[Ti]: 08:45 PM
[Location]: Townhouse 107 · Underground Library
The heavily fortified safe door stood open, bathing the dark mahogany bookshelves in an aggressively fluorescent, neon-pink glow.
It was a light that did not belong in a solemn, ancient family vault. It looked like a neon sign from the White City's entertainnt district had been violently stuffed into a maximum-security lockbox.
Hathaway, having fully braced her mind to witness a reality-altering curse or a forbidden, apocalyptic grimoire, slowly lowered her defensive posture and stared at the twin grimoires resting on the red velvet cushion.
Printed boldly across the topmost cover: [Banishnt of Sorrow].
Hathaway's brain took three full seconds to process the na.
She knew exactly what it was.
Decades ago, the 6th Seat, Marlena 'The Beast,' hosted a world-shaking academic symposium at the Red Square Opera House that fundantally revolutionized the entire Abjuration school.
During her presentation, she casually proposed a theoretical tangent: if one could forcefully and systematically 'banish' all physical tension, neurological stress, and emotional 'sorrow' from a biological target... the only conceptual state left behind would be absolute, mind-shattering euphoria.
The truly terrifying part? This wasn't even the main thesis of her lecture.
It was a re byproduct. A casual academic footnote from a Grand Witch with unfathomable knowledge.
But the Witches of the Starry Sea, wielding their equally unfathomable capacity for degeneracy, took that footnote and ran with it. They poured unimaginable research funds into perfecting it.
They essentially weaponized bliss.
And thus, the world's first Tier 7-to-8 Pink Spell was born.
Not "pink" as aesthetic choice. "Pink" as in supre, as in ultimate, as in the most coveted erotic magic in recorded civilization.
It was the exact caliber of spell that caused roving bands of High Witches—including Daryce, the editor of Playwitch magazine—to relentlessly harass the arrogant Lin Zhaojun.
The 'Millennium Sovereign' hoarded a vault of over a million spells. She was so insufferably confident in her encyclopedic knowledge that she famously boasted to her friends: "Na a spell I don't recognize, and you can take any grimoire from my vault."
But the outsiders didn't co to play trivia.
Legions of thirsty, elite Witches pulled up to her doorstep daily to brawl their way past her. They completely ignored her Legendary combat magic, risking brutal beatdowns purely to try and rob her of her pink spell stash.
A terrifying epiphany clicked into place.
Back in Lecture Hall 7, Victoria had definitively proven that Lin's 'Tentacle Summoning' manuscript was, in fact, highly degenerate, self-lubricating smut.
Hathaway had ntally cursed Lin as a hopeless pervert and shoved the knowledge deep into her repressed mories.
That fact remained entirely true. Lin Zhaojun was a massive pervert.
But she was a massive pervert who treated her friends like premium sworn sisters.
When she casually tossed that 'Tentacle Summoning' manuscript into Hathaway's arms on the very first day they t... she wasn't just playing a crude prank on the new kid in the club.
She had bypassed the impossible trivia gas and the blood-soaked dueling pits entirely, just to hand Hathaway a genuine Tier-3 fragnt of her most fiercely guarded stash—a spell easily worth ten tis the standard market rate—completely for free.
I called her a degenerate. But she gave a premium slice of the server's most violently coveted adult DLC on day one.
Margaret gazed at the twin grimoires with overwhelming parental pride.
"Anna and I paid an astronomical price to secure the master copy of this out-of-print manuscript back in the day. The original text alone holds a market value comparable to a Legendary-tier spell. We even had to pay an exorbitant licensing fee just to get that authorized duplicate printed."
Hathaway stared at the matching set resting on the red velvet.
She fervently, desperately wished she lacked the basic deductive reasoning to ask the obvious question:
Why pay an exorbitant licensing fee for a duplicate?
Good news, Hathaway thought, with the calm of soone watching their own ship sink. My family has profound, ancient heritage.
Bad news: I am now permanently burdened with the horrifying, high-lun implications of my parents' Tier-7 dostic activities. I would literally rather we were broke.
A secondary realization followed, uninvited.
Margaret was a terminal show-off who treated bragging as a competitive sport. Yet, sohow, she had kept this absolutely classified.
If the rest of the White City knew the Ludwigs had a pristine, out-of-print pair of Tier 7-to-8 Pink Spells in their basent...
The ntal image of Townhouse 107 being violently besieged by legions of elite, thirsty High Witches trying to raid their ho for premium smut made her soul temporarily leave her body.
Thank the stars my mothers know how to keep their mouths shut. Otherwise, our front lawn would be the server's highest-level PvP warzone every single Tuesday.
Anna leaned forward with carefully calibrated innocence.
"Hattie, since you're already rooming with the Wellington girl... I understand that family tends toward cold, repressed, aggressively competent personalities. With the appropriate application of this spell, I'm sure your dostic arrangents could beco significantly more—"
"I would like everyone to note, for the official family record, that we are purely platonic roommates and she is my academic tutor," Hathaway said.
Her voice was terrifyingly level, adopting the flat, hyper-articulate cadence of a system administrator trying to halt a catastrophic server deletion.
She was, however, simultaneously launching backward from the open safe so fast she nearly took out a display stand.
"I owe her a massive debt of gratitude," Hathaway continued, her speaking speed increasing by the second as her internal temperature spiked. "You do not cast Tier-7 erotic magic on the person who ticulously handwrites your spell theory study guides! Put it away. Please. Can we look at actual combat spells? Spells appropriate for my current power tier and general situation of not being a degenerate?!"
Both mothers burst out laughing.
It wasn't a polite chuckle; it was the synchronized, deeply satisfied laughter of two apex predators who had successfully sprung a psychological trap.
Hathaway stood there, her chest heaving, her 'system administrator' composure completely shattered. She glared at them, waiting for her spiking heart rate to slow down. "You are terrible parents. Both of you."
"Oh, darling," Margaret wheezed, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye as she pushed the heavy bronze door shut.
The heavy clunk of the locks engaging instantly cut off the aggressive neon-pink glare. The underground library returned to its quiet, solemn amber glow. The visual shift was imdiate and grounding.
"We had to," Anna said, her laughter finally subsiding into a gentle, impossibly fond smile. "You were wound so tight at dinner, we were afraid you might actually start drafting amortization schedules."
Hathaway blinked.
Anna walked over to the reading table and transitioned into full tactical mode with surgical efficiency.
Three books on the table.
She knew exactly what a pure fire-specialist Glass Cannon was missing.
[Anti-Spell Domain] (Tier-5 Abjuration): Extre magic resistance, supports instant-casting via mana-burn at triple the normal operational cost.
For most Witches, a catastrophic mana black hole—functionally useless in any sustained engagent. For soone with Hathaway's bottomless reserves, a mandatory survival layer. A fire-immune enemy could still blow her up with anything else. This made her unkillable in a single shot.
[Charged Sonic Boom] (Tier-5 Evocation-Conjuration Hybrid): Generates an extre sonic detonation bypassing physical armor entirely, rupturing sensory systems and internal organs directly.
Hit a fire-immune target? Zero problem. The flaws were real—triple mana cost, two-and-a-half tis standard charge ti, catastrophically expensive for anyone operating on a normal power budget. For Hathaway, a trump card she could pull whenever the fire-build wall appeared.
[Dispel Magic] (Tier-3 Abjuration): Basic dueling prerequisite, and the stepping stone toward eventually inheriting whatever was sitting on that obsidian pedestal.
She looked at all three. Every one plugged a gap she hadn't consciously identified yet.
Anna had mapped her build in its entirety, found every hole, and filled them. In order of priority. Without being asked.
"I'll take them," Hathaway said.
Margaret picked up [Charged Sonic Boom], flipped to the first blank page, and traced three runes with her index finger.
Even with dynamic vision fully engaged, Hathaway couldn't follow the strokes—they moved at a speed that registered as afterimage rather than motion.
Then, clearly and formally:
"Purchaser: Myself. Recipient: Hathaway, present before . Material: Copperplate paper, Viscount Marie Garland faux-cursive font, 32-mo paperback. Process imdiately."
The air tore open.
CLANK. WHIRRR. BOOM.
A colossal holographic projection of an industrial steel printing factory materialized in the middle of the quiet underground library.
Rows of brass gears and steam-powered rollers stretched across the bookshelves. Ranks of goblin-like phantoms in matching uniforms furiously pulled levers at assigned stations. A massive wrought-iron hamr descended onto a spectral conveyor belt with rhythmic, apocalyptic force, like the heartbeat of so enormous and deeply committed manufacturing enterprise.
Thirty seconds.
The projection collapsed.
A brand-new 32-mo paperback dropped perfectly into Margaret's waiting hands, still warm, radiating the particular dry heat of a newly minted item fresh from the press.
She handed it to Hathaway.
The mont her fingers touched the cover, a deep, steady pulse of magical energy moved up her arm and into her cognition—comprehension-assistance runes beginning the slow, patient work of restructuring her neural pathways toward the spell's internal architecture.
Anna would cover the other two the sa way.
She stood in the absurd, overlit, nouveau-riche-disaster-turned-cathedral underground library, holding three warm books against her chest.
She thought about her mothers' faces at the dinner table. The sheer, unperformative horror.
She thought about the absurd speeding ticket Anna was now treating as a catastrophic parenting failure.
She thought about Margaret pressing her palm to those encryption runes with the focused intensity of a weapons engineer.
They heard she had money. They turned it down.
Then they turned around and spent their own.
"Thank you," she said.
"You are our daughter," Margaret said, and pressed a kiss to the top of Hathaway's head.
Rory, from the crook of her arm, offered a thoughtful, contemplative blorp that conveyed, in its own way, complete agreent.
"You don't pay us back. You just let us give you more."
She looked down at the three warm, ticulously curated grimoires in her arms.
They weren't the most expensive things in this vault. But right now, they were the heaviest.
She didn't need to earn her keep here.
She was just ho.
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