The Sorcerer's Handbook

”Repeat after me. Under the following circumstances, I am willing to transfer the Divine Lord’s wish to Annan Dolan.”

Inside the inn. Iger spent nearly half an hour painstakingly reviewing the new contract, which had spiraled to nearly a thousand clauses. When he finally finished, he cast a long, searching look at Annan, pressed his thumbprint onto the parchment, and declared, ”Under the following circumstances, I am willing to transfer the Divine Lord’s wish to Annan Dolan.”

Annan turned to Harvey. ”Your turn. Say it. Under the following circumstances, I am willing to transfer the Divine Lord’s wish to Annan Dolan.”

Harvey seemed utterly indifferent. Without so much as glancing at the text, he pressed his print down and droned out the exact same oath.

The Purple Moth let out a soft sigh of relief, then turned her attention to the cult leader sitting beside her.

Ashe looked up, mildly surprised. ”I have to do it too?”

”It’s just a formality anyway,” Annan said. ”Besides, since they’ve both signed, I’m worried they’ll exclude you if you don’t join in.”

”Oh, so now you care about my workplace relationships? What about earlier, when you were feeding me—”

Annan tugged at his sleeve, her tone turning uncharacteristically coy, almost coquettish. ”It’s just going through the motions. Can’t you just give me some peace of mind? But I’m fresh out of contract paper, so just repeat after me: No matter the circumstances...”

Ashe echoed, ”No matter the circumstances...”

Annan smiled. ”I am willing to transfer the Divine Lord’s wish to Annan Dolan...”

Ashe followed along, ”I am willing to transfer the Divine Lord’s wish to Annan Dolan...”

Annan added smoothly, ”And forever adore her, respect her, and cherish her.”

Ashe began, ”And forever adore her—”

”Whoa, hold on! There’s a problem here!” Lys instantly cut in, thoroughly annoyed. ”Aunt Annan, you’re sneaking in extra conditions!”

Iger’s face darkened as well. ”Interfering with free will and surreptitiously extending a contract’s duration. Both are egregious violations of our original agreement, aren’t they?”

”Tch,” Annan idly toyed with her earring. ”It was just a joke. Even if Ashe had agreed, the contract wouldn’t have validated it anyway.”

Ever since returning from her review of the Culprit Rankings, Annan’s absolute priority had been reinforcing the bindings on her subordinates.

She was no longer the highest-weighted Echoer in the Woven Festival, even though, by all rights, she should have been. Unfortunately, Gospel Ashe had utterly voided her top position on the Culprit Ranking. If their assassination of the princess succeeded, either Iger or Harvey would technically be more qualified than her to claim the Divine Lord’s wish.

To ensure that whoever obtained the wish would immediately hand it over, she had to deepen the constraints of their arrangement. Under normal circumstances, an advance command from Annan would force the two of them to obediently transfer the prize. But the Divine Lord’s wish was no ordinary variable.

No one truly understood how the wishing mechanism operated. Would the Omniscient Weaver peer directly into the deepest, truest desires of the soul? Would the wish-maker be pulled into an isolated, divine space to be questioned? Or would a literal parchment materialize for them to write upon? The possibilities were endless.

Setting aside the risk that Iger or Harvey might exploit semantic loopholes to wish away their contracts entirely, Annan was far more terrified that the Omniscient Weaver might simply shield them from contractual coercion altogether, granting them absolute autonomy. For a deity, bypassing a mortal contract required less than lifting a finger. A mere passing thought would suffice. But for Annan, it would mean total ruin, rendering all her meticulous planning worthless.

She had never once considered relying on Iger or Harvey to make the wish on her behalf. Not even for a single second. This wasn’t a matter of testing human nature. It was a test of her own intelligence.

To be perfectly honest, even during the height of passion the previous night, while she and Ashe were tangled together exchanging bodily fluids, she hadn’t trusted him with this for a single moment either.

The final, crowning step of defiling the Gospel had to be executed by her hands alone. It could never be entrusted to another soul.

Hence, the absolute necessity of forcing Iger and Harvey to sign this supplementary agreement.

Still, stacking multiple contracts was a dangerous taboo. As a master fraudster himself, Iger had anticipated this from the start. Back when they signed their initial pact, he had noted the numerous traps Annan had woven into the text. When she was in a pleasant mood, she could play the benevolent employer, but the moment her temper soured, she possessed clauses that could force Ashe to lick her toes.

Iger had fought bitterly to strip away the worst of those conditions, but Annan had still retained significant leverage, specifically, the contract deepening clause.

Simply put, within the permissible framework of the original agreement, Annan was allowed to draft supplementary pacts to mandate highly specific behaviors, such as dictating exactly how they must act under highly specific conditions.

Of course, even this deepening clause had its hard boundaries. For instance, the expiration date of any new agreement could not outlast the original contract. If it could, Annan could simply renew a master-slave contract every three months indefinitely, at which point the entire crew might as well legally change their surnames to Dolan.

Furthermore, it could not overwrite fundamental personal will. Had Annan ordered them to wholeheartedly serve as Dolan’s loyal hounds, they might well have continued to serve her even after the magic faded.

Contracts, ultimately, were not omnipotent. Leaving aside a Mind Class sorcerer of Iger’s caliber, even Ashe possessed enough sheer willpower to resist Annan’s dictates to an extent. She could never truly force them to do something they fundamentally, deep down, had absolutely no desire to do.

Now that Iger and Harvey had signed the detailed secondary contract, no matter how unwilling they were deep down, the moment any one of the nearly one thousand prerequisites listed in the document was triggered, they would immediately recite their oath.

If this still failed to wrest the Divine Lord’s wish from their hands, Annan could only accept defeat.

”If my oath had actually taken effect just now, what would have happened?” Ashe asked, curiosity piqued. ”Would it have directly altered my thoughts?”

Annan explained, ”A contract isn’t a Mind Class Miracle. Its effects aren’t that immediate. Most likely, it would constantly plant subtle suggestions in your mind, causing you to focus more of your attention on me. You would only look at me, only care about me. Even when I wasn’t in your sight, your thoughts would still somehow circle back to me...”

”That sounds rather similar to how listening to the Gospel finds someone a partner,” Ashe said. ”It strips away all other choices, leaving you capable of loving only one person for the rest of your life.”

Annan froze. After a moment of silence, she said, ”Sorry. That joke went too far.”

”It’s fine,” Ashe turned toward Harvey and Iger. ”Speaking of which, what effects do your ranking rewards have this time? The Cursed Rainbow Tail Feather... could it be...”

”That’s right. It’s the Rainbow Tail Feather of the Celestial Chariot Ox.”

At the mention of it, Iger’s expression turned complicated. ”Instead of calling it a reward, I’d say it’s a trap. It feels like...”

”It feels like the Gospel is paying us protection money, yet hiding counterfeit coins inside the payment,” the necromancer chimed in, his voice laced with ridicule.

[Cursed Ghost King / Rusty Crow’s Rainbow Tail Feather]

Restrictions: Can only be used within the Continent of Time. Can only be used by the owner.

Effect: Upon use, the Gold Wing will fully condense, and the user will directly ascend to the third layer of the Virtual World.

Penalty: Simultaneously, the user’s mana pathway between the sorcerer and the fourth layer of the Virtual World will be permanently sealed.

So powerful!

Ashe had thought the Rusty Crow’s Golden Feather was already absurdly overpowered. It allowed an ordinary person to instantly obtain a gold-level sorcery class rank, leaving them to simply explore the Virtual World steadily to continue climbing upward.

However, the Rainbow Tail Feather was even more outrageous. It directly fed Gold Mana into your mouth and carried you all the way to the third layer of the Virtual World! Not even a kindergarten’s service would be this considerate.

If the Golden Feather meant letting someone win at the starting line, the Rainbow Tail Feather was like placing the finish line directly above the starting line. Simply using the item was all it took to become a Sacred Realm sorcerer.

”What does ’permanently sealing the mana pathway between sorcerers and the fourth layer of the Virtual World’ mean?” Ashe asked, puzzled.

”It means exactly what it says,” Pankey explained. ”In our daily lives, we consume mana, which quickly regenerates on its own. Where does that mana come from? There is no mana floating in the air. We sorcerers, can only provide knowledge as the raw material for mana. We cannot directly create it ourselves.

”We do not directly enter the Virtual World, yet we have always maintained a connection with it. Whenever we consume mana, our virtual wings automatically draw energy from the Virtual World to replenish it. That is the mana pathway.”

Ashe remained confused. ”Then what use is there in sealing the connection to the fourth layer of the Virtual World? They will only become Sacred Realm sorcerers of the third layer by using the Rainbow Tail Feather. They wouldn’t be able to absorb fourth-layer mana anyway.”

”If you break through your sorcery class rank and want to summon higher-level spirits by entering deeper layers of the Virtual World, you must establish communication with the mana of that higher layer,” Iger calmly explained. ”Simply put, if I want to ascend to the fourth layer of the Virtual World in the future, I must connect with fourth-layer mana to summon Four-Winged spirits because the fourth wing of a Four-Winged spirit is formed from the colorless mana of the fourth layer of the Virtual World.”

Ashe caught on. ”So if you use this reward, wouldn’t that completely cut off your hope of becoming a Legendary sorcerer?”

Iger sneered. ”That is why it is called the Cursed Rainbow Tail Feather. The Gospel thinks far too highly of us. It was willing to use such precious bait as the Sacred Realm just to cut off our possibility of becoming Legends in the future...

”At this point, even I’m curious how much trouble I’ll cause the Gospel in the future for it to be this wary of me.”

Ashe said seriously, ”That only means you absolutely shouldn’t use it. The Gospel recognizes, and perhaps even fears, your potential. Becoming a Sacred Realm sorcerer is only a matter of time for you. There’s no need to rush it—”

”I already used it.”