The Lamp That No Longer Shines: A LitRPG Action Comedy Chapter 96: Tactical Espionage via Doujinshi

[Ti]: Sumr Break, Day 5 — Rest Day, 9:00 AM

[Location]: Royal Rosas Club · Competitor Dormitories

One day after being flash-frozen, shattered, and unceremoniously respawned, Hathaway sat cross-legged on her bed with the [Dispel Magic] grimoire open in her lap.

She was building an ergency patch.

The [Model Architecture Instructions] were written in the usual esoteric Witch cryptography—Tarot taphors, astrological alignnts, and poetic nonsense. Having already survived the naspace disaster of decompiling Amora's spell weeks ago, Hathaway simply pulled out her standardized translation notebook and went to work stripping the formatting.

[Reversed Justice] beca a phase-inversion node. [The Moon] beca an oscillating mana frequency.

But translating the text was only the first step. [Dispel Magic] wasn't a standard output function like a fireball; it was a targeted uninstaller designed to dynamically unravel chaotic mana structures in real-ti.

Building the complete three-dinsional geotric model in her mind and preparing her nervous system to physically ingest the Tier-3 Abjuration potion would take at least two solid days of compiling.

She noted her current progress, allocated a background cognitive thread to keep running the translations, and closed the heavy grimoire.

She had a tactical briefing to attend.

[Ti]: 12:30 PM

[Location]: Club HQ · Tactical Briefing Room

The Grand Masters qualifiers ran a strict closed-broadcast policy. No public feeds. No streaming. No leaked footage. The Witch Authority classified match data as proprietary intelligence, and penalties for unauthorized distribution were severe and enthusiastically applied.

This rule applied exclusively to people who didn't have money.

The central holographic table in the Royal Rosas briefing room displayed the full Day One bracket results in high-resolution, fully tistamped glory, sourced from the exclusive all-access season passes the club's managent purchased annually without blinking.

Nino stood at the projector, laser pointer in hand, visibly unimpressed by most of what she was reviewing.

"Mare Bru." Nino swiped the screen. "Lee Alice Varro's club. 4-0 sweep. Alice didn't even step onto the field. They cleared the opening 3v3 and the subsequent KOF relay using exclusively their substitute bench. Zero tactical data leaked on their starters."

Tasia's brow moved approximately one milliter.

For Tasia, this constituted a complete emotional response. The room registered it and said nothing.

Rhode was slumped on the sofa with her boots on the coffee table, a hard candy clicking idly against her back teeth, radiating the profound spiritual energy of soone who had already won today before it started.

Beside her, perched on the armrest of the sofa, Bella sat half-shrouded in her cloak. Her unsealed crimson eye cast a faint, ominous glow in the dim light of the projector.

In the far corner, Alucard sat with a stack of printed reports on her knee. Since it was a scheduled rest day and the team hadn't needed to deploy their Center for yesterday's relay, the Archon of the White City looked unusually relaxed, turning a page without urgency.

"Anything else worth noting?" Alucard asked, not quite looking up. "The Holheim bracket, for instance."

Hathaway's ears pricked.

Rhode pulled her candy stick from her mouth and delivered her verdict with the flat certainty of a judge who'd already written the sentence.

"A catastrophe." She set the stick down. "Greed Umbrella."

She said the na with the particular contempt of soone who'd found the material personally offensive.

"An independent club registered by five folklore PhDs. Roster: five starters, one substitute." Rhode shook her head. "The opening 3v3 requires three bodies on the field. Do you know who they sent? Victoria—their substitute—plus two of the regular five. No Cecilia. The two starters did their jobs. Nothing went wrong. Nothing went particularly right, either. Victoria was the only one who produced anything worth watching."

She let the pause breathe for exactly one beat.

"Then the KOF relay. Victoria swept it 1v3. Three opponents. Solo. Cecilia never left the bench."

Rhode's eyes swept the room.

"Cecilia is my eternal destined rival. She is the only reason I am watching that bracket at all. And she spent the entire match sitting on the sideline watching her substitute little sister be the only person on that field worth looking at." A pause. "I find this deeply embarrassing. For her, obviously. For it's mostly just sad."

Two seconds of silence.

Alucard set down her report.

The Archon's grey eyes were fixed on a point sowhere past the floor. She rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers, slow and habitual, and let out a long, quiet exhale.

"How many tis," Alucard murmured, her voice losing its usual bureaucratic flatline. "Her sister orchestrates so grand, obsessive spectacle. And Victoria just quietly drops whatever she is doing, pulls out her wallet, and goes to clean up the ruins. Every single ti."

Hathaway's brain stopped.

What.

"Wait." She looked directly at Alucard. Her voice ca out dry. "Senior Alucard. When you say 'sister'—which sister? Cecilia or Evangeline? Are you saying Cecilia does this? That Cecilia is the one who—"

She caught herself.

She had spoken to Cecilia Wellington through a holographic projection in the dorms. Beautiful, effortlessly charming, exuding the relaxed, untouchable elegance of a pure academic. Yes, back in Lab 606, Heidi's pregnant pause over "that incident" had warned Hathaway that the golden middle daughter wasn't as perfect as her public record suggested.

But Hathaway had assud it was a one-off tragedy. A political misstep. An experint gone wrong.

Not a chronic, systemic pattern of orchestrating catastrophic disasters.

Spectacles. Ruins. Every single ti.

Hathaway's logic processor seized up. This completely upended everything she thought she understood about the Wellington sisters. From her own observations, Victoria genuinely revered Cecilia. It wasn't forced; it was absolute, unquestioning devotion.

How do you revere soone who constantly turns your life into a disaster zone?

Unless... she isn't just making mistakes. Victoria Wellington doesn't tolerate incompetence. If she is willingly pulling out her wallet to pay the cleanup bill, it's because the trouble Cecilia makes is so breathtakingly brilliant, so magnificently mad, that Victoria considers the ruins an acceptable price of admission to the spectacle.

It was a terrifying psychological profile of a sisterhood.

But it was the only logic that fit.

And yet, if Victoria was a willing enabler to her sister's brilliant madness... why was Alucard talking about it like it was a grueling, inescapable tragedy?

When Alucard had said the words 'pulls out her wallet' and 'clean up the ruins,' her voice had carried the bone-deep, hollow familiarity of a fellow survivor.

Alucard blinked. A brief, uncomfortable flash crossed her pale face as she realized she had just let a personal grievance slip in a tactical briefing.

She glanced at the sofa.

Rhode had perked up. The feral, delighted gleam in the Ludwig Vanguard's eyes ant she had absolutely just connected the dots to a specific, historically disastrous Wellington family scandal and was drawing a breath to eagerly share the tea.

Bella's visible eye flared with the sa gleam, frad with considerably more theatre. She raised a bandage-wrapped hand, her voice dropping into a portentous whisper. "Ah. The Grand Illusion of Babylon. The day the Heir forged a phantom marriage to deceive the—"

Alucard's gaze locked onto them. A silent, terrifying weight settled over the sofa, radiating a crystal-clear promise of catastrophic municipal retaliation if either Ludwig completed their sentence.

Rhode's mouth snapped closed with an audible click.

Bella slowly lowered her hand. She caught Hathaway's desperate, starving gaze, and gave a solemn, tragic shake of her head, sealing the forbidden lore back into the abyss.

"That," Nino said, laser pointer clicking off, voice carrying the absolute zero of soone ending a topic professionally and permanently, "is internal Wellington family business. It is not within the scope of this briefing."

She swiped to the next screen without ceremony.

"Tomorrow's opponents. Bone Breakers. Third-tier defensive club, no tactical novelty. Yenna, pull their movent profiles tonight. Everyone else—eat sothing and sleep."

The eting dispersed.

Hathaway sat still for two extra seconds.

Victoria, packing her bag the night she'd left. The precise way she folded everything—like disorder was a personal insult—thodical and quiet.

The clasps clicking shut with the finality of decisions already made.

And then those words, barely audible, softer than she'd ever heard Victoria speak anything: I can't.

What in the hell is actually happening in Holheim.

She filed it. Labeled it. Closed the tab.

I have no clearance. No resources. No actionable path.

She stood up and put her jacket on.

Running the loop generates heat and nothing else.

I, she thought with perfect clarity, am going to buy the book.

[Ti]: 1:45 PM

[Location]: White City · Underground Comrce District

She changed into an inconspicuous grey trench coat, pulled the hood up, and slipped out during lunch.

She was shifting her mood. She knew this. She had zero guilt about this.

An adult who had lived two lifetis and survived the high-pressure industrial at-grinder of Earth corporate culture had learned one clean, irreversible principle about ntal resource managent: when you acquire a puzzle piece with no matching edges and currently have no tools to investigate it, keeping it open in the foreground is the most expensive thing you can do.

The correct process was to file the fragnt, tag it awaiting new variables, and run sothing productive on the main thread in the anti.

She had done the filing. She was doing the productive thing.

The productive thing was acquiring Lee Alice Varro's underground doujin bibliography before her conscience caught up with her and made it awkward.

She found the shop tucked behind three legitimate apothecaries and a "Premium Rare Ingredients" storefront that was clearly neither. A small hand-lettered sign above the door read: Magical Gardening Exchange.

Inside: warm lighting, artfully arranged shelving, approximately seven other custors, all wearing hoods and not making eye contact with anyone. The ambient culture of mutual professional discretion was impeccable.

Hathaway approved. She pulled her hood lower and went to work.

The third shelf on the left displayed a row of perfectly respectable-looking White City Historical Review journals. Behind them, wedged with practiced care, sat the motherlode.

Hathaway's eyes scanned the shelf.

[Captive Trophy Wife, Little Sia — Complete Archon Edition]

[Avarice's Golden Plunder: Watching My Precious Sister lt in the Sovereign's Embrace — 112,000-Word Uncut Edition]

[Shattered Ice, Subjugated Glow: The Millennium Sovereign's Private Pet]

Why the majestic 10th Seat of the Grand Witches was the universally acknowledged bottom in every single conceivable pairing on this entire shelf was a mystery Hathaway decided her Earth-brain was better off not questioning.

She grabbed everything on the shelf.

She dropped the massive stack of tos on the counter—they threatened to topple—and slapped her premium black-crystal slate onto the glass with the unhesitating, terrifying resolve of a hardcore fan.

"Black bag," she said, keeping her voice low. "Completely opaque. Double-wrapped. Swipe the card. I want all of them."

Behind the counter, a clerk in an oversized vendor's hat reached under the shelf without comnt. The clerk's movents were smooth and practiced. Behind her, mostly hidden by the shelving unit, a fluffy cloud-grey tail swayed in a slow, covert arc.

"Excellent taste, valued custor~"

Her voice was light, bouncy, with a faint musical feline lilt. The wrapped packages appeared on the counter.

Hathaway reached for them.

The clerk pulled off her hat.

A cascade of pearlescent silver-blue hair fell, drifting and curling at the ends like morning mist.

Soft, silver-tipped cat ears erged and twitched upright with the small, precise self-satisfaction of an entrance that had been rehearsed.

A pair of liquid-teal eyes curved into delighted crescents. Two fluffy cloud-grey tails uncoiled from behind the shelf and swayed with a natural, mischievous rhythm. The ambient temperature in the shop dropped, carrying the crisp scent of impending rain.

Lee Alice Varro.

Hive Lord of Mistfall City. Apex of Dominion. The walking raincloud who had swept yesterday's qualifiers 4-0 without even taking the field. The Witch whose divination capabilities were the absolute apex of the Inner Sea of Stars.

Standing behind the counter of an unlicensed underground bookshop, wearing a vendor's hat.

Hathaway did not move. Her hands were still extended toward the packages. Her processing had hit a total hard stop.

You are a monarch, her inner voice began, with the asured calm of soone assessing a geopolitical crisis. You control a Hive City. You are freely walking around a public street in the White City, selling highly illegal literature about Tasia's emotional devastation.

Tasia is in this city. Tasia has already produced a peer-reviewed technical blueprint for injecting a gravity singularity into a strawberry tart and making it look like a catering accident. You are selling this within walking distance of her.

"Well~" Alice set both hands on the counter. Her smile achieved a quality of mischief that appeared genuinely load-bearing. "If it isn't Royal Rosas's newest Vanguard. Miss Ludwig."

Her cloud-grey tails swept in a slow, lazy arc.

"You play for the sa club as Little Sia and her pathetic cuckold, don't you~?" The teal eyes glittered, flicking down to the massive stack of books. "And buying the Sovereign of Avarice's slow-burn NTR, too! You wouldn't want your club's data analyst to find out you've been secretly buying literature about her emotional devastation... would you~?"

Ten thousand alpacas stampeded through the interior landscape of Hathaway's soul.

Why. Her inner voice had gone entirely flat with betrayal. Why can this stunningly beautiful Phantom Rain Cat Witch deliver a textbook visual-novel blackmail line in real life with a perfectly straight face?! Is this the live-action R-18 scenario?! My innocence was not listed in the pre-match roster—

Alice watched her internal catastrophe unfold for exactly three seconds, then burst into a peal of crisp, entirely heartless laughter.

"Kidding-nya~!" She waved a hand. "I have no interest in blackmailing my own loyal readers. You're perfectly safe."

Hathaway let out a breath that had originated sowhere around her solar plexus.

"Besides." The mischievous energy sharpened into sothing with real purpose behind it. Alice produced a small notebook and a pen from sowhere inside her coat.

"I'm not here to run the stall. I'm conducting market research." The teal eyes locked onto Hathaway with the calm, targeted intensity of a focus system acquiring a bearing. "I'm blocked. Completely dry. Zero inspiration for the next project. Tasia and Alucard's dynamic is getting stale, and Irene's legal team is starting to breathe down my neck."

She paused. The pen hovered over the blank page.

"As a reader. Tell : whose story do you want to write next?"

Every cell in Hathaway's body went cold.

She is not surveying readers.

She is selecting the next victim.

If Alice wrote it—and Alice's work always circulated through every back-channel—and the subject ever discovered who had originally planted the idea... Hathaway would be turned into a fine aerosol.

She opened her mouth to na soone historical. Soone mythological. Soone safely dead.

Then sothing hit her.

Cold. Clean. Perfectly pragmatic.

Lee Alice Varro's divination capabilities were not rumor. Tasia, Alucard, and Nino—none of whom agreed on anything—had all confird it. Alice's magic was reality-piercing. Unreasonable. The kind that could surface buried truths that other investigators couldn't even locate the entrance to.

And she was blocked. Looking for material. Looking to dive deep into soone's life with her full toolkit, reconstruct their secrets and buried history with forensic precision—and turn everything she found into extrely detailed fiction.

There is no entity better at digging up lore than a blocked author looking for material.

Hathaway looked at the silver-blue-haired cat Witch across the counter.

I just found a variable.

She swallowed once. Held the gaze.

"Cecilia Wellington," Hathaway said.

The pen stopped mid-air.

Alice's two silver-tipped cat ears shot straight upright.

She hadn't expected this. Cecilia Wellington—second daughter of an academic house, currently running the underdog Greed Umbrella team—was precisely no one's first answer.

"The Wellington middle daughter?" The cloud-grey tails had gone completely still. The teal eyes were genuinely, narrowly interested. "That's a specific choice. Give a reason. If there isn't enough dramatic tension, I won't write it."

Hathaway took a careful breath.

She could not say: Because I think there is sothing catastrophically wrong in that family, and you are the single most capable intelligence-gathering asset currently available to .

She had to say sothing that made sense to an author who specialized in high-stakes NTR and emotional devastation.

"The Wellington family's signature ability," Hathaway said, voice level. "The [Mystic Eyes]. They perceive the world primarily through mana-flow vectors. But their actual physical eyes suffer from 1200-degree myopia."

She paused half a second.

"Consider what that ans. A Witch who is powerful specifically because of her perception—plunged into double sensory deprivation. Suppress her mana-sight, and that proud, untouchable noble is lost in a world without outlines."

She looked at Alice.

"Completely dependent on touch, on sound, on the physical proximity of other bodies. The structural implications of that for certain narrative conventions are not subtle."

Alice's ears moved a fraction. The pen touched the paper.

"Furthermore." Her voice found its montum. Acceptable losses, she decided.

"Cecilia is genuinely, objectively beautiful. And she just voluntarily locked herself into a closed-team environnt with four other academics she loved enough to stay broke for. Years of shared scholarship. Shared late nights. They built their own 'umbrella' and stood in the rain together because none of them were willing to be separated."

A slight spread of her hands. "That kind of intense, insular bond usually hides the most interesting material."

Alice's tails had gone completely still. She was writing in fast, abbreviated strokes.

Hathaway pulled in a slow breath.

I'm sorry, Victoria. I am genuinely, sincerely sorry. Please understand this is for a tactical cause.

"And then there's the younger sister," Hathaway said quietly. "Cold. Precise. Devoted in ways that border on obsessive. The kind of sister who willingly acts as a cleanup crew, who quietly steps in to fix every disaster, pulling out her wallet without a word of complaint."

She let that land.

"A twisted, toxic kind of reverence. Imagine that younger sister standing outside the room. Listening to what happens under the Umbrella, unable to intervene."

Alice's pen stopped.

Absolute silence.

Her silver-tipped ears flattened slightly backward. Her liquid-teal eyes had gone to that specific bright, unfocused middle-distance where plot architecture was assembling itself in real ti. Her two fluffy tails were motionless.

Ten full seconds passed.

Alice slamd her notebook shut.

"STOP."

Three custors in hooded coats flinched simultaneously.

She was on her feet. Both cloud-grey tails went to full extension, bristling with creative voltage. She was visibly vibrating.

"Mystic Eyes sensory deprivation! Insular academic polycule! Toxic, obsessive younger sister standing outside the door—!"

She spun in a complete circle, notebook pressed to her chest, tails sweeping a full arc.

"It's too perfect! It's tailor-made! I can already see the chapter structures—The Blind Scholar: Sleepless Nights Under the Greed Umbrella!"

She levelled her teal eyes at Hathaway with the blazing focus of soone who had just found exactly what they needed.

"Miss Ludwig," Alice said. "You are a visionary."

She reached into the depths of her coat and produced a business card—heavy embossed stock, a small golden cat-paw stamped in the corner—and pressed it into Hathaway's hand with the gravity of a sacred contract.

"My private communication frequency." Her eyes were burning. "We are creative consultants now. Once my preliminary research into [Greed Umbrella] is complete, I will send you the first draft. I expect specific notes."

The smile that followed was bright, decisive, and terrifying.

"Pleasure doing business, Miss Ludwig~"

She swept her vendor's hat back on, tucking her silver-blue hair up, looking like soone already ntally halfway through a reality-piercing divination ritual.

Outside, the afternoon sun was still bright over the White City's comrcial district.

Hathaway adjusted her hood and walked.

In one hand: two double-wrapped, completely opaque packages containing the entire collector's edition box sets of Mistfall City's finest literary output, which she had technically purchased as tactical cover.

(And because the cover art of Irene was genuinely stunning.)

In the other: the private contact information of the single most capable intelligence-gathering entity currently operating in the Inner Sea of Stars—who was now enthusiastically preparing to deploy her full divination toolkit on the Wellington family's buried history, of her own accord, for completely personal creative reasons.

She looked up at the pale, clean sky.

Victoria.

If you ever read this novel—I need you to understand that I was genuinely just trying to gather intelligence. The books were purchased separately. These are two entirely unrelated events occurring on the sa afternoon.

I hope you appreciate the gift.

I really do.