Chương 60: A Flawless Questline

[Time]: Day 32, 04: 00 PM [Location]: Dormitory Area · Shadow Sector The transition from the Golden Branch to the Shadow Sector was less like walking across campus and more like stepping into a different season. The afternoon sun dissolved into a permanent, elegant twilight. The clouds hung low, bruising the sky in indigo and charcoal. [The Obsidian Spire] hovered silently a few meters above the ground, held aloft by a deep, magnetic hum that vibrated in the soles of Hathaway's boots.

The corridor inside smelled of Midnight Tea, old parchment, and expensive incense—the scent of scholars who preferred the quiet of 3 AM to the bustle of noon. The silence here wasn't empty; it was heavy with intent. Behind the shifting door numbers, Hathaway could sense the faint vibrations of insulation spells and the muffled thrum of bass lines. She found it at the end of the hall, isolated from the rest. Room 404.

Below the number plate, a holographic error message flickered in glitchy red text: [Error: Room Not Found] Ghost humor. Hathaway took out the Black Ice Card. Her fingers were already numb from the ambient chill. She remembered the warnings—Victoria's diagnosis of "Biological Regression," Nino's sneer of "Vegetarian Vampire." But she felt no fear. Only the hush of entering a backstage area. She pressed the card against the wood. The surface rippled like dark water disturbed by a stone.

The tension broke, revealing a swirling mist that pulled her in. [Space Expansion: Active] Hathaway stepped through the mist and found herself standing on soft, dead grey grass. The room was a chaotic, beautiful collision between a Mausoleum and a Recording Studio. Towering bookshelves lined the obsidian walls, spiraling up into the darkness. Thousands of leather-bound volumes shared shelf space with vinyl records, framed acoustic diagrams, and jars of preserved ectoplasm.

In the far corner, a pristine, black velvet Coffin rested on a raised stone dais. A reading light clamped to the lid cast a warm, inviting glow over a pile of plush pillows inside. Next to it, a weathered Tombstone served as a nightstand, cluttered with messy stacks of spell books and a half-empty mug of tea. But the center of the room belonged to the Noise. Weeping angel statues stood guard around a full set of Heavy Metal Instruments.

A sleek, black electric guitar leaned against a stack of ancient grimoires, its strings humming with latent mana. A massive drum kit with double bass pedals sat on a rug woven from spider silk. Synthesizers, amplifiers, and loop pedals were stacked like monoliths, their standby lights blinking red in the gloom. Cables snaked across the grey grass like vines. It was a library built for screaming. A graveyard waiting to dance.

Spectra was perched casually on top of a massive Marshall Amplifier near the floor-to-ceiling window. She floated above the black leather casing, legs crossed, a loose black silk nightgown draped over her spectral form like a shroud. A vinyl record rested in her pale hands—fingers tracing the grooves, reading the music through touch alone. Hathaway watched her for a moment. The scene was undeniable: the coffin, the instruments, the isolation.

The symptoms of a creature desperate to feel something —rhythm, heat, noise—in a body built for silence. Hathaway strangled the urge to stare. She cleared her throat softly. Spectra turned. Her green, abyssal eyes blinked slowly.

"You are early." Her voice was flat and cool, like a stone dropping into a still lake.

"It has been less than eight hours since I gave you the assignment." She drifted off the amplifier, her movements smooth and eerie, trailing a faint scent of formalin and midnight flowers.

"I expected a week of careful infiltration inside Lab 606. You are either terrifyingly efficient, or you are here to announce your failure."

"I brought the package," Hathaway said. She placed the [Optimized Heartbeat Core] on a floating stone table—which was actually a flat Gravestone—that drifted between them. She maintained the two-meter safety distance Victoria had warned her about. Spectra's eyes fixed on the glowing red core. She didn't reach for it immediately. Her hand hung inches above the surface, fingers trembling. Hathaway stood silently in the shadows, watching. She knew the code inside was perfect, but Spectra didn't.

To the Ghost Witch, this was a bomb built by a paranoid Professor. Finally, Spectra's pale fingertip brushed the crystal. Hum. The reaction was instant. The crystal didn't spark. It didn't grind with the friction of heavy calculation. Instead, a soft, harmonious resonance filled the room. The red light of the core bled gently into the grey aura of the Ghost Witch, blending like watercolor on wet paper. It wasn't a collision of energies. It was a Synchronization.

The warmth didn't burn her skin; it simply flowed into the void, filling the silence with a hum so smooth it felt like liquid. Spectra froze. Her finger lingered on the smooth shell. She tilted her head, her eyes narrowing in genuine confusion.

"It's... Light," she whispered. She tapped the core again.

"Nino's magic is heavy. She builds fortresses. She solves problems by stacking walls around them." Spectra looked up at Hathaway, a sharp light in her green eyes.

"But this... this doesn't solve the maze. It simply ignores it. It is minimal. It is intuitive. It is... Effortless." Hathaway offered a small, knowing shrug. Spectra looked back at the crystal.

"There is only one person who dares to treat Nino Lucent's hard work as a rough draft."

"Nino built the machine," Spectra murmured.

"But Heidi wrote the answer in the margin." She picked up the crystal, clutching it with both hands. It felt like a cheat code made solid.

"I see... I asked for a driver. You brought me a masterpiece signed by both sisters." Spectra shook her head, a self-deprecating smile touching her lips.

"With Heidi's genius layered over Nino's hard work, the value has tripled. I've been outplayed. How annoying." Hathaway watched her carefully. She noticed the way Spectra held the crystal—not analyzing the data stream like a hacker, but weighing the "feel" of the magic like a conductor testing a baton. She talks like an artist. Nino sees code. Victoria sees equations. But Spectra sees a 'Duet'. She isn't a starving vampire or a degenerating monster.

She is just a musician frustrated that someone else wrote the perfect song for her.

"Are you okay?" Hathaway asked quietly.

"You seem... conflicted." Spectra looked up. Her green eyes were unreadable.

"Conflicted? Perhaps. I am simply calculating the heritage." She floated back to her drum kit, placing the glowing red heart on the snare drum.

"My mother... the one who gave birth to me... is a Ghost. She taught me silence. But my other mother... is an Angel. She taught me about Light and Pulse." Hathaway blinked. The logic of the Ghost Box—the very thing she and Victoria had just dissected—snapped into devastating focus. For a Ghost Witch, the highest form of love was turning their partner into family—incinerating their heart and mixing the ashes in the Communal Box so they could share eternity and resurrect together.

But an Angel Witch could never undergo that conversion. An Angel's heart was a living, breathing reactor of High-Frequency Positive Energy. You simply cannot burn a core of absolute, blinding Light into cold, entropic ash. They were deeply in love, yet biologically locked out of the ultimate Witch union. The Ghost Mother was eternally tethered to the silent ashes of her lineage, while the Angel Mother was forever bound to the blinding pulse of the Light.

They could share a home, but they could never share a "Save Point." Hathaway imagined their daily domestic life. It was an extreme, high-dimensional long-distance relationship played out under the exact same roof. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. At the dinner table, the Angel Mother had to constantly dim her radiance to avoid giving her wife an accidental Holy Sunburn.

Across from her, the Ghost Mother had to rigidly lock down her entropic chill so she wouldn't freeze her wife's glowing wings into brittle ice. They loved each other by constantly holding themselves back. No wonder Spectra was so obsessed with this synthetic "heartbeat." She was the living, breathing compromise between a mother of absolute Silence and a mother of blinding Pulse—belonging to both, unable to anchor herself in either's extreme. Spectra tapped the crystal.

The heartbeat rhythm echoed through the amplifiers. Thump-thump.

"I crave this rhythm," Spectra murmured, staring at the blinking lights of the synthesizers.

"I wanted to build it myself. To prove I could exist between Silence and Sound without their help."

"But Nino just handed me the sheet music." Spectra sighed, a sound like wind through a crypt.

"It is efficient. It saves me pain. But it ruins the solo." Hathaway's gaze drifted back to the priceless artifact resting on the snare drum. Wait a minute. A Ghost Mother and an Angel Mother. Two of the most extreme, terrifyingly powerful lineages in the multiverse. And Nino Lucent—the arrogant tyrant of Lab 606—owes them a massive favor? Hathaway's empathetic tears instantly evaporated, replaced by the dead-eyed stare of a working-class gamer. Her corporate radar started blaring.

She isn't a tragic, starving indie artist fighting for survival. She is the ultimate Nepo Baby. Spectra had run away from her overprotective, ultra-wealthy family to play the 'Hardcore Survival Crafter' mode. She wanted the street-cred of building her own engine from scratch. But her moms (or Nino, cashing in a favor to her moms) had just forcibly logged into her account, dropped a Best-in-Slot Cash Shop item into her inventory, and completely ruined her 'Zero-Damage Indie Run'.

The "Debt" Victoria had mentioned wasn't Nino extorting Spectra. It was Nino paying off the VIP parents by babysitting their rebellious runaway teenager! Rich kids, Hathaway thought, her corporate soul sighing heavily. I am out here farming my weekly lockouts in a zero-gravity reactor just to earn an honest paycheck, and she is chronically depressed because the universe refuses to let her play on Hard Mode. Lecture Hall 7. The front row. If Nino Lucent already owed Spectra's family a massive favor...

why was the Ghost Witch even participating in that brutal, three-thousand-person elimination test for a lab assistant position? Because she didn't need to pass, Hathaway realized, her eyes widening in absolute shock. She was the original VIP hire. The seat was already hers! No wonder Spectra had stared at her so intensely when Nino handed her that paper.

Hathaway remembered the feeling perfectly—the look of a high-roller who had secretly brought a Royal Flush to the table, only to watch a clueless silver-haired girl sweep the entire pot with a blank card. I didn't just steal a genius's spot, Hathaway thought, a mix of horror and hysterical amusement bubbling in her chest. I accidentally out-nepotism'd the biggest Nepo Baby in the entire academy! I beat a multi-dimensional royal bloodline with a napkin stained with Dragon Steak grease!

That only meant one thing: Nino Lucent was a truly incurable, terminal Siscon. Heidi's casual recommendation had actually outweighed a massive political debt. Except... Hathaway's Game Designer logic refused to stop there. The underlying architecture of this situation was too clean. Too optimized. No. Nino isn't just a Siscon. She is a monster. Hathaway's mind raced, re-evaluating every single event since she registered for this course.

If Nino had simply accepted Spectra into the lab, she would just be accepting a highly qualified student on merit. That wouldn't clear the "Favor" she owed the parents. It would just be normal academic procedure. So the Tyrant had to reject the flawless VIP. She had to find a third-party idiot to act as a courier so she could forcefully deliver a "Luxury Asset" and zero out the account. The timeline of yesterday's events aggressively rewrote itself in her mind. The moment she registered for classes.

She remembered hearing Victoria speak the name 'Lucent', and arrogantly thinking she was going to step into the Academic Tyrant's territory and dominate the stage to entertain Heidi. A bitter, hysterical laugh almost escaped her throat. Dominate the stage? What a joke. Heidi had only mentioned her name at a dinner table a month ago. But Nino was a Professor. The exact second Hathaway registered for Lecture Hall 7 yesterday, her name appeared on Nino's roster.

That was the exact moment the Academic Tyrant compiled the code for this entire political trap. She hadn't stepped onto a stage to conquer it. She had simply walked into a predefined aggro range and clicked 'Accept Quest'. The board was set less than twenty-four hours before Nino even opened the classroom door. A sudden, paralyzing chill ran down Hathaway's spine as she remembered exactly how Nino had looked during that screening test. The Academic Tyrant had looked like she hadn't slept in three months.

Her Sanity Meter had been hovering at absolute zero. She had been a natural disaster running entirely on fumes and concentrated spite. Hathaway's designer brain practically short-circuited. Nino didn't spend an afternoon planning this. She physically didn't have the energy to waste an entire afternoon on a freshman hiring puzzle!

When Hathaway's name popped up on that registration roster yesterday, Nino—critically sleep-deprived and operating on a mere fifteen percent of her total cognitive capacity—had drafted a flawless, multi-dimensional political checkmate balancing the lab's recruitment protocol, a massive multi-versal family debt, and her own twisted Siscon desires...... in the three seconds it took her to take a sip of her coffee.

The sheer processing power required for that maneuver was staggering, but the physical evidence was sitting right in front of her. Hathaway stared at the red crystal. Spectra had just admitted she expected Hathaway to spend a week farming the Leviathan for this data. But Hathaway had miraculously obtained the perfect 'Heartbeat' on her very first shift? In a video game, when a Legendary Quest Item drops on the very first pull of the tutorial level, it isn't "luck." It isn't "RNG." It is a Scripted Event.

Nino had deliberately produced that specific rhythm today just to trigger the delivery phase and get the political chore over with! If the entire political checkmate, the rejection, and the hiring were all mathematically finalized the exact second she registered yesterday... What was the Academic Tyrant doing during that terrifying, suffocating silence in front of my desk this morning? Hathaway recalled how Nino had stared at her for several long seconds.

At the time, Hathaway thought the Professor was judging her flawed mana core, deciding her fate. Hathaway's jaw dropped as the horrifyingly absurd truth finally dawned on her. She wasn't calculating the plot! She was inspecting the graphics! She was running a high-fidelity visual analysis just to figure out what exactly her sister found 'cute' about me! Nino deliberately manipulated the drop rates. Nino forcefully cleared her political debt. Nino satisfied her Siscon obsession.

Nino got a cheap laborer to scrape her ship. Nino Lucent played everyone in the room like scripted NPCs and walked away with the Platinum Trophy. Hathaway stared at the humming red crystal on the snare drum, feeling a profound, terrifying awe. We are all just lines of code in Nino Lucent's game engine, Hathaway swallowed hard, her respect for her boss skyrocketing to terrifying new heights.

"You're right," Hathaway said.

"It ruins the solo. But hey... at least the music is good." Spectra blinked slowly, the lingering melancholy dissolving, replaced by her usual unblinking, deadpan demeanor.

"It is," Spectra conceded quietly. She tilted her head, her abyssal green eyes locking onto Hathaway.

"And the one who delivered the instrument deserves her due. You played your part flawlessly. The perfect courier for her checkmate." She waved her hand. The Black Ice Card in Hathaway's pocket flew out, hovering between them.

"The account with Nino is settled. But the account with you is still open." Spectra traced a sigil in the air. The card absorbed a wisp of Spectra's own shadow, turning from translucent ice into a deep, heavy Black-Gold. She floated closer, breaking the safety distance for just a moment to hand the card back to Hathaway. Her fingers brushed Hathaway's palm. They were cold, like marble, but soft.

"Take this." Spectra's voice was low, flat, and incredibly sincere.

"If you have someone you need to disappear... just break the card. I will handle it." Hathaway froze.

"Wait... disappear? Like... kill? Spectra, that's a felony! Even if you send them back to the Underworld for a respawn, the Tribunal counts that as 'Malicious Assault'!" Spectra looked at her, her face completely expressionless. Her large, abyssal eyes didn't blink.

"Yes. And the penalty for Malicious Assault is Three Months of Corrective Labor." Spectra paused. A rare ripple of genuine terror disturbed her dead eyes.

"In the Kinetic Sector." Hathaway shuddered. The Kinetic Sector. Those giant, soul-crushing generators—her calves ached in phantom pain just hearing the name. The one punishment every Witch feared more than death. Cardio.

"I am a Ghost Witch," Spectra said, her voice trembling slightly with the horror of the concept.

"My legs are semi-corporeal constructs. They are designed for floating through walls, not for... impact. To make me run on a treadmill is a violation of my spectral rights. It is barbaric." Then, the corners of her mouth twitched upwards by exactly 2 millimeters.

"So, I was joking." Her tone hadn't changed at all. It was still that same flat, sincere, gentle voice.

"I will not kill anyone. The aerobic risk is too high." Spectra floated back to her window, clutching the Heartbeat Core to her chest like a precious doll.

"But if you need me to break a leg, or steal an exam paper, or haunt a rude ex-girlfriend who dumped you... that is within the acceptable range. The penalty for those is just a fine."

"This card is not a transaction, Hathaway von Ludwig. It is an... introduction." Spectra looked at the nebula outside her window, her pale profile glowing in the starlight.

"I do not have many friends in this Sector." She stated it as a simple fact, not a complaint.

"Back home... in the Ghost Castle... privacy does not exist." Spectra sighed softly, her voice carrying a hint of exhaustion.

"We are possessive. We share everything. If I were home right now, my sisters would be hovering over me, trying to force-feed me Souls because they think I look 'too thin'. That is why I came to Yggdrasil. To escape the... suffocating affection. I needed a place where I could be alone with my 'hobby'." She glanced at the instruments and the Heartbeat Core. Hathaway watched her, piecing the puzzle together. So I was right. She is a runaway princess hiding from her overprotective family.

If she were back in the Ghost Castle, her family would have staged an intervention for her 'dieting'. Here, among strangers, she can starve herself in peace.

"But privacy has a cost," Spectra admitted.

"To the students here, I am..." She paused, searching for the right words.

"... I am an Untouchable Idol."

"They treat me like a rare exhibit in a museum. They stare, but they do not touch. They fear the chill of my aura, so they keep their distance. They treat me like a dangerous shrine. Not a classmate." Spectra turned back, her green eyes fixing on Hathaway with a quiet intensity. She scanned Hathaway from head to toe, as if waiting for the usual reaction—the shiver, the nervous glance at the door, the excuse to leave. But Hathaway didn't move. She forced her muscles to relax against the chill.

She didn't check the time. She didn't inch away. She simply stood there, meeting the Ghost Witch's gaze, offering curiosity instead of the fear that Spectra clearly expected. Spectra blinked, a flicker of genuine surprise breaking her deadpan mask.

"You sat next to me in class. You walked into my room. And you are still standing. That makes you a Rare Specimen."

"So, try not to go quiet on me. I invest in my friends. And I think... you might be a very profitable investment."

"Now go," she dismissed her gently.

"I have a heart to install. And I suspect... it will be a long, transformative night." Hathaway bowed slightly—no longer just a courier, but an acquaintance—and stepped back through the rippling door. In the cool hallway, clutching 1, 500 Solars in one pocket and the Black-Gold Card in the other, Hathaway let out a long breath. She rubbed her palm where the cold fingers had touched her. The spot wasn't frozen. Surprisingly, it felt... warm.

As if Spectra had siphoned a tiny bit of warmth from the Heartbeat Core just to make that handshake bearable for a warm-blooded classmate. She offered to kill someone for me. And then admitted she wouldn't do it because she's terrified of cardio. Hathaway smiled, shaking her head as she walked away from the chill of Room 404. Nino sees a starving vampire. Victoria sees a devolving monster. But I just see a rich, runaway nepo baby hiding from her sisters so she can play drums in peace.

That solved the mystery of the Ghost Witch. But as Hathaway walked down the long, dimly lit corridor of the Shadow Sector, her thoughts inevitably drifted back to the mastermind behind it all. Nino Lucent. It was terrifying. It was absolute, undeniable proof that Witches were calculating, manipulative monsters who treated reality like their personal game engine. But as Hathaway squeezed the 1, 500 Solars in her pocket and felt the lingering, careful warmth on her palm from Spectra's handshake...

she found that she couldn't bring herself to be angry or afraid. Because what was the actual result of the Tyrant's ruthless, sociopathic master plan? A lonely ghost girl got the perfect, master-crafted heartbeat she was too proud to ask her family for. A perfectly competent Witch caught in a temporary cash-flow crisis landed an absurdly lucrative lab position to brilliantly balance her ledgers. And an arrogant, terrifying Professor got to secretly spoil her little sister while pretending she didn't care.

In this brutally efficient, over-engineered political checkmate... absolutely no one got hurt. It was a mathematically perfect, violently executed act of extreme, socially awkward kindness. Witches, Hathaway thought, stepping out of the Shadow Sector and back into the late afternoon sun. They have the processing power of a supercomputer, and they use it to treat basic empathy like a high-level covert operation. She looked back at the Obsidian Spire, a genuine, soft smile touching her lips. They are all insane.

But surprisingly... incredibly cute.