Chapter 1030: A Witch Floating Battleship?
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 1030: A Witch Floating Battleship?
"This semester has been the most blood-pumping one I've had in all my years at the Witch Academy! Fight! Cool!"
This exclamation voiced the inner feelings of the senior sisters currently gathered at the Jack-of-all-trades Club's task reception board.
Those who came to the Jack-of-all-trades Club to pick up emergency missions dispatched for the Academy War were essentially the most bellicose group of students.
The emergency missions distributed here were mostly tasks that regular members of the Combat Sequences weren't quite suited for—things like harassment behind enemy lines, covert sabotage, targeted assassinations, or temporary regional patrols.
Only after the United Club truly understood the nature of an Academy War did they realize how effective these methods were. War wasn't just about killing on the front lines; it also involved underhanded, dirty tricks in the shadows.
With the Witch United Club holding the line on the main battlefield, these independent students were left to handle the local skirmishes.
Initially, to motivate students to participate, the Jack-of-all-trades Club had coordinated with the task board to list "War Points" as a temporary currency. These could be exchanged for high-quality goods within the United Club—items that usually couldn't be bought with money even within the Academy. Everything from various raw materials to finished alchemy items, potions, and even scrolls containing insights into various techniques was available.
However… the United Club had clearly underestimated the enthusiasm of the Witch Academy students.
Those who had been clamoring on the Academy Network about wanting to see "rivers of blood" were, for the most part, being dead serious.
Aside from the constant chatter about blood and carnage, another rumor had recently been grabbing everyone's attention on the Academy Network.
The Witch Academy’s first prototype floating battleship was already under construction!
At first, many witches didn't believe it—until an "anonymous source" from the United Club leaked the finalized plans, which explicitly included a "Witch Warship." That was when the topic truly exploded into a heated debate.
Building a battleship wasn't something you could just do on a whim.
From theory to design to implementation, without years of accumulated experience, fumbling through the process could easily take decades.
But… the witches didn't want a battleship to serve as a primary combat force. They wanted it as a status symbol!
If they weren't worried about appearances, the Spell Research Society could have just welded a square iron box together, engraved anti-gravity rune rituals on the bottom, slapped a controllable propulsion solidification spell on the back, and it would still be able to perform complex maneuvers in the sky.
Because they lacked a professional shipyard, the Witch Academy's first floating battleship was being "manually forged" in a temporary, enclosed construction site by a large group of talented individuals skilled in alchemy, rune engraving, spell solidification, and master smithing.
The blueprints had been "borrowed" for free from a Witch Mentor, the exterior was a direct copy, the internal equipment was just piled together, and there was no power engine to speak of. While meeting the basic combat requirements of the Combat Sequences, they had stripped away as many unnecessary elements as possible to shorten the construction time.
After all, the United Club couldn't afford to wait years for a battleship to be built.
The United Club's requirements for the first floating battleship were simple: the exterior had to look powerful, ideally showcasing the imposing aura of the Witch Academy.
That was the most important part.
Second was a basic level of protection; it would be quite embarrassing if a single Fireball Spell from an enemy left a permanent black scorch mark on the hull.
Finally, it just had to be able to fly, have height control, and not be slower than a standard flying broom. If it hit those marks, they were satisfied.
There was no other way; their technical accumulation was only at this level, and they couldn't force it. At worst, they could optimize and remodel it later while gaining construction experience.
If all else failed, when the floating battleship deployed, they could just have a few witches on brooms fly alongside it as an escort.
As for the transcendent energy required to power the battleship?
Speaking of that, the piles of energy crystal ore that most clubs had hoarded in the Expansion Realm would finally come in handy.
After that trip to the Expansion Realm, many clubs had become wealthy overnight. However, this was followed by a devaluation of transcendent energy crystals. Crystals that couldn't be processed immediately were left gathering dust in club warehouses.
Thus, the basic conditions for the floating battleship's existence were met. If push came to shove, they could just run the battleship on mana and use witches as living batteries.
Mana storage techniques were common knowledge in the Witch Academy; even the academy dorms had mana storage devices for daily consumption.
Regardless, the Witch Warship project had begun. The sudden appearance of secret intel regarding the ship on the Academy Network was certainly no coincidence.
After months of research, even if they hadn't fully mastered battleship technology, their "hull technology" was looking quite respectable.
With the hype building on the Academy Network, it meant the Witch Academy's first floating battleship was nearly ready for takeoff!
Some platforms on the Academy Network had even started spontaneous polls.
As for what they were voting on…
Naturally, it was the name of the first battleship!
* * *
While the Core World was in an uproar, the Expansion Realm was undergoing a very solemn experiment.
If this succeeded, the witches' attitude toward the Main World would change in an instant!
Consequently, every witch involved in this experiment was incredibly excited, for they were participating in a revolution!
However, unlike the witches who understood nothing, I—who was directly leading the experiment to incubate the consciousness of the Ancient Remnant Ice—knew very well that this wasn't something that could be achieved through passion and hot-bloodedness alone.
Still… this was the first time I had experienced having over a hundred Transcendent Witches standing by, ready for anything, just to help me with Luck observation and data comparison.
This was a transaction with the Main World Consciousness.
The World Consciousness was like a silent, dying person.
The Qi Observation Art project was like a professional micro-expression expert targeting the World Consciousness; any decision or thought I had would sway the fluctuations of Luck.
After spending these past few days together, I had managed to become much more familiar with Sister Lucine and the others.
Compared to their previous cautiousness, where they were even careful about how they asked questions, they had gradually let down their guard. If they didn't understand something, they would just ask directly.
And I would cooperate by explaining.
On one hand, it broke the awkward silence of being alone; on the other, it relieved the fatigue brought on by long periods of intense concentration.
But more importantly, I wanted to draw upon the rich experience and foundations of these older witch sisters!
Otherwise, I would often find myself overthinking things until I hit a dead end.
Right now.
I let out a soft sigh, glanced at the spell projection beside me, and then casually swiped away a hypothetical solution.
This was an item on the trial-and-error list I had compiled.
Consciousness incubation was a field I had never touched before, so I could only make bold hypotheses and carefully seek verification.
The witch sisters nearby watched me with sighs of admiration.
This was the most hardworking little witch they had ever seen.
In just these few days, she had proposed numerous hypotheses and then proven them wrong.
This also allowed them to witness how mastering a miraculous technique was far more efficient than conducting countless experiments!
What impressed them most was the technique called Soul Depiction.
If they wanted to conduct a similar experiment involving the soul, they would need a vast amount of professional equipment, would have to tune countless parameters, and use massive control groups to verify error margins…
But Xiao Han, using Soul Depiction combined with the information interpretation of the Tree of Great Knowledge, could display text and data in real-time. Data that might take them months or even years to confirm simply appeared effortlessly.
After all, the most time-consuming part of an experiment was the waiting.
Even if the data obtained this way had a significant margin of error, with such an efficient experimental process, they could simply run more tests and verify them to find an answer within the allowed margin of error.
As they watched from the sidelines, they occasionally felt a pang of self-doubt, wondering if they were simply getting old.
"Xiao Han, take a break. You aren't a Transcendent yet; your spirit will eventually get exhausted," Lucine said, taking the opportunity to step forward and advise me as she saw me cross off another verified hypothesis.
"Mm… okay."
I looked at Sister Lucine as she walked toward me and finally nodded, agreeing with her.
It was time for a rest.
It wasn't that I was tired, but rather that the string of "failures" made me feel it was necessary to change my line of thinking.
While these didn't count as failures to the other witch sisters—they were just normal trial and error—to me, they were indeed failures.
Because I knew exactly what I was doing.
What I was doing was something even the entire world was trying to facilitate. With the driving force of the World's Luck combined with the verification of Qi Observation Art, it was simply wrong that there hadn't been much progress after all this time.
Unless… my line of thinking had been wrong from the very beginning, so wrong that even Luck couldn't correct it.
But… was that possible?
Or was it due to some other reason?
Once I agreed to take a temporary break, the witch sisters nearby immediately crowded around.
They had been watching from the side, and they were simply too curious!
After gaining my consent, they began to exchange ideas with me eagerly. Although all the hypotheses I had verified so far were wrong, even a wrong hypothesis provided a line of thinking worth learning from. Even the process of proving them false was incredibly precious.
Though there was a generational gap in our academic exchange, it didn't hinder their determination to share ideas with me.
"Xiao Han, looking at the hypothesis you just rejected—where the soul incubates the spirit, introducing an unknown spiritual concept to name an unknown complex set, and using a spiritual network woven with spirituality as the cradle for consciousness incubation—could that hypothesis and the other one about the multi-dimensional consciousness network complement each other?"
"Or perhaps use the consciousness network to denote a specific interval of the spiritual concept set…"
"It's no use. There are too many unknowable variables…"
Listening to the sisters' hypotheses, I chimed in: "Perhaps it is feasible. If such a complete life model were introduced into a Life Sequence for verification, maybe we could ignore those unknowable variables through direct observation."
Over the past few days, I had learned some specialized terms from Sister Lucine and the others. However, specialized terms were just names; if one believed in them too much, their divergent thinking would be constrained by the framework of those terms.
After all, naming was only an aid to understanding and shouldn't turn the natural order upside down. I only learned them to make communication easier.
But even so, my communication with the witch sisters wasn't exactly smooth.
If this really doesn't work… I pulled out a coin.
"Mockery of Fate's Incompetence," the "Reverse Lucky Coin," or the "Misfortune Coin"—whatever you called it, it was all the same thing.
Its existence felt like a joke the world had played on me.
Its birth had led that Luck Alchemist named Teryx to test its effects and side effects for me.
However, I didn't interpret it based on the test data.
In Sister Teryx's eyes, it was likely just a transcendent item with miraculous properties and side effects.
But in my eyes, it was a medium that used Luck as a lead to "communicate" with the Main World.
Of course, this communication wasn't the direct communication produced by Spirit Vision at the Real World level, but rather an indirect communication produced through a form of gambling.
"Xiao Han… what are you doing?"
The witches were surprised to see me stand up. I hadn't even been resting for five minutes!
Surely she wasn't starting again?
What kind of efficiency maniac was she?
However, many witches also noticed the coin I was fiddling with in my hand.
"I want to try the plan we just mentioned one more time. If it doesn't work, I'll take a few days off to organize my thoughts," I said.
Seeing how determined I was, the sisters didn't stop me.
Inspiration was a fickle thing. They had advised me to rest precisely because they were afraid I would get stuck on a single idea.
I walked back toward the massive figure, catching the coin in my hand after tossing it up casually.
Just as I was about to flip the Misfortune Coin and prepare for the price I would have to pay…
My footsteps suddenly froze.
I looked at the Misfortune Coin resting in my palm. The side facing up… was the side with the silhouette of my face!
I pinched the coin between my thumb and forefinger, looking at the mocking curve of the lips…
I… guessed right?
How is that possible… Teryx had verified through a massive number of experiments that when the Misfortune Coin is active, it is impossible for the side the holder desires to appear!
After all, only by flipping to the side one desires would one pay the equivalent price and receive the desired result!
Crack—
A faint, rapid sound of cracking echoed from between my fingers.
To my shock, "Mockery of Fate's Incompetence" split down the middle. The red Luck presented by the transcendent item dissipated at that moment, wisps of crimson vanishing… a thread of Luck power quickly faded into nothingness.
My pupils contracted as I watched this process!
Luck doesn't disappear for no reason; it only sinks into a deeper level of the Real World's time.
My Spirit Vision is at the Floating World level.
Then the level I cannot "see"… the Real World… the place where the Main World Consciousness resides!
In that case…
"Sister Lucine, and everyone else… shall we do this together this time?" I looked at the cracked coin in my hand, then solemnly put it away before turning to face the group of witch sisters behind me.
"The composition of consciousness is complex and formless. With only the ability and wisdom of a single little witch, I feel powerless. Perhaps if we combine all of your thoughts and ideas, we might strike a different kind of spark?"