[Ti]: Sumr Break, Day 23 — 09:30 AM
[Location]: Royal Rosas Club · Tactical Briefing Room
The holographic light danced across the mahogany table, settling cold and sterile over the faces of every Witch in the room.
Today's core agenda was the team that had secured the final Main Tournant ticket yesterday, in an incredibly bizarre fashion—[Greed Umbrella].
"Before we review the footage," Nino said, tapping her keyboard, "I need to briefly introduce the opponent they defeated in the Regional Finals—[Pale Court]."
It was a heavyweight na. The official competitive roster of the Ghost Castle.
Hathaway nodded silently from the bench. She knew exactly how much weight that na carried.
But beneath the suffocating, ancient prestige of the Inner Sea's apex undead, her connection to the team felt unexpectedly grounded. Spectra was listed right there on the starting roster.
"Let's look at Pale Court's starting lineup first." Nino swiped across the console. Several awe-inspiring nas and faces materialized on the hologram.
"Captain and Anchor: Eve Hawkins. The only Lord of the Ghost Castle. A forr Grand Witch, a figure who still carries the title of Honorary Senator of the Witch Association.
"Vice-Ace: Bixie. Holder of The Mandate of the Fire Dragon."
"Core Control: Roxanne." Nino paused, the clinical edge in her voice softening into the exhausted, grudging respect reserved for an academic peer. "My fellow candidate for The Axiom of the Water Dragon."
Nino brought up a dazzling, absurdly complex spell matrix on the monitor.
"A Ghost Witch wielding Holy Light is a biological paradox," Nino stated. "But Roxanne used her intellect to forcibly reverse-engineer her own racial weakness. She completely rewrote her genetic response to positive energy."
Hathaway’s eyes widened.
Spectra's mother. The Ghost Witch who had fallen in love with an Angel Witch.
Back in the academy, she had imagined Spectra's mothers tragically and carefully suppressing their auras at the dinner table just to safely coexist.
Roxanne hadn't just endured the "Holy Sunburn" of living with an Angel Witch—she had mathematically annihilated a universal racial law just so she could safely hug her wife.
"Now she outputs positive energy with a structural purity that would make a multiverse Paladin question their faith," Nino finished, shaking her head.
"And rounding out the core control," Nino paused.
The clinical, academic respect she had just used for Roxanne suddenly vanished. Nino pinched the bridge of her nose, letting out a slow breath.
"My student. Spectra."
Hathaway blinked at the hologram of her classmate.
"Finally, from the Hawkins family," Nino continued, recovering her flat tone. "Pippa Hawkins." A delicate, black-haired Ghost Witch with heterochromatic gold-and-red eyes, throwing a peace sign at the cara. She radiated a bubbly, energetic presence that fundantally did not belong to the ghost race.
"It's worth noting," Nino added, "that this isn't even the Ghost Castle's full-strength roster. Lady Sonia opted out of the tournant circuit entirely this year."
Hathaway took a slow breath. A forr Grand Witch leading. The Mandate of the Fire Dragon on DPS. A mutated Holy Light Ghost on control. A highly anticipated Hawkins prodigy, and Spectra.
This was a roster that could contend for the championship in almost any other region. And it was simply what the Ghost Castle had lying around while their active Grand Witch took a gap year.
"However." Nino's tone turned subtly, precisely dry as she pressed play. "Even a club with foundations this deep experienced certain events—during yesterday's opening 3v3—that exceeded the paraters of tactical comprehension."
The holographic screen lit up. Both rosters entered the arena.
[Pale Court] fielded Pippa and Spectra alongside Vice-Ace Bixie.
[Greed Umbrella] fielded Cecilia, Flandmira, and their Captain, Wei Changqing.
Sitting in the dim briefing room, Hathaway locked her eyes onto the three faces materializing on the screen.
The mont she saw the living won in the VOD footage, she mapped them perfectly and involuntarily against the twisted, vivid textual depictions scorched into her brain during last night's three-hundred-page baptism.
Cecilia Wellington.
She stood on the battlefield with the dignified, inviolable composure of a black swan.
Hathaway had seen her once before. Months ago, as a flickering hologram in Room 302. Back then, she had thought: she looks like a poem. She looks like a saint.
Then she had read three hundred pages of Alice's manuscript.
Eight hundred highly specific images fired simultaneously on her retinas. She compressed them into a very small ntal folder, locked it, and bit the inside of her cheek.
She had ant to be angry at her.
Victoria.
But looking at the screen, the irritation simply dissolved into a heavy, quiet ache.
Flandmira.
In the VOD, Flandmira was elegantly adjusting her gloves.
Blonde. Extraordinary. Silver eyes.
This was the "accessory" Rhode had ntioned with such blistering contempt—the one who had spent the grueling Semi-Final entirely engrossed in a hand mirror.
Hathaway's gaze fell on those long, immaculate hands, and her mind drifted, unbidden, to a quiet and hair-raising passage from Alice's book:
When Cecilia’s fingers slipped from hers to greet the Minothnago junior, the evening air rushing into the empty space felt like frostbite.
Flandmira stood a half-step behind. Her face remained a portrait of aristocratic grace, but her right hand stayed suspended in the air, frozen in the exact contour of holding Cecilia.
For the ten seconds it took the conversation to end, Flandmira’s silver eyes didn’t track the junior. They dropped to the delicate back of Cecilia’s hand. Her own thumb rhythmically rubbed against her empty index finger, chasing the phantom body heat.
Her gaze traced the faint blue veins beneath Cecilia’s skin. She calculated the precise incisions required to flay it away, seamless and whole. Stitched directly into the velvet lining of her winter gloves, the temperature would be preserved forever.
Cecilia turned back. "Did I keep you waiting?"
Flandmira's eyes curved into a radiant crescent. "Not at all, Cici," she murmured. She slid her freezing hand into her coat pocket, where her fingers locked into a bloodless fist. "I was just wondering what brand of hand cream you’ve been using lately. It slls divine."
The next morning, twelve tubes of that exact cream sat ticulously aligned on Flandmira’s vanity.
Hathaway looked at the radiant, impeccable socialite adjusting her gloves in the VOD, and exhaled slowly.
She was sitting in a tactical briefing holding enemy intelligence with the highest psychological precision in the history of Witch dueling.
Finally, Hathaway's gaze shifted to the third person.
Captain, Wei Changqing.
Contrasted against Cecilia's black-swan dignity and Flandmira's stellar radiance, Wei Changqing appeared profoundly unremarkable. Black hair, dark eyes, average build. She stood there with such perfect stillness, she almost resembled a staff mber who had wandered onto the field by mistake.
It wasn't plainness that rendered her invisible. It was a total, suffocating placidity. She lacked every ounce of the aggressive, demanding ego customary to top-tier Witches who expected the world to look at them.
Hathaway stared at the unassuming black-haired woman on the screen.
Alice had dedicated an entire, exquisitely quiet chapter simply to Wei Changqing serving breakfast after a thoroughly degrading night.
Cecilia sits at the edge of the ruined bed. Her silver hair spills over collarbones covered in dark, overlapping marks. Her fingers tremble, slipping against the stiff fabric of her coat as she forces a single button through its hole.
The lock clicks. Wei Changqing enters with a tray of hot breakfast. She sets it down and covers Cecilia’s shaking hands with her own warm palms. The scent of clean linen and faint tea leaves settles over the bed.
"You’re still so cold, Cici," the Captain murmurs. She brushes Cecilia's rigid fingers aside. With thodical, unbearable tenderness, Wei Changqing begins to undo the exact button Cecilia just fought to fasten.
As the heavy wool slides off her marked shoulders, Cecilia turns her face away. A choked sob escapes her bitten lips.
Wei Changqing rely smiles. She slides her fingers between Cecilia’s, her warm hold locking shut with an unyielding weight. Pulling the trembling Saint against her collarbone, she presses a slow kiss to her temple.
"Why are you wearing this? It's freezing outside," she whispers. "You must be so tired. Let's just stay ho."
Hathaway looked at the unremarkable, gentle captain on the tactical monitor. She was the first to look away.
She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. Snapped them open. Straightened her spine. Forcefully shoved all three hundred pages of the manuscript to the back of her mind.
"Starting playback," Nino pressed the button.
The referee's fireball dropped.
And then.
At exactly 0.5 seconds into the match, a theoretically infallible Legendary spell perford a spectacular [Fizzle] in front of the entire world.
"The prodigy of the Hawkins family—Pippa," Nino said. Her laser pointer rested dead-center on the pink ghost currently detonating into a cloud of black smoke. Her voice carried the sterile, flat cadence of an autopsy report. "Attempted to bypass the standard matrix and manually compile an [Overcharged: Mummy Dust] in the opening microsecond."
In the VOD, the necromantic mana swelling in Pippa's palms reached genuinely impressive proportions.
"Teletry indicates an instantaneous mana draw exceeding her biological bandwidth by four hundred percent," Nino read from the monitor, her tone utterly devoid of inflection. "A theoretical output capable of instantly converting the entire arena into a tier-nine necropolis.
"However," Nino stated coldly. "Manual spell compilation at this overcharge ratio carries an inherent [Spell Failure Rate]. Without prior testing to stabilize the frawork, structural collapse was a mathematical certainty. Her foundational mana circuits ruptured before the cast could complete."
BANG.
In the VOD, the spell model in Pippa's hands imploded.
The massive necromantic backlash instantly blasted the energetic ghost prodigy into a severely weakened, half-health transparent state—in full view of a sold-out stadium that had bought tickets expecting an epic clash between a powerhouse and a dark horse.
Before anyone could recover from Pippa's opening self-destruct, her impeccably composed counterpart beside her promptly choked right on schedule.
"Spectra," Nino zood in on the fra. Her voice was absolutely devoid of emotion. "Attempted to utilize the [Double Casting] feat in the opening phase to pre-read and cast two Legendary spells in a single breath."
In the VOD, Spectra began constructing the dual spell models. But a fraction of a second later, her casting fra visibly shuddered.
The brutal reality of forcing [Mummy Dust] and [Summon Legendary Sandstorm Dragon] through a single neural pathway simultaneously had hit her biological limit.
A catastrophic mana blockage ruptured her blood vessels.
With blood seeping from her eyes and a mouthful of dark crimson spraying from her lips, Hathaway's effortlessly cool, untouchable friend instantly collapsed. Clutching her chest, Spectra's ironclad composure disintegrated into the fragile, tragic aesthetic of a Victorian maiden expiring dramatically on a fainting couch.
Hathaway gripped the edges of the mahogany table, her jaw dropping open.
Spectra. In front of one hundred and fifty thousand people.
But right before her knees hit the floor, Spectra turned her head. She threw a despairing, resentful, practically homicidal glare at Pale Court's coaching box on the sidelines.
It was the precise, concentrated betrayal of soone whose trusted authority figure had just assigned them mandatory cardio.
Rhode crossed her arms.
"Ah. The classic whiteboard casualty," Rhode said. Her voice dripped with the specific, venomous contempt a frontline veteran reserved for armchair tacticians. "Her coach probably assured her in a vacuum-sealed training room that her bandwidth could perfectly accommodate the dual-cast."
"But the whiteboard doesn't simulate the crushing spatial pressure of three top-tier Witches staring you down in a live arena," Hathaway realized.
"Exactly," Rhode said, staring at the collapsed Spectra on the screen. "She was ordered to execute a textbook suicide, and she only physically realized her coach's math was lethal halfway through the cast."
Less than half a second into the match. Two of Pale Court's starting three had self-destructed into cripples.
Only the Vice-Ace remained: Bixie, holder of The Mandate of the Fire Dragon.
In the VOD, Bixie had the precise look of a veteran who had already clocked out, been told the building was on fire, and simply put her coat back on to deal with it.
Without wasting a single fra on emotional processing, she gritted her teeth and consecutively chained two Legendary matrices.
[Legendary: Solar Nova] and [Legendary: Summon 500 Fire Elentals].
With a blinding, sky-covering sea of solar fire, she violently stabilized a board state that had been inches from complete collapse.
anwhile, [Greed Umbrella] was not the type to stand there and appreciate the cody.
In the exact sa 0.5-second window that Pale Court was busy double-imploding, Cecilia Wellington moved.
She displayed a casting speed so terrifying that the official comntators couldn't keep pace—utilizing [Spatial Compression] pre-reading, combined with the [Ti Theft] feat, she chain-cast [Dinsional Lock], [Greater Wall of Dispel Magic], and [Create Greater Undead] in a seamless, flowing sequence.
"Three Tier-8 spells. Less than half a second," Nino said. Her voice had dropped a fraction, the clinical detachnt replaced by genuine, heavy caution. "She did not have this casting speed a month ago."
Rhode slowly reached up and pulled off her dark sunglasses. Beneath the lenses, crimson irises were literally glowing in the dim light of the briefing room, locked dead onto the silver-haired Ace on the holographic screen.
The relaxed, mocking smirk she usually wore was completely gone. In its place was an expression of raw, terrifying intensity—a fighting spirit burning so hot it practically distorted the air around her.
Beside her, Bella sat in equal, rigid silence.
The theatrical chuunibyou persona had completely evaporated. The bandages on her left arm creaked faintly as her fists clenched under the table. Her one unsealed crimson eye glowing fiercely in the dark.
Two Ludwigs, sitting side-by-side in dead silence, their glowing red eyes burning a hole through the projection of Cecilia Wellington. Simply, categorically refusing to let their lifelong rival leave them behind.
While Cecilia locked down the board with battle-forged precision, the blonde socialite didn't waste a single microsecond.
Flandmira simply raised her staff and brutally slamd down a monolithic pillar of pure, raw energy.
[Legendary: Glacial Torrent].
The holographic VOD visibly glitched, unable to process the sheer density of the magical output.
On the screen, the sky vanished. Replaced by a wall of absolute-zero white moving at near-relativistic speeds.
The torrent hit Bixie's 500 fire elentals. There was no hiss of steam. No battle of elents. Just imdiate, total disintegration.
Flandmira's torrent simply pushed forward.
"Kick them while they're down," Alucard observed, with the precise economy of soone stating a teorological fact.
Because right as Bixie was suppressed by Flandmira's absolute-zero front, unable to split her focus, the historically invisible Captain turned her attention to the two ghost prodigies who had just blown themselves to critical health.
With a smile as incredibly gentle and routine as a perfect housewife sweeping dust out of her parlor, Wei Changqing casually backhanded a blinding, ultra-high-tier [Holy Light Spell] directly into Pippa's face.
"Blunt-force Exorcism."
Bixie's eyes practically detached from her skull as she watched Pippa dissolve into white light and exit the arena while Spectra was still coughing up blood on the floor, looking like she wanted to murder her own coach more than the enemy.
2v3. Without any further suspense, [Greed Umbrella] swept Bixie off the board like a high-pressure system clearing fallen leaves, claiming the first point.
In the Royal Rosas briefing room, everyone maintained a thirty-second dead silence after the clip ended.
Hathaway leaned back in her chair feeling like she'd forgotten how lungs worked. She had mobilized an unprecedented degree of psychological preparation, bracing herself to perform fra-by-fra analysis of the apex duel that decided the Main Tournant ticket.
She had been ready for a masterclass in apex-level tactical horror. She had not been ready for this.
Rhode leaned back in her chair. A short, incredulous laugh escaped her as she slid her sunglasses back on.
"I have seen my fair share of Galaxy Brain tier ltdowns over the years," Rhode said, her tone dripping with the relaxed, cynical amusent of a veteran watching a spectacular trainwreck. "But a double-implosion in the opening half-second of a Regional Final? Ghost Castle really knows how to put on a cody show."
Beside her, Bella remained entirely mute. Her jaw was slightly slack. The grand, forbidden vocabulary of the Dark Fla had completely short-circuited in the face of such transcendent, monuntal stupidity.
It was Tasia who finally broke the quiet. She leaned forward a fraction of an inch.
"Were they..." Tasia murmured. The deliberate pause hung in the air, carrying a microscopic tremor of genuine, existential bewildernt. "...trying to kill themselves?"
Nino paused.
Even having reviewed this footage multiple tis last night while pulling the data, re-watching this particular blooper reel on the large-format screen still caused her rigorous academic brain a small, precise spasm of pain.
She took a breath.
"The VOD is correct. The background mana signatures match perfectly."
Then, delivering the tactical verdict on the entire farce in a perfectly flat voice:
"Pippa Hawkins handed Wei Changqing a free kill. Wei Changqing took it in 0.3 seconds.
"Regardless of how comical the process was," Nino continued, tapping the table, "the execution speed with which Greed Umbrella capitalizes on openings is apex-tier and lethal. Keep watching."
Hathaway’s eyes remained locked on the fading afterimage of the arena.
In that 0.5-second sequence of utter chaos, Cecilia, Flandmira, and Wei Changqing hadn't exchanged a single glance or tactical ping.
You didn't need to communicate when your souls were already stitched together. It wasn't teamwork. It was a single, multi-headed apex predator sharing the exact sa nervous system.
But the 3v3 had ultimately been a farce. A free win handed over by Ghost Castle's whiteboard casualty. It proved their reflexes, but it hadn't forced them to show their actual depth.
Hathaway slowly exhaled, forcing the suffocating, claustrophobic weight of the manuscript to the back of her mind.
The team phase was over. The true nightmare of the regional finals was about to begin.
She needed to see what happened when these co-dependent monsters were forcibly dragged out of their perfect, overlapping ecosystem. She needed to see what they looked like when the rules of the arena stripped away their soul-bound partners and forced them to hunt in absolute isolation.
Hathaway straightened her spine in the quiet briefing room, silently bracing herself.
At the head of the table, Nino tapped the console.
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