The Sorcerer's Handbook

In the Belldet estate, Evelyn stomped her foot in fury after reading the rankings.

”This is all Ashe’s fault! If it weren’t for him ruining everything, we could have raked in two whole sets of ranking rewards this time!”

Since Leia hadn’t even properly been born yet, her reward would naturally have gone to her parents, Anphel and Iger. Evelyn herself had also appeared on the ranking as the Happiest Merchant, meaning the Belldet family had actually struck a double jackpot in the Happiness Rankings.

However, because of Ashe’s interference, the ranking had been invalidated and all rewards were scrapped.

For Evelyn, this was even more infuriating than if Ashe had actually added her to his harem in the story. She had lost two full rewards. Away from the strategic drawing board, Evelyn was actually quite meticulous about her personal gains. While other faction leaders cared far more about the strategic information leaked by the rankings than the actual prizes, Evelyn remained utterly fixated on the loot.

After all, she possessed nothing that was truly her own. Everything she currently owned came from the Belldet family. Even her youthful attempt to run away in search of genuine romance had stemmed from that deep-seated insecurity. Now that the Gospel had finally validated her personal worth, she had been this close to obtaining a reward that belonged solely to her, only for Ashe to ruin it. It was no wonder she was furious.

Evelyn slumped onto the table, sulking. ”I’m going to take control of Iger and force him to bring Ashe over! You handle Iger; I’ll handle Ashe. We are definitely getting those rewards back!”

Anphel glanced at her sister, slightly bewildered. Evelyn’s level of fixation on Ashe seemed excessive, especially since Ashe wasn’t even one of her debtors and, theoretically, shouldn’t even be on her radar. Furthermore, while her sister supposedly yearned for a standard, ordinary romance, deep down she clearly possessed a fetish for domineering-CEO scenarios. The irony was that within the Gospel Kingdom, the most domineering CEO alive was Evelyn herself.

”Evelyn, the reason the rankings were invalidated and the rewards scrapped actually has nothing to do with Ashe.”

Evelyn tilted her head. ”What? How is it unrelated? If he hadn’t enchanted me in that story, how could I have lost the title of Happiest Merchant?”

Anphel said calmly, ”Think about it carefully. Ashe is merely a variable, or rather, a convenient excuse. Just like how I can only offer you advice, but the actual decision is always made by you, Evelyn.”

Evelyn blinked. ”You mean...”

”Ashe Heath is just the Gospel’s scapegoat.”

***

Meanwhile, Ashe frowned in sheer confusion. ”Fine, if the Gospel wants to write us into out-of-character fanfiction, so be it. But why am I always the one thrown in as the source of all evil and chaos?

”And it’s been ten times in a row now! In its storylines, I’ve basically become an anti-Gospel agent of chaos. Anyone who makes it onto the Happiness Rankings ends up having their fate derailed by me, causing their ranking to be invalidated. Do I really look like I’ve got nothing better to do? If I had that much free time, I’d rather go home and hold my wife while we sleep.”

”Ashe, aren’t you already a chaos extremist?” Harvey asked curiously while slicing a small piece of lamb and popping it into his mouth. ”I’ve never actually seen you do anything to uphold order.”

Ashe opened his mouth to find a counterexample to the necromancer’s accusation. But after a brief, painful reflection on a track record that featured jailbreaking, smuggling, deceiving the Gospel, evading warrants, and recently instigating a massive legion war in the Virtual World, he quietly shut his mouth.

The title Harbinger of Disaster suddenly didn’t sound so inaccurate after all.

Desperate for validation, Ashe scooped Lys up into his arms. ”I adopted Lys! Isn’t providing for a child a good deed for order?”

Lys nodded eagerly in agreement.

For a moment, Harvey just stared at them, dazed. Wait, wasn’t Lys the one who latched onto you in the first place because you looked incredibly easy to bully and could serve as a perfect scapegoat? Did you completely wipe your own memory, or did the two of you just decide to start rewriting history together?

”Ashe, you’re misunderstanding the situation,” Iger said, taking a sip of warm milk. ”It’s not that you are the agent of chaos. It’s that the Gospel needs you to be one, which is why it manufactures these stories around you.”

”What do you mean?” Ashe asked, thoroughly perplexed. He rubbed Lys’s white hair to soothe his rising anxiety. ”Did I offend the Gospel somehow? Why is it targeting me like this?”

Annan tapped her earring lightly. ”Speaking of which, I still haven’t explained the true meaning behind why you are all described as ’meteors.’

”The concept of a meteor is something that destroys all characters in its path, bringing an immediate end to the story. For an author like the Gospel, who is desperately trying to rush a deadline, a sudden ending is exactly what it wants.”

”From the rankings, you can tell that the Gospel does include a lot of accurate, real-world data. Aside from Leia and Harvey’s hypothetical wife, figures like Daphne, Cliose, Evelyn, and Quinna are real, local Gospel citizens. That means the Gospel can’t just make up wild predictions about them.”

”But,” Annan paused, letting the weight of her words sink in, ”the Gospel can only simulate their futures up to a certain point. When it runs out of time and calculations, yet still needs to submit a finished product, what does it do? That’s when it drops a meteor to destroy everyone, forcibly wrapping up their storylines.

”You, Iger, and Harvey, you three are that meteor. As long as you crash into their lives and violently disrupt their destinies, the Gospel no longer has to bother calculating their futures, and the rankings are neatly invalidated. As for why you specifically act so erratically in these predictions...”

”Because we possess infinite possibilities,” Ashe said bitterly. ”So the Gospel is just using us as toilet paper to wipe up its own narrative mess.”

Had the Gospel been a flesh-and-blood author, Ashe would have stormed into its office and grabbed it by the collar. Even an abrupt cliffhanger would be better than producing such garbage writing! How could it rush its deadlines so badly that it vomited out trash like this? Did it have absolutely no respect for its audience?

Ultimately, the Gospel’s current crisis was simple. It wanted to push out an early update. Unable to finish the job properly, it had simply inserted a ”meteor suddenly falls from the sky and kills the entire cast” plot device into the middle of the story, slapped a ”Fin” on the page, and rushed it to the publishers.

As for why the meteor fell, it was actually the culmination of a masterfully hidden trail of breadcrumbs laid down from the very beginning. Because the meteor had come from another world. For now, it might look like a perfectly ordinary migrant-worker meteor, but there was still a chance it could grow into a demon-king meteor, even if that probability was only one percent.

It certainly made things easier for the Gospel, but had it ever considered how the meteor felt?

”I can understand the meteor part,” Harvey said around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. ”But why did the Gospel invalidate the rankings too?”

Iger replied, ”Because the rankings really are invalid. Not only is Ashe’s sudden intrusion into the storyline completely fabricated, but the people on that list were essentially made up, too. They were only inserted because of their connection to Ashe, just to make his interference look more natural and justified.”

”So the Gospel had to deny those rankings. If it were a true Happiness Ranking, they wouldn’t have appeared at all!”

Annan shook her head. ”Not necessarily. I think the tenth-place ranking is probably valid, but only that one. After all, you don’t even know Daphne and her brother... It’s just that, to preserve Ashe’s destructive nature, even the happiest wedding had to be dragged down with them.

”As for the rankings after that, they’re likely just positions created to give Ashe a plausible reason to show up. Most of the people listed are people Ashe already knows. That can’t be a coincidence.”

Ashe felt his veins practically harden at the sheer absurdity of it all. The Gospel’s schemes run too deep! Take me back to the Blood Moon!

Using Ashe as the perfect scapegoat to clean up its own mess, the Gospel had produced a garbage update of a chapter, dumped all the responsibility onto him, and retroactively invalidated the entire storyline as if nothing had happened, all without harming the accuracy of the Woven Festival.

In the end, the Gospel got a free update, the readers got a piece of filler content, and only Ashe got hurt.

The living room fell quiet for a moment as everyone pondered the changes brought by the Happiness Rankings. Then, Pankey spoke up. ”Let’s eat. The meat soup is going to get cold.”

Only then did everyone remember they were still in the middle of dinner. The sudden update of the Happiness Rankings had completely distracted them from eating.

Ashe turned around and noticed that Harvey had unknowingly polished off more than half the food. He had been working all day at the construction site without using any sorcery, and he was starving.

”Uncle Harvey, could you stop eating? I won’t have enough left!”

”Pankey, please serve me another bowl of soup, thank you.”

”The lamb is really tender and flavorful. Your substitute’s cooking is excellent, Ashe.”

Lys choked slightly, having eaten too fast in her silent competition with Harvey. ”Mmmm!”

Ashe couldn’t help but laugh, patting her back while handing her some soup.

After eating and drinking his fill, Ashe felt that as absurd as the Happiness Ranking was, it didn’t really affect him much. As Harvey had said, his reputation was already beyond redemption. If he wasn’t a legendary villain, he was at least notorious, so he didn’t really need this extra ”boost.” As long as he stayed completely useless, no one could exploit him. The Happiness Rankings? It isn’t even as important as getting a full meal.

That comfort lasted until Iger suddenly shattered the warm atmosphere. ”Miss, you seem to be in a good mood.”

Everyone turned to Annan. The Purple Moth did indeed have a faint smile at the corner of her lips, which were lightly stained with black pepper sauce. She paused, then smiled. ”I’ve been working all day, and dinner is delicious. I can’t help but feel a little happy.”

The fraudster lowered his eyelids. ”Is that so... I thought you were happy because the rankings became invalid.”

Ashe, Harvey, Lys, and the others all looked confused. ”Huh?”

Why would Annan be happy about the rankings being invalidated?

Annan sighed, spreading her hands. ”I’m not hiding anything on purpose. Iger, you’re just being overly suspicious.”

Iger said calmly, ”If you want me to trust you completely, you’d have to be as stupid as Ashe.”

Ashe snapped, ”Alright, can we stop attacking me now? What exactly are you talking about?”

Iger explained, ”If the Gospel is rushing to finish the Woven Festival, then situations like ranking invalidation will likely continue to happen. It’s even possible that all the remaining six rankings will be invalid. In that case, the true Divine Lord’s Wish will only be drawn from the first three lists.”

Ashe and Lys froze, then immediately whipped their heads toward Annan. Their minds flashed back to the trio’s results in those first three rankings. Art Rankings Number One, Annan Dolan. Family Rankings Number One, Archibald Harvey. Schemer Rankings Number One, Iger Perskin... and Number Ten, Annan Dolan.

Among the entire Funeral Agency, only Annan held places on two of those lists.