The Sorcerer's Handbook

May 28th was just another workday at the Belldet Estate, located on the second layer of Montphera.

Evelyn stood on tiptoe, squatting atop the statue of the Veela Paladin as if flaunting her perfect balance. ”Hey, why don’t you just join the Belldets? Even if you leave Montphera, where exactly do you think you can run? Out of the top ten in the Gospel’s latest Family Rankings, you’ve already offended nine of them. The imperial family has a warrant out for your arrest, the Red Hats are just waiting to cash you in for points, and that contract of yours with Annan is definitely some kind of exploitative slave agreement.

”She’s exactly the type to take an inch and demand a mile. You’re either going to end up as dog meat or keep living like a dog, so why not be Belldet’s dog instead? We actually offer great benefits!”

Ashe was busy wiping dust from the intricate grooves of the statue. Irritated by the hem of her skirt dangling right in front of his face, he slapped it away. ”But you people always make me work overtime!”

Evelyn promised solemnly, ”I can give you weekends off! Two whole days off a month! That’s one more than everyone else! You can rest on one day and spend your money on the other.”

Ashe thought. Damn it!Before I transmigrated, I only had two days off a month, and now I still only get two days off a month. What was the point of transmigrating?! And how do people in Montphera even manage to take out loans and spend money with only one day off? Their consumption cycle efficiency is insane! It completely shatters the workplace ideology that working overtime leaves you no time to spend your paycheck!

”But can you actually protect me?” Ashe asked aloud, skeptical. ”I’m a wanted criminal, you know.”

”The Book of Gospel,” Evelyn said, cupping her face with both hands. ”I can directly spend Gospel Points to request that it expunge your wanted notice.”

”But wasn’t the warrant issued by the Empire?” Ashe asked, stunned. ”Can the Book of Gospel directly control the Empire? No... wait. Does that mean the Gospel can directly manipulate how society operates?”

Evelyn said, ”Gospel Points carry different value depending on who wields them. For ordinary people, they purchase only fleeting pleasures. For sorcerers, they can be exchanged for power. But in our hands, they become a universal source of energy.

”Think of them like currency. When the amount of money you control reaches the level of a nation’s wealth, you can manipulate prices, leverage social systems, stir up mass movements, or even fabricate literal enemy states. Gospel Points themselves aren’t tradable, but the Book of Gospel acts like an all-purpose wishing machine that streamlines consumption to the absolute extreme. For instance, if you want to buy chocolate balls, you normally need to know where to find them, purchase them through some medium, and then wait for delivery. But the Book of Gospel...”

Evelyn summoned the Book of Gospel, and a bag of chocolate cookies materialized in her left hand. ”It’s expensive, but it skips all the bureaucratic steps... Want one?”

”Give me one to try. No catch,” Ashe said without missing a beat.

Evelyn rolled her eyes but popped a chocolate ball right into his mouth anyway. ”It may be costly, but something like lifting your wanted notice is well within Belldet’s capabilities.”

”If it’s that powerful, why don’t the Red Hats just use Gospel Points to capture me directly?”

”The Book of Gospel can alter the weather, resurrect the dead, and bend reality, but it cannot fix the ever-changing human heart, nor can it directly violate personal privacy,” Evelyn said, casually tossing a chocolate ball in the air. ”For example, these chocolate balls were likely pulled from an actual shop. The Book of Gospel simply transported them to me and paid the vendor. It didn’t force a chef somewhere to instantly manifest them out of thin air.

”It’s the same with your wanted notice. The Book of Gospel won’t erase people’s desire to hunt you down, but it can block the Empire’s warrant, cancel your bounty, and suppress any related information across all communication channels. From an end-result perspective, it’s as if your wanted status never existed at all.

Evelyn ate another chocolate ball. ”Looking at it that way, it seems like the Isa Imperial Family doesn’t actually care about you that much. If they were truly determined, your wanted posters would be plastered everywhere you looked, with rewards so high they’d warp people’s minds. If the temptation were strong enough, even I wouldn’t be able to suppress Montphera’s greed.

”Personally, I think your warrant is just the Empire making a political statement to appease the various factions. They’re not really putting much effort into it. On the night the Art Rankings were released, I personally filed a complaint in my capacity as mayor of Montphera, demanding that Nabistin capture you, a criminal still acting so brazenly in the midst of the apocalypse. In fact, at least a dozen other leaders submitted complaints alongside me.”

Ashe caught on. ”So, if you pull some strings behind the scenes and get the other leaders to stop hating me, the Empire would cancel the warrant?”

”Perfectly doable. As long as you sign this...”

”Is this a marriage registration form?”

”It’s an IOU[ref]IOU stands for I Owe You. It is a written acknowledgment that one person owes something to another person. In simple terms, it is a promise of repayment.[/red],” Evelyn corrected smoothly. ”The amount isn’t even that substantial, just one hundred million Gold Coins. As collateral, I only require ninety percent of your cognitive capacity. It’s not like you use that much of your brain anyway.”

Ashe shook his head vigorously. ”No way! Why does Iger get such good treatment while I have to mortgage ninety percent of my brain?”

Evelyn pondered this for a moment. ”Hmm... If you want Iger’s treatment, it’s not entirely impossible to negotiate...”

Ashe blinked, caught off guard. ”Huh? Are you trying to copy what Iger and Anphel did and make me marry you this time?”

The blue-haired girl suddenly fished out a single Gold Coin and slipped it down his collar, letting it slide cold against his chest.

”Consider that your compensation,” she said.

Before he could react, she brought her hand down in a sharp chop, smacking him right on top of the head.

Ashe gritted his teeth, fishing the coin out of his shirt and pocketing it anyway. ”How dare you insult me like this...”

Evelyn snorted. ”I’ve got zero interest in your unrefined, low-quality genes. They haven’t even gone through Miracle-screening. Besides, the heads of the Belldet family don’t marry for life. Still, I get it. Standing in front of Montphera’s number one beauty, it’s only natural you’d start getting delusions.”

”Good thing that’s not the case. At least my future kids won’t blame me for their height...”

Watching Evelyn conjure nearly a ton of Gold Coins out of thin air and slam them onto the ground with a heavy crash, Ashe straightened his back stubbornly. ”Can I at least wear a helmet?”

”You want to act tough and still wear a helmet? Do you really think you can have it both ways?”

”Blue-haired goblin... I wasn’t talking about you!”

By the time Evelyn finally got off him, looking thoroughly refreshed, Ashe was left looking like a ravaged wreck. Still, he swallowed his pride and calmly stuffed the Gold Coins into his pockets.

Most of his spirits had already been upgraded to the Two-Winged level. With how frequently he had been fighting in the Virtual World lately, even his hardest-working spirits were burning through resources at an alarming rate. He simply didn’t have enough Gold Coins to feed them anymore. In a way, scamming a bit of cash out of a capitalist like Evelyn solved his most urgent problem.

Ashe could have asked Annan for money, but she always insisted on inspecting his spirits first so she could allocate funds strictly based on their numbers. If he asked too often, she would inevitably question why he used them so frequently. She might wonder if he was ”paying public dues” somewhere or secretly starting his own venture behind her back. Ashe had a feeling that if this continued, his anomalous Virtual World Explorations would eventually be exposed, so he tried to avoid asking her altogether.

”So, you still refuse to join the Belldets?” Evelyn asked. ”I’ll give you a highly flexible contract.”

”You’ve been harassing me for days. Honestly, isn’t Harvey the better option? In the future, he’s going to inherit your ancestor’s legacy. He’ll even dig up your family’s ancestral grave.”

Evelyn shrugged. ”He’s far too troublesome. I never planned to recruit him from the start. As for the necromancer Angel’s legacy... that belongs to the Angel, not the family. Harvey was right in the recording. The Belldet family has no right to inherit it. All I need to do is maintain control over our faction and the family itself.”

She looked at him. ”I only need you and Iger. Name your terms. I refuse to believe the Belldet family can’t satisfy your appetite!”

”Unless I’m treated better than Iger, I’m not interested.”

Ashe dampened his cloth again and resumed wiping the statue. Even after being thoroughly ”handled” by the lady of the house, a mere servant like him still had work to do.

”If you’re really not going to budge...” Evelyn hesitated for a moment. ”Fine, I agree to your terms!”

”Didn’t you say you can’t get married? Oh, I get it. We can only be lovers?”

”Bullshit! I just think you’d actually suit Anphel quite well.”

Ashe froze in shock. ”Wait, isn’t Anphel in a passionate relationship with Iger right now? You want me to steal his lover?”

”Anphel doesn’t have to settle for just one,” Evelyn said, sizing him up with a serious expression. ”Now that I think about it, you and Iger are a perfect contrast. One is smart, the other is dumb. One is aloof, the other is cheerful. One is refined, the other is rough. You’d make the perfect pair to bring home together. She can have one for the daytime, and the other for the nighttime.”

”Who’s for the day and who’s for the night... actually, never mind.” Ashe sighed helplessly. ”Can you just give me a contract that doesn’t involve gifting me a spouse?”

”So you were just trying to fish for details about Iger’s contract all along,” Evelyn said with a teasing lilt. ”I knew you were just brushing me off.”

”Who said that? If your terms are good enough, I’ll definitely sign!”

Evelyn bent down to watch Ashe as he worked. ”If you’re so worried about Iger, and so unwilling to let him stay with the Belldet, why didn’t you interrupt their date that night? My original plan was for you to successfully ruin things, making Iger resent you and pushing him completely to our side. Otherwise, did you really think it would be that easy to just toss that remote control away?”

Ashe replied irritably. ”You owe Harvey, whom you stomped on, a proper apology! I just think Iger is smarter than me. If he thinks it’s fine, why should I meddle? And besides... What if you are actually sincere toward him?”

Evelyn coaxed gently. ”Exactly. If even someone as smart as Iger is willing to join us, why won’t you follow him?”

Ashe carried his bucket to another statue, wrung out the cloth, and continued wiping. ”Because he didn’t ask me to come along.”

The cult leader shrugged. ”Maybe he thinks staying with Miss Annan offers me a better future.”