[Time]: Day 24 of Enrollment, 02:00 AM[Location]: Yggdrasil Academy · Dormitory [Golden Bough] · Room 302
Day 24: The Walking Dead (Integration)
[Status]: Critical
Hathaway shambled. If anyone from the outside world had seen the "Young Miss" of the Ludwig family at that moment, they would have called a necromancer, and then asked the necromancer to hurry.
Three days unwashed, her hair was tied back in a messy bun held together by a spare quill, her socks were mismatched, one striped and one polka-dotted, and a smudge of Dragon Blood Ink sat on her cheek at an angle that looked suspiciously like war paint.
She sat on the floor, surrounded by the Eight Pillars of knowledge. The books had become parts of her body.
She was working through a Golden Croissant bite by bite at a fixed interval. The 50-Solar pastry, a delicacy that would make a gourmet weep, was biomass fuel for the furnace in her skull, and she would have accepted a potato.
Inside her skull the noise was deafening and perfectly organized. The Hell Crusade was re-running its logistics for the fourth time. Void-Steel held at 7.8 grams per cubic centimetre with its thermal conductivity sitting in the negative, checked. Star-Grass vein patterns matched the antidote profile, checked. Somewhere underneath all three, a small unattended voice reported that hunger was at 40%, and was told to take a number.
This had stopped being reading three days ago. It was Processing.
She looked up at Victoria with a cold, flat, dead-fish stare that had replaced the blur and confusion of the first week entirely. It was the stare of a doctoral student who had stared into the abyss, and then 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 3,250-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 frozen in mid-air, and the room went silent with her.
Victoria narrowed her eyes, her mana-sight crawling across the page Hathaway was pointing at. She leaned forward, and her voice dropped into something dangerous.
"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 met the question with the flat, unblinking stare of a woman being asked to justify gravity. 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."
Somewhere behind her eyes the reaction ran to completion, twice, and returned the same answer both times.
"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 lowered the cup. Something rare crossed her face, and it had the shape of a woman watching her own investment mature.
"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."
Day 27: The Great Depression of Hell (Economics)
Subject: A1 International Standard: Witch Philosophy, Law, and Economics
The air in Room 302 had come down a few degrees from Study Hell. One pillar remained.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Victoria flipped a heavy, glowing gold coin into the air.
Cling. The note hung there, crisp and resonant, until she caught the coin between two fingers and held it up against the light.
"Identify this currency," she commanded.
Hathaway smelled it from where she sat.
It smelled like Vanilla, Sunshine, and Moral Purity. It smelled like a childhood dream wrapped in candy and sold at a markup.
"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, flat as a spreadsheet. "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. Her turf at last.
"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. "She had to sell her castle. She is livestreaming on the Witch Network now, just to service the interest."
"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 had no need of 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 from her past life that now carried a completely different weight.
So this is the truth, she thought, a cold, arrogant smirk touching her lips. We beat the Abyss, and then we did something worse to it. We Domesticated them.
Violence built the factory. Economics hired the workers. The demons are line staff now, costed by the hour and filed under Operations.
Hathaway closed her fist around the coin. This is Our world.
Day 29: The Final Afternoon
[Time]: 04:00 PM[Status]: The Calm Before the Storm
The room was different. The chaotic piles of parchment had been squared away, the smell of burnt alchemy ingredients scrubbed out of the air, and the mountains of books stood closed in a single tower that reached Hathaway's waist.
Hathaway sat in the center of the room on a meditation cushion, clean, showered, in a fresh uniform, her silver hair brushed to a shine and her hands resting perfectly still on her knees.
She closed her eyes, and the screaming of the past month resolved into four clean lines running at once, like a well-oiled engine idling before a race. One walked the timeline of the Ovelia War, filing dates and names as it went. One simulated a [Mana Potion] and watched the fluid dynamics settle. One recited the three hundred key runes of High Gothic on a background loop, the way other people hummed. The fourth simply listened: Victoria turning a page, dust moving through the light, the hum of the mana lamps.
It had stopped hurting somewhere in the last week. What was left was Power.
"It is quiet," Hathaway said, and her voice came out level as a poured drink.
"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 had finished being the "Visual Fraud" she 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.
The aura itself was unchanged, still that heavy, stable, vintage-wine crimson. What had moved was the Presence behind it.
The novice's "Input Lag" had given way to a cold, calculating stillness, and the mana had stopped merely sitting there. It was Waiting, primed by thousands of logic gates, ready to go out as a precise surgical strike rather than a fistful of thrown spice.
The "Imp" who had offended her aesthetic sense had been replaced by a Witch. A weird one, yes, and a Scholar, and perhaps, at last, a worthy owner of that power.
"Tomorrow is the A1 Exam," Victoria said, and for once she said it gently. "I have nothing left to teach you about the basics. You are ready."
What followed was the silence of two soldiers who had survived the same siege.
Hathaway opened her eyes. They were clear, red, and sharp.
"Thank you, Teacher."
BLAM!
On the desk, Hathaway’s communication crystal detonated into 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).
Hathaway came off the meditation cushion by three inches. The calm "Scholar" aura held for exactly as long as it took the guitar to reach the second bar, then collapsed into the face 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.
Her hand stayed where it was. 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 turned her head by degrees and looked at Victoria. Her hand hovered over the crystal, and 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 fulfilled, the "Hell Training" finished.
Victoria closed her eyes for a moment and let 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 had been holding since the guitar riff, and her shoulders came down with it. She smiled, and it came out happy, and human, and entirely her own.
"Yes, Teacher."
She reached out and tapped the crystal.
Time to face the chaos.