[Time]: Day 30 of Enrollment, 06:15 PM[Location]: Milan'thir · The Commercial Ring · "The Witch's House"
"I don't need courage," Hathaway smirked, reaching for the glass. "I just need a celebration."
Up close, the drink was doing two incompatible things at once. Translucent blue, boiling hard enough to bubble, and out of its own steam huge crystals of ice kept condensing, floating a moment in the churn, and melting back down.
"It looks like a storm," Hathaway whispered.
"It is a paradox," Victoria explained, picking up her glass. "It is brewed from Moon Sugar and Gin, sealed in ice, then flash-boiled with High-Tier Fire Magic. The spell keeps it perpetually in a state between 'Boiling' and 'Freezing'."
"The temperature is fixed at -3°C, but the texture is searing hot."
Victoria took a sip. Color rose in her pale cheeks. "It helps Witches with low sensitivity to feel their own mana flow. And for us... it just tastes like victory."
Hathaway picked up her glass. Azure, with fractured ice rotating inside it. The exact shade of Rory's eyes.
"To Rory," Hathaway smiled, clinking her glass against Victoria's.
"To the Siren," Victoria nodded.
Hathaway took a sip.
BOOM.
It felt like swallowing a liquid explosion. The cold hit her tongue first, numbing it, followed by a wave of boiling heat that rushed down her throat and detonated in her stomach.
Her mana circuits lit up like a Christmas tree. Her brain came back online at a clarity she had not paid for, while her body went floaty and boneless.
"Whoa," Hathaway breathed out a cloud of cold steam. "That is... awake."
"Now that your brain is online," Victoria cleared the table.
She looked around the bustling bar. The surrounding tables were full of Witches playing cards. Holographic monsters battled on the tabletops, and the air was thick with the excitement of gambling.
Victoria turned her gaze back to Hathaway. The Strict Tutor of the past month went somewhere, and what was left leaning across the table had the eyes of a Collector.
"The lighting here is perfect," Victoria whispered, leaning in. "Back in the dorm, I only got a glimpse. We were too busy cramming for the A1 Exam, and it would have been... unprofessional to get distracted by shiny cardboard."
She extended a gloved hand, palm up.
"But now, the exam is over. Show Her to me, Hathaway. I want to see the 0.002% miracle properly. I want to see the First Seat."
Hathaway grinned. The boiling-ice wine buzzed in her veins, and this was a flex she had been saving all month.
She pulled the heavy obsidian box out and set it on the table, then left it shut and drew [The Witch of Eternal Slumber · Ovelia] from her inner chest pocket instead, still sealed in its protective crystal shell.
With a dramatic flair, she placed it on the velvet tablecloth.
"Feast your eyes, Victoria," Hathaway smirked. "But don't drool on the foil."
Hummmm—
The moment the card face was exposed, the light in the booth seemed to bend.
The ambient sounds of the bar, the chatter, the music, the clinking of glasses, faded into a muffled background hum, as if the air itself had become heavy and viscous.
Hathaway looked at the card. Even though she had seen it before, her breath still hitched.
The card frame was a border of Solidified Void, a matte, abyssal black that seemed to absorb the surrounding light.
At the top, the name was inscribed in Original Witch Script.
The characters twisted and shifted like living smoke, and reading them was beside the point. The moment Hathaway's eyes touched them, the concept was shoved into her neural cortex, bypassing language:
【THE FIRST SEAT · OVELIA】【Meaning: The Silence Before the End】
And below the text lay the Portrait.
Inside the frame, Ovelia reclined in a void of scattered stars. She possessed the terrifying, raw beauty of a Top Predator resting after a hunt. Like a black panther lounging on a tree branch, she ran on the flat confidence that nothing in this dimension could reach her.
Her hair was a cascading waterfall of the night sky, blending seamlessly into the background cosmos.
The high, majestic black ears and the nine colossal flowing tails dominated the composition, and nothing about them read as fluffy; they carried a heavy, beast-like majesty, their fur shimmering with the cold light of distant nebulas.
Her eyes were half-open. They were deep, abyssal black irises that swallowed all hope and light.
She looked out from the card with an expression of Supreme Arrogance. It was a languid, side-eyed glance that looked down upon the viewer, conveying a clear message: 'You are too small to disturb my rest.'
It was the beauty of a natural disaster.
Below the art, the stats burned in the same cognitive Witch Script:
[Cost: 10 Stars][ATK: 30 / DEF: 30 / HP: 5]
Whoever balanced this card should be in prison, Hathaway thought, with enormous affection.
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The silence in the booth lasted about four seconds. In a room full of mana-sensitive Witches, a Starlight Foil going off was a flare, and whispers went up around them like a grass fire.
"Did you see that darkness? That wasn't an illusion spell.""That Frame... Solidified Void? Is that The Card?""Current market price is 625,000 Solars, and it's still rising. It's the Holy Grail..."
Witches from nearby tables stood up, craning their necks. Even the automated pianist seemed to miss a beat.
Hathaway sat straighter and let the room look.
That's right. Look at her. She is beautiful, and she is mine.
Victoria ignored the crowd. She kept her gloved hands well clear of the card and hovered over it instead, eyes tracing every line of the "Solidified Void" frame, drinking the artwork like it was the better vintage.
"Magnificent," she breathed. "The texture... the depth... It really is a window into the void."
She looked up at Hathaway, a rare, genuine smile on her face. "Thank you. That was... satisfying."
She lingered for a second longer, staring at the abyss within the card, before forcing herself to pull back.
With a sigh of reluctance, she straightened her posture and adjusted her velvet gloves. The soft, dreamy look of the Collector evaporated, replaced by the sharp, analytical gaze of the Duelist.
"However," Victoria tapped the table, signaling the end of the viewing session. "A masterpiece deserves a battlefield. And right now... we do not have one."
"What do you mean?" Hathaway asked, still admiring her Ovelia. "Too scared to play against a Chief?"
"No," Victoria pointed at the empty seat next to them. "I mean the rules."
"The Shared Void system requires a minimum card pool of 120 cards to remain stable. Your deck is 40. Mine is 40. That is only 80. We cannot duel 1v1. We need a third player to stabilize the dimension."
Hathaway's alcohol-fogged brain retrieved the rulebook a half-second late. Forty cards a player, all three decks shuffled into one public pool, three players minimum to hold the dimension open. One hundred and twenty cards.
"Right," Hathaway said, at the volume of someone who had definitely known that. "We need a third leg."
She looked around the room, eyeing the gawking crowd. "Any volunteers to get crushed by the High Council?"
"Me! Me! I want to play!"
A cheerful voice cut through the murmurs.
Before Victoria could vet the candidate, a young witch bounced over to their booth. She looked like the quintessential Girl Next Door, assuming your neighbor was vibrant enough to blind you: silky, shoulder-length black hair, eyes the color of bright rubies, and a smile radiating a terrifying amount of Genki. She looked like she had walked out of a shoujo manga on a budget.
"Hi! I'm Rina!"
The girl stared at the Ovelia card the way small children stare at aquariums.
"Wow! It really is the First Seat! Look at those ears! Look at that 'I don't care about you' expression! It's so cool!"
Victoria's gaze went over the girl once, top to bottom, and stopped somewhere around her table manners. "This table is playing with... high stakes cards. Are you sure?"
"I'm pretty confident in my luck!" Rina grinned, pulling out a deck box that was bright gold and slightly tacky. "I once bought a soda and won another soda five times in a row! Can I play? I promise I won't cry when I lose!"
Hathaway shrugged. "Sure. Fresh meat is welcome."
She looks harmless, Hathaway thought. Probably plays a casual deck.
"Great!" Rina sat down, slamming her deck on the table.
[Deck Core: The 5th Seat · Irene (The Sovereign of Avarice)]
Hathaway raised an eyebrow. Irene? That's a 'Gold Generation' deck. It focuses on economy and RNG. Not bad. But compared to Ovelia? Cute.
"So," Hathaway summarized. "We have the Lucky Girl (Rina). We have the Control Freak (Victoria). And I have..." She patted her obsidian box. "...The Entire Government."
"Wait."
Victoria didn't smile at the joke.
She raised a gloved hand, stopping Hathaway from touching the synchronization crystal. Her eyes locked onto the obsidian box with a sudden, sharp suspicion.
"A standard 'High Council' collector's set contains exactly 25 Cards." Victoria listed them off on her fingers. "The 10 Current Seats. The 10 Eternal Seats, meaning the historical founders. And the 5 Grand Artifacts."
"That is 25 cards," Victoria leaned in, her gaze piercing. "But the Shared Void rules require a legal deck of 40 Cards. You showed me the Queen earlier. But where is the infantry? What did you fill the remaining 15 slots with? Low-cost minions? Utility spells?"
Hathaway grinned. The original Hathaway, that magnificent obsessed whale, had skipped the useless "Minions" and "Items" entirely and gone for Thematic Perfection.
"Prepare yourself, Roommate," Hathaway said, sliding the box fully open to reveal the entire 40-card stack. "I didn't want to dilute the bloodline with trash mobs. So, I expanded the definition of the Council."
Victoria's eyes went down the deck, her brain processing the mana curves.
She saw the Current Seats (Cost 8-10). Powerful, modern, expensive.
Then she saw the Eternal Seats.
[The First Herbalist · Violet]
Cost: 10 Stars
ATK: 1 / DEF: 1
They were Ancient Pioneers. Legends who founded modern civilization. But in a duel? They were Monuments, not soldiers. Their cost was astronomical due to their status, but their combat stats were weaker than a stray cat.
And finally, her gaze landed on the 15 cards at the back of the deck, the ones Hathaway had added to fill the gaps. One of them caught the light.
[The Scarlet Fox of Casendiara · Josephine Durant]
Cost: 9 Stars
Hathaway's finger rested on the card a beat longer than it had on the others. Josephine Durant. She remembered Victoria's history lesson about the "Hell Crusade" and the "Ovelia War."
She is a tragic hero, Hathaway thought. I couldn't bring myself to remove her from the deck.
"I included the Former Grand Witches," Hathaway announced proudly. "Josephine, Don Jill Ross, George Morris... Every single Grand Witch who has ever held a seat in the modern era is in this box."
Victoria stared at the box.
She stared at the Current Titans (Cost 10).She stared at the Ancient Monuments (Cost 10, Stats 1/1).She stared at the Retired Legends (Cost 9).And she stared at the Artifacts (Cost 10).
Victoria froze.
Her hand, holding the wine glass, started to shake. Her lips pressed together so tightly they turned white. Her chest heaved.
Hathaway sipped her boiling-ice wine and watched.
She thinks I'm an idiot. She thinks I have a 'Brick Deck' that can't play anything for the first 8 turns.
Hathaway had read the Shared Void mechanic the way she used to read her own patch notes: hunting for the part nobody had meant to ship.
The rule was simple: In a three-player game, each player retains exactly two 'Core Cards' in their starting hand. The remaining 114 cards from the three decks are shuffled together to form the Shared Void.
Why should I put low-cost 'Goblins' (Cost 1) or 'Slimes' (Cost 1) in my deck? Hathaway thought, her inner toxic gamer awakening. My strategy is Malicious Sabotage.
"Ludwig... You... you have forty cards, and there isn't one of them under 8 Stars?" Victoria’s voice came out strangled, and squeaked at the end.
"Quality over quantity, Roommate," Hathaway replied, leaning back and crossing her arms. "I’ve dumped thirty-eight unplayable 8-to-10 Cost Titans into the shared pool. I am deliberately poisoning the well."
Rina blinked at Hathaway's deck. "Wow! That's so... toxic! But won't you draw your own heavy cards and get stuck too?"
"Of course I will," Hathaway said, unbothered. "The probability of drawing a brick is now equally symmetrical for all three of us. We will all choke on my Titans. We will all miss our early curves. The overall pace of the game will grind to a miserable, suffocating halt."
Victoria stared at Hathaway.
"You are forcing a slow game," Victoria whispered, her voice shaking. "You are deliberately dragging the board into a late-game stalemate, because..."
"...Because a slow game favors whoever is already holding the endgame in her opening hand," Hathaway finished, tapping the two Core Cards she had secretly retained. "You two might have retained early-game synergy cards as your cores. But I retained the absolute ceiling of the Witch World. I don't need to win the early game. I just need to make sure you can't either."
Victoria took a deep breath. She picked up her own deck box, [The Black Emperor's Shadow Court].
A smile worked its way onto her face, twisted at one corner and still climbing.
"It is... breathtaking, Hathaway," Victoria said softly. "Truly... breathtaking logic. You have brought a deck of arrogant Gods to a knife fight to force a stalemate."
"Tonight," Victoria whispered, placing her deck on the synchronization zone, "the High Council is indeed in session. And I cannot wait to see how they treat a master who tries to use them as bait."
Hathaway grabbed her deck.
I am ready. I have a plan. I am a genius.