[Location]: District 1 · The White City · "Iron Rose" Comprehensive Arena · VIP Box No. 3
Hathaway stood in the center of the arena, the gravel beneath her feet making a soft crunching sound against her boots.
In her right hand, she tightly gripped a [Ludwig Custom · 'Silver Star' Model].
It was a masterpiece of alchemy, forged from 95% conductive Moon-Silver and inlaid with a high-purity sapphire core that hummed with latent energy. In the market, this "stick" cost enough to buy a small villa in District 12.
But in Hathaway's sweaty palm, it looked less like a weapon of mass destruction and more like a glow stick she didn't know how to turn on.
She felt exactly like a newbie player who had just hit the level cap, bought a full set of "Pay-to-Win Skins," and confidently queued into the arena, only to realize the opponent was a top-10 server-ranked Smurf.
And said Smurf was not only naked (gear-wise) but also lazily telling her: "Come on, sis, I'll play with one hand tied behind my back."
Opposite her, Lin was casually rolling up the sleeves of her black tactical vest, revealing forearms with fluid lines and tight muscles. She didn't even bother using her legendary staff, [Legion's Bane], which could probably trigger planar quakes. Instead, she had just grabbed a generic, white-grade wooden stick from the weapon rack—the kind you could find anywhere.
"Repeating the rules one last time."
Lin swung the wooden stick, tearing the air with a sharp whoosh.
"You have 40,000 M-Units and top-tier gear from the Ludwig family. I have 60,000 M-Units, but I will restrict myself to Tier 1 (First Circle) and below basic cantrips. If you can force me to move half a step or even graze the hem of my clothes, you win."
Hathaway took a deep breath. The 40,000 M-Units of mana inside her surged through her veins like a roaring river, channeling into the [Silver Star] staff, causing it to emit a blinding azure radiance.
That overflowing sense of power gave her a certain delusion—
Yes, she is a legend, but this is a tutorial match!
I am currently a stat-stick monster with 40k M-Units! This is like fighting a raid boss—as long as my HP bar is long enough and my blue bar is deep enough, I can just button-mash my way to victory, right?
More importantly... she glanced at her reflection on the highly polished surface of her staff—those crimson, blood-like eyes were contracting slightly with excitement.
This is my trump card.
The massive death flag she had planted just half an hour ago roared in her mind: As long as I can see through her movements, forget winning—I'll make her reimburse me for that ridiculously expensive hotpot!
"Stop glaring."
Opposite her, Lin finished rolling up her sleeves and tapped the generic wooden stick on the ground.
"Although your eyes look like you want to swallow me whole right now, I have to remind you: Staring at me won't increase your win rate."
In the spectator stand, Rhode was sitting with absolutely no decorum, her long, slender legs crossed, hugging an extra-large bucket of popcorn. She brushed some crumbs off her miniskirt and flicked her finger upward.
An orange fireball condensed out of thin air. It didn't have an explosive roar; instead, it resembled a quiet, unstable blob of liquid magma, pulsing gently in the air.
Rhode glanced at Hathaway, who looked ready to pounce, gripping her expensive staff like a baseball bat, and then at Lin, whose relaxed posture suggested she was waiting for takeout delivery. A mischievous grin tugged at the corner of Rhode's mouth.
"Don't be nervous, Hathaway. Getting personally beaten up by Old Lin is 'fan service' that many people beg for but can't get."
Rhode's gaze instantly sharpened.
"Catch this—Fastball."
In the etiquette of Witch Duels, there is no "Ready, Set, Go." The moment the fireball touches the ground, the fight to the death begins.
Rhode slammed her palm down.
The fireball plummeted like a falling meteor, dragging a trail of distorted red light as it smashed toward the ground.
The instant the fireball began its descent, Hathaway snapped her eyes wide open, her consciousness screaming:
Open eyes! Cheat mode ON!
The world changed.
Under the insane infusion of 40,000 M-Units of mana, those red eyes instantly overheated. The rapidly falling fireball turned into a frame-by-frame slow-motion slideshow on Hathaway's retinas.
She saw the subtle turbulence generated as the fireball cut through the air, saw the spark remaining on Rhode's fingertip, and even saw every grain of dust kicked up by air pressure near Lin's feet.
I see it! So slow! Everything is under my control!
Hathaway even had the leisure to construct complex tactics in her mind: 0.42 seconds until fireball impact. Lin's center of gravity is tilted 3 degrees to the left. The moment the fireball explodes, I just need to point the [Silver Star] and unleash an instant-cast [Explosive Fireball] to lock down her movement, and this game is in the bag!
BANG!
The fireball hit the ground, exploding into a rippling shockwave.
Hathaway's brain sent the command to her body: Do it! Cast! Coordinates (12, 45), maximum output!
However, what happened next completely shattered every fantasy she had as a game designer about "cheats."
Her eyes clearly captured it: Lin moved.
That practice wooden stick moved in a trajectory that looked "heineously slow" to Hathaway's eyes but was lightning-fast in reality. It slipped past the [Silver Star] staff—which Hathaway hadn't even finished raising—and gently tapped the tip of her nose.
[Hathaway's visual feedback: Slow motion.]
[Hathaway's physical feedback: System Crash.]
No chant. No prelude.
[Evocation · Tier 0 · Force Push]
BOOM—!
It was an utterly absurd experience.
Hathaway watched helplessly as she was swatted away like a baseball. Her body traced a beautiful parabola in the air. The "slow-motion" vision allowed her to see every fold of her robe fluttering in the wind, and see her unformed Fireball spell "misfiring" inside the crystal core of her expensive staff due to the forced interruption. The violent mana backlash made her lungs feel like they were filled with pepper spray.
Then, SPLAT.
Without suspense, she plastered against the protective wall with a miserable thud, then slid down slowly like a soggy pancake.
Time Elapsed: 0.05 seconds.
"Too slow." Lin stood in place, one hand in her pocket, her breathing not even slightly disrupted. "Seeing a fastball and only thinking about reaction speed? What are you doing? Writing a thesis in your head?"
"No... my eyes clearly saw it..." Hathaway clutched her chest, crawling up from the ground with a face full of shock and a trace of blood at the corner of her mouth. She used her staff to prop herself up, the metal shaft groaning under her weight. "In that moment, the world definitely slowed down..."
"What's the use of seeing it?"
Lin ruthlessly popped her bubble.
"It's like installing a master-grade perception array behind your eyes while your casting circuits are still apprentice-tier."
She pointed at Hathaway's still bloodshot red eyes.
"Your visual refresh rate has indeed increased due to high mana infusion, effectively giving you high-speed perception functions. But your neural transmission, muscle memory, and casting circuits are still 'white grade' garbage. Being able to see but not move—in a real duel, this only serves to make you die with more clarity. You'll watch yourself die frame by frame."
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Hathaway's heart went cold.
So this isn't a cheat code; it's just a monitor with an insanely high refresh rate but zero processing power!
Forget reimbursing the hotpot; if we keep fighting, I'm afraid I'll end up owing medical bills.
"I don't believe it!"
Hathaway gritted her teeth. If I can't react fast enough, I'll just max out my defense! A stat monster never surrenders!
"[Abjuration · Greater Mage Armor]!"
Hathaway learned her lesson this time. The moment she got up, she slammed the [Silver Star] into the ground.
The foundation of 40,000 M-Units erupted, and a pale blue wall of light, thick as bulletproof glass, formed instantly. Hathaway huddled behind the shield, finally feeling a shred of security.
Come on! Idol! This is a Tier 4 strength shield! Let's see how you break it with a Tier 0 cantrip!
Lin looked at the turtle shell and sighed.
"Typical pay-to-win player mindset. You don't understand Resource Efficiency at all."
She didn't attack the shield.
She simply snapped her fingers.
[Conjuration · Tier 1 · Grease]
A puddle of slick, black magical grease appeared out of thin air beneath Hathaway's feet.
Hathaway, fully focused on maintaining her frontal defense, suddenly lost gravity under her soles.
To stabilize her center of mass, she instinctively flailed her arms to find balance. In that split second, due to the caster's drastic shift in posture, the structure of the "invincible" shield collapsed instantly, dissipating into shards.
Immediately after, Lin followed up with a completely non-lethal—
[Evocation · Tier 0 · Gust]
A blast of wind swept past with precision.
Hathaway looked like a drunkard trying to dance ballet on ice. Feet on grease, facing the wind, she performed a standard "faceplant" in full view of everyone, smashing face-first into the puddle of oil.
Time Elapsed: 1.5 seconds.
[Tactical Analysis]
- Hathaway Consumption: Greater Mage Armor (Tier 4) ≈ 1,200 M-Units
- Lin Consumption: Grease (Tier 1) + Gust (Tier 0) ≈ 15 M-Units
- Cost-Benefit Ratio: 1 : 80
- Bill Status: Hotpot Refund Progress: -1,200 M-Units.
- Evaluation: You tried to use the price of a supercar to smash a five-cent thumbtack.
"You traded the price of a sports car for one of my bicycle tires." Lin twirled the wooden stick leisurely. "Hathaway, with this playstyle, even if you had 400,000 M-Units, you wouldn't last three minutes."
The next ten minutes turned into a one-sided instructional session on "Fancy Ways to get Stomped."
- Round 5: Hathaway tried to use the high-quality Light Crystal on her staff to cast [Flash] and blind her opponent. Lin simply closed her eyes, sensed her position via airflow, and during the gap in Hathaway's chant, an invisible [Mage Hand] quietly groped Hathaway's ankles and tied her shoelaces together.
"Remember, Mage Hand isn't just for holding cups; it's for creating an IQ gap."
- Round 8: Hathaway tried to create distance to kite her. Lin used [Animate Rope] to trip her, then casually used [Ray of Frost] to freeze the [Silver Star] staff to the floor. Hathaway tugged on it three times, but it wouldn't budge.
- Round 10: Hathaway desperately tried melee combat. Result: Lin used pure martial arts—a clean shoulder throw—to toss her out of bounds.
Hathaway lay on the floor, staring at the spotlights on the ceiling, her brain buzzing.
Not because of the violence, but because of the despairing gap.
It felt like a toddler who just learned to walk trying to challenge an Olympic sprinter.
Hathaway fell for the thirteenth time.
This time, she didn't get up. She lay spread-eagle, covered in oil, her hair a bird's nest, looking like she had lost the will to live.
It was as if a giant red [WASTED] sign had popped up in her vision. Even more despairing was the realization that she would probably never get that expensive hotpot money back in this lifetime.
"It's over."
Lin walked over and looked down at her. "13 to 0."
Lin tossed the wooden stick to Rhode, her tone flat. "If this were real combat, you would have died 13 times. We could have pieced your corpse together into a jigsaw puzzle."
Hathaway gasped for air, her voice choked with tears. "...This is impossible to fight. Every move before I make it, you've already set the counter. Every second of my existence is within your prediction..."
"It's not a bot; it's a brain." Lin crouched down and tapped Hathaway's forehead. "Hathaway, your current playstyle is like wielding a city-leveling siege cannon to swat a fly. In a real Witch Duel, Resource Management and Timing are king."
Rhode walked over and pressed an ice-cold sports drink against Hathaway's burning cheek.
"Alright, don't be discouraged," Rhode said, popping open a popcorn bucket. "Lasting thirteen rounds without rage-quitting makes you pretty outstanding already. Do you even realize who you were trying to hit?"
Before the fight, her "Data Cache" had warned her that Lin was the G.O.A.T., the "Overlord of the Century's End." But to a former game designer, "World Champion" was just an abstract title. She had genuinely believed that her 42,000 M-Units and her "anime protagonist eyes" could brute-force the skill gap.
But now, her bruised physical body finally translated what "G.O.A.T." actually meant.
The fan-girl cache in her head supplied one terrifying, concrete stat from Lin's absolute peak: A staggering 97% "First-Cast Rate" across an entire World League season.
Hathaway finally decoded the sheer horror of that statistic.
If a Control Mage—whose sole purpose was to interrupt, trip, and silence you—struck first 97% of the time against other world-class professionals, it meant her opponents literally didn't get to play the game. You were permanently stun-locked from the opening buzzer.
You try to raise your wand? Cast canceled. You try to move? Landing zone predicted.
She hadn't dismantled the eleven-year dynasties with bigger explosions; she had suffocated them with perfect, inescapable frame-traps. Her spell 'startup frames' were practically zero.
I tried to stat-check a player with perfect frame data while playing on a 500-ping brain, Hathaway thought, her soul leaving her body. I'm not a clown; I'm the entire circus.
"In my rookie year, they called my style a 'gimmick' because the League was obsessed with massive firepower," Lin said, standing up and brushing off her pants. Her blue-grey eyes looked down at Hathaway with absolute, cold pragmatism.
"They thought my win rate was just a cheap trick. So, by the second season, the entire League adapted. Every top-tier Witch evolved, copied my meta, and started playing the disruption game."
Lin stepped closer, her aura pressing down like a physical weight.
"And I still slaughtered them. I swept the championship three years in a row. Do you know why?" Lin sneered, the sheer arrogance of the undisputed apex predator radiating from her every word. "Because anyone can copy a loadout and a tactic, but they can't copy the hands operating them. They learned how to play my game, but I was already optimizing the frames they couldn't even see."
She looked at Hathaway, her tone softening slightly, though her words remained razor-sharp.
"In a real, unrestricted slaughterhouse outside the League, there is no referee to stop me from targeting their casting nerves directly. And you, Hathaway? You aren't even ready to be a punching bag. You are just a pile of waste material filled with mana but with zero processing speed."
Hathaway clutched the drink bottle. The cold condensation cooled her feverish brain.
She finally understood. In the eyes of this PvP monster, mana was not just a number; it was a weaponized rhythm played to the absolute limit.
Hathaway sat up and wiped the oil off her face fiercely.
The confusion and naive confidence in those red eyes vanished, replaced by a near-paranoid thirst for knowledge.
"...Again."
"Hah?" Lin raised an eyebrow.
"I said, Again!" Hathaway looked up, her eyes frighteningly bright. "That combo just now, [Grease] into [Gust]—I want to learn that! And that operation using [Mage Hand] to tie shoelaces... although it's cheesy, it's so effective! I want to learn that!"
Lin paused for a moment, then smiled.
It was her first genuinely satisfied smile today—not mocking, but the relief of seeing a kindred spirit who possessed the most important quality of a Witch: Pragmatism.
"Cheesy?" Lin raised an eyebrow, her tone carrying a hint of amusement at Hathaway's naivety. "Kid, tying shoelaces is kindergarten-level mischief. If you think that's dirty, you're going to develop PTSD when you meet a Plumed Dragon Witch."
She spun the wooden stick in her hand, her expression turning slightly grim, as if recalling some unpleasant memories.
"Those maniacs don't aim for your HP bar; they aim for your dignity. I only hurt your body. But they? They specialize in 'Social Death.' They will make you do things in the arena that will force you to change your name and migrate to another planet out of pure shame."
She looked at Hathaway with pity.
"Compared to the mental pollution they inflict, my little shoelace trick is practically a gentleman's greeting. But at least you understand that 'Honor' is just a shackle for the weak. You want to learn how to fight without a bottom line? You've got good taste."
She fished a crumpled letter out of her pocket, stamped with a shimmering silver World Tree emblem.
Hathaway instinctively reached out to take it, but Lin's hand moved past her.
Snap.
She flicked the letter directly at Rhode.
Rhode caught the envelope with two fingers, looking completely unsurprised.
"Yggdrasil Academy?" Hathaway saw the emblem on the envelope and froze. "Wait, isn't it already the middle of the semester?"
"Yggdrasil Academy doesn't look at time; it only looks at Hardware," Lin explained casually, her tone as matter-of-fact as if discussing some cosmic axiom. "That is the recognized apex of the entire star sector, the crown jewel of Witch Civilization. And Yggdrasil has only one hard rule for entry: Under 18, Mana Reserves exceeding 20,000 M-Units."
She looked Hathaway up and down.
"The old you only had 8,000 blue bar, which is the level of a regular honor student at a top school. But now, you have 40,000. In Witch logic, there is no 'late,' only 'strong enough.' As long as your stats meet the standard, you can transfer in anytime. This is Privilege."
Hathaway stared at the letter in Rhode's hand.
As a game designer in her past life, she knew the weight of this item all too well.
If this world were a game, this was the "VIP Pass" to the Endgame Content.
"Rhode," Lin ordered lazily. "You handle the logistics."
"Understood." Rhode tucked the silver letter into her jacket pocket. She looked at Hathaway with a smirk. "I'll take this Recommendation Letter to the Main House Archive first. I need to get the Matriarch to stamp the 'Financial Guarantee'—you can't enter Yggdrasil without a sponsor covering the tuition."
"I'll have the full admission package delivered to Auntie Margaret's desk before you even get home," Rhode said, tapping her pocket. "Don't worry about the paperwork. The Family Machine is efficient."
Hathaway nodded, feeling the weight of the "System" supporting her.
Lin gives the Ticket. Rhode validates the Ticket. The Main House pays for the Ticket. All I have to do is show up.
"However, don't celebrate too early." Lin suddenly changed the subject. "Yggdrasil has no written entrance exam. You can get in just by filling out a form, but in exchange—there is the Entrance Duel."
She held up one finger. "The rule is simple: As a new student, you have the right to designate one opponent from all the senior students watching for a duel."
"Designate an opponent?" Hathaway was stunned.
"This tests your eye, and it tests your guts. Pick someone too strong, and you get stomped. Pick someone too weak, and the whole school despises you. How to pick a 'lucky bastard' out of hundreds of people who you can beat and use to showcase your strength—that choice itself is part of your strength."
Hathaway swallowed hard. "So... who did you pick back then?"
Rhode, tapping the letter in her pocket, couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing.
Lin shrugged, looking completely unbothered.
"I found it troublesome. So I used an AOE hard crowd-control spell—[Curse of Tarantella]. I pointed at the three third-year seniors leading the pack. Then they tap-danced at the school gate for the entire night until their shoe soles wore through. Since then, no one has dared to disturb my afternoon naps."
Hathaway: "..."
"Alright, off you go."
Lin turned around, waving her hand at Hathaway with her back turned, her silhouette looking ridiculously cool.
"Go home. Pack your bags. Your mother is waiting for the good news. Report in at 8:00 AM tomorrow. Don't embarrass me. If you lose even the Entrance Duel, don't say you're my fan."