana inward, flooding every layer of her body with dense, pressurized reinforcement until her skin felt armored from the inside out. She gritted her teeth. She stepped off the edge of the crater. She plummeted headfirst into the sun.