[Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · Dormitory [Golden Bough] · Room 302
The holographic projection of Margaret faded, leaving behind the afterimage of her manic, wine-fueled grin.
The physical card—[The Witch of Eternal Slumber]—sat on the desk, its rainbow foil surface shimmering in the dim light.
Hathaway’s hand trembled as she covered it, her mana instinctively locking onto the treasure. She took a deep breath and tapped the silver barrier surrounding her desk.
Pop.
The opaque silver dome dissolved into thin air.
The sounds of the room returned—the ticking of the clock, the scratch of a quill.
"Done?"
Victoria’s voice broke the stillness. She was sitting in her high-backed chair, facing away from Hathaway, reading a book. She hadn't looked once.
She had respected the Absolute Privacy Protocol—sight, sound, and mana signature were all blocked.
"I assume the... seismic activity... has concluded?" Victoria noted dryly, not turning around. "Even through the barrier, I could feel the vibrations in the floorboards. Your caller seemed... spirited."
"Yes," Hathaway let out a breath, wiping sweat from her forehead. "My mother. She's... a lot."
"I can imagine."
Victoria closed her book. She swiveled her chair around, her expression calm, polite, and completely unreadable.
"Well, as long as the dormitory is still standing—"
Then, her gaze dropped.
Her mana-sensitive eyes caught a glimpse of something on Hathaway's desk. A specific, rainbow-colored reflection that should not exist in reality.
The "polite roommate" mask cracked instantly.
"Wait."
Victoria stood up. She didn't walk; she practically teleported to the side of Hathaway's desk. The calmness was gone.
She wasn't looking at Hathaway with the scrutiny of a teacher. She was looking at the desk with the specific, painful, hungry gaze of a Collector who had just witnessed a miracle.
"'The Witch of Eternal Slumber' · Ovelia. The 'Starlight' Limited Edition. Foil finish." Victoria whispered the name, her voice trembling slightly.
"And you Soul-Bound it instantly," she noted, seeing the faint mana residue on Hathaway's fingers. "Fast reflexes. Very possessive. That card..."
Victoria took a slow breath to steady herself. "...has a global drop rate of 0.002%. It is the Holy Grail of the Starlight Pool."
She looked at Hathaway, her blue eyes filled with a mix of aristocratic envy and genuine confusion.
"I saw it fall from a spatial rift. Did your mother just... send you this?"
"I have been chasing that card for five years," Victoria continued, her voice turning cold as she recalled the trauma. "I liquidated my entire Family Dividend—50,000 Solars—into the Starlight Pool last month. I opened five hundred packs. Do you know what I got?"
"A lot of... Lava Dragons?" Hathaway guessed cautiously.
"Lava Dragons are SR. They are acceptable fodder," Victoria scoffed. "No. I drowned in a sea of 'Common Brooms' and 'Giant-Horned Deer'."
Victoria pressed her fingers against her temple, looking physically ill. "And when I finally hit the 'Grand Witch Pity Timer'... do you know who answered the summons?"
Hathaway swallowed. "Who?"
"Paddy."
Victoria spat the name out like it was a piece of rotten meat. "The 9th Seat. The Plumed Dragon Witch."
Hathaway gasped. She instinctively took a half-step back.
The memory of the "Skyscraper Jump" was still fresh. The sheer, unreasonable malice of the Plumed Dragon species. If a normal Witch's motto was "Harm others to benefit oneself," the Plumed Dragon Witch's motto was "Harm others even if it benefits no one—especially myself."
"I spent 50,000 Solars..." Victoria whispered, her voice trembling with suppressed rage. "...and I pulled the Troll of the High Council. I burned the card immediately."
Victoria took a deep breath, composing herself. She looked back at the Ovelia card, her gaze burning with curiosity.
"So, tell me, Miss Ludwig. How? How did your family acquire this?" Victoria leaned in, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. "Did you manage to stroke the tail of a Black Cat?"
The Black Cat.
The moment those words left Victoria's lips, a jolt of electricity shot through Hathaway's spine. It wasn't magic; it was a Pavlovian reflex inherited from the original Hathaway.
A memory from the "Data Cache" surfaced instantly:
A dark room. The manic glow of a gacha screen. And a ceramic statue of a sleeping black cat on the desk, its head completely bald.
The glaze had been mercilessly rubbed away by the original's frantic, sweaty palms before every 10-pull. In a fiercely atheist society where magic was treated as high-dimensional physics, Ovelia was the only entity that defied calculation. She wasn't a deity; she was a walking, breathing Probability Distortion Field.
Rather than treating the ceramic cat as a religious idol, the original Hathaway had utilized it as a superstitious Signal Booster. Since Witches didn't pray, her frantic petting was a desperate, pseudo-scientific attempt to siphon a fraction of Ovelia's contagious luck, hoping to violently twist her own fate from "E-Rank" to "SSR."
So that's why there was a bald cat statue in my luggage, Hathaway realized with a mental grimace. It wasn't modern art. It was a pathetic attempt to steal bandwidth from the ultimate statistical anomaly.
Hathaway blinked, shaking off the urge to reach out and touch the phantom cat. She looked at Victoria.
"No," Hathaway said honestly, a small smile touching her lips. "My mother didn't use the Cat Totem. She didn't rely on 'Passive Luck'."
"She was playing poker with a Luck Witch. She bet our family Villa on a single hand."
Victoria’s eyebrows shot up. "She bet an estate? On cards?"
"Yes. And she won." Hathaway paused, then added the most important detail. "She said she cheated."
"Even better," Victoria nodded approvingly, her tone shifting from envy to respect. "Cheating successfully against a Luck Witch requires immense skill. It implies she wanted that card more than she feared the consequences."
Victoria leaned back, her fingers tapping the armrest of her chair, her demeanor returning to that of the elegant tutor.
"The Ludwig family's luck is as chaotic as its finances. Remind me never to play poker with your mother."
Victoria leaned back, her fingers tapping the armrest of her chair. "But that call... it changed you."
Victoria pointed a pale finger at the air surrounding Hathaway.
"I can't read minds, Hathaway. But my eyes see Turbulence. When you were reading the history book earlier, your mana was vibrating with a high-pitched, jagged frequency. It looked like static on a broken screen."
"It was gray. Unstable. Flickering. I thought you were terrified of the curriculum. Or perhaps..." Victoria paused, her voice turning slightly mocking. "...realizing that you are hopelessly behind."
"But now?"
Victoria smiled. It was a faint, amused curve of her lips.
"The static is gone. The gray has turned into a deep, heavy crimson. It stabilized into something... dense. Something solid."
"You feel hungry," Victoria whispered the word. "Not the hunger for food. And certainly not the fear of a failing student. It is the hunger of a collector who just realized they own the rarest item in the catalog. It is the weight of possession."
Hathaway looked down at her hands.
Victoria was right.
The fear of being an "Imposter" was gone. Why? Because an Imposter would be terrified of that phone call. An Imposter would feel guilty about the Villa.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
But Hathaway?
She only felt pride.
That's my mother. That's my card.
"I realized something, Teacher," Hathaway said softly.
She reached out and tapped the open page of The Ruthless History. The text about the Shapeshifter Purge was still visible under the dim light.
"I was reading about the Shapeshifters. About how they were exterminated."
"Ah." Victoria nodded, glancing at the blood-red text. "A gruesome chapter. Given your... previous 'sympathy' for Feathered Livestock—Angels—I wondered if this genocide offended your delicate sensibilities?"
Victoria's tone was testing. She expected Hathaway—the girl who hesitated to kill an Angel—to find the extermination cruel.
"No," Hathaway answered immediately. "I didn't find it cruel. I thought... they were stupid."
"Oh?" Victoria raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Stupid? That is a harsh judgment for a species that forced the Council to issue a Universal Sanitation Order. How so?"
"They tried to mimic Witches."
Hathaway looked at the text, her lip curling in genuine disgust. "They studied us. They copied our faces. They copied our spells. They tried to act like us."
"But if it were me..." Hathaway leaned back in her chair, the leather creaking. Her red eyes gleamed with a dangerous, cold light. "...I wouldn't mimic. I would become."
"If you eat the role... if you swallow the identity whole... if you can't tell the difference between the fake and the real... then the fake is the real, isn't it?"
Victoria stared at her for a long, heavy moment.
To her Mystic Eyes, the mana around Hathaway wasn't flickering with the deceit of a liar. It was burning with the conviction of a fanatic. The red aura was steady, devoid of the "gray static" of hesitation.
Then, a low chuckle broke the tension.
"An aggressive philosophy. Very... Holheim. Very... pragmatic."
Victoria’s pale hand reached out and rested on the open book, her long finger tapping the section about the [Soulfire Purge].
"You are correct, but you are missing the core reason. Do you know why we exterminated them, Hathaway? Why we didn't just banish them? Why we spent centuries burning them until their very concept was erased from history?"
Hathaway looked at the text. "Because they were thieves? Because they stole our identities?"
"No." Victoria shook her head gently. "Thieves are annoying, but we don't hunt them across twelve dimensions. kleptomania is practically a traditional sport in our society. By the Abyss, your mother just scammed a friend out of a card worth an entire estate."
"We hunted the Shapeshifters because they committed the ultimate sin against Witch-kind."
Victoria leaned in, her voice dropping to a hiss.
"They tried to Define us."
Hathaway blinked. "Define?"
"The Shapeshifters were logical creatures. They came from a dimension of strict Cause and Effect. They studied us. They saw our anger, and they mimicked anger. They saw our calmness, and they mimicked calmness. They built algorithms to predict our behavior."
"But they made one fatal calculation error." Victoria tapped her own temple. "They didn't have the Noise."
"They thought our Chaos was 'Madness'. They thought our Order was 'Reason'. They didn't understand that for a Witch, Chaos and Order are the same thing."
Victoria began to pace the room. Her movement was fluid, navigating the furniture she couldn't clearly see by memory and mana sense.
"A Witch can be weeping over a broken nail on Thread A... While simultaneously calculating the trajectory of a meteor strike on Thread B... And planning tonight's dinner menu on Thread C."
"We are not bipolar. We are just fast."
Victoria spun around, her dress flaring.
"An idea sparks— Desire. The brain simulates the path— Logic. The body moves— Action. It happens in a nanosecond. The 'Reasoning' process is compressed so tightly that it looks like impulse."
"To the slow-witted races—like Humans, or Elves, or those pathetic Shapeshifters—we look whimsical. We look irrational."
"But in reality? We are the most hyper-rational creatures in the universe. We just process the 'Why' and the 'How' so fast that the world only sees the 'Result'."
Victoria sneered, looking at the book as if the Shapeshifters mentioned in it were physically present and offending her.
"But those Shapeshifters... they tried to act 'Consistent'. They tried to be 'Polite' when they should have been greedy. They tried to be 'Logical' in a human way when they should have been calculating profit."
"They tried to put a leash of 'Single-Threaded Logic' on a 'Multi-Threaded Existence'."
Victoria waved her hand, conjuring an illusion of a memory—a smoky scene of a high-end Witch restaurant from 1600 years ago.
"We walked into a room," Victoria narrated. "And we saw two Witches. Identical faces. Identical mana signatures."
"One was screaming at a waiter because her soup was cold. She was making a scene. She was threatening to burn the restaurant down. But if you looked closely... her mana was perfectly stable. Her eyes were scanning the room for exits. She wasn't angry; she was screaming because she calculated that 'Intimidation' was the most efficient way to get the waiter to reveal the location of the hidden menu."
"She was chaotic on the surface, but icy cold underneath."
"The other one..." Victoria’s expression twisted into disgust. "...Was politely apologizing to the staff. She was saying, 'Oh, it's fine, I don't want to cause trouble.'"
"We killed the polite one instantly."
Hathaway shuddered. "Because she was polite?"
"Because she was fake."
"She was empty. She didn't have the thousands of voices screaming, calculating, desiring, and plotting all at once inside her skull. She was a sketch trying to be a 3D model. She was a 'Character' written by a bad author who thinks 'Good People' are always polite."
Hathaway listened, and a cold realization washed over her.
It hit her harder than the wind from the skyscraper.
She closed her eyes and imagined a Shapeshifter trying to be Margaret. She imagined a creature wearing Margaret’s silver hair and red eyes. She imagined this creature sitting at that gambling table tonight.
And then... being sensible.
She imagined the Fake Margaret saying: "Oh, I shouldn't bet the Villa. That's irresponsible. I should save it for my daughter's future."
Hathaway felt a wave of nausea rise in her throat.
It wasn't fear. It was revulsion.
That’s not my mother.
If Margaret acted 'Sensible', she would be a corpse.
Margaret bet the Villa because she loved Hathaway. Margaret cheated because she valued the Result (The Card) over the Process (The Rules). Margaret was a mess of greed, love, arrogance, and brilliance.
A Shapeshifter would look at Margaret selling the necklace and think: "She is crazy."
A Shapeshifter would look at Anna selling the car and think: "She is wasteful."
A Shapeshifter would look at Rhode destroying a mech for a tart and think: "She is violent."
Wrong.
They were none of those things.
Margaret calculated that the necklace was worth less than her daughter's tuition. Value Judgment: Optimal.
Rhode calculated that destroying the mech was faster than dodging. Time Management: Efficient.
The Shapeshifters mocked this complexity by trying to act "Normal." That was the blasphemy.
They looked at the magnificent, high-speed, multi-threaded fire that was a Witch's soul... and they tried to replace it with a damp rag of "Common Sense."
They insulted us, Hathaway thought.
The "Us" came naturally. She didn't feel like an imposter anymore.
Because she understood the Chaos. She loved the Chaos.
She was the one who kicked the lid off Newton's coffin. She was the one who felt the "Toxic Love" and decided to drink it.
A Shapeshifter would have run away from this family. But Hathaway stayed.
"They deserved it," Hathaway whispered.
Her voice was calm. It wasn't an act. It was a judgment passed by a member of the species.
"They insulted us. They were... Boring."
Victoria paused.
Her deep blue, blurry eyes didn't widen in surprise. Instead, they softened into a look of rare, genuine satisfaction. It was the look of a master blacksmith seeing a blade finally take an edge after days of hammering.
"Precisely." Victoria nodded, her voice filled with approval. "They were boring. And in this world, being boring is a crime worse than murder. A murderer has passion. A boring person has nothing."
Hathaway felt a surge of adrenaline.
The fear of being discovered was gone.
Because she realized something fundamental:
Victoria won't kill me for being strange.
She would only kill me if I tried to be 'Normal'.
As long as I am greedy, as long as I am chaotic, as long as I burn with this hunger... I am a Witch.
She wanted to know more. She wanted to consume this logic until it became her bone marrow.
She reached out.
Her finger traced the title of the next chapter. The font was standard, academic, and excruciatingly boring.
[Chapter 24: The Third Hell Crusade - An Analysis of Multi-Party Strategic Divergences]
Strategic Divergences?
Hathaway stared at the words.
Two days ago, she would have believed it. She would have memorized the dates and the treaties and thought, "Ah, yes, politics."
But now?
After learning about the Shapeshifters... after hearing Victoria's mockery of "Reason"... after seeing her mother bet a house on a card game...
She looked at that polite, sanitized title, and she smelled a Lie.
It was a euphemism. It was a layer of thick foundation make-up applied to hide a jagged scar. "Strategic Divergences" sounded like a meeting in a boardroom.
But Hathaway knew Witches now.
Witches didn't have "Divergences." They had tantrums. They had grudges. They had catfights that leveled continents.
What really happened?
Hathaway felt a dark, intellectual hunger gnawing at her gut. She didn't want to read the text. She wanted to Deconstruct it. She wanted to hear Victoria tear this polite title apart and show her the bloody, chaotic, hilarious mess underneath.
She reached out, her hand trembling with anticipation.
She grabbed the corner of the page.
SNAP.
Suddenly, the book slammed shut.
It wasn't magic. It was Victoria’s hand, pressing down firmly on the cover, pinning the heavy tome to the obsidian desk.
Hathaway blinked, her red eyes wide with confusion.
The sudden interruption broke her focus. The adrenaline crashed like a severed puppet string.
A sharp, throbbing pain drilled into her temples—the warning signal of Mana Overdraft. The room spun slightly, the shadows lengthening and twisting.
"Teacher?" Hathaway asked, her voice raspy and dry. "I can still read. I know it says 'Strategic Divergences', but I want to know the—"
"You are drooling blood, Miss Ludwig," Victoria said calmly.
Hathaway touched her nose. Her fingers came away wet and red.
She looked down. A drop of dark crimson blood had splashed onto the leather cover of The Ruthless History. She hadn't even felt it.
"Your [Thread D] is overheating. Your cognitive centers are reaching critical failure," Victoria diagnosed clinically, checking the clock in the corner. "It has been twelve hours since we started. Your spirit is hungry, but your hardware is melting."
"But..." Hathaway stared at the closed book, feeling a withdrawal symptom. "The book is lying, isn't it? 'Strategic Divergences'... that's not the truth. I need to know the truth."
"The truth will still be there tomorrow. It has waited a thousand years; it can wait another night."
Victoria withdrew her hand.
She stood up and turned away, her black dress trailing across the carpet as she walked towards the heavy oak door of her private bedroom on the first floor.
"Besides," Victoria added without looking back, "I have 'Introduction to Magitech' at 8:00 AM tomorrow. I do not intend to fail my own classes while saving yours."
She stopped at her door and pointed a pale finger towards the spiral staircase leading to the second floor.
"The study session is over. Go upstairs. Sleep. We have twenty-eight days left. This is a marathon, not a sprint."
"But remember this feeling," Victoria said softly, her hand resting on her doorknob.
She didn't turn around, but her voice carried a rare weight.
"That hunger you feel right now? That refusal to accept the written word? That disgust for the 'Boring'? Keep that."
"That is the difference between a Historian and a Witch."
Click.
Victoria entered her room and closed the door. The sound of the lock turning was final.
The "Teacher" was off the clock. The roommate had retreated to her territory.
Hathaway sat alone in the silent, dark living room.
Her body was screaming for rest. Her brain felt like it had been run through a blender. But her spirit... her spirit was buzzing with a high-frequency vibration.
She wiped the blood from her nose with a handkerchief. She looked at the closed door of Victoria’s room, then at the mountain of books on the table.
She stood up, her legs trembling slightly.
She grabbed The Ruthless History with her left hand, hugging it to her chest like a shield. In her right hand, she gripped the Ovelia Card.
Her thumb brushed against the foil surface, feeling the faint hum of the Mana Lock—a heartbeat that matched her own.
She didn't need to check the shadows for monsters tonight.
She didn't need to worry about being an "Imposter."
The Shapeshifters were dead because they were boring.
She was alive because she was Interesting.
And she was holding the proof of her mother's chaotic love in her hand.
As she climbed the steps, she didn't dream of Earth. She didn't dream of her office or her sensible grey suit.
She dreamt of the words "Strategic Divergences."
And she couldn't wait to wake up, watch Victoria burn those words to ash, and reveal the absurdity hidden beneath.