Sorcerer’s Handbook

For Ashe and Sonya, consulting the Golden Fish was undoubtedly the most cost-effective choice.

Spirit, they were in need, but Destiny’s Inquiry wouldn’t just hand over a spirit; this was an inquiry, not a wish machine.

Miracle, this was something they weren’t particularly lacking. Moreover, with the number of answers they had, the Virtual Realm was unlikely to provide a detailed Procedure for a Miracle, at best pointing them towards a specific research direction for a Miracle.

As for how to quickly improve within the Magical Factions Realm, the fastest method would undoubtedly be consuming Experience Orbs. However, the source of Experience Orbs was Knowledge Creatures, and at most, the Virtual Realm would point out where suitable Knowledge Creatures could be found, not directly extract an Orb from within a Creature and hand it over to them.

After much deliberation, spirits, Miracles, and Faction Realm were all just icing on the cake. What truly determined a Sorcerer’s combat power was the number of virtual wings and the tier of arcane energy!

By achieving Promotion to Two Wings, one could venture on the Time Continent and acquire a Two Wings spirit!

By achieving Promotion to Two Wings, one’s arcane energy could continue to grow!

By achieving Promotion to Two Wings, Ashe could fully activate the Two Wings spirit ‘Earth Sword’ with Gold Tier arcane energy, significantly enhancing the defense of the Miracle ‘Sword Barrier’, making an escape from prison even more secure!

Wasn’t Ashe’s eager desire to nourish the Swordswomanship of the Swordswoman to the Gold Tier level all about hoping she would carry him to clandestinely traverse the Time Continent after her Promotion to Two Wings? Now there was an even better opportunity for smuggling!

However, directly inquiring about the situation with the Golden Fish, the Virtual Realm would certainly not provide a very detailed answer.

Still, there was an obvious loophole in Destiny’s Inquiry: regardless of the number of correct answers a Sorcerer had, if the question posed was a true or false judgment, the Virtual Realm was bound to provide the correct answer!

For instance, if a Sorcerer is researching a Miracle and hits a bottleneck, having tried all possibilities with only two directions, A and B, remaining, then they could inquire of the Virtual Realm whether the A direction is correct. The Virtual Realm would inevitably only be able to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’, thus naturally revealing the correctness of direction B.

If one is a master of logic, they could even construct a complex true or false question to have the Virtual Realm eliminate multiple doubts for them.

Take Ashe, for example, who whimsically wonders, ‘Will I wake up one day ten years from now to see the Swordswoman sleeping beside me?’ The critical elements here are ‘one day ten years from now’, ‘wake up’, and ‘the Swordswoman sleeping beside me’.

‘Waking up’ is an inevitable element; Ashe cannot possibly spend every night in the Virtual Realm, and sleeping in is a luxurious and delightful pleasure that Ashe would undoubtedly want to experience occasionally.

And ‘the Swordswoman sleeping beside me’ is a controllable element; Ashe could simply remember this and ask her to act out the scene, sleeping beside him in the future.

The only uncontrollable element is ‘one day ten years from now’.

If the Virtual Realm answers ‘yes’, then there’s nothing more to say; Ashe can confidently call the Swordswoman his wife.

If the answer is ‘no’, then there are two possibilities: either Ashe will have ruptured his relationship with the Swordswoman by that time, so she wouldn’t even pretend to act it out, or the Virtual Realm believes Ashe won’t live to see ten years from now.

Therefore, when the Virtual Realm is stingy with the quality of its responses, asking a true or false question is the most cost-effective choice, as it at least guarantees no useless information.

After a brief discussion, the two decided to pose different questions to the Virtual Realm in succession:

“Is a specific Ritual required to see the Golden Fish?”

Questions like ‘where is the Golden Fish’ or ‘how can one find the Golden Fish’ are sure to get no detailed answer from the Virtual Realm, which would likely respond with correct but useless information such as ‘in the Sea of Knowledge’ or ‘look with your eyes’.

These two questions were actually inspired by guesses made by Ashe and Sonya—Sonya had inquired from Professor Trozan and learned that the Time Continent is also an incredibly vast place, not much smaller than the Sea of Knowledge. Logically, if the Time Continent is so large, then the Golden Fish must also be huge. But why can’t Sorcerers see the Golden Fish in the Sea of Knowledge?

With precedents like “Whirlpool Secret Poison” and “Eviction Secret Poison,” it was natural for them to surmise that the Golden Fish might ‘not exist’ in the Sea of Knowledge and that it would only appear before a Sorcerer after a specific Ritual activates a mechanism in the Virtual Realm.

However, the answer they received was startling: “No.”

The Golden Fish can be seen without a specific Ritual? Does that mean that right now, the Golden Fish is also present in the Sea of Knowledge?

After a brief discussion, they posed the second question:

“When does the Golden Fish rise from the depths?”

Regardless, Ashe and Sonya were convinced that normal navigation would not lead them to encounter the Golden Fish, especially since even Ashe, who held the “Map of the Virtual Realm,” had never seen a trace of the Golden Fish, making it even less likely for other Sorcerers to find it.

Since the Golden Fish was not to be found on the surface, it must be submerged beneath. Moreover, since the Golden Fish could be seen without a specific Ritual, they speculated it might periodically rise from the deep sea to the surface. Hence, they directly inquired about when the Golden Fish would rise, planning to try their luck in finding it then.

Because the question was not a true or false one, they were anxious about whether the Virtual Realm would give a nonsensical answer.

The result was just as surprising: “The Golden Fish is always floating on the surface.”

The Golden Fish is always floating on the surface and can be seen without any specific Ritual?

Although this conclusion was completely at odds with Ashe and Sonya’s experiences during their Exploration in Virtual Realm, they had no choice but to believe it. If the answers to Destiny’s Inquiry about the ‘future’ might not happen, the question about the Golden Fish was information that the Virtual Realm certainly had mastery over; the Virtual Realm was the authority on the matter!

“Could it really be just our bad luck that we’ve never encountered the Golden Fish?”

As incredulous as it was, Ashe could only accept this conclusion. At that moment, the paper turned to light smoke and vanished, and their chairs suddenly disappeared, almost causing them to fall to the ground.

Returning to their Boat and watching the small island of Destiny’s Inquiry sink, Sonya spoke disheartenedly, “It feels like a loss; we didn’t get any useful information.”

“At least I know I can escape from Blood Moon Kingdom alive,” Ashe replied, more relaxed. To him, Destiny’s Inquiry was a chance for free insight. If they gained something, great; if not, it was an experience: “And in the future, I might rupture my ties with you for various reasons, and then reconcile for some other reasons—”

“The fact that we’ve gone through Destiny’s Inquiry means the future might not happen as foretold!” Sonya glared at him, “Besides, there’s a saying that many predictions made in Destiny’s Inquiry never come to pass, but those who know of them die before they can or cannot happen, so no one knows about these unfulfilled predictions, and naturally, there are no records.”

“If you die, I’ll report this precious case about Destiny’s Inquiry to the school; maybe I could earn some extra credit…”

Survivor theory, huh… Ashe spread his hands, “So, do you hope the predictions come true, or that they don’t?”

Sonya huffed through her nose, “I only believe predictions that are favorable to me; the rest are lies.”

“That’s so like you.”

“What about you?”

“Me? Well… I don’t care much about the predictions themselves, but I’m really looking forward to challenging them.”

“A challenge? What do you mean?”

“Well, let me think about how to put this… Swordswoman, do you think that you now and you in thirty years will be the same in terms of personality, values, ideals, habits, etc.?”

Sonya thought for a moment and shook her head: “Probably not, right? I’m not even twenty yet, and thirty years is longer than the time I’ve been alive. There will definitely be many changes.”

Ashe nodded: “Then, if the soul of you thirty years from now suddenly took over your body today, could it be said that the future you has killed the current you?”

Sonya’s brows furrowed slightly, and her expression became a bit uneasy: “I guess you could say that?”

“Extend the ‘takeover process’ to thirty years. If through a prophecy you know that in thirty years there will be a Swordswoman completely different from you in every way, and you still inevitably become the Swordswoman in the prophecy, can it be said that the prophesied Swordswoman slowly killed you over those thirty years?”

“…Normally, no one would think like that.”

“But don’t you find it interesting?” Ashe spread his hands: “If you didn’t know the prophecy, that’s one thing, but knowing it, it’s as if a ‘future you’ has appeared. Only one of you can survive, either they kill you, or you kill them; there’s no second possibility.”

“The only difference between ‘prophecy’ and ‘possession’ is the length of time. ‘Possession’ happens in an instant, so you feel like the ‘future Swordswoman’ has killed the ‘current you.’ But ‘prophecy’ stretches over the long days and nights, where the ‘future you’ sculpts the ‘current you’ into their own image over time.”

Sonya’s lips moved slightly as if she wanted to say something but then held back, seemingly contemplating a rebuttal. Ashe continued to ask:

“Have you heard of a game where kids write a letter to their grown-up selves?”

“I have heard of it, and I’ve done it too.”

“Do you think that an adult, upon seeing that letter, might feel as if it’s a last will and testament?”

“Why would they feel that way?”

“Because they are completely different people, with different thoughts, habits, values, and ideals, yet they once lived in the same body. Isn’t it like the latter has killed the former?”

Sonya shook her head repeatedly: “But they are the same person over time, this change is called growth, not possession!”

Ashe smiled: “When the child writes the letter, it’s like freezing that moment of themselves onto the paper. The soul in the letter separates from the continuous timeline, becoming an independent, unchanging entity.”

“Isn’t that similar to a prophecy? A prophecy extracts and shows you your future self from a certain point in time. Isn’t that just like the future you writing a letter to the current you?”

“Different versions of oneself are not the same person.”

“That’s why I don’t care about prophecies, but I do look forward to the challenge they present. Of course, something like me causing trouble for Sylin after my escape from prison, which is clearly about to happen, doesn’t count as a prophecy. But if in the future we do rupture for those inexplicable reasons, it would mean the Observer in the prophecy has killed me, and the Swordswoman in the prophecy has killed you.”

Ashe suddenly mused: “It’s strange, why does love appear as a reason for coming together, but emotional rupture isn’t listed as a reason for falling apart? Could it be that love only develops after a rupture, when both sides realize how indispensable the other is—”

Sonya snapped back to reality, her face blushing as she spoke through clenched teeth: “That would mean it’s not because of love at all, but because of coming together to face a common crisis!”

“Alright, alright, no need to get worked up.”

“I’m not worked up!”

“Mhm, mhm, you’re right. It’s time to go slay a Slaying Fish-Dragon to lighten the mood.”

After hunting two Knowledge Creatures and failing to obtain any Experience Orbs, Sonya was distracted and failed to intercept the escaping Knowledge Creatures. However, such mistakes were common and Ashe didn’t mind. After saying goodbye, they both logged out of the Virtual Realm.

Back in her body in the Meditation Room, Sonya took a while to return to her normal state, with the Observer’s words echoing in her mind.

After getting to know the Observer better, Sonya couldn’t help but wonder—was the Observer really the reincarnation of a powerful figure she had imagined?

The main reason for her doubt was that the Observer didn’t seem like a Legend at all. He didn’t pursue power, wasn’t keen on learning, and even his desires were shallow. If he were at Swordflower College, Sonya wouldn’t give a second glance to such a person with no potential, a nondescript, inferior sort.

But the Observer’s recent remarks made Sonya realize that he couldn’t possibly be an ordinary person. Even if he seemed so now, it wouldn’t be the case in the future.

That madness shrouded in logic, that deviant nature so different from the norm—Sonya had encountered it many times in “Psychological Analysis of Sin Sorcerers.” Not all Sorcerers were evil, and many were content with a simple life and family. But when their lives were disrupted by unforeseen events, they would shed their ‘old selves’ like caterpillars becoming butterflies, daring to stomp over all laws in pursuit of the light in their hearts.

She recalled the preface of that book—

“They haven’t changed; they have simply awakened.”

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