Chapter 99: The Tempting Tea Treasure

“All plans exhausted, huh~”

The girl slumped weakly in the cockpit of the necro-mecha, letting out a helpless sigh.

She truly had nothing left to give — that whole carefully laid strategy from before had drained every last drop of her mana.

The few weapons she still had charged and ready? None of them had the kind of power that could turn the tide.

And she herself didn’t even have enough mana left to maintain full-power mode — much less use [Cognitive Overlap], that mana-hungry monster of a spell.

She was bone dry. Completely.

As for Violet, she still had a bit of mana in reserve, but her combat strength? Against two instructors like Vladimir and Karol… that was pure suicide.

Sure, the little one could stand up to an Archwitch in a direct fight — but between Archwitches, the differences were terrifying.

For crying out loud, Instructor Vladimir had once fought a Sage head-on for an entire day and night and survived.

Violet, with all her talent and fancy gear, could at best bully a freshly promoted Archwitch.

The gap between them was absurd.

Even Karol herself hadn’t been afraid of that [Death Finger].

Sage-tier spell or not, she’d seen worse in her fifty-plus years of fighting.

If she were in a real battle — as a combat witch — she would have had dozens of ways to deal with it.

But as an Academy instructor, she couldn’t just unleash wide-scale destruction during a trial.

So she’d gone with the safest, least destructive counter — a direct clash.

In truth, the joint spell cast by Vladimir and Karol had been even stronger than Violet’s [Death Finger].

One strike — and “splitting mountains and seas” wouldn’t even be an exaggeration.

The searing flame burned away the death aura, and the razor-sharp dimensional edge carved through everything in its path.

With one blow, the necro-mecha’s right arm was severed, and the machine fell into complete paralysis.

“Can this thing still be repaired? Can it be mass-produced? Any commercial potential?”

Karol glanced at the necro-mecha, now miniaturized by spatial compression to roughly witch-size, and gave the girl’s petite backside a couple of light kicks.

The soft, springy feel seemed to amuse her — she didn’t stop.

Bounce~

Kick~

Bounce~

Kick~

The scene quickly became… rather odd.

“Nope, can’t repair it,”

Jiang Cha pouted, answering moodily.

“The mana circuits I engraved have all burned out. The only option is to dismantle and recycle it — at least most of the high-grade materials can still be salvaged.”

The body of the necro-mecha — which still looked vaguely undead on the outside — was, inside, a maze of pale blue mana circuits that ran like glowing veins, all now burnt out.

Hydraulic mechanisms powered the arms; five mana cores fueled six superweapons.

If anyone called this a normal undead creature, even the Ancient Great Sages would probably rise from their graves to protest.

And yet, technically speaking, it was undead — a necrotic organism with its own consciousness, just a highly intelligent one.

It was Jiang Cha’s first fully integrated creation — a culmination of everything she’d learned.
She was quite proud of it.
But the flaws… were many.

“And honestly,” she went on,
“the mecha’s power level was only possible because I stacked ridiculous amounts of high-grade materials into it. It’s basically a prototype built with no concern for cost.

If I replaced the materials with cheaper substitutes for mass production… well, let’s just say the price-to-power ratio becomes laughable.”

“This thing’s way too heavy. Without sufficient physical reinforcement, the user can’t even operate it properly. Sure, we wouldn’t die, but no serious witch would ever touch something this clunky.”

“To be honest, the main purpose of this mecha is as a spellcasting amplifier. The real combat effectiveness still depends on the pilot’s base skills.

And when the original designer built it, she sacrificed too many convenience features just to chase raw performance. Without a high-tier mental sensor, a humanoid mecha is basically a failed design…”

“So… you’re saying the designer wasn’t you?”

Karol narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“Nope, not me~”

The girl turned her head and whistled innocently — though her guilty expression betrayed her instantly.

I mean, come on — can you even call a “frenzy-state” witch and a “calm-state” witch the same species?
Their entire thought process changes!

“…”

“That [Death Finger] spell…”

“Violet cast that! Tea-Tea knows nothing about it, okay~?”

“The tactical design?”

“Hey, I’m the pilot — it’s only natural I know a bit of strategy, right?”

“And those high-grade undead materials?”

“Uh… I just, like, found them lying around in the warehouse!”

“Right. Sure. Keep that up then.”

Karol shrugged, clearly unconvinced but too lazy to argue.

“Not talking, huh? Then you can just stay tied up.”

Yes — Jiang Cha was currently hanging from the ceiling.

And not just by her hands and feet — the ropes wound around her in intricate, almost artistic loops, accentuating her slender figure and turning what should’ve been a restraint into… something else entirely.

The small, prison-like room was lined with gray-black stone — anti-magic material.
In front of her stood an iron-barred door made of reinforced alloy.

The black-haired, red-eyed girl hung there quietly, looking every bit like a captured succubus — her face pure yet a little mad, an unsettling blend of innocence and danger.

Her beauty radiated temptation, like a siren’s song calling someone to commit a sin they could never take back.

“Sensei~ my butt hurts~”

Just as Karol turned to leave the cell, the girl spoke up pitifully — her soft, trembling voice like that of an abandoned kitten.
There was no overt seduction in her tone, yet it tugged at the heart with a pang of guilt and desire.

“Serves you right. You deserve it.”

The dark-skinned witch paused, her shoulders trembling slightly, then exhaled sharply, forcing herself to turn and walk out the door.

As it shut, the room sank back into silence and darkness.

“Damn, that was close…”
Karol cursed inwardly the moment she stepped out, clutching her chest and taking a few deep breaths to calm herself.

That little brat — wasn’t she supposed to be an Awakened Witch?
Or was she secretly a succubus in her past life?
How could she suddenly become that alluring?

Inside, Jiang Cha merely pouted in disappointment and went back to studying — analyzing the magical legacy left behind by the Tower’s master.

Outside, Karol had to physically restrain herself from turning back.

Because that girl hadn’t just been visually tempting — her mana itself had turned seductive, overflowing with subconscious, rhythm-like allure that filled the entire room.

And the worst part?
Karol could feel that Jiang Cha wasn’t doing it on purpose.

That innocent unawareness — that unintentional charm — was the deadliest part.

For any witch, it was a lethal temptation.
But for someone as notoriously indulgent as Karol…

If she’d stayed another ten minutes, she might’ve completely lost control.

“A teacher… assaulting her own student?”

If that rumor ever got out,
she’d die of embarrassment on the spot.