The Sorcerer's Handbook

Chapter 151: I Want to Go With You

Freya lingered outside the door for a long time. From within came the faint sizzle of hot oil. Her hand rested on the doorknob, yet she did not turn it.

It was not until she heard a door open next door and her neighbor was about to step out that she finally gathered her courage and pushed the door open.

”Welcome back. Dinner’s ready.”

The familiar greeting made Freya hesitate for a moment. ”I’m home.”

”University Student’s Moon, or Death Pursuit?” Ashe asked as he carried the dishes to the long table and activated the Knowledge Curtain to choose a show for dinner.

University Student’s Moon was a lighthearted campus comedy. Its protagonist was a goblin with abysmal grades who, after eating Moon Candy, would enter an extremely intelligent Moon Mode. In that state, he breezed through exams with ease. He even placed first in the unified national examination and earned admission to the top academy in the Blood Moon Kingdom.

The candy, however, came with severe side effects. His personality became wildly unstable. Sometimes he was frivolous, while at other times reliable. At times, he lived ascetically; at others, he gave in to lust. He could be gentle or violently unhinged.

To hide his identity as a hopeless underachiever, the goblin struggled against these side effects while actively participating in university life. The result was a chaotic campus story filled with laughter, shouting, and constant mishaps.

Objectively speaking, the show was well-made. Its pacing was brisk, with jokes landing one after another, and it was packed with sharp satire aimed at university life. Even in Ashe’s eyes, it qualified as a rare quality production.

That was, of course, if one ignored how subtly it guided public opinion toward the legalization of Moon Candy.

After Caimon City announced Moon Candy’s legalization, other cities began pushing similar proposals. The explosive popularity of the University Student’s Moon clearly had backing from various powerful stakeholders. The show could even be seen as a promotional drama, designed to ease resistance and normalize Moon Candy as an everyday consumer product.

Incidentally, the only Moon Candy brand featured in the show was Snow White, a name even Ashe knew well. The identity of the biggest sponsor was obvious.

Death Pursuit, by contrast, was a fantasy suspense drama. Its story followed a protagonist murdered by a close friend. At the moment of death, their souls swapped. The friend’s soul perished inside the protagonist’s body, while the protagonist survived within the friend’s.

To uncover the truth behind the murder, the protagonist assumed multiple identities and traced the clues step by step. He died again and again, disrupted the antagonist’s plans repeatedly, and peeled away layers of hidden schemes. It was a tightly paced thriller.

After skimming a few spoilers, Ashe discovered that the antagonist was a cult.

No matter how he looked at it, the show was clearly referencing the Four Pillars Cult. It never named them outright, yet the group looked like them, behaved like them, and even spoke like them.

That alone was tolerable. What truly irritated Ashe was seeing someone in the reviews ask whether the show was based on his real experiences. He immediately jumped into the discussion as an innocent bystander. When this show started airing, I had not even been caught yet!s

”University Student’s Moon,” Freya said.

Ashe had no objections. He ate while watching with relish, laughing so hard his shoulders shook. As he ate, he reached out to rub Little String. The cat let out an annoyed cry and went back to stuffing its face with kibble.

Freya, however, paid no attention to either the show or the food. Beneath her alluring and charming appearance, a tangle of complicated emotions was quietly brewing.

Adela is right. Ashe is a dangerous man.

Freya had known that from the beginning. What she had not expected was that beneath the surface danger, he was so deeply ”malicious” inside. There was nothing more evil than binding a free soul. Even prison could only restrain the body.

Her thoughts drifted back to the materials she had reviewed days earlier while writing a paper on social upbringing.

The blood bond between the one who gives birth and the one who is born is the shackle farthest from freedom. Severing all innate ties is the foundation of personal autonomy. All forms of dependency are betrayals of freedom.

Along with that came the moral teachings drilled into her over the past decade.

Human nature is impossible to define. Someone may be a good person today and a heartless criminal tomorrow. To grant someone complete trust is to give them the power to harm you at will

Do not place expectations on others. Others are hell.

Trust only yourself. Be responsible only for yourself. Live only for yourself. Die only for yourself.

The truest form of equality lies here. I cannot take advantage of you, and you cannot take advantage of me. Only complete detachment creates true equality. Only when people are entirely unrelated can they breathe freely.

Never allow anyone to plant a seed in your heart.

Freya stole a glance at Ashe. He was laughing so hard that food nearly sprayed from his mouth. A smear of cream clung to the corner of his lips. Faced with his near-ogre-level table manners, Freya felt no discomfort. Instead, a strange impulse rose within her. She wanted to lick the cream away with her tongue.

This is terrifying, the veela thought.

Adela was right. While she still had her rationality, she had to cut this relationship off and drive Ashe out of her life. Otherwise, she would lose her complete self. She would become a slave to emotion, bound by invisible ties, stripped of freedom, reduced to an appendage of social connections, and hollowed out in the end.

No wonder Ashe is a cult leader. If all the followers of the Four Pillars Cult tried to corrupt others like this, they truly deserve to be crushed. It’s no wonder I feel disgusted and want to keep my distance from him.

Yet the moment she imagined a future where she would watch him as closely as she did now, feel joy at his happiness, sorrow at his sadness, and give everything for him, her heart surged with an unfamiliar feeling, something like anxious anticipation.

No. Freya, you are a veela with an independent self. You cannot submit to the despicable tactics of a cult leader. You must gather your courage and throw him out of this apartment. Only without him can you become better. Say it after this meal. Say it after washing the dishes. After I finish this assignment—

Halfway through her thought, Ashe cut her off. ”I’m leaving tonight.”

Freya jerked her head up. ”Where are you going?”

”To where an escaped prisoner belongs,” Ashe donned his coat and mask. ”Thank you for taking care of me these past few days. Though truthfully, I think I’ve been taking care of you more.”

”S-so soon?” Freya stammered, flustered. ”It hasn’t even been seven days yet...”

”The deadline was seven days, but I’ve already found the information I needed.” Ashe summoned the Sympathy spirit. ”You’re not a sorcerer yet, right? Do you have a container to store a spirit?”

”I do, I do,” Freya hurried over to the cabinet. ”I have a glowing orb that can temporarily hold a spirit...”

Ashe waited, watching her squat and rummage through the cabinet. He stepped closer, glanced inside, and lifted a transparent spherical container. ”This one?”

”Oh, yes, that’s it.” Freya scratched her head, embarrassed. ”It was right here. How did I miss it?”

Ashe placed the Sympathy spirit into the orb and severed his connection. The container glowed softly, and the spirit stretched lazily before curling up, as if drifting off to sleep.

Ashe handed the orb to Freya. ”Here. That settles our contract.”

”Mmhmm.”

”After I leave, don’t expose any information about me. You did shelter an escaped prisoner. It could get you into trouble. I tried to avoid the neighbors, but someone might have seen me coming and going. If anyone asks, just say you picked me up from a liquor cafe and didn’t expect me to survive afterward.”

”Okay.”

Ashe crouched before Little String and rubbed its head. ”Goodbye. If it hurts again in the future, don’t hold it in. Cry out. If you don’t, no one will know.”

He stood and turned to Freya, smiling. ”I wish you peace and comfort, Freya.”

She did not respond. Her gaze stayed fixed on Little String, as if the folded-ear cat had transformed into a strange creature she no longer recognized. She could not tear her eyes away from it.

Ashe stepped past her and headed for the entryway.

”Will you come back?” she asked.

While putting on his shoes, Ashe shook his head. ”No. If all goes well, I’ll be doing something big tonight. Coming back to you would only cause trouble.”

”Then where will you live?”

”Somewhere rough. I might leave Caimon City, but I’ll manage.”

”That sounds miserable.”

He chuckled. ”It is. That’s why dinner tonight was so lavish. I had a feeling the next month would be rough, so I treated it as my last bit of happiness.”

As Ashe wrapped his right hand around the doorknob, someone grabbed his left.

He turned to see Freya holding his wrist tightly.

He quickly caught on. ”Do you want me to stay?”

Freya shook her head. ”No. I don’t want you staying in this apartment.”

”But I want to go with you.”