Chapter 1009: The Witch United Club
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 1009: The Witch United Club
"Damn it! A tiny place like Sun Rock Elf Academy actually has the nerve to try and walk all over our Witch Academy!"
Nicola had taken the seat of President of the Jack-of-all-trades Club, but it was a difficult position to hold. Since she had taken over, the internal situation of the club had become increasingly chaotic, with factions constantly at each other's throats.
Even a minor matter regarding a collaboration had spiraled out of control, eventually reaching the point where an Academy War was about to be ignited.
For someone like her, who had absolutely no experience with Academy Wars, she was completely in the dark.
However, at the suggestion of her advisory think tank, the Jack-of-all-trades Club had quietly established a War Department within the Witch Academy during the holidays.
This move was inspired by the Academy War experiences of smaller transcendent academies. However, it was impossible for the Witch Academy to achieve a state where "every citizen is a soldier," and the same applied to an entire club.
After all, the atmosphere and framework of the Witch Academy, combined with the general environment, simply wouldn't allow for such a situation.
Following the Jack-of-all-trades Club's lead, other clubs began to follow suit. Regardless of whether this so-called Academy War would actually break out, having a specialized department for such matters ensured they wouldn't be caught off guard.
Moreover, establishing something like a War Department wasn't particularly difficult. Every club had its own combat pillars within their respective competitive departments. On paper, these were the types who fought for rankings in the arena. To a certain extent, the student leaderboards in the Universal Arena reflected the combat strength of a club.
Furthermore, the Witch Academy was a transcendent academy to begin with, and transcendence was inseparable from conflict. It was simply a matter of moving the students who shed sweat in the arena onto the battlefields of the future.
After rounds of negotiations, compromises, forceful persuasions, and appeals to reason, the various clubs had reached a final agreement.
At the start of the new semester, with the cooperation of the academy authorities, they would form the "Witch United Club"!
The concept of a united club was the product of discussions between club representatives and the academy.
This was a brand-new, independent club—a massive entity led by several large clubs and composed of multiple smaller clubs with transcendent combat capabilities.
Furthermore, it was a dual-membership club. Under normal circumstances, a person could only join one club and could not hold memberships in two different organizations simultaneously.
The Witch United Club was the first club officially recognized by the Witch Academy to allow dual-membership status!
Additionally, the United Club promised that, in principle, it would not interfere with the internal affairs of any member club.
Everything was dedicated solely to preparing for the potential Academy War.
The club was roughly divided into three sections.
The Main Battle Department.
This department was primarily responsible for personnel, supplies, and resource allocation during wartime. it was the core reason for the club's existence.
The Transcendent Academic Department.
War was not a simple one-for-one trade of lives or mindless charging. Special tactics, strategic weapons, and specialized methods required professional talent to implement.
For instance, spell arrays, giant magic circles, strategic one-time alchemy items, and even the development of new weapons or combat-adaptive equipment weren't things a single person could just tinker with on their own.
Of course, its more significant purpose was to provide a platform for academic exchange. It served as a formal reason to invite those academic clubs that lacked fame within the Witch Academy but were so formidable that no one dared provoke them.
Finally, there was the Logistics Department.
The Logistics Department's role went without saying—it managed all logistical matters. War, after all, was a battle of logistics!
The Witch United Club was led by eight clubs, known as the "Eight Core Guardian Clubs." The remaining smaller clubs were referred to as Guardian Clubs, though they were secretly called the "Protected Clubs."
Among these eight, seven held positions of immense importance within the Witch Academy.
First was the most widely known: the Jack-of-all-trades Club.
Next was the Witch Secret Realm Club, responsible for the maintenance and operation of the Witch Secret Realms, known as the source of transcendent materials and resources within the academy.
Then there was the Spell Research Society, which was so low-profile that it was rarely discussed, yet no one dared to cross them when they were mentioned.
The wealthiest was the Alchemy and Pharmacy Society, which gathered the largest number of alchemists and pharmacists in the academy and was the primary producer of potions and alchemy items.
The Potion Coven was a club with no lower-year students. Potion-making was a craft where mental strength had to be sufficient to command mana, using mana as a ritual medium to harmonize potions. It was a special skill unique to the Witch race. Rumor had it that this club was founded by a mentor; if a member did not ascend to become a Transcendent Witch, their memories related to potion-making would be erased upon graduation!
The next club was a constant presence in the various arenas of the Witch Academy, with members who were essentially battle-crazed lunatics: the "Battle? Cool! Club." Make no mistake—the punctuation was part of the name. This club was considered one of the primary combat pillars of the Witch Academy.
The seventh club, whose status in the Witch Academy was unshakable, was the Witch Academy Stunt Flight License Training Club.
There were several clubs for flight license training, but only this one bore the title "Stunt Flight."
Though it might look like just a club for riding brooms, it didn't matter how high your combat power was—if your broom wasn't as fast as theirs, you couldn't hit them.
Of course, that was how ordinary people joked about them. In reality, students who truly mastered stunt flight possessed terrifying combat power. The advantages of flight and three-dimensional combat were immense. They only felt restricted in places like the arena; otherwise, they could easily slap the people on the leaderboards and fly away before the victims could even hope to give chase.
As for the eighth club...
It was the Baking House.
Previously, if someone mentioned the Baking House, some might not have had much of an impression, while others might have thought of red velvet cake.
But now, when the Baking House was mentioned... everyone thought of that terrifying figure.
The Teaching Assistant who had been personally granted the honorary title of "Little Witch" by the Academy Dean!
She had single-handedly crushed a multitude of geniuses and teaching assistants within the Witch Academy, and later suppressed the top teaching assistants and students from other academies—at least a hundred people in total! Yet, those records were merely achievements, not the limit of her power. Not knowing her upper limit and being unable to find any information about her was what made everyone truly uneasy.
Many clubs accepted her sheer strength; after all, they had no choice.
Even clubs like the Spell Research Society, which usually stayed out of conflicts, held her in high regard.
They knew a great deal.
If things like the Knowledge Seeds and Knowledge Seeds could be attributed to a Great Spellbook, then the Omni-Link Main Network Tree, the Power Network, the Root Network, and most shockingly, the research project on Self-Generated Mana... those were things that put immense pressure on them.
And that was only what they could manage to find out.
The mentors they followed often mentioned this Little Witch as well, hinting that there were many things buried beneath that figure that they weren't even qualified to know.
A single person supported a club's status as one of the "Eight Core Guardian Clubs."
The other seven clubs acknowledged this.
Even if someone didn't, the others would "help" them acknowledge it. Otherwise, they could try the alternative path: being kicked out of the United Club.
Of course, the Eight Core Guardian Clubs also had a ninth, unofficial group.
These were the "Discipline Squads," composed of graduates who remained at the academy to maintain internal discipline.
The combat power of the Discipline Squads was obvious to all. Even an average senior sister who had graduated possessed terrifying strength. The Discipline Squads served as the ninth, unofficial mobile force of the Eight Core Guardian Clubs.
They were essentially considered equal in status to the core clubs.
Under normal circumstances, they would not participate in the deployment tasks of an Academy War. Barring any surprises, the Discipline Squads would remain at the academy to guard the Curtain Wall space and the Magic City territory.
As the saying goes, "When one holds a sharp blade, the desire to kill naturally arises."
Once the Witch Academy established the United Club with the mindset of potentially launching an Academy War, countless reasons for a "just war" would surely follow.
* * *
Witch Academy Time.
9:00 AM.
The official meeting of the Witch United Club began.
After consultations among the eight clubs, the Witch Secret Realm Club was elected as the representative to preside over the meeting.
Originally, the Jack-of-all-trades Club should have presided, but their President had only recently changed, and the club's consecutive setbacks had left her with a bitterness she couldn't voice.
For the sake of internal unity, the Witch Secret Realm Club ultimately took charge of the proceedings.
The President of the Witch Secret Realm Club was named Olina. She wore a crisp, professional uniform with no unnecessary flourishes. Her movements as she walked from the floor to the stage were fluid and efficient, giving the impression of someone with great executive capability.
Compared to the current President of the Jack-of-all-trades Club, Nicola, Olina made Nicola look visibly green.
Olina stood on the stage and scanned the crowd. Even for a president who had weathered many storms, a scene like this was a first in her life.
Throughout the entire history of the Witch Academy, there had never been such a unification within its walls.
Her gaze passed over the representatives of the Core Guardian Clubs one by one, finally landing on a very peculiar seat.
It was a girl with long, silver-white hair, sitting in the assembly seat with a relaxed posture.
A sign on the desk beside her read "Baking House."
Unlike other clubs, which brought a representative plus nearly a dozen secretaries, executives, and elders, the group from this club could be counted on one hand.
Finally, Olina took a deep breath.
"Representatives of the various clubs, hello. I am honored to preside over this meeting."
"I don't think I need to dwell on why everyone is sitting here. Let's get straight to the point."
Olina's voice was loud and clear, devoid of excessive pleasantries. After glancing at her meeting notes, she stopped looking down at the script.
After a concise summary of the Witch Academy's recent encounters and a brief mention of family conflicts, Olina began to describe the academy's situation.
It wasn't that the others or Olina didn't care about the family conflicts, but rather that this wasn't the time to discuss them. They were club representatives, representing the interests of their clubs and the academy; they could not act based on family interests.
Family frictions were, at most, an extension of the academy's conflicts. It could be said that Olina was well-versed in the art of rhetoric.
As she spoke, a massive spell projection expanded behind her.
These were all real images of the frictions occurring around the Witch Academy.
"As you can all see, the Sun Rock Elf Academy, as a transcendent academy bordering our territory, has for years acted as a lackey for Afuhemi Academy. Now, they even dare to provoke our Witch Academy directly. Not only with verbal insults, but they have even dared to raise their hands against our academy's people!"
"This behavior is a severe provocation against the Witch Academy! We must make them pay a price in blood!"
"Right! Kill them! March to their academy and blockade their gates!" The representative from the Battle? Cool! Club was the first to respond.
With a hot-headed club taking the lead, the "Protected Clubs" below also began to speak up.
"Exactly! This is practically a suicide mission on their part!"
"The new semester is about to start. Blockade their gates while they're returning to school!"
"Let them know the consequences of provoking us Witches!"
"Everyone!" Olina's voice boomed, instantly drowning out the shouting representatives.
"We are now a formal United Club. Please do not act like the keyboard warriors on the Academy Network who only know how to talk big. This is not some village brawl, nor is it a childish group conflict, and it certainly isn't like the academy exchanges of the past!"
"In this world, the attitude of other transcendent academies toward our Witch Academy is extremely hostile. What we are facing now is a conflict between academies; we cannot afford to let our emotions dictate our actions."
"When we stepped into the transcendent world, great power already told us that strength is the essence of identity, status, and the right to speak! Fortunately, the Witch Academy has provided us all with a comfortable and harmonious learning environment."
"To be honest, our Witch Academy has almost no precedent for Academy Wars. But in the corners of the world we have never known, the rise and fall of countless small transcendent academies tell us all one thing: there has never been such a thing as peace in this world!"
As Olina spoke, the screen behind her timely displayed images they had never seen before.
People wearing tattered clothes, with obvious racial characteristics, living in filthy environments amidst mundane dirt and dust. It was hard to imagine that these people were students of transcendent academies.
Some also recalled the warnings from their families.
Their elders had told them that if their college entrance exam results were poor, they would rather have them be ordinary people than crawl into those small transcendent academies.
Perhaps this was why.
Those ordinary families thought that by constantly having children and having them blindly choose transcendent academies, one would eventually succeed. But their narrow perception failed to realize that they were personally sending their children into the abyss of death.
While everyone was lost in shock and reflection, Olina's voice pulled them back once more.
"I am telling you this for no other reason than because, just by standing here, I can sense that many of you still don't understand what sitting here truly means!"
"The Witch United Club! It is a club that unites the vast majority of the Witch Academy's combat power! Its purpose for existing is to respond to an Academy War that could arrive at any moment! If there is no war... then our union is utterly meaningless!"