[Location]: District 1 · Milan'thir (The White City) · Ludwig Manor · Guest Wing (The Cloud Suite)
When Hathaway von Ludwig woke up, her very first sensation was hunger.
Not the "I could go for a croissant" kind of hunger. It was as if every cell in her body was blaring a famine warning, like ten thousand starving ghosts banging gongs and drums inside her stomach. She felt like she could swallow a whole cow—or, to use the local parlance, a whole dragon.
Then came the lightness.
It was a strange sensation. She remembered—though she wasn't sure where this memory came from—that this body used to feel heavy, like carrying a backpack full of water. But now, gravity seemed to have taken a fifty percent cut. She merely twitched her fingers, and the friction against the air produced a faint, electric zzzt.
"What the hell?"
She struggled to crawl out of the four-poster bed. It was ridiculously large and soft enough to be a cloud.
No wonder the original loved mooching off the Main Family, she thought. The service here is just unbeatable.
Her memory felt like a ball of yarn that a cat had absolutely demolished. She was Hathaway... no, she was a transmigrator, but now she was Hathaway.
Strangely, there was no painful soul fusion, nor any lingering resentment from the original. Because it all happened too fast.
The original soul seemed to have departed... abruptly.
It was like a traffic accident on the spiritual plane. A sudden, unannounced space-time turbulence had snatched away the original soul—who was busy enjoying her life mooching off the Main Family's hospitality—and instantly jammed her soul from another world into this shell.
There was no time to react, and certainly no time to handover memories. This wasn't a hostile takeover; it was two unlucky bastards forced to swap lives amidst a cosmic-level screw-up.
"Fine. I'm here, might as well roll with it."
Hathaway rubbed her temples. She didn't know where the original soul had been yeeted to, but since she had inherited this account...
She got out of bed and walked toward the full-length floor mirror.
The mirror reflected a young girl. Silver hair flowed like liquid mercury—a bit messy, but with an effortless, lazy beauty. She wore a silk nightgown with so much intricate lace it made one suspect the entire year's tailoring budget had been blown on sleepwear.
Typical, she thought. The original Hathaway always wore her most "combat-ready" luxury pajamas when staying at the Main Estate, desperate to not be outshined by the furniture.
Then, she looked into her own eyes.
They were deep crimson pupils. The irises held complex, precise geometric patterns, like a bottomless ruby maze. With every turn of her eye, the patterns seemed to rotate slightly—breathtakingly magnificent.
But Hathaway frowned and leaned closer to the mirror.
"Crap."
She touched the corner of her eye, disbelief written on her face.
They aren't glowing.
You have to understand, the Ludwig family's red eyes were infamous sources of light pollution. They came with a constant brightness of 150 lumens, providing all-weather, 360-degree illumination.
In this family, not being bright enough was considered a disability—especially when facing their arch-rivals, the Wellington Family.
Rumor had it the Wellington women were monsters possessing [Mystic Eyes].
These eyes gave them the ability to see the true essence of things, but the price was that their physical eyesight was practically zero.
The worst part? They absolutely could not wear glasses.
It sounds absurd, but the logic lay in "Focus." The Wellington Demon Eyes were passive; as long as their gaze remained unfocused, everything was fine. But if you perched lenses on their nose bridge, the eyes were forced to focus continuously through the glass. This high-intensity, close-range directed gaze would instantly flood the lenses with excessive soul mana, animating the two pieces of glass into some sort of biting alchemical creature that would proceed to eat the owner's eyeballs like jelly.
So, that bunch of blind bats who relied solely on mana sensing hated bright lights.
In the past, a Ludwig only had to stand in front of a Wellington, and those two "150-Lumen High Beams" would make the opposition tear up instantly.
But now...
Hathaway paused, tapping her temple with a frown.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Wait. How do I know all this specifically about the Wellingtons?
My soul was definitely from Earth, but it felt like the previous owner's brain was a hard drive that hadn't been fully formatted. There were... residual files left behind. Ghost data.
Knowledge about rival families and social etiquette popped up like autocomplete suggestions whenever I focused on a topic. Gross. But useful.
Hathaway looked at the deep, dark, completely non-luminescent eyes in the mirror.
"Great," Hathaway stroked her chin. "My 'Tactical Flashbang' function is busted?"
Without these headlights, wouldn't she be down a natural weapon if she ran into anyone from the Wellington family?
However... Hathaway thought about it, looking at her reflection which seemed to melt into the shadows.
"Look on the bright side. I can't blind them instantly anymore, but at least... when I sneak into the kitchen for a midnight snack, I won't get caught by the Head Maid for being a walking searchlight."
To confirm her physical condition, Hathaway walked to the desk.
There sat an alchemy device that looked offensively expensive—the [Mana Wave Detector (Ludwig Custom · Platinum Edition)].
It was a torture device her mother had bought specifically to monitor her tragic magic growth. Hathaway remembered clearly that the last measurement was a pitiful 8,200 M-Units.
Hathaway skillfully placed her hand on the detector's obsidian sensor sphere.
VROOM—!!
The sensor sphere instantly lit up with a blinding red light, emitting a roar like a turbocharged engine.
Hathaway stared at the needle on the dashboard. The needle, which should have been crawling around the 8,000 mark, acted like a wild horse breaking its reins. It instantly whipped past the 20,000 mark—the watershed for a High Witch—and kept soaring.
Finally, it slammed hard against the edge of the Red Zone, trembling as it came to a halt.
[Reading: 42,150 M-Units]
Hathaway's pupils constricted slightly.
She looked at the prominent mark on the far right of the dashboard—45,000.
Next to it, a line of small gold text read: [WARNING: ARCH-WITCH THRESHOLD].
Is this machine broken?
According to the "cached data" in this brain, this body was a diagnosed magical dud. The doctors said her mana cap was a pathetic 20,000. That was the "absolute truth" she had lived with for eighteen years.
So why am I nearly ripping the needle off the gauge?
"Forty-two thousand..." Hathaway sucked in a cold breath.
In this universe, Witches were an all-female race of apex predators. They were arrogant, absolute atheists for one simple reason: they believed Mana was Omnipotent.
It was the highest-dimensional energy in existence. As long as a Witch's mana pool was vast enough, she could twist reality, rewrite laws, and even create worlds. If she couldn't do it, it wasn't because some god forbade it.
It was simply because... her blue bar wasn't long enough.
And right now, Hathaway's blue bar was terrifyingly long.
The cached knowledge in her brain automatically supplied the cold, hard metrics of the Witch hierarchy. A Standard Witch hovered below the 12,000 M-Unit mark, struggling with a clunky 3:1 mana conversion rate. Breaking past 20,000 elevated a caster to a High Witch, granting them that sweet, highly efficient 2:1 ratio.
But 45,000? That was the Arch-Witch threshold.
An Arch-Witch wasn't just a stronger mage; she was a creature of another dimension. Hitting that number wasn't the end of the journey, but it was the minimum requirement to step into the "Infinite." It was the ultimate ticket to evolution, the baseline qualification for a seat among the sea of stars.
The original had been a "Combat Power 5" scrub, diagnosed by doctors as a magical dud destined to never touch the High Witch threshold. But now, Hathaway stood less than 3,000 M-Units away from that legendary realm.
This meant her blue bar hadn't just exploded by five times its size; the density and quality of her mana had taken a quantum leap.
"Let's test this..."
Hathaway extended a finger, pointing at a crystal vase on the desk. She attempted to cast the most basic [Illumination] (Level 0).
Just a little light will do.
Zzz— BOOM!
No chant, no delay.
A ball of blinding white light detonated instantly at her fingertip. That wasn't Illumination; that was a Tactical Flashbang.
CRASH!
The expensive crystal vase was shattered into powder by the shockwave of overly dense mana. The thick red diary on the desk was blown onto the floor, pages fluttering wildly.
Hathaway stared dumbfounded at the messy desk.
Is this the gold standard of a 2:1 Conversion Rate? The same spell used to be a flashlight; now it was a laser cannon.
She bent down, picked up the surviving diary, closed it, and tossed it back onto the desk. No need to read it anymore. This account was no longer the one described in the original's self-pitying logs.
"So this is what real power feels like,"
Hathaway glanced once more at the dashboard needle, still pinned in the red zone. The finish line was right there.
In a world crawling with monsters, this tiny remaining gap was all that stood between her and the leverage she needed to survive. More importantly, it was the capital to achieve her ultimate dream: "being a happy, rich sugar mommy."
"Who said I can't be an Arch-Witch?"
Knock, knock, knock.
The heavy mahogany door was suddenly rapped upon. Immediately after, a voice full of energy (and high volume) pierced through the door:
"Lady Hathaway! Are you awake? Lady Rhode sent someone to ask if you'd like to go 'inspect the territory' at the new dessert shop that opened on Commercial Street in the White City today?"
Hathaway paused.
Rhode? The name triggered an instant emotional tag in her brain: [Rich Cousin / Walking Wallet / Surprisingly Nice].
And that phrase, "Inspect the territory"... The translation surfaced automatically: Slang. It means shopping.
Man, having access to someone else's local cache is convenient.
"Coming!"
She stood up from the carpet, eyeing the glass shards scattered everywhere.
[Mage Hand].
Almost subconsciously, the mana tentacles originally meant for fine manipulation formed instantly. But because the energy supply was terrifyingly excessive, those invisible hands weren't slender. Instead, they manifested as several invisible heavy-duty bulldozers.
Crunch—Smash!
It was not a gentle sweep.
The glass shards on the floor were ground into crystalline dust by the brute force of the mana. Even the expensive handmade Persian rug was "clawed" with deep gouges, and the whole mess—dust and dirt included—was shoved violently into a trash can that twisted and deformed under the mana pressure.
Hathaway looked at the trash can full of "glass powder" and the brutalized rug. Instead of being annoyed, she wore an amused smile.
This violent, unrestrained mana output was something the original Hathaway's 8,200 M-Unit body could never achieve (nor did she have the blue bar to squander).
"Since I've inherited your body and these 42,000 M-Units..."
Hathaway glanced at her non-glowing deep crimson eyes in the mirror.
"I'll make good use of this 'Lights Out' feature for you."
But before that, she had two urgent problems to solve:
First, learn how to control this mana that felt like a wild mustang so she didn't accidentally demolish the house.
Second, fill her stomach, and find something decent to wear from the luggage she brought. Hopefully, amidst all the flashy trash her mother packed, there was something that didn't scream "I'm trying too hard."