“I’m telling you, Cha Bao, Casey-senpai is seriously brutal when she gets physical!”

“And Mentor Carol, too! Why’d she suddenly drag me off for some kind of special training? Waaah, I just wanna have fun battling! That old lady’s definitely jealous of my youthful, gorgeous body!”

“Oh, Estelle won’t wake up unless the house collapses. I’ve been in her room before—the walls are covered in thick soundproofing runes! You could throw a party in the living room and she wouldn’t hear a thing!”

After listening to the little blond girl chatter on and on, Jiang Cha had to put in a bit of mental effort to make sense of what had happened from her all-over-the-place complaints.

Simply put, Lina had gone to the Battle Club earlier and, for some reason, Casey-senpai and Mentor Carol had taken turns beating her up all afternoon. They’d even announced they’d keep putting the little dragon through her paces tomorrow...

‘Could it... be because of me?’

The girl thought, feeling a little guilty.

After all, both that senpai and Mentor Carol seemed to take her seriously, didn’t they?

But the little blond girl was clearly the carefree type. Just moments ago, she’d been tearfully complaining to the girl, but now she’d happily plopped down on the sofa and started fiddling with the game console.

“Cha Bao, Cha Bao~ Let’s play a game!”

The console looked pretty much like the ones in the girl’s ‘common sense’—the kind you played at home. It even had two controllers plugged in.

It wasn’t at all like the VR game pods she’d imagined.

“Actually, I’d rather read a book, you know?”

The girl tilted her head. She wasn’t very interested in this old-fashioned thing, but then the retro-looking console suddenly projected a virtual screen. Lina, sitting on the sofa with a controller in her hands, closed her eyes. The next second, a golden-haired girl appeared on the screen—almost exactly like Lina, but a little taller.

She grinned and waved at Jiang Cha. “Come on, Cha Bao! I’m a gaming pro. I’ll carry you~”

Jiang Cha: “....”

She’d underestimated Witch technology. Who needed a game pod when they could connect directly through Mentalism?

The girl was still interested in technology so far beyond her common sense. Besides, she couldn’t learn much in twenty minutes or so. She might as well relax a little.

So the girl followed Lina’s example, sat on the sofa, and picked up a controller.

Suddenly, she sensed a very strange signal requesting a connection.

A line of text appeared out of nowhere in her mind.

【Connect to virtual reality?】

‘Yes.’

She didn’t even need to think the answer. She simply sent the signal with her mental power, and the next second, she found herself inside the game.

It was a very strange feeling.

It wasn’t as if her soul—or her entire mind—had plunged into the game. Instead, it was as if she’d suddenly split into two separate perspectives. Most of her thought processes remained with her physical self, sitting with her eyes closed and resting. She could even focus on reviewing and organizing the knowledge she’d memorized earlier. Meanwhile, one of the thirty-four thought circuits she normally maintained detached along with her mental power and entered the game world.

The game didn’t seem to have any classes, just character customization. Jiang Cha couldn’t be bothered to change her appearance, so she chose the online name Qingcha and entered the virtual world.

“Hehe, it’s your first time playing. If the console’s connected to another account, your spawn point gets set next to that account. It’s so friends can play together.”

Lina explained with a smile, then dropped a pile of basic gear in front of Jiang Cha, who was staring dazedly at the world’s desolate, post-apocalyptic scenery.

A big LV1 hovered over her head. Jiang Cha glanced at the wild monsters around her, all at least level 50, then at Lina’s level 200. She fell silent for a moment.

So the little blond girl was a gaming addict, too.

“This virtual world is 99 percent realistic, but you don’t have to worry about mixing up reality and the game. You’ve felt it, right, Cha Bao? That weird double perspective.”

“Yeah... How does it work?”

“I heard it’s done with a rare spell, but that spell isn’t widely available, so I don’t know how it works.”

Lina shrugged, then immediately perked up. “Come on, come on! I’ll help you level up first!”

The virtual game world was far bigger than Jiang Cha could have imagined.

As Lina explained things, Jiang Cha gradually learned some of the basic rules.

The game map was as large as three star systems, and each one was controlled by a faction—in other words, a side.

In reality, the Witches’ conquests met with almost no serious resistance. The game was different, though. Their opponents were all Witches, so they couldn’t rely on racial advantages to steamroll their way through.

So they could only compete with each other like crazy. As a result, the war technology trees of the various factions in the game had been developed even further than in reality. Plenty of logistics Witches even tested alchemical products in the game, then moved on to making them in the real world once they’d got them right.

That meant that in a game that had been out for barely a year, even characters above level 100 were just cannon fodder. Only characters like Lina, who’d reached the level cap of 200 and had decent gear, counted as elite combatants.

Everyone started at the same level and had the same level cap, so it was hard for anyone to take on a hundred opponents of the same level. And with the game’s incredible realism, it had become one of the places where Witches could hone their combat skills.

It still wasn’t quite like reality, but it worked pretty well.

On the other hand, that also meant that plenty of frontline Combat Witches logged in to play a few rounds when they got home to rest. With so many big shots around, there were plenty of big shots getting wrecked, too.

“There was even a Grand Witch from the combat division who got killed in the game by a Witch whose real-world magic power was over 3,000. She got so mad she went straight to the other Witch’s house to get revenge. It was hilarious!”

The little blond girl looked gleeful at the thought.

After something like that, even if the Grand Witch got her revenge in the real world, she must’ve been dying of embarrassment.

Witches cared a lot about saving face.

Maybe it was because beginners leveled up quickly, and Lina was precise enough to leave the last hit to Jiang Cha when an enemy’s health was nearly gone. Even with the experience penalty, the girl leveled up fast.

Before long, she’d reached level 50.

Compared to the grind of leveling up the hard way, this felt more like a relaxed outing.

There was still a big gap between 99 percent and 100 percent realism. Even the Witches hadn’t fully grasped all the rules of the real world—especially the miraculous force that was magic.

As Jiang Cha leveled up, the amount of magic in her in-game body kept growing, and she soon sensed that subtle difference.

In the real world, magic was a miraculous force that could do anything. A Witch backed into a corner could unleash more than ten times her usual combat power.

No one knew how it worked. It even seemed to defy reason, but Witches could do it—and so could many magic-wielding races across the multiverse.

But in the game, magic was simply energy used to cast spells.

The game world also simplified the casting process. After all, spell models carried knowledge contamination, too. For an ordinary Witch, releasing a forbidden spell’s model in the game would be no different from murder.

In short, while the game had some training value, this high-tech virtual reality game could really only be played as a game in Witch society.

So Jiang Cha quickly lost interest. More than playing games, she wanted to travel around the real world herself.

“Jiang Cha-chan, Lina-chan, dinner’s ready!”

The girl had been wondering how to tactfully tell Lina she didn’t like games when she suddenly heard He Qin Mom calling.

Before she could say a word, the little blond girl vanished from the game in a flash. In the real world, Lina threw herself at He Qin. “It smells so good! Qin Bao, will you marry me? Waaah, I wanna eat your cooking for the rest of my life!”

Jiang Cha: “....”

“Stop fooling around and go wash your hands.”

He Qin gently tapped Lina on the head, a hint of exasperation in her voice. She didn’t seem bothered at all—she was already used to Lina’s sweet talk.

“You too, Jiang Cha-chan.”

When she saw the girl open her eyes, He Qin repeated herself.

“Sure~” ×2

Then the two Witches went off to wash their hands obediently, like children who’d just been scolded by their mom.

He Qin was a very good cook.

The ingredients made a big difference, but Jiang Cha had eaten food from the Witch World before. Aislen Witch Academy had money to spare, and its cafeteria used excellent ingredients. Still, its magic puppets couldn’t hold a candle to He Qin’s cooking.

It wasn’t that the food tasted bad. It was that every dish made by the magic puppets tasted exactly the same—no variety, no originality.

Witches hated anything unoriginal.

That was why they all liked handmade meals, custom-made wands that showed off their individuality, and hunting down handmade magical items—like buying crafts from an artisan’s shop.

Were these things better than mass-produced products?

Not necessarily.

But they were definitely more interesting.

“I’m full.”

“Me too!”

He Qin looked very Japanese, like a Yamato Nadeshiko, but she was a Chinese Witch at heart. She didn’t press her palms together at the dinner table.

Jiang Cha and Lina, on the other hand, acted like little kids. After wolfing down their food, they obediently announced they were done, then ran to the sofa and collapsed.

“Help me clear the table!”

He Qin called out, sounding a little annoyed.

Witches liked cooking, but they didn’t like cleaning the table.

Lina pretended not to hear and swiftly connected to the virtual game, while Jiang Cha...

Jiang Cha raised a hand slightly. A strand of magic drifted out, forming thirteen spell models in the air at once. Each one released a gentle force, lifting the tableware one piece at a time and carrying it, gently swaying, into the kitchen’s all-in-one dishwasher.

She even supplied the dishwasher with magic so it could start working.

Then she cast another spell, and a stream of water appeared, cleaning the entire table in the blink of an eye.

The whole time, the girl lay sprawled on the sofa like a lazy cat, eyes half-closed. She only moved her fingers. It looked as if she hadn’t done a thing.

He Qin: “....”

She’d underestimated just how absurdly capable Jiang Cha was.

If Lina had done it, she would’ve smashed every plate!

The second-tier force-magic spell 【Levitation】 wasn’t simple at all! It might’ve been second-tier, but its spell model was much more complex than Fireball’s.

Especially since Jiang Cha was controlling thirteen Levitation spells at once, precisely balancing the amount of magic and the weight of each piece of tableware.

Even plenty of upperclassmen might not have been able to pull that off.

This wasn’t just a matter of finely controlling magic. The calculations needed to pull off something like this would keep a supercomputer busy for over ten seconds!

‘Jiang Cha-chan really is...’

He Qin sighed softly, looking a little helpless.