[Time]: Day 4 of Enrollment, 10:45 AM[Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · Dormitory [Golden Bough] · Room 302
The silence in the room was heavy, weighted down by the ghost of a lost fortune.
Hathaway sat slumped in her chair, the previous adrenaline of her "Sacred Vow" settling into a cold, simmering resentment. She stared at the torn edge of the map, her mind still calculating the GDP of five missing layers of reality.
"Thirty Floating Cities..." she muttered, her voice sounding like a miser who had just watched a gust of wind blow a winning lottery ticket into a sewer. "We could have had thirty more cities. We could have had free energy."
She looked up at Victoria, her red eyes searching for the joke and failing to find one.
"Teacher, I accept that Witches are chaotic. I accept that we are greedy. I even accept that we are clinically insane most of the time. But..."
Hathaway gestured helplessly at the book.
"Are we truly this stupid? To lose an eternal fortune just because someone stole a lunchbox? To start a civil war over a song? It feels... inefficient. It feels like a plot hole in the history of a race that prides itself on 'Rationality'."
The scratch of Victoria’s quill stopped. She kept her eyes on the page and let the silence stretch, creating a vacuum that sucked the oxygen out of the room.
"Stupid?" Victoria finally repeated the word. Her voice was low, carrying a vibration that made the dust motes in the air dance. "You think the 'Golden Generation' of Casendiara, the generation that produced two Grand Witches, were brainless bullies who lost their minds over pork ribs?"
Victoria stood, the shadows of the room following her black dress like loyal hounds, and walked to the map, tracing the border between Casendiara and Caroshadel.
"No, Hathaway. The lunchbox was just the fuse. The explosion was engineered. Look at the map," Victoria commanded.
Hathaway looked.
In the projection of the Old Hell, the entrance to the vast, resource-rich Fourth Layer was located geographically closer to the forward operating base of Caroshadel.
"At that time, the crusade was going too well. The first three layers were conquered. But the prize... the jewel of the Fourth Layer... was sitting right on Caroshadel's doorstep."
Victoria’s voice turned cold and analytical.
"If the crusade had continued peacefully, Caroshadel would have claimed the logistical rights by default. They would have controlled the flow of Demon Crystals. They would have monopolized the slave trade of high-tier Devils."
"If Caroshadel obtained the resources of five more layers..." Victoria trailed off, letting Hathaway fill in the blank.
Hathaway’s eyes widened. Server-first clear on a five-layer raid zone, the design half of her brain filed, admiringly. Exclusive vendor rights. Every other guild locked out of the map for a thousand years. Whoever balanced this expansion should be fired into the sun.
"They would become a Superpower," Hathaway whispered. "They would eclipse Casendiara. The balance of power in the Council would shatter."
"Exactly." Victoria sneered, her expression twisting into a look of geopolitical ruthlessness. "The Witches of Casendiara realized this. They did the math. A unified Hell meant a powerful Caroshadel. And to the proud, arrogant Casendiara, a powerful neighbor is the ultimate nightmare."
Victoria laughed, a sound devoid of mirth.
"Demons are easy, Hathaway. Rivals are hard. Witches do not fear 'Demon Invasions'."
"To us, a Demon Invasion is just 'Free Delivery'. It saves us the fuel cost of traveling to Hell. It is resources knocking on our door, begging to be harvested. But a Competitor? A neighbor who controls the market? A rival who might have more Floating Cities than you? That is a catastrophe."
Hathaway shivered.
So the tantrum was staged, she realized. A preemptive strike. They were not fighting over food. They were fighting to make sure their neighbor stayed poor.
That's... somehow even worse than being stupid. That's purely malicious.
"So, they needed a fight. They did not simply get angry over a lunchbox. They were looking for a lunchbox."
Victoria painted the scene with vivid, brutal clarity:
"When that Holheim Witch beat up the thief, the Casendiara squad did not see a 'Civil Dispute'. They saw a Casus Belli: a justification for war. They beat up the Holheim Witch to provoke the alliance. They sang their Battle Hymn to assert dominance."
"And when they charged at the Caroshadel trenches..." Victoria paused, her eyes gleaming. "They did not do it because they were crazy. They did it because destroying Caroshadel's command structure was the primary strategic goal."
Cold sweat gathered at the back of Hathaway’s neck.
It was a Containment War disguised as a bar fight, and the history books had filed it under Comedy.
"That is why Lady Josephine and Lady Don stood by and watched," Victoria continued. "They did not stop their subordinates, because deep down they knew: District Interest comes before Alliance Interest."
"But they miscalculated," Hathaway whispered.
"Yes. They assumed the board would stay still while they removed a piece." Victoria looked at the empty void on the map. "They did not anticipate that the Devils had a 'Nuclear Option'. They played the Game of Thrones, and the Devils flipped the table."
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The room fell silent again.
Victoria turned away from the map, her focus locking onto her student with renewed intensity.
"But there is a deeper lesson here, Hathaway. One that applies to you, personally. Why did Caroshadel lose so badly?" Victoria asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Why was Caroshadel, a military powerhouse known for its iron discipline, beaten into the dirt by a squad of singing, eating lunatics in less than ten minutes?"
Hathaway recalled the text. Iron discipline. Military doctrine. They should have held the line.
"Because Casendiara was stronger? They had the 'Golden Generation'."
"No." Victoria shook her head firmly. "Because Caroshadel was Greedy."
"Greedy?" Hathaway blinked. "I thought you said they were naive?"
"Naivety and Greed are often the same thing, Hathaway."
Victoria walked to the desk and picked up a crystal vial of mana potion, full, shimmering, deep blue, and held it up to the light.
"Back in 1920, the concept of a 'Mana Reserve' did not exist. The doctrine was 'Maximum Firepower'. The Caroshadel Witches saw the Devils. They saw the loot. They saw the entrance to the Fourth Layer."
"They did not want to defend the line. They wanted to Clear the Map before anyone else could."
Hathaway's gamer instincts kicked in.
Clear the Map? Wait. You don't dump your entire mana pool on the first wave of mobs just to get the drop.
Victoria narrated the scene, her voice echoing with the scale of the destruction:
"The Caroshadel Commander... let us call her 'General Speedrun'. She looked at the battlefield and thought: 'If we unleash everything now, we can wipe out the Demon Lords instantly. Then, the Fourth Layer is ours.' To achieve that speed, she and her entire legion unleashed a Rule-Breaking Torrent."
Victoria waved her hand, simulating the chaos.
"They did not merely kill the Devils. They shredded the fabric of the dimension. For ten minutes, the laws of physics in that sector ceased to exist. Gravity was inverted. Time looped. Matter and Energy became a soup of chaotic data. Legendary-tier Demon Lords did not even have a chance to scream; they were erased by a tidal wave of reality-warping spells."
She is narrating an extinction event with the exact cadence Mom uses for a soufflé recipe, Hathaway noted, keeping her face polite. Somebody give this woman a cooking show.
"It was magnificent," Victoria admitted, her eyes gleaming. "It was the ultimate display of Witch Supremacy. But..."
Victoria tilted the vial.
Splash.
She poured out almost all of it. The blue liquid hissed as it hit the stone, evaporating into nothingness. Only a few pathetic drops remained at the bottom of the glass.
"After the bombardment, the Caroshadel Legion was empty. They stood amidst the twisted ruins of reality, proud of their work, waiting for their mana to regenerate so they could collect the loot. They assumed their 'Teammates', the Casendiara Witches, would cover them during the cooldown."
"They assumed that after the boss fight, everyone would sit down and roll dice for the equipment. It is logical, is it not?" Victoria smiled cruelly. "Like a dungeon raid party."
Hathaway nodded, and internally she was screaming.
Logical? That's suicide! You blew your cooldowns! You have zero mana! You are literally a sitting duck standing on a pile of gold! Even a rookie gamer knows you save a defensive spell for the loot distribution phase!
"But she forgot one thing." Victoria leaned down, her face shadowed. "She forgot that her teammates were also Witches."
"When the Casendiara squad arrived, they didn't see a hero who had cleared the way. They saw a rival standing on a pile of their potential loot. And most importantly..."
Victoria pointed at the empty vial.
"They saw a rival who was Defenseless. So the Casendiara Witches, fresh, full of mana, and still wiping BBQ sauce from their lips, launched their attack. They did not need strategy. They just poured firepower onto the exhausted Caroshadel troops."
"And then?" Hathaway asked, breathless.
"And then, Holheim joined the chat."
Victoria straightened her back, a hint of pride in her voice as she mentioned her own district.
"We saw the opening immediately. The Holheim Witches saw Casendiara bullying Caroshadel. They remembered their sister who had been beaten over a lunchbox just moments ago. They calculated the odds. If Casendiara absorbed Caroshadel, the balance of power would break. So, Holheim intervened. They reinforced the battered Caroshadel lines, unleashing their own curses upon the Casendiara aggressors."
Hathaway watched Victoria's expression.
Of course, Hathaway thought with a touch of cynicism. In Teacher's version, Casendiara is the bully. Caroshadel is the idiot. Holheim is the rational hero. The balancer.
"It was a mess," Victoria sighed, though she sounded strangely nostalgic. "Casendiara was fighting Caroshadel. Holheim was fighting Casendiara. And finally..."
Victoria paused, her lips curling into the specific, petty sneer a Holheim Witch reserves for her hereditary rivals.
"Milan'thir. Your people, Miss Ludwig. They decided to grace us with their presence."
Hathaway sat up straighter. Her cynicism vanished, replaced by a spark of ancestral pride.
Finally. The adults are here, Hathaway thought, relieved. In this madness of greedy gluttons and vengeful emos, at least my district retained some sanity. We are Milan'thir. We are the Nobility. We were the conscience of the Alliance!
"So... we came to stop the fighting?" Hathaway asked, her voice hopeful. "To mediate? To restore order?"
"Oh, they stopped it alright." Victoria rolled her eyes so hard Hathaway thought they might get stuck. "The self-proclaimed 'Police of the Alliance'. The arrogant 'Arbiters of Justice'. They looked at the three-way brawl and decided that everyone was guilty."
"So, how did the noble Milan'thir keep the peace?" Victoria leaned in, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "By bombing everyone equally."
Hathaway’s smile froze. "W-What?"
Wait. That's not mediation. That's...
"They could not be bothered to figure out who started it. They did not care about the nuances. To Milan'thir, the chaos itself was an insult to their 'Order'. So, they deployed [Strategic Silence Spells], which is a polite, academic way of saying they nuked the entire grid."
"Holheim, Casendiara, Caroshadel... your people did not discriminate. They just suppressed everyone with superior firepower."
"Hathaway," Victoria chuckled darkly. "Your ancestors did not join as peacekeepers. They joined as Riot Control with a God Complex. It was no longer a battle. It was Fratricide on a galactic scale."
Hathaway slumped back in her chair.
My ancestors... I thought they were Paladins. Turns out they were just trigger-happy cops who hated noise.
Victoria slammed the empty vial onto the table. The sound cracked like a gunshot.
"While the Witches were busy tearing each other apart, Casendiara for greed, Holheim for revenge, and Milan'thir for 'Order', the Devils saw the opening. They realized that the 'Invaders' had gone mad. So, they cut the cord."
"If Caroshadel had retained the ability to fight back..." Victoria leaned on the table, staring deep into Hathaway's eyes. "If they had not been so eager to speedrun the dungeon... If they had held back even a little... They could have deterred Casendiara. They could have maintained the formation. But because they were 'Empty', they invited robbery."
Victoria leaned down further, her voice hissing like a serpent coiling around its prey.
"Weakness is a sin, Hathaway. But believing that your allies, even the 'righteous' ones, will not backstab you over a pile of gold? That is a capital crime."
Hathaway stared at the empty vial on the table.
Where the history books had put a tragic hero, Hathaway now saw a greedy player who blew every cooldown on the boss, only to learn too late that Friendly Fire was enabled and that the "Server Admins" of Milan'thir had just logged in to ban everyone permanently.
"That disaster taught us a lesson written in blood," Victoria said, her voice straightening, regaining its composure. "A lesson that became the cornerstone of modern Witch Academy training."
"We stopped treating war like a co-op game, Hathaway. We realized that in the end, every Witch is playing a Solo Campaign."