Millennium Witch.

Chapter 18 - 18 - Cyber ​​Mage
The next morning, before dawn, Yvette was woken up. She groggily opened her eyes and saw her student sitting on the carpet, leaning over the edge of the bed, staring at her with panda eyes, looking like a cute blonde ghost.

“Good morning, teacher,” Rosalyn said.

"...What time did you start lying here?"

"It seems so, around four o'clock."

"Getting up so early?"

"...I can't sleep."

"Okay, remember you're not allowed to lie next to my bed anymore."

“…Okay.” Realizing she might have been rejected, Rosalyn made a sound like a wronged puppy.

No matter how tired she was, Rosalyn's heart leaped with joy at the thought of exploring this magnificent "ancient kingdom".

She diligently brought the teacher the dried clothes, but then she heard the doorbell ring.

As she opened the door, Rosalyn's breath caught in her throat for a second—a life-size doll stood silently in the narrow corridor, its porcelain-white skin gleaming coldly, its ball joints making a soft clicking sound as it bowed, and it carrying two boxes in its hands.

"Welcome to 'Sky Express'. This is your package, which has been photographed and signed for. Have a nice day, goodbye." After saying this, the doll handed over the package and left, leaving a stunned Rosalind standing there.

"Teacher, teacher...!!" Rosalyn stammered in surprise, "There was a human-human-human doll just now!! It gave me something! How could that doll talk?"

"That thing is clothes I ordered online. I introduced it to you last night. The doll is a 'mechanical puppet,' a kind of magical mechanical creation. It looks like a human, but it has no soul. It's a dead object that imitates a human."

"It's amazing, it's like something out of a fairy tale..."

After receiving the teacher's explanation, Rosalyn clicked her tongue in amazement, closed the door, and opened the box. Inside were the clothes she had chosen the night before: one set in the teacher's simple black and white style, and another set in her own girly blue and white style.

"Let's go," Yvette said after changing.

"Ok!"

Soon, led by Yvette, Rosalyn arrived outside the hotel and took a deep breath. The streets weren't clean; chewing gum and strange advertising cards were stuck to the ground, and the walls were covered in exaggerated graffiti and suspicious marks accompanied by a foul odor.

However, she was unmoved by it; she had seen far dirtier streets in the Earl's territory, and this little bit of dirt was nothing to her.

At that moment, all she could see was the wonder of the unknown world, and even the aroma of fried food wafting from the roadside breakfast stalls seemed particularly tempting.

"Teacher, where are we going next?" Rosalin asked expectantly after breakfast, her mindset completely geared towards tourism.

“Let’s take a look around a few places here first, and see if there are any ways to make money. If you feel sleepy, you can go back to your room to sleep… In the evening, I’ll take you to the city center, which is the area around our ‘home’,” Yvette said.

As an experienced person, Yvette's current understanding of the dream's fog is "survival," which means doing nothing, just avoiding accidental death, and letting time allow the dream to collapse on its own. To survive, the most urgent task is to make money. Once she has money, she'll naturally find ways to buy a more secure ID card, clearing herself of suspicion for heinous murder and illegal hacking of the police system—although that's all true. So last night, besides buying clothes online, Yvette also scoured various local online forums in Ish City, searching for gray areas. Finally, she spent a small amount of money on a few anonymous channels to buy the specific locations of several "underground trading markets" in the Blackwater District, planning to check them out today and see what kind of work she could do.

Once the money issue is resolved, taking her apprentice to the city center for a lavish celebration will be no problem. She can even buy some items she needs and try to bring them into reality when the dream ends.

“No, teacher, I’m really not sleepy at all,” Rosalyn said immediately.

Yvette glanced at her still-present dark circles and hummed in agreement.

……

The street where Yvette and Rosalyn live is called "Pixel Street." The name sounds funny, but it actually comes from the street office's unique understanding of "macroeconomics of extra income distribution," which results in holographic advertisements here always being blurrier than elsewhere.

About five kilometers down this street, there is an underground exchange called the "Garbage Dump Black Market," built beneath a garbage dump and converted from an air-raid shelter. Many shady transactions take place here, making it extremely hostile to non-locals; without a trustworthy intermediary, no one is allowed to enter.

As newcomers to the area, Yvette certainly couldn't find any locals willing to vouch for them, but she was still determined to give it a try.

Soon, after getting off the strangely smelly bus, they found themselves on the edge of the Blackwater District, with wasteland stretching into the distance along the roadside. One fenced-off area, piled high with garbage, was their destination.

The two guards at the landfill were burly men, one with short hair and the other bald, both nearly two meters tall, with cybernetic arms, making them imposing and formidable.

Seeing Yvette and Rosalyn approach, the bald, burly man immediately stepped forward and coldly rebuked them, "Kids, this isn't a place for you! Go home!"

Clearly, Yvette and Rosalyn's pretty faces, clean and brand-new clothes, and high school age led the two gatekeepers to mistake them for young tourists who had wandered into the wrong place.

Yvette didn't speak. She raised her head expressionlessly and looked at the bald, burly man until his impatience reached its peak, at which point she suddenly snapped her fingers.

The next second, four huge red rune rings appeared around Yvette, and from each rune ring emerged a ferocious fire dragon that intertwined and coiled above the girl's head, making her instantly resemble a fire angel descending from the sky, majestic and awe-inspiring.

"A cyber mage?!" This unconventional move instantly snapped the bald man back to reality, causing him to stumble back several steps. The short-haired burly man beside him also paled.

This is the most dangerous group in all the gray areas of the Origin Civilization, and at the same time, they often have another name: "Rune Hackers"!
"What do you want to do?" The bald, burly man, having forced himself to calm down, immediately distanced himself by more than ten meters and asked warily.

His mechanical prosthetic arms looked intimidating, but they were actually just the lowest-grade model. Apart from being a little stronger, they had no additional functions, and he didn't want to clash with the cyber mages.

“We’d like to do some business here, um, but we don’t have a guarantor,” Yvette said expressionlessly after dispelling the magic.

The two gatekeepers looked at each other in disbelief at the unexpected answer. Their gray market only provided small-scale business, and the people who came here to trade were all from the local underclass. How could a dignified cyber mage be interested in the profits of such a place?
"Um... Respected Mage, please wait a moment. We can't make a decision on this matter yet; we need to inform our leader first..."

Yvette hummed in agreement, slightly raising her chin to signal the two to hurry.

(End of this chapter)