[Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · Dormitory [Golden Bough] · Room 302
[Status]: Critical
Hathaway was no longer walking. She was shambling.
If anyone from the outside world saw the "Young Miss" of the Ludwig family now, they would call a necromancer.
She hadn't washed her hair in three days. It was tied back in a messy bun held together by a spare quill. She was wearing mismatched socks—one striped, one polka-dotted. There was a smudge of Dragon Blood Ink on her cheek that looked suspiciously like war paint.
Right now, she looked more like a lich than any noble.
She sat on the floor, surrounded by the Eight Pillars of knowledge. The books were no longer enemies. They were parts of her body.
She was eating a Golden Croissant mechanically, bite by bite. The 50-Solar pastry, a delicacy that would make a gourmet weep, was being consumed without joy. To her, it was just biomass fuel for the furnace in her brain.
Inside her mind, the noise was deafening, yet perfectly organized.
Thread A: History... Re-simulating the logistics of the Hell Crusade... Supply chain failure at Sector 4 confirmed.
Thread B: Metallurgy... Void-Steel Density is 7.8g/cm3, thermal conductivity is negative... Check.
Thread C: Botany... Star-Grass Vein Pattern matches the antidote profile... Check.
Thread D... Hunger levels at 40%. Ignore.
She wasn't reading anymore. She was Processing.
She looked up at Victoria.
Her eyes were terrifying. The blurriness and confusion of the first week were gone. In their place was a cold, flat, dead-fish stare. It was the stare of a doctoral student who had stared into the abyss, and decided to eat the abyss because she was out of snacks.
"Teacher," Hathaway rasped. Her voice was dry as ancient parchment.
"What?" Victoria looked up from her midnight tea, raising an elegant eyebrow.
"I finished the General Manual." Hathaway pointed to the 3,000-page tome lying open on her lap. "I cross-referenced the Rune Tables on Page 1,400 with the Alchemy Stabilization Protocols on Page 2,103."
She tapped a specific paragraph with a finger stained yellow by sulfur.
"I found a bug."
"The author confused 'Sulfur' with 'Soul-Sand' in the stabilization formula for the [Mind-Clearing Potion]."
Victoria paused. Her teacup froze in mid-air.
The room went silent.
Victoria narrowed her eyes, her mana-sight scanning the page Hathaway was pointing at. She didn't smile immediately. Instead, she leaned forward, her voice dropping to a dangerous, testing tone.
"Are you questioning the International Standard?" Victoria asked slowly. "This is the 2004 Revised Edition. It was updated just last month by the Alchemy Association. Are you saying the Head of the Department made a mistake? Are you saying a student knows better than the Council?"
Hathaway didn't flinch. She didn't look scared. She looked Bored.
"I don't care if it's the 2004 Edition or the Word of Grand Witches," Hathaway mumbled, her eyes glazed over as she ran a simulation in her head. "Logic is Logic."
She pointed at the formula again.
"Sulfur is a volatile catalyst. Soul-Sand is an absorptive stabilizer. If you use Sulfur in a mental-stabilization formula, the solution becomes highly acidic."
Hathaway simulated the reaction in Thread B.
"It wouldn't clear your mind. It would dissolve your frontal lobe and explode the cauldron."
She looked at Victoria, her expression dull but absolutely firm.
"The book is wrong. If I brew this, I die. That is the only truth."
"..."
Victoria slowly lowered the cup. The dangerous tension vanished instantly.
A rare look of genuine approval—mixed with a hint of pride—crossed her face.
"Correct." Victoria admitted, a small smile playing on her lips. "You passed the real test. It is not a typo, Hathaway. It is a Filter."
Victoria stood up and walked over to the mini-fridge.
"The passing grade for the A1 Exam is 50 points. You can get those 50 points by memorizing the book like a parrot. If you write 'Sulfur', you will pass."
"But to get 120 points? To be a Scholar?" Victoria took out a bottle of "Deep Sea Glacial Water" and handed it to Hathaway. "You need to spot the lie. You need to realize that the 'Authority' is trying to kill you."
"Witches do not have Bibles, Miss Ludwig." Victoria's voice was soft but heavy. "We exist to question the world. If you cannot question the textbook, you are not fit to weave reality."
"Drink," Victoria commanded softly. "You have evolved. You are no longer a rich tourist pretending to be a Witch. Welcome back to civilization."
Subject: A1 International Standard: Witch Philosophy, Law, and Economics
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The heavy atmosphere of "Study Hell" had lifted slightly. Now, it was time for the final pillar: Understanding the World.
Victoria flipped a heavy, glowing gold coin into the air.
Cling.
The sound was crisp and resonant. She caught it with two fingers, holding it up against the light.
"Identify this currency," she commanded.
Hathaway didn't need to look closely. She smelled it.
It didn't smell like metal. It smelled like Vanilla, Sunshine, and Moral Purity. It smelled like a childhood dream wrapped in candy.
"It is a Standard Soul Coin (Type-V)," Hathaway recited without looking up from her notes. "The universal currency of the Inner Sea of Stars. Current exchange rate: 1 Coin = 100 Hours of Imp Labor or 15 Minutes of Greater Demon Service."
"Correct. Now, explain its composition."
"It is a synthetic alloy," Hathaway answered, her voice flat as she recalled the horrifying, brilliant truth of Witch Industry. "Despite the name, it contains 0% Human Soul."
Hathaway gestured vaguely with her quill.
"It is a mixture of 40% Cow Soul (for volume), 30% Pig Soul (for texture), and 30% synthesized 'Memory Dust' extracted from lab-grown slimes. The mixture is subjected to Lady Irene's (5th Seat) patented 'Joy-Injection Process' to mimic the taste of a Saint's soul."
"And the economic impact?" Victoria asked, spinning the coin on the table. "Why do we use fake souls?"
Hathaway let out a cynical laugh. This was her turf. She was a corporate slave on Earth; she understood capitalism better than magic.
"Disastrous... for the Demons," Hathaway shrugged. "Before the Type-V, Devils hunted humans for souls. It was inefficient, dangerous, and provoked crusades from the Church."
"But then, Witches industrialized the process. We flooded the market with these cheap, delicious, high-purity synthetic coins."
Hathaway pointed at the spinning coin.
"It tastes better than the real thing. It's purer than the real thing. And it costs a fraction to produce. We effectively hyper-inflated the Abyssal Economy."
"The value of 'Real Human Souls' collapsed overnight," Hathaway concluded. "Why would a Demon risk his life fighting an Exorcist for a 'gritty, sinful human soul' when he can just work a 9-to-5 for a Witch and buy a 'Premium Vanilla Soul Coin' at the convenience store?"
"I heard the Succubus Queen went bankrupt six years ago," Hathaway added a piece of trivia she picked up from the news. "She had to sell her castle and is currently livestreaming on the Witch Network just to pay off the interest on her loans."
"Precisely." Victoria stopped the coin with one finger. Her eyes gleamed with the cold light of a ruler. "We did not conquer the Abyss with swords, Hathaway. We didn't need Holy Light or Divine Retribution. We conquered it with Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management."
Victoria pushed the coin across the table to Hathaway.
"Remember this lesson. Magic bends reality. But Economics bends the will. Violence ensures they cannot say no. Economics ensures they do not want to say no."
Hathaway picked up the coin. It felt warm against her skin. She flipped it over her knuckles—a trick she learned in her past life, but now it carried a completely different weight.
So this is the truth, she thought, a cold, arrogant smirk touching her lips. We didn't just defeat the Abyss. We didn't just kill the monsters. We Domesticated them.
Violence built the factory. Economics hired the workers. The demons aren't gods to be bargained with. They are just cheap labor for our supply chain.
Hathaway closed her fist around the coin. This is Our world.
[Time]: 04:00 PM
[Status]: The Calm Before the Storm
The room was different.
The chaotic piles of parchment were gone. The smell of burnt alchemy ingredients had been scrubbed away. The mountains of books were closed, stacked neatly in a tower that reached Hathaway's waist.
Hathaway sat in the center of the room on a meditation cushion.
She was clean. She had showered. She was wearing a fresh, crisp uniform. Her silver hair was brushed and shining. She wasn't fidgeting. Her hands rested perfectly still on her knees.
She closed her eyes.
Inside her head, the chaotic screaming of the past month had silenced. Instead, Four Distinct Threads were humming in perfect harmony, like a well-oiled engine idling before a race.
Thread A (Memory): Replaying the timeline of the Ovelia War, indexing dates and names like a filing cabinet.
Thread B (Calculation): Simulating the alchemy formula for a [Mana Potion], visualizing the fluid dynamics in real-time.
Thread C (Linguistics): Reciting the 300 key runes of High Gothic in a background loop.
Thread D (Perception): Listening to the sound of Victoria turning a page, the dust motes dancing in the light, the hum of the mana lamps.
It wasn't painful anymore. It was Power.
"It is quiet," Hathaway said. Her voice was calm, steady, and devoid of fear.
"The silence of competence," Victoria replied from her high-backed chair. She closed her own book—a fashion magazine she had been reading for leisure. "You have completed the curriculum, Hathaway."
Victoria stood up.
"You have consumed 21,040 pages of theory, 40 boxes of military rations, and approximately 3,000 Solars worth of my private pastry stash."
Victoria looked at Hathaway with her blurry, mana-sensitive eyes.
To her myopic vision, the girl sitting there was no longer the "Visual Fraud" she had met at the Bridge of Sighs a month ago.
Back then, that magnificent deep crimson aura felt like a tragedy. It was a masterpiece of raw power draped over a Scammer. It was like seeing a grand piano being used as a dining table by a barbarian who threw chili powder because she didn't know how to play music. The mana was perfect, but the soul wielding it was... unworthy.
But now? The deep red aura hadn't changed. It was still that heavy, stable, vintage-wine crimson.
But the Presence had shifted.
The chaotic "Input Lag" of a novice was gone. The flustered panic of an imposter was replaced by a cold, calculating stillness. The mana was no longer just sitting there; it was Waiting. It was primed by thousands of logic gates, ready to be unleashed not as a fistful of spice, but as a precise surgical strike.
The "Imp" who had offended her aesthetic sense was gone. Sitting there was a Witch. A weird one, yes. But no longer an Imposter.
She was a Scholar. And perhaps... finally... a worthy owner of that power.
"Tomorrow is the A1 Exam," Victoria said, her voice lacking its usual bite. "I have nothing left to teach you about the basics. You are ready."
The silence in the room was profound. It was the shared silence of two soldiers who had survived a siege together.
Hathaway opened her eyes. They were clear, red, and sharp.
"Thank you, Teacher."
BLAM!
Suddenly, the sanctuary of silence was shattered.
On the desk, Hathaway’s communication crystal exploded with a chaotic, deafening ringtone—Heavy Metal Witch Rock.
The guitar riff screamed through the quiet, scholarly room, sounding like a Banshee stepping on a Lego brick.
"?? BURN IT DOWN! BURN IT ALL DOWN! ??" (The chorus screamed).
The serene atmosphere evaporated instantly.
Hathaway flinched violently. The calm "Scholar" aura vanished for a split second, replaced by the panic of a daughter caught gaming at 3 AM.
She stared at the crystal, which was vibrating so hard it was about to fall off the table.
Caller: [The Bankroll (Mother)]
"I told them..." Hathaway stammered, her face turning pink. "I explicitly told them I was in seclusion! I told them not to call until the exam was over!"
But of course they called. They were Ludwigs. Rules were for people who didn't have 50,000 Solars to burn on gacha games. Privacy was a suggestion.
Hathaway didn't pick it up immediately.
For the past 29 days, she had imposed a brutal 'No Contact' rule on herself. No distractions. No gossip. No family drama. She respected the "Classroom" Victoria had built too much to break the atmosphere with her family's insanity.
She slowly turned her head and looked at Victoria. Her hand hovered over the crystal, but her eyes asked for permission.
"Teacher?"
Victoria looked at the trembling girl, then at the screaming crystal. She checked the clock on the wall.
04:05 PM.
The month was over. The contract was fulfilled. The "Hell Training" was officially finished.
Victoria didn't frown at the noise. She didn't scold Hathaway for the interruption. Instead, she simply closed her eyes for a brief moment, letting out a soft breath.
Then, she picked up her tea, the corner of her mouth lifting in a faint, tired, but genuine smile.
"The class is dismissed, Miss Ludwig." Victoria nodded at the phone. "Answer it. Before your mother decides to buy the telecommunications company just to check if the line is broken."
Hathaway let out a breath she didn't know she was holding.
The tension in her shoulders finally melted away. She smiled—not a polite smile, but a genuine, happy, human smile.
"Yes, Teacher."
She reached out and tapped the crystal.
Time to face the chaos.
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