[Ti]: Sumr Break, Day 3, 8:00 PM
[Location]: Grand Masters Regional Qualifier Venue · Grand Banquet Hall
The thick, rune-etched doors of the Grand Banquet Hall severed the deafening roar of the outside crowd like a falling guillotine.
Absolute, perfectly tuned acoustic isolation. Hathaway stood in the sudden quiet, adjusting the deep blood-red cuffs of her tailored black dress, and understood the architectural and economic logic of the building.
Outside was the advertisent. Blimps, red carpets, and screaming fans generating enough ambient emotional mana to power a small city—all broadcast live, entirely for free.
But inside? Inside was the sealed, highly monetized product. No caras. No livestreams. Just extre magical violence, packaged and sold exclusively through premium "comntary channels" to season ticket holders.
It’s the most elegant, ruthless gacha extraction chanism I’ve seen since I left Earth, Hathaway thought.
Then, she looked down at her bespoke, crimson-lined black dress and suddenly understood where all that premium subscriber money went. Her ga designer conscience briefly wrestled with the ethics of monopoly capitalism, and lost.
If this is what corporate welfare looks like, I have zero moral objections, she decided, smoothing her impeccably tailored skirt with profound satisfaction. Production value: objectively correct. Perks: fully secured.
The entrance of Royal Rosas did what it always did to a room. It reorganized the physical space.
Hathaway walked at the absolute back of the formation, perfectly positioned to watch the hall’s collective attention snap toward them.
Tasia von Milan'thirskaya led the vanguard, parting the sea of high-society elites without saying a word.
She had forsaken the traditional gown for a razor-cut silver suit that looked less like fabric and more like forged weaponry. She had actively suppressed the usual blinding iridescence of her dragon horns and wings, reducing them to cold, hard tallic lines.
The only accent was a low-saturation gray trimming her collar and lapels—a deliberate, arrogant display of restraint. She wore no jewelry. She didn't need to. The ssage was absolute: I am the centerpiece; everything else is clutter.
Walking in her imdiate shadow, Alucard wore the inverse.
Her gown was an oxidized, near-transparent gray, but the heavy embroidery along the hem blazed with the exact iridescent spectrum Tasia was suppressing.
It was the visual grammar of twinhood executed with surgical precision—completely undermined by the heavy, bruised shadows under Alucard’s eyes that high-tier costic magic had simply surrendered to.
Nino flanked them, her dress shifting in a seamless gradient from bright silver at the shoulders to pragmatic gray at the ankles, her glasses catching the chandelier light like a ruthless academic grading the room.
Rhode swaggered behind her in an unbuttoned club suit, rolling a dessert-table lollipop around her mouth.
Bella brought up the rear of the main squad, her velvet cape sweeping the floor as she surveyed the glittering hall with the tranquil, condescending authority of soone wearing four layers of gold-embroidered gothic ceremony gear.
Hathaway, trailing behind Bella’s majestic cape, let out a quiet sigh of relief.
She was the unmapped corner of the map. The NPC in the crowd scene. The room’s aggro hierarchy simply slid right off her.
The polite, diplomatic fiction of this opening banquet was that it served as a gesture of goodwill—a night to showcase club spirit, enjoy a magnificent feast, and reaffirm that martial combat would not damage political friendships.
The brutal, unspoken reality was entirely comrcial.
This was a massive networking runway designed to attract investors, outshine rival clubs, casually trash-talk the competition, and bait unaligned Witches into buying premium season tickets.
She didn’t need a ntal spreadsheet to categorize the room; her ga designer instincts read the aggro chanics naturally as she grabbed a glass of sparkling juice. There were no patriotic flag-wavers here. The competitor demographics were fascinatingly cynical.
It wasn't that the Inner Sea lacked patriotism. The concept absolutely existed, but it operated on a purely spite-based chanic.
Witch patriotism didn't manifest as noble civic duty or tearful national anthems; it manifested as hyper-aggressive regional discrimination. A Witch's love for her ho district burned brightest exclusively when she was drafting culturally specific insults for people from other zip codes.
They wanted to survive these Regional Qualifiers purely to earn the legal right to stomp on the faces of the other Grand Districts on global television.
And the imdiate ecosystem inside this room was just as toxic.
Over by the ice sculptures, a towering Vanguard Witch was subtly shifting her weight, her eyes tracking Rhode with the pure, feverish hunger of an amateur brawler here for absolutely no reason other than the thrill of legal, high-end violence.
A dozen ters away, a knot of aristocratic Witches were staring at Tasia. There was absolutely zero reverence in their eyes. They weren't looking at an untouchable monarch; they were looking at a celebrity target.
Nobody here was bleeding their own money just to fight for a negligible cash prize. The only real currency here was Face.
They were prestige trolls and clout chasers. They were cold, calculating opportunists ntally drafting the trash-talk they would unleash if they managed to step on the Empress's face in the arena and broadcast her defeat to the world.
A cloud of dense, magically flavored tobacco smoke drifted past her face. Hathaway coughed, casting a localized [Air Freshening Cantrip].
Through the haze near a manticore ice sculpture, Hathaway caught a glimpse of a petite girl with lted-gold hair.
The girl’s face was completely obscured by the thick clouds of smoke she was expertly blowing from a heavy, rune-carved smoking pipe. Hathaway wouldn't have given the deceptively young-looking Witch a second thought if she hadn't overheard passing aristocrats respectfully murmuring, "Good evening, Mada Curie," or "A pleasure to see you, Sharon."
Curie? The legendary alchemy master who invented the [Patent Spell]? The woman who sold a perpetual printing press that generates six hundred million Solars a year to Irene for 1.6 million? Hathaway stared at the small, smoke-shrouded silhouette, her free hand pressed to her sternum, a professional mourner's reflex.
Up in the elevated VIP alcove, Hecate—Yggdrasil's Dean of Students—was exhaling perfect rings of pale purple smoke from a slender smoking pipe.
High above the polite chatter, Hecate leaned over the balcony. Her golden serpentine eyes scanned the competitors below with the delighted, malicious anticipation of a woman who arranged lethal roommate assignnts purely for her own entertainnt.
Hathaway shuddered instinctively, but found, to her profound annoyance, that she couldn't even muster a proper grudge.
She threw into a cage match with a homicidal Wellington just for a laugh, Hathaway thought, forcibly suppressing a sigh. And in doing so, inadvertently gave the best roommate in the entire world.
The resulting psychological cocktail of residual terror and genuine, intensely begrudging gratitude was giving her a headache.
Hathaway processed the sheer density of financial trauma and sadistic intent occupying just those two square ters of the hall.
Historical texts claid Witches used to abstain from vices to protect their mana purity, Hathaway mused. Clearly, the modern consensus had realized that when your society is governed by ruthless capitalists, gothic chuunibyous, and sadistic educators who also double as aggressive matchmakers, a heavy nicotine habit is the only thing keeping the regional murder rate in check.
"Three o'clock," Nino murmured, materializing at Hathaway's elbow with the terrifying stealth of an apex predator. "Pop quiz, Assistant. What do you see?"
Hathaway didn't turn her head, casually shifting her gaze over her juice glass. "Iron Rain. They swapped their usual ace for a... Blood Magic specialist?"
"With absolutely no public match record," Nino confird smoothly, her eyes constantly scanning the room. "A hidden card. Now, seven o'clock."
"Crimson Rose and Pale Hand," Hathaway observed. "They're actively avoiding eye contact."
"Mineral rights dispute last week in the third sector," Nino supplied, committing the data to mory. "Watch for alignnt shifts if they bracket adjacent. Take notes, Ludwig. The tournant started the mont we walked through those doors."
Hathaway was, apparently, the field-testing dummy.
Through a gap in the dense crowd, a familiar heat signature registered on Hathaway's passive scan. Surtrina.
She was wearing a dark, elegant red gown, standing with an entirely different delegation. They made brief eye contact across twenty ters of high-end cocktail party. A fractional, acknowledging nod from each.
Filed, Hathaway thought, returning a microscopic raise of her juice glass. Friends in the classroom, boss fights in the arena. See you in the brackets, Surtrina.
The live string quartet shifted tempo, and the social dancing phase opened with the smooth, polished inevitability of a trap springing.
Hathaway had fully intended to stand near the dessert table and guard the macarons.
She had severely miscalculated the combined market value of the Ludwig surna, her anomalous mana levels, and the context of a high-society gathering.
"You move with such fascinating energy, Miss Ludwig," a flawlessly smiling, highly distinguished Countess murmured, steering her effortlessly through a waltz Hathaway was barely surviving.
The Countess's voice was warm, dripping with practiced, high-society romance.
"I have always admired the martial elegance of your family. I would be absolutely thrilled to formally court you. Just imagine the magnificent... legacy our intertwined bloodlines could produce."
Oh no. Her footwork disintegrated. These weren't competitive feelers. This was a eugenic overture masquerading as a romantic pursuit.
She was currently running a desperate NPC evasion script, computing exit vectors from the crowded dance floor.
During a particularly centrifugal spin, one thought surfaced with absolute clarity: if her roommate were here, she would not be dancing with anyone else. She had no data on Victoria's opinions regarding high-society waltzes. But Victoria's re presence, she was certain, would have established a zero-Kelvin exclusion zone with a single, freezing glare—shutting down this eugenic nightmare before it even began.
"Excuse , Countess."
Rhode's voice cut through the waltz. She executed a flawless, chanically precise aristocratic bow that offered absolutely no room for polite refusal. "Family prerogative. I need to borrow my cousin for this rotation."
The Countess blinked, but aristocratic etiquette demanded she yield to imdiate family.
Before she could express her disappointnt, Bella moved into the vacated space, sweeping her heavy velvet cape with majestic grace.
"Do not despair, seeker of the abyss," Bella intoned, her voice resonating with dark, poetic gravity. "The Eclipse's singularity cannot accept supplental investnt at this current junction of fate.
"However, if you wish to discuss the true rging of shadows and the weight of ancient bloodlines... I am willing to grant you an audience."
Hathaway, now safely being swept across the floor by Rhode, glanced back.
Rhode danced with the effortless, devastatingly smooth lead of a natural-born lady-killer. She steered Hathaway through the complex waltz with a casual, androgynous grace, perfectly covering for Hathaway's ruined footwork without even looking at her feet.
"How utterly poetic," the Countess murmured, her eyes lighting up with genuine, captivated intrigue. Her attention was entirely hijacked by Bella's intense aura. "I would be honored, Miss Nightfall."
Hathaway covered her face with her free hand. Weeks ago, during a jungle hunt and a profoundly traumatizing trip to a nightclub called the Velvet Choker, she had discovered two horrifying sociological truths: Witch society had no concept of Chuunibyou, and Rhode and Bella were lethal, apex-predator lady-killers.
She had aggressively buried that knowledge three weeks ago. But tonight, the universe had apparently restored her deleted files from the cloud in high definition.
Bella was successfully courting a high-society aristocrat using eighth-grader-syndro ani dialogue, and Rhode was currently leading Hathaway through a waltz so flawlessly it was actually making Hathaway furious.
The abyss wasn't just staring back; it had incredible networking skills and perfect rhythm.
"Thanks," she mumbled into her palms, completely dead inside.
"Obviously," Rhode smirked, spinning Hathaway out of the path of a passing couple with predatory ease.
They returned to the Royal Rosas table just in ti to hear the sound of shattering crystal.
Crack. Tasia’s knuckles were stark white. The glacially maintained serenity on her face had not changed by a single milliter, but the silver champagne flute in her hand had just spider-webbed under imnse, homicidal pressure.
Beside her, Alucard’s perennial aura of exhaustion deepened into sothing profoundly, existentially haunted.
The Archon had gone very still in the specific way that was the exact opposite of calm. She looked like she had just been forced to swallow broken glass and was actively rembering the taste.
Even Nino, who was usually immune to anything that couldn't be quantified in a spreadsheet, froze. A sharp snap echoed from her hands as her titanium-reinforced smart-stylus broke cleanly in two.
Hathaway followed their collective, murderous gazes.
Strolling through the grand double doors with the vibrant, bouncy energy of a protagonist in a completely different, much happier genre, was a Phantom Rain Cat Witch.
She had cascading, pearlescent silver-blue hair that seed to drift and curl at the ends like morning mist, and large, liquid-teal eyes. A pair of fluffy, cloud-grey tails swayed with a natural, mischievous rhythm. Soft, silver-tipped cat ears twitched atop her head.
She didn't walk; she practically skipped. She completely ignored the cynical, high-society posturing of the room, plucking a champagne flute from a passing waiter's tray while scanning the crowd with a small notebook in hand.
She brought with her the crisp, unmistakable scent of impending rain. As she moved, the ambient temperature in the hall dropped subtly—a pervasive, bone-seeping chill of a sudden downpour.
"Who is the walking raincloud?" Hathaway whispered, pulling her collar up against the sudden chill.
"Lee Alice Varro," Nino replied, her voice dropping into a flat, traumatized monotone. "Hive Lord of Mistfall City. An [Apex of Dominion] title holder."
Hathaway's internal world-map instantly pinged, automatically retrieving the global leaderboard. Mistfall City. The fourth-largest Hive City in the entire world. A geopolitical monolith.
Hathaway blinked, processing the terrifying weight of that title. "Okay. A literal reigning monarch. Strong. But why do you all look like she just detonated a mana bomb in your living rooms?"
Tasia did not answer imdiately. Her grey eyes remained locked entirely on the skipping cat witch.
One second. Two seconds. Frost began to rapidly crystallize on the base of Hathaway’s juice glass as the temperature strictly around their table crashed into the negative digits.
"Because," Tasia finally said, her tone unhurried, yet carrying the absolute, bone-chilling weight of an active glacier, "she is the most degenerate, irredeemable nace to public decency in the modern era."
Across the room, the subject of this verdict took a sip of champagne, scribbled sothing in her little notebook, and smiled to herself.
Hathaway had absolutely no idea what she'd done.
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