[Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · "Iron Throne" Dueling Club (AKA: High-Risk Mana PvP Zone)
Hathaway carried two takeout bags that looked as exquisite as jewelry boxes, containing the 500 Gold Solar "Starlight Black Tea" and "Void Blueberry Tart."
This was the "Victoria Happy Meal," purchased with clenched teeth and a bleeding wallet—her toll fee to the A1 passing line.
On her inevitable path back to the dorms, she passed a building that looked like jagged obsidian, currently belching thick purple-green smoke—the Dueling Club.
The air was thick with the smell of ozone and burnt circuitry—the specific scent of high-concentration mana colliding violently in a short timeframe. Before she even entered, Hathaway felt the space around her vibrating, as if a miniature dimensional storm was raging inside the building.
Driven by some masochistic "I just lost 13-0" PTSD (or perhaps a desire to steal a few moves to update her own meta), Hathaway drifted inside like a ghost.
"Intuition! I said INTUITION! Why are you still routing the signal through your brain?!"
The moment she stepped in, Hathaway saw a senior witch hovering in mid-air, roaring at a junior.
Her fingers didn't weave complex sigils. They simply snapped.
A dozen [Feeblemind], [Melf’s Acid Arrow], and [Reverse Gravity] spells fired simultaneously. There was no "casting process"—it was as natural and instant as exhaling a breath. The mana was simply an extension of her will, lashing out like invisible whips.
The freshman was clearly a genius with maxed-out reflexes. Her body performed a physics-defying Z-Axis Blink in mid-air, while her staff spun into a defensive blur:
"[Spell Turning]! [Mirror Image]! —Also, Senior, I can feel the mana turbulence 0.1 seconds before you fire! Take this! [Mass Polymorph · Modified]!"
Poof!
The senior turned into a pink sheep in mid-air and slammed into the ground.
But before the sheep’s hooves even touched the floor, the transformation shattered.
Biological Rejection.
Her body’s mana circuits were too domineering; they simply refused to accept the "Weakness" definition imposed by the foreign spell. The sheep form peeled away like burnt paper.
Bang!
The senior’s main body emerged from the smoke, blasting the freshman away with a point-blank [Arcane Missiles · Shotgun Mode].
"Too slow! Your Polymorph is potent, but there is a 20-millisecond lag between your intent and the reality!"
The senior flicked her staff, giving a cold, merciless review: "You are still trying to 'control' the magic. In a real duel, that 20ms of conscious thought is enough for me to kill you three times. Don't think. Let your instincts take the wheel."
Hathaway: "..."
This... this is the Dueling Club?
It wasn't barbaric brawling. It was high-frequency, lethal, frame-perfect spell offense and defense. Everyone here was a monster who had min-maxed "Cast Speed" and "Reaction Time."
And in the center of this chaos, hovering above the main ring with the highest density of mana turbulence, was a Forcefield Hammock.
Rhode von Ludwig, wearing triple-reinforced lead eye-masks, was sleeping peacefully in an environment that looked like a permanent warzone.
Hathaway stared at the hammock. Instantly, a piece of "ghost data" from the original Hathaway popped up like an autocomplete suggestion.
[Cached Gossip: Cousin Rhode's Current Status]
Age: 33 (Status: Refusing to "Adult").
Identity: Dueling Club Tenured Honorary Advisor (The Server Admin).
Reason for Loitering: Dodging the "Quarterly Performance Review" from the Ludwig Family Board.
Context: The Matriarch keeps comparing her to "The Wellington Successor"—who obtained a PhD in Folklore from Minotnango University at age 27—and nagging Rhode to stop playing games and "Secure a Strategic Merger" (Marriage) to improve the gene portfolio.
Rhode's Logic: "So what if she has slightly higher specs? She's just a Nerd who digs up dirt in the countryside! Why should I compete with a glorified librarian when I can stay here and Smurf on students?"
"Advisor! Advisor, wake up!"
The Club President (a short-haired witch in a skin-tight combat suit, surrounded by seven floating funnel drones) was screaming from below.
"The 'Turtle Mages' from the [Black Forest Alchemy Club] are back! They brought their new invention, 'Truth No. 2'! They say they're here to teach us the 'Art of Firepower'!"
Before the sentence finished.
The main gates were blasted off their hinges.
A thick smell of engine oil and preservatives slammed into the room, clashing sharply with the crisp scent of ozone.
A group of witches in white lab coats stained with suspicious potions rushed in. They wore gas masks and had the fanatical eyes of cultists.
Leading them was a short witch riding a monstrous mechanical abomination cobbled together from countless brooms, alchemy boilers, rune circuit boards, and the still-beating heart of a dragon.
She held a complex Magitech Remote Terminal, the screen frantically scrolling through thousands of lines of code.
"Listen up! You apes who only rely on intuition to spam spells!"
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The short witch adjusted her goggles, declaring her manifesto: "Mana isn't for wasting! Mana is for CALCULATION!"
She slapped the leaking, screaming machine beneath her:
"Behold! The [Ultimate Alchemy · Chimera Fortress · Mark III (Safety Valves Removed Edition)]!!"
Vrrr—!
As she introduced it, hundreds of complex alchemy arrays lit up on the mechanical beast. Red warning lights flashed madly, and steam erupted from every valve.
"Core powered by a Three-Phase Mana Reactor! Equipped with six hundred High-Pressure Alchemy Blast Flasks! Loaded with an 'Auto-Aim Retaliation Matrix' and an 'Anti-Magic Field Generator'!"
"And..." She wore the blissful smile of a martyr ready to ascend. "...To pursue maximum instant output, we hard-locked all the limiters!"
"As soon as I press this button, this baby releases a mana torrent equivalent to a 9th Circle Forbidden Spell in one second! Even your proudest shields are as thin as wet tissue paper before the Cannon of Truth!!"
Facing this industrial horror weapon, the Dueling Club members didn't tremble. Instead, their expressions were filled with the disdain of a Pro Player looking at a Noob.
"Hah? Another clumsy hunk of metal?"
The President's funnel drones spun rapidly as she crossed her arms and sneered. "Is the Alchemy Club brain-damaged? The wind-up animation is way too long!"
"By the time your broken stove pre-heats, my [Disintegrate] could disassemble your turtle shell into spare parts eighteen times over."
"Exactly!" Another witch holding a crystal sword mocked. "You still use a 'Remote Terminal'? You still write code? Do you not use Brainwave Direct Connect? Your latency is high enough to be my grandmother!"
"Sisters!" The President waved her hand. "Show these nerds who only know how to read books what it means to be Speed Kings! Dismantle that scrap heap! I want the core!"
"In your dreams!"
The short leader laughed maniacally and slammed the red button.
"Full Salvo · Torrent of Truth! Login!"
BOOM—!!!
The "Chimera Fortress" let out a soul-tearing roar.
This wasn't a physical collision; this was a Saturation Mana Strike.
Six hundred blast flasks ignited simultaneously. They didn't spray fire, but a stream of Alchemically Compressed Ether Particles. This force not only propelled the mech into a Mach 3 charge but also formed a visible Hemispherical Anti-Magic Barrier in front of it.
"Wha—?!"
The President's face changed. "Scatter! That's Ether Turbulence! All directional spells will be distorted!"
Dozens of curses and rays fired by the Dueling Club members hit the barrier and bounced off like water hitting a rock—deflected, twisted, or reflected straight into the ceiling.
Rumble—
The mech was like a steel beast wrapped in a storm, bulldozing through the crowd. It didn't even need to aim; the AOE Mana Radiation alone stunned the witches trying to blink-attack it.
"Hahahaha! Do you see?!" The short leader laughed, her voice amplified by a rune array. "This is called Yield Suppression! This is called Saturation Attack!"
"Screw your technique! Screw your reaction speed! In the face of absolute mana density, your flashy little tricks have zero casting space!!"
The mech, carrying world-ending momentum, charged straight toward the central ring (where Rhode was sleeping).
Hathaway stared, dumbfounded.
This... this is the Alchemy Club's "Science"?
It's clunky, it has a long start-up, but once it gets going, it's an unstoppable juggernaut!
Just as the out-of-control, ether-spewing mech was about to vaporize the ring along with Rhode...
Rhode was woken by the ear-splitting screeching.
She rolled over, pulling up her eye mask. Her crimson eyes were filled with the irritability of a disrupted nap.
"...So noisy."
Rhode yawned and made a casual "come here" gesture.
Yoink.
The two exquisite paper bags in Hathaway’s hands containing the "Starlight Black Tea" and "Blueberry Tart" instantly flew out of her grip and landed steadily in Rhode’s hand.
Hathaway: "!!!"
My 500 Gold Solars! My bribe money!
"Yo, Hathaway. Good kid." Rhode happily took a sip of the priceless tea, not even looking at the incoming steel beast. "Did the Alchemy Club lunatics come to feed again? What is it this time? Anti-Magic Barrier?"
"Advisor! Watch out!" The President shouted while maintaining her shield. "The mana density is too high! It's scrambling the spatial coordinates! You can't Blink!"
"Density my ass."
Rhode sneered, tossing the expensive blueberry tart into her mouth and mumbling through the crumbs: "That thing is just Loud and Messy. What's the use? Too unoptimized."
"Unoptimized?!"
The Alchemy leader was enraged. She manipulated the mech, pushing the mana output to 120%, crashing toward Rhode with a sonic boom that tore the air apart:
"What do you know! This is a Perfect Matrix calculated twenty thousand times! It is a seamless unit that cannot be parsed! You uncultured barbarian, become ruin!!"
It was a Mana Tsunami rising from the depths. Mach 3. Anti-Magic Barrier. Plus an Overloaded Elemental Core. Any spell attempting a direct confrontation would be washed away by this torrent.
However.
Rhode was still chewing the tart.
She didn't even take off her sunglasses.
Just as the chaotic mana storm was about to swallow her—0.01 seconds.
Rhode moved.
She didn't cast a spell. She didn't summon a shield. She didn't even use her massive mana pool to counter-blast.
She simply extended one finger (the other hand still holding the empty tea cup), and her fingertip lit up with a faint red light, almost invisible.
That was [Ludwig Style · Curse Deconstruction].
She didn't need to fight the whole tsunami. She just needed to find the "First Note" that sustained it.
Rhode’s finger tapped lightly.
It tapped on the 427th Rune Node in the bottom right corner of the behemoth's Anti-Magic Barrier. Among tens of thousands of complex runes, this was just an inconspicuous connection point responsible for mana recirculation and cooling.
Ding.
A crisp sound, almost inaudible, pierced through the roaring noise.
The next second.
A miracle occurred.
The "Chimera Fortress," originally indestructible and capable of bouncing off high-tier curses, suddenly looked like its skeleton had been removed.
Because of the blockage in that key node, the high-speed mana circuit instantly suffered a 0.05-second lag. In a Mach 3 overloaded state, a 0.05-second lag was a catastrophe.
Zzzzt—
The mana turbulence began to backflow.
The Fire Elemental Lord noticed the circuit blockage and began to expand in rage.
The originally perfect defensive matrix, because of this tiny "blood clot," instantly triggered a system-wide chain reaction.
Click-clack-click-clack—
The massive machine began to self-disassemble in mid-air. Parts flew off like rain.
KABOOM!!!!
A grand, multi-colored Great Explosion filled with alchemical bad taste bloomed in mid-air.
The short leader was blasted into the sky, laughing maniacally as she flew:
"Hahahaha! Beautiful! It's so beautiful! This explosion color! It's the Void Purple I've never seen before! I know! The phase parameter on the cooling valve was wrong! Next time I'll adjust it to 37.5 degrees!!"
Splat.
She hit the ground, turning into a twitching pile of charcoal (slowly regenerating).
The smoke cleared.
Rhode was still lying in the hammock, not a single drop of tea spilled.
"...Did you see that, Hathaway?"
Rhode licked the frosting off her finger, pointing at the pile of scrap metal below.
"So-called 'Witch Science' is just a group of maniacs trying to use the most complex formulas to calculate uncontrollable chaos. They chase 'Massive Compute Power'. They think more runes mean more power, thicker matrices mean more stability."
"But we Ludwigs chase 'Absolute Intuition'."
Rhode pulled her eye mask back down, delivering the final summary:
"Any complex spell model has Nodes. As long as your eyes can see that node, and your finger can slip into that crack... Even a Forbidden Spell is nothing more than a balloon that will pop with a gentle poke."
The crowd cheered. The Dueling Club members waved their staffs excitedly:
"Advisor is OP!! That is the peak of 'Debuffing'!!"
"I told you! Stacking raw stats is useless! It's all about the mechanics!"
"Quick, quick! Before that Fire Elemental dissipates, seal it! We're having a barbecue tonight!"
Hathaway stood frozen, looking at the mess.
Looking at the Alchemists who, despite being covered in soot and ash, were still arguing about whether "that deconstruction technique utilized the wave-particle duality of mana."
Looking at the Duelist maniacs rushing to loot the alchemy core.
She understood.
There are no normal people in this world.
Alchemists are "Data Maniacs." Duelists are "Mechanics Maniacs."
And I... I am the unlucky soul trying to carve a bloody path between the maniacs.
And...
Hathaway looked at the empty takeout bag in Rhode's hand, and grief overwhelmed her.
"...Cousin Rhode." Hathaway let out a heart-rending wail. "I bought that for Victoria!!! That was my tuition fee!!!"
"You ate my 500 Solars!! You just bricked my save file!!"
If Victoria doesn't see the afternoon tea...
Hathaway remembered the ultimatum: "I don't drink dishwater, and I don't teach students who drink dishwater."
She felt like she could see the expulsion notice waving at her.