[Time]: Day 31 of Enrollment, 02:15 PM[Location]: Dorm 302 · Gothic Main Hall (Via Holographic Call)
"Mom?" Hathaway asked, dumbfounded, staring at the holographic destruction of her backyard. "Did we get invaded by Marenia? Or did the house flood?"
"No, honey. It's a renovation."
Anna walked into the frame in a sheer silk robe, barefoot on the warm crystal floor, hair frizzed from mana overexposure, wearing the specific manic glow of somebody who has spent a catastrophic amount of money in a very short time.
"We are building a 'Deep Sea Thermal Cycle Snowfield' ecosystem for Rory," Anna announced proudly, gesturing to the chaos behind her. "You know Siren Witches are picky about humidity. Standard dry air makes their scales itch. So, we hired a top contractor from Marenia."
Hathaway frowned. "Why hire a contractor? Can't you and Margaret do this?"
"We could do the terraforming," Anna admitted, walking over to a coral shelf to arrange some sea-glass vases. "But we can't replicate the 'Super-Evolution' trait."
"Super-Evolution?"
"It's a Siren Nest characteristic," Anna explained. "Their mana carries a specific frequency of 'Pure Evolution'. It doesn't just create an environment; it accelerates the beneficial mutation of the ecosystem."
"If we did it ourselves, it would just be a cold swimming pool. But with a Siren Contractor? In a month, we might get Giant Tree Squids or Sea-Tree Tyrant Octopuses growing in the backyard."
Hathaway nodded, remembering the "Cretaceous Park Incident" in biology class. A Witch's nest leaked too much mana, and suddenly the local lizards evolved back into Dinosaurs. The Witch woke up to find a T-Rex drinking from her toilet.
Right. We are paying for the RNG Buff.
"It sounds... efficient," Hathaway noted, looking at the rapidly forming snowfield outside. "But also like a trap."
"Just look at her work, though," Anna sighed at the snowfield. "It's art."
Hathaway shifted her gaze past Anna, to the artist herself.
The Siren Contractor was a tall, stunning woman wearing a standard blue contractor’s jumpsuit with an enchanted tool belt. She didn't use a wand. She simply Looked.
She glanced at a patch of boiling mud that was setting too slowly. Her eyes flashed a faint blue, Zap, and the mud cooled into solid, reinforced permafrost. She wiped sweat from her forehead, blinked her eyes, and a gust of chilling wind (Personal Air Conditioning) blew around her.
"That's Madame Vosh," Anna whispered reverently. "She's expensive, but look at that efficiency. She's using her racial talent to calibrate the soil density to the micro-gram."
As if hearing her name, Madame Vosh descended. She hovered outside the window, holding a clipboard, looking professional and gravely concerned.
"Lady Ludwig," Vosh said, her voice smooth like a cello, projecting through the glass with acoustic magic. "We have a problem with the Ley Lines. The resonance frequency of the artificial lake is currently at 440Hz."
"Is that bad?" Anna asked, clutching her pearls.
"It's... acceptable for a Human Witch," Vosh said with a pained expression, as if the word tasted like lemon. "But your daughter is a Siren Witch. Like all of our kind, she perceives the world through the [Eye of Eternal Frost]."
Vosh tapped her own glowing blue eyes significantly. "Our eyes are not just cameras; they are thermal sensors. At 440Hz, the standard quartz foundation creates a 'Thermal Flicker'. It won't hurt her, of course. But for a developing infant? It will be... annoying. Like a constant, low-pitched buzzing sound inside her optic nerves."
Anna gasped. "Buzzing?! In my baby's eyes? Absolutely not!"
"My thoughts exactly," Vosh nodded sympathetically. "To silence the flicker, we need to tune the frequency to 432Hz (The Golden Ratio). But to do that, I can't use standard quartz. I need to embed a matrix of Abyssal Black Pearls into the foundation. About... two thousand of them."
Hathaway narrowed her eyes.
Bullshit.
The Eye of Eternal Frost is a Legendary Spell Organ. It doesn't get 'annoyed' by quartz vibrations. She just wants to sell you pearls.
"Mom," Hathaway interrupted. "She's upselling you. That's pseudo-science."
"I know," Anna whispered back, covering the microphone. "I checked the manual. The effect is negligible. Maybe 0.5% improvement in comfort."
"Then say no!"
"But Hattie," Anna looked at her daughter with serious eyes. "It's 0.5%. Do you want your sister to be 99.5% comfortable? Because I don't. I want 100%."
Anna turned back to the window and shouted. "Do it! Use the Black Pearls! The Grade-A ones!"
"Excellent choice, Ma'am." Vosh's smile arrived with too many teeth in it. "I'll add it to the bill."
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Hathaway rubbed her temples.
She is a Perfectionist Mother, and the Contractor knows exactly how to weaponize that. It's a hostage situation, and the hostage is the concept of "The Best."
"Beautiful work," Hathaway said, watching Vosh dump a literal chest of treasure into the mud. "And expensive."
"The renovation was within budget," Anna sighed, turning away from the window. "The problem... is the Landscaping."
She turned the camera to a small, high-tech greenhouse erected in the corner of the living room. It was sealed with a Class-4 Biohazard Barrier. Inside stood ten strange, beautiful trees.
Their leaves were a noble Purple-Gold, glowing with a hazy fluorescence. The branches were heavy with fruits that looked like carved blue sapphires. They looked like a jewelry display that had learned photosynthesis.
"Glacial Purity Fruit Trees," Anna said, the way other people say a diagnosis. "It was a sales trap. That Siren contractor... she's a filthy, brilliant Capitalist. She gave Rory a sample fruit. Just one. A 'free gift'."
"Hattie, you should have seen her." Anna gestured helplessly, her eyes misty. "Rory dropped Margaret's Abyssal Staff immediately. She hugged the fruit with both tiny hands. She purred. She looked at us with those big, teary, icy blue eyes..."
"And you bought ten trees," Hathaway guessed.
Classic newbie parent mistake. Never take the free sample. The first hit is always free. That's how they get you.
"We bought ten trees," Anna admitted. "Ten trees, and a bag of Cryo-Fertilizer. And then... we read the manual."
Anna walked closer to the camera, lowering her voice as if sharing a scandalous secret. "Hattie, do you know the history of these fruits? Originally, ancient Witches cultivated them to increase mana. But they failed. They didn't boost mana at all. They were deemed 'useless trash' and dumped in the seaside test fields."
"But then..." Anna's tone became suggestive, her eyebrows wiggling. "A group of bold Sirens sneaked ashore and stole them. And guess what? Those Sirens, average-looking every last one of them, became stunning. Their skin turned smooth as glazed porcelain, their eyes became deep as the ocean, and their pheromones went off the charts."
"Were they arrested?" Hathaway asked, blinking.
Earth Logic: Theft = Jail.Witch Logic: Theft of Property = Total Obliteration or Eternal Suffering.
"Arrested?" Anna scoffed, looking at Hathaway like she was a naive child. "Oh honey."
"They became too charming. The Witches who caught them... didn't punish them."
Anna gave a wicked, knowing grin. "The Witches very enthusiastically 'kidnapped' them. Brought them home. Locked them in the bedrooms. And 'loved' them thoroughly. Day and night. It is said that the Sirens cried for mercy, but the Witches just fed them more fruit and brushed their hair."
Hathaway: "..."
She rubbed her temples.
Well. That explains a lot about our species.
Considering Witches usually turn trespassers into living furniture, soul-batteries, or garden gnomes, getting kidnapped and pampered as a Trophy Pet is basically a Happy Ending. It's weird. It's horny. It's morally gray. But by Witch standards? It's absolute mercy.
"So," Hathaway sighed. "What does this erotic history lesson have to do with my bankruptcy? Are we starting a Siren harem?"
"Everything!" Anna pointed at the beautiful trees. "Because of that 'Beauty Effect', these fruits have a massive side effect. They must be eaten when fully ripe."
"If they are Unripe..." Anna looked terrified. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "...They emit a Pheromone Storm. For an adult Siren, it's just a heat cycle. A bit of blushing, a bit of fever. Manageable."
"But for an infant like Rory? It is catastrophic."
"Her immature circuits would boil. She would become a walking aphrodisiac bomb," Anna explained, her hands shaking. "Can you imagine? A baby radiating 'Unconditional Love' pheromones at 500% intensity? Every golem, spirit, stray beast, and probably the mailman within ten miles would have broken down our doors trying to... mate with the furniture. Or adopt her. Or worship her."
"We would have a zombie apocalypse, but instead of brains, they would be chanting 'Cute! Cute!' while destroying the house."
"So just... don't let her eat the green ones?" Hathaway asked logically. "Put a fence around the trees."
"We tried!" Anna threw her hands up in defeat. "But she Cries. She points at the trees. She wobbles her lip. She wails until the windows crack and the foundation shakes. We can't handle the crying, Hattie. We just can't. It breaks Margaret's heart. She was about to summon a Demon Lord just to juggle for the baby to make her stop."
"So, to let her eat them safely... we had to panic-buy enough Absolute Cryolite to flash-ripen the entire orchard overnight."
Anna pointed to the shimmering floor of the greenhouse.
The shimmer came off a high-end magical mineral locked in perpetual flux: one-third solid ice, one-third flowing liquid, one-third sublimation mist, all of it throwing blinding prismatic light.
Cryolite. Sold by weight, like flour, because the multiverse burns through High Witch mana lenses and curse-breaker potions by the ton.
"It's a strictly regulated 6 Solars per gram," Anna explained with a pained smile, rubbing her temples. "Normally, a very reasonable expense for crafting. But when you have to buy enough of it to engrave a fifty-square-meter 'Perpetual Winter Array' on the floor... we simply gritted our teeth and drained the liquidity."
Hathaway felt her soul leave her body.
She did the mental calculation instantly. The number made her dizzy.
6 Solars a gram.A 50-square-meter array.That's not a floor. That's a literal carpet of melted gold.
My 30,000 Solars got walked on. Barefoot.
Because my baby sister is a foodie, my moms are pushovers, and a Siren contractor is a marketing genius who invented 'Visual Buzzing'.
She looked at the velvet cushion with a 3-Solar lump hidden under it. Then at the mist-shrouded floor that had eaten her dividend.
"So, we are broke," Hathaway whispered.
She ran her personal finances. Her account still held about 6,600 Solars, enough to ride out the thirty-day wait until the next family dividend in comfort, with her daily academy routine fully funded.
But... she was a Ludwig!
She had just treated Victoria to a 7,400-Solar night out, dropping cash on Deep Sea Ice Moon Sugar and Dragon Egg Cocktails without blinking, and the 'Carefree Rich Girl' persona had gone live, fully patched, running beautifully.
Now? She was effectively downgraded from "Wealthy Heiress" to "Student on a Strict Budget."
If she wanted to invite Victoria to the VIP lounge again, or casually order another cup of that 500-Solar Starlight Black Tea, she would have to mentally calculate her balance first.
The sheer indignity of it! Hathaway thought, clutching her chest as if she had been shot. I just survived the hellish A1 Exam! I am supposed to be enjoying the high life, not browsing the 'Part-Time Jobs for Freshmen' bulletin board just to maintain my cash flow! I refuse to be a working-class hero in front of Victoria!
"But don't worry," Margaret's relaxed, cheerful voice came from the side, instantly pulling Hathaway out of her financial despair.
The camera shifted.
Margaret had traded the noble attire for a casual silk robe and was lounging in a rocking chair by the fireplace, sipping what looked like lava-whiskey. In her hand, she was idly tossing the Abyssal Staff, the legendary weapon Rory had been using as a teething toy, testing its weight like a cudgel.
She had the look of a General who had just worked out which neighboring province to pillage in order to make payroll.
"We are Asset-Rich but Cash-Poor," Margaret said, a dangerous, confident grin spreading across her face. Her eyes glowed with a faint, predatory red light. "We have the land. We have the artifacts. We just need a quick injection of liquidity to cover your allowance and the milk powder. And fortunately..."
She stood up, the Abyssal Staff humming with dark power.
"...I've already found the perfect victims... I mean, Clients."