[Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · Dormitory [Golden Bough] · Room 302
If the first forty-eight hours of Hathaway’s new life were a comedy about a fish out of water, then Day 3 was a psychological horror documentary titled "Overclocking the Primitive Soul."
Director: Victoria Wellington.
Test Subject: Hathaway von Ludwig.
Objective: To force a brain evolved for checking emails, drinking coffee, and scrolling social media to run high-fidelity magical calculations usually reserved for supercomputers.
The room was submerged in the signature [Silent Black] of the Wellington family. It was a sensory deprivation tank designed to filter out the "noise" of reality.
The only light came from the ghostly blue aura of four floating spellbooks and the faint, rhythmic pulse of runes rotating in the air.
Hathaway sat at the obsidian desk in the center of the room. She looked like she was conducting a solemn séance, but her expression suggested she was trying to defuse a nuclear bomb with a pair of chopsticks.
"Process."
Victoria’s voice didn't come from the air. It resonated directly inside Hathaway's skull via a telepathic link—cold, frictionless, and unforgiving.
Hathaway’s brain felt like a CPU whose cooling fan had broken. She wasn't doing one thing. She was being forced to run Four Independent Threads simultaneously.
[Thread A: Motor Control & Rhythm]
Her left hand held a crystal pestle, grinding a wrinkled, ugly root in a heavy stone mortar. This was a [False Mandrake] (Academy Standard Training Material).
Grind. Grind. Pause.
Hathaway’s heart didn't ache from poverty, but from the sheer annoyance of Inefficiency. She had purchased a crate of these roots from the Academy Supply Store this morning using her startup capital.
Price: 50 Solars per root.
For a vegetable, it was pricey. But for a magic material, it was pocket change. However, Hathaway knew what this ugly thing represented. It was the cheap, mass-produced cousin of the True Mandrake.
The True Mandrake was a strategic resource. It was the key ingredient for [Resurrection Elixirs]. A single dose could pull a Witch back from the void, restoring her to peak condition. In the Open Market, a mature True Mandrake traded for anywhere between 25,000 to 35,000 Solars. It was hard currency, stable as gold.
The False Mandrake she was holding had none of that power. It couldn't resurrect a fly. But it perfectly mimicked the hypersensitive temperament of the real deal.
If you ground it too fast? It spoiled.
If you ground it too slow? It woke up and screamed.
Maintaining rhythm... 60 beats per minute... Focus, Hathaway. You have 30,000 Solars in the bank, but that's for equipment, not for making trash.
[Thread B: Geometric Visualization]
Inside her mind’s eye, she was constructing a 12-sided Dodecahedron Rune Model based on the A1 General Rune Manual.
Victoria had ordered her to rotate this mental model continuously along the Z-axis at 45 degrees per second.
Don't drop the model. Keep the lines straight. Don't let the vertices collapse.
[Thread C: Analytical Calculation]
Her right eye was twitching as it scanned a floating page of A1 Universal Alchemy Standards.
She had to calculate the molar mass of Dragon Blood (Type-4) required to neutralize Red Mercury in real-time.
Formula: M = (ρ * V) / n... Carry the Mana Coefficient...
[Thread D: Main Processor - The History]
Her left eye—and the bulk of her conscious soul—was focused on the thickest, heaviest book on the table:
A1 International Standard: The Ruthless History (Page 342)
The text she was reading was gruesome. It described the "Angel Wing Harvesting Techniques" of the 13th Century.
[Excerpt: Celestial Resource Management]
"Angels possess high-purity Light Element structures (Wings/Halos). However, their mana evaporates instantly upon death.
Extraction Protocol: The subject must be kept fully conscious. Use [Nerve Stimulation Spells] to prevent fainting. The brighter the Angel screams, the higher the purity of the extracted feather."
[ERROR.]
Hathaway’s "Human Operating System" flared up.
Kept conscious? Stimulate the nerves?
That's not harvesting. That's torture.
A spike of raw, human empathy hit her chest.
How can they do this? They are sentient beings!
This emotional spike was a fatal error in a multi-threaded system. It occupied Thread D's bandwidth. Thread D panicked and demanded more resources from the brain.
The brain, following emergency protocols, stole resources from Thread B (Visualization).
CRASH.
In Hathaway's mind, the spinning Dodecahedron Rune didn't just fade; it fell. It was a phantom sensation, but it felt incredibly real—like dropping a heavy glass sculpture inside her skull.
Vertigo.
A wave of intense dizziness hit her. The world spun.
Thread A (Motor Control) lost its rhythm.
Her hand slipped. The pestle ground too hard against the side of the mortar.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Skrrrt!
The semi-dormant False Mandrake Root felt the irregular pressure. Its ugly, wrinkled face contorted in pain. It opened its mouth.
"SCREEE—!!!"
A sonic blast, sharp as a needle, pierced the silence of the room.
Hathaway flinched violently, dropping the pestle. She clutched her head, the combined assault of mental vertigo and auditory damage making her gag.
"Fail."
The telepathic link cut off. The silence returned, heavier than before.
Victoria, who had been floating cross-legged in the air behind Hathaway, descended slowly. She didn't look angry. She looked... bored.
It was the look of a scientist watching a lab rat fail a maze for the tenth time.
"Your 'Geometry Thread' collapsed first," Victoria diagnosed clinically, her unfocused blue eyes staring at the empty air above Hathaway's head where the mana turbulence was still dissipating. "The collapse of the visual model caused a vestibular system error (Vertigo), which disrupted your motor control."
Victoria floated closer, her pale hand reaching out to pick up the screaming False Mandrake. She squeezed its throat casually, choking the scream back into a whimper, and shoved it back into the mortar with the indifference of someone closing a noisy window.
"But the geometry didn't collapse on its own. It was stable." Victoria turned her head, her blurry gaze trying to lock onto Hathaway's face. "Something pushed it. A surge of chaotic emotion originating from your Reading Task."
She tapped the open History book with a pale finger.
"Did you find a typo? Or did the text confuse you?"
Victoria’s tone was genuinely puzzled. To her, history was just data. She couldn't conceive of any other reason to react so violently to a textbook.
Hathaway gasped for air, her forehead slick with cold sweat. Her brain felt bruised.
"It... it says they were kept conscious..." Hathaway swallowed hard, her voice trembling. "It says we stimulate their nerves to make them scream brighter. Isn't that... isn't that cruel? They feel pain."
Victoria froze.
She tilted her head slightly, as if she had misheard. For a long, agonizing minute, she didn't speak.
Then, she let out a sigh.
It wasn't a sigh of anger. It was a sigh of deep, aristocratic disappointment.
"Cruel?" Victoria repeated the word as if tasting a piece of rotten meat. "Hathaway."
Victoria’s voice was soft, but it cut deeper than any shout.
"Are you truly a Ludwig? Or did your mother accidentally drop you on your head when you were an egg, damaging your cerebral cortex?"
Hathaway froze. "W-What?"
"I thought you were analyzing the efficiency of the extraction method. But you..." Victoria circled Hathaway, her voice dripping with academic disdain. "You were feeling Pity for the raw materials?"
"Your processing architecture is not just inefficient; it is Mortal."
Victoria leaned down, her face inches from Hathaway's. Her eyes were beautiful, deep, and utterly devoid of human empathy.
"You read data. You feel an emotion. You stop processing to digest that emotion. Then you react. Linear. Slow. Pathetic."
Thump.
Hathaway’s heart missed a beat.
The word "Mortal" hit her like a bullet.
"Mortals have singular, linear brains because they are short-lived weaklings," Victoria continued, unaware of Hathaway's internal panic. "They waste their limited lifespan agonizing over 'Ethics' and 'Feelings' because they lack the capacity to see the Big Picture."
"But you are a Witch. You are an Apex Predator. Why is your brain running on Mortal Hardware?"
Victoria poked Hathaway's temple hard.
"Is your mind so filled with Ludwig muscle fibers that you can't run a simple parallel separation? It's embarrassing. You are processing reality like a village girl who has never seen magic, gasping at every little detail."
Hathaway sat there, frozen. Cold sweat trickled down her back.
She doesn't know.
She thinks I'm just stupid. She thinks I'm a "Muscle-Brained Ludwig" who is bad at math.
But Victoria's insult—"You are processing like a Mortal"—was the accidental truth.
It was a slap in the face that woke Hathaway up.
I am thinking like a human.
I am letting my Earthling logic clog the system.
If I keep acting shocked by this world... if I keep clutching my pearls at every 'Cruelty'... she will eventually realize it's not stupidity.
She will realize it's Alien Logic.
"I... I apologize, Teacher." Hathaway lowered her head, hiding the panic in her eyes. "I was... distracted. It won't happen again."
"Suppress it," Victoria commanded, floating back to her throne. "Treat the text as data. Treat the False Mandrake as a variable. Treat the Angel as a resource node."
"Do not 'Feel'. Process."
"If you fail again, I will assume your brain is defective and apply [Shock Therapy] to jumpstart your synapses."
Hathaway swallowed the bile in her throat.
She picked up the crystal pestle. Her hand was shaking, but her eyes were hardening.
Process. Don't feel.
Kill the Human inside. Boot up the Witch.
"Restarting..." Hathaway whispered.
[Time]: 8:15 PM (Six Hours Later)
This time, she held it.
[Thread A] was a rhythmic metronome. Grind. Grind.
[Thread B] was a stable, spinning shape.
[Thread C] was solving the equation.
[Thread D] was reading without judging.
Hathaway had entered a "Flow State." Her conscious mind felt detached, floating above her body, watching her own hands work.
She was finally reading A1 International Standard: The Ruthless History as intended.
"Report on Thread D," Victoria commanded, sensing the stabilization. "Subject: Resource Acquisition. Subsection: The Heavenly Plane. Summarize."
Hathaway didn't stutter this time. Her voice was flat, mechanical, efficient.
"In the Witch's perspective... Heaven and Hell are not religious destinations. They are... Open-Pit Mines."
"Continue."
"We invade Hell primarily for Rubies and High-Energy Demon Blood. These are essential catalysts for Destruction Magic. Rubies from the 7th Layer of Hell have the highest mana conductivity. To acquire them, Witches typically... exterminate the local demon population to clear the mining shafts."
"Correct. Demons are renewable resources; they respawn like weeds. And Angels?"
Hathaway looked at the anatomical diagrams again.
Angel Wing Dissection. Halo Energy Extraction.
The images were grotesque. But this time, under the multi-threading protocol, she didn't feel nausea. She saw Data. She saw Value.
"Angels..." Hathaway recited. "Unlike Demons, who are ugly and purely functional... Angels are aesthetically pleasing to the Witch's eye. Therefore, they are categorized as 'Luxury Goods' and 'Rare Materials'."
"Specifics?"
"Angel feathers make excellent quill tips due to their light-affinity. Their blood is a vintage delicacy for banquets."
"However, the most valuable resource is their 'Emotional Spectrum'." Hathaway read the text that had sickened her earlier, but now her voice was steady. "To take a creature of pure good, corrupt its mind, shatter its faith, and turn its tragedy into a stage play... this generates a unique frequency of 'Despair Mana' that is highly sought after for Enchantment spells."
"Teacher," Hathaway asked. Her voice was calm, but the question was genuine. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do we do this? Is it... hate?"
Victoria paused. She floated to the front, her face inches away from Hathaway.
Her deep ocean-blue eyes held absolutely no focus, yet Hathaway felt stripped naked under that sightless gaze.
"You are still looking for 'Human Logic', Hathaway. That is your Ludwig weakness showing again."
Victoria tapped the cover of The Ruthless History.
"We don't hate Angels. In fact, we love them. We love them like a gourmet loves a rare bluefin tuna. Or a silkworm. Does a human hate the silkworm when they boil it alive to get the silk?"
"No. They just want the silk."
Victoria spread her hands, encompassing the thousands of books in the room.
"Witches are an arrogant, long-lived species. We stand at the top of the food chain. We do not have 'Human Rights' treaties with our food, nor do we sign peace accords with our livestock."
"This book, Hathaway..." Victoria declared coldly. "Do not read it as a record of morality. It is not a bible."
"This book is a Shopping Catalog."
"It teaches our descendants: When you need a Ruby, go to Hell. When you need a feather, go to Heaven. When you need labor, go to the Abyss."
"History is simply the log of where we found the best materials, and which species we had to exterminate to get them."
Hathaway stared at the book.
The title The Ruthless History suddenly made sense. It wasn't about being mean. It was about the absolute, cold indifference of a Player looking at the NPCs of the server.
Angels drop Feathers. Demons drop Rubies. Elves drop wood.
That's it. That's the world.
"I understand," Hathaway whispered.
And terrifyingly, she realized she truly did.
She looked down at the book. Her finger traced the next chapter title. The ink was red. The font was jagged.
[Chapter 22: The Purge of the Faceless]
It was a joke. A cruel, cosmic joke. The textbook of this world was predicting her own execution in real-time.
Hathaway felt a drop of ice-cold sweat slide down her spine. The air in the room suddenly felt too thin, as if the massive tome were sucking all the oxygen out of the atmosphere to fuel its own dark history.
"Good," Victoria nodded, satisfied with the lack of empathy in Hathaway's eyes. "Since you have mastered the art of 'Dehumanization', let us proceed to the next case study."
Victoria’s voice became softer, almost amused.
"This one is my favorite. It details how our ancestors dealt with a species that tried to... imitate us."
Hathaway’s finger froze on the page.
A cold shiver, far worse than the False Mandrake's scream, crawled up her spine.
"Imitate... us?" Hathaway asked, her voice tight.
"Yes. Thieves who wore our faces. Parasites who hid in plain sight."
Victoria smiled. It was a beautiful, serene smile that promised absolute annihilation.
"Turn the page, Hathaway. Let me show you what happens to Imposters in this world."