[Ti]: Day 35, Saturday, 02:45 PM
[Location]: High-Altitude Research District · Sector 6 · Lab 606
This was their third shift, and a brutal, highly efficient rhythm had already been established in Lab 606.
Hathaway floated in the zero-gravity void, her translucent [Mage Hand] scraping Aether residue off the Leviathan's hull with the terrifying, dead-eyed precision of a CNC machine. Thread 1 handled the manual labor on complete autopilot.
Threads 2 through 4 were red-lining in the background, frantically brute-forcing the final thirty pages of Amora's decompiled logic tree.
Below, Victoria sat at the terminal with impeccable posture, her fingers flying across the runic keyboard in a blur of blue light.
From deep inside the Leviathan's core, a muffled, rhythmic clanging echoed—Nino Lucent, currently inside the machine, personally arguing with a recalcitrant valve.
It was supposed to be a standard, highly productive Saturday afternoon built on unspoken working-class solidarity.
Until the massive brass doors let out a soft hiss of pressure release.
Not from the inside. The exterior door. The one that led to the corridor. The one that nobody used unannounced, because Lab 606 had a bio-scan periter that could incinerate a stray moth at forty paces.
The light entered before the person did.
Silver hair long enough to brush the small of her back. Silver eyes. An impeccably tailored, off-white trench coat with pearl buttons.
She looked like a Renaissance painting that had accidentally wandered into a steel mill.
Heidi Lucent.
Below, the rapid clacking of Victoria's keyboard ceased instantly.
The floating teapot orbiting her left shoulder wobbled dangerously, lost its stabilization spell for a full quarter-second, and nearly deposited boiling Earl Grey onto a 200,000-Solar diagnostic console.
Victoria caught it without looking. Her gloved fingers closed around the handle with the reflexive precision of a woman whose entire nervous system had just received a voltage spike, but whose aristocratic breeding absolutely refused to let her spill tea.
Heidi walked in and gently placed a delicate pastry box on the corner of Victoria's workstation.
She offered no explanation. She just placed it there as naturally as soone putting a book on a shelf.
Then, she looked up.
Her silver eyes bypassed the zero-gravity chamber, landing directly on Hathaway floating thirty ters above the floor, holding a translucent hand-spell and a bucket of crystallized reactor waste.
"Ah." A flash of pleasant recognition sparked in those silver irises. "The girl whose eyes don't glow."
One syllable, crisp and clear, exactly as Hathaway rembered from the Cloud Terrace.
Heidi smiled up at her, her tone carrying genuine, heartfelt admiration. "To be the core assistant in Nino's lab... You must be quite the exceptional talent, Miss Ludwig. My sister's tolerance for diocrity is absolute zero."
Floating in zero gravity, Hathaway's expression nearly cracked in half.
She doesn't know.
The entire universe knew Nino Lucent was a terminal, incurable Siscon who secretly dedicated permanent brain storage to log the exact chronological serving ti of her sister's mushroom soup, treating a casual remark about a "cute junior" like classified holy text.
The entire universe—except Heidi Lucent herself.
Hathaway descended three ters on pure reflex, which was the physical equivalent of standing up straighter when the CEO walks in. Her [Mage Hand] was still clutching a wad of crystallized residue that slled faintly of burnt ozone and academic suffering.
"You are too kind, Lady Heidi." She deployed the practiced, bulletproof smile of a ga designer who had once told an investor that "server instability" was actually a "dynamic difficulty feature."
Heidi chuckled softly, her gaze sweeping to the terminal below. "A Ludwig and a Wellington, both in Nino's lab? What a rare and excellent combination."
Victoria rose from her chair, her motion visibly stiffer than usual.
"It is an honor to have you in the laboratory, Lady Heidi." Victoria's voice was perfectly steady, but her hands unconsciously adjusted the edges of her gloves.
Heidi studied Victoria with frank, assessing directness. Not her mana signature. Not her calculation output. Her face.
"You bear a striking resemblance to her," Heidi murmured. "Tell , how is your sister, Cecilia? I haven't heard much from her since... well, since that incident."
Victoria's posture remained immaculate. "She is doing well. Thank you for your concern, Lady Heidi."
High near the ceiling, Hathaway’s ears practically twitched in the zero-gravity void.
Hold on. 'That incident'? Hathaway’s logic processor snagged on the phrase. From everything she had gathered, Cecilia Wellington was the golden second daughter, the pride of the family, the untouchable academic elite. What kind of 'incident' warranted a pregnant pause from a Grand Witch?
Heidi nodded. "Good eyes," she said simply. "Clear. Untainted."
She tilted her head, her tone shifting into sothing incredibly casual.
"It's good that you don't take after your eldest sister."
The words landed lightly, but Victoria's spine locked.
For a fraction of a second, her breathing stopped. One mont she was a composed aristocrat accepting her idol's assessnt, and the next, sothing behind her eyes went completely rigid.
Then it was gone. Victoria's composure reassembled itself with chanical perfection.
"You honor , Lady Heidi."
Too flawless.
Hathaway’s internal Thread 4 was practically smoking from the data processing.
A double lore drop. Within sixty seconds. First, a mysterious 'incident' involving the supposedly perfect middle sister. And now, an eldest sister whose re ntion acted as a psychological kill-switch for the usually unflappable Victoria. For the 10th Seat to specifically single this eldest sister out as a cautionary tale?
But beneath the gar's instinct to categorize lore, Hathaway felt a sharp pang of genuine concern. She looked at her roommate's rigidly perfect posture and had to actively suppress the urge to float down and ask if she was okay.
Seriously, what the hell is going on in the Wellington household? Hathaway's inner ga dev complained, a mix of fierce empathy and absolute exasperation.
The Ludwigs are basically an open-source tutorial level! We are arrogant, loud, and so embarrassingly transparent that you couldn't find a hidden main quest in our family tree if you tried! But you Wellingtons? You're apparently just walking around casually carrying enough dark, suppressed, late-ga trauma to fuel an entire expansion pack!
Hathaway filed the reactions away in a high-priority folder. She was going to figure this out. Roommates didn't let roommates deal with expansion-pack family trauma alone.
If Heidi noticed the freshman's reaction, she didn't show it. The conversation was about to flow naturally onward—
Clang.
A heavy wrench hit the tal deck.
Nino Lucent climbed out of the Leviathan's access hatch. She was covered in soot, her grey hair held together by a repurposed probe, and her eyes radiating pure, unadulterated irritation.
"Have you finished treating my laboratory like a et-and-greet, Heidi?"
Hathaway let out a silent breath of relief. Perfectly tid aggro pull, Boss.
Down below, Victoria's rigid shoulders subtly relaxed. With her roommate safely out of the crosshairs, Hathaway seamlessly shifted gears from 'concerned friend' back to 'front-row spectator'.
Oh, please. Hathaway watched the Tyrant from her aerial perch, highly entertained. You are absolutely thrilled she's praising your assistants. You just couldn't stand being ignored for another second, so you banged a wrench to get her attention.
Two cats in a room. One pretending she doesn't care. The other pretending she doesn't know the first one is pretending.
Heidi finally turned to her sister. Ignoring the cold glare entirely, she swept her gaze over the lab's diagnostic holograms, locking onto the core progress bar:
[99.8%]
A brief, suffocating silence.
Nino's expression darkened. Not with anger directed at Heidi—but with the pure, consuming frustration of a top-tier scholar angry at herself for being stuck on the last 0.2%.
"You didn't co all the way down to Sector 6 just to nitpick," Nino said sharply, shoving her hands into the pockets of her oversized coat. "What do you want?"
Hathaway’s internal translator imdiately parsed the subtext: (Please tell what you've been up to lately.)
Heidi smiled, effortlessly letting the 99.8% slide.
"I ca to deliver pastries," she gestured gracefully toward the box, "and to ntion that I've finalized the roster for [Golden Iris]. Irene and I found so excellent prospects."
Up in the shadows, Hathaway’s ntal gears smoothly clicked into place.
Wait. [Golden Iris]? Hathaway blinked in the zero-gravity void. Isn't Heidi the literal poster child for [Royal Rosas]? Why would she suddenly ditch her official, faction-backed guild to build a brand-new startup team?
Oh. Irene.
The realization washed over her, replacing her brief confusion with pure, cynical logic.
The 5th Seat. The Minister of Finance who controlled the wealth of the Inner Sea of Stars. The universally beloved MVP who had maintained an eleven-year undefeated dynasty.
You didn't just call a woman like that a 'well-rounded player'. She was an all-stats-maxed raid boss. If soone with that kind of resu and a bottomless wallet invited you to co-found a team, you didn't think about faction loyalty or corporate obligations. You just said yes.
Nino scoffed, leaning against the console. "Irene is a walking vanity project."
The slight, bitter edge in Nino's voice was unmistakable. Ah, soone is definitely jealous, Hathaway noted with quiet amusent.
"Who did she dig up to carry her luggage?" Nino asked.
"A few interesting prospects from the special recruitnt pool. Anita—nineteen years old, over eighty thousand M-Units. Her spatial compression is remarkably violent."
Suspended in the zero-gravity void, Hathaway nearly dropped her bucket of radioactive residue.
Eighty thousand M-Units? At nineteen? Hathaway's brain stalled. The sheer absurdity of the number hit her ga-designer soul like a devastating, unannounced balance patch, washing over her in a heavy, suffocating wave of existential dread.
Excuse ? she thought, a cold sweat of nurical anxiety breaking out on her back. Aren't I supposed to be the once-in-a-decade tier genius here? Did the server's power creep really just outscale on Day 35? Who the hell is balancing this ga?!
"And she's pretty," Nino added dryly, completely ignoring the terrifying stat block.
"Combat efficacy and aesthetics are not mutually exclusive, sister."
"Your recruitnt standard is a magazine cover, Heidi."
"My standard is perfection." Heidi's silver eyes glead. Her tone shifted, dropping the casual elegance for a razor-sharp, dangerous thrill. "Especially this year. Because she is back."
Nino's eyes narrowed. "Lin Zhaojun."
"Yes." A rare, undeniable edge of excitent bled into Heidi's voice. "The 'Millennium Sovereign'. She decimated Royal Rosas during our golden run. But she took a year off."
Heidi's lips curved into a deeply smug smile.
"She spent an entire year trying to pass the A3 exam... and she still failed. The [Absolute City] roster has her as their anchor, but she's walking in there carrying the stench of academic defeat. I intend to thoroughly remind her of it."
Hathaway, floating near the ceiling, felt a massive, undeniable wave of esports hype crash over her.
Lin Zhaojun! Hathaway practically vibrated in the zero-gravity void, her previous nurical dread entirely eclipsed by pure excitent. She STILL hasn't passed the A3 exam! And the mastermind who blew up her thesis is standing right below , smiling like a villain who just built an all-star roster for the sole purpose of spawn-camping her in the arena!
My enrollnt sponsor versus the spoiled genius who gave the holy napkin. Hathaway pressed a translucent hand to her forehead, genuinely paralyzed by the conflict of interest. Both sides are my absolute benefactors! Who am I supposed to root for?!
Actually, never mind, her inner gar whispered, eyes wide with anticipation. I would sell my own soul for front-row tickets to this deathmatch. This isn't an academic tournant; this is a multi-dinsional blood feud.
"You're smiling," Nino observed.
"I'm not."
"Your left cheek has been elevated by 4.2 milliters for the past eight seconds. That is, by clinical definition, a smile."
"I'm anticipating," Heidi corrected. "There's a difference."
Nino listened to her sister's enthusiasm. On the surface, she looked utterly bored. But Hathaway noticed the Academic Tyrant's eyes tracking every single detail, committing the Golden Iris roster to her eidetic mory.
"A formidable plan," Nino said flatly. "Assuming you don't get disqualified by the absolute circus the Council allowed to register this year."
Heidi's expression froze.
Up until this exact second, the 10th Seat of the High Council had maintained an aura of absolute, untouchable perfection. But at Nino's words, that flawless facade cracked.
It was like watching a beautiful Renaissance painting get violently splashed with cheap soy sauce.
"Don't remind ," Heidi whispered, and for the first ti since she walked into the lab, genuine, profound horror bled into her voice.
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