The Sorcerer's Handbook

In the Abyss.

Harvey glanced down at the shackles binding his wrists, then turned to look at Ashe with an expression of profound grievance.

Lys chimed in emotionally, "See? This is what happens when you let yourself get dragged down by Ashe."

The others remained silent. Deep down, they all sympathized with Harvey's helplessness.

Ashe reached out, grabbing Lys's little face and squishing it back and forth. "Stop adding your own narration!"

Iger offered a faint smile. "Look at it this way, Harvey. The Gospel already knows you're going to commit crimes in the future, yet it didn't kill you on the spot. That alone is a huge gain. Now it's even rewarded you. You should be a little grateful to the Gospel."

Ashe eagerly agreed. "Exactly, exactly! Look, there isn't even a chain between those cuffs. The Gospel is clearly being lenient. You should take this time to properly reflect on yourself and reform."

Harvey's handcuffs lacked a connecting chain, meaning they didn't actually function as restraints at all. Instead, they looked more like decorative, or perhaps even "playful" accessories. Against his dark skin, they bore an unsettling resemblance to a captive's irons.

The necromancer grumbled under his breath. For a man who habitually carried a coffin on his back, with aesthetic sensibilities as unyielding as marble. He naturally couldn't care less about the cuffs' appearance.

After a brief inspection, Harvey shifted into his Mist Spirit form, instantly behaving as though he had received a fascinating new toy. He drifted excitedly over to the coffin and tapped on its lid. "Alice, this form really suits you. Once I fully master its mechanics, I'll configure it for you right away. Hmm? You don't like white mist? Then I'll experiment with some variations, maybe a blue mist form instead..."

Watching Harvey enthusiastically converse with a coffin, the rest of the group felt their sanity had undergone a forced calibration.

Annan closed her Book of Gospel and declared, "Alright. We need to move. We must find a safe place to rest as soon as possible. Ashe's injuries can't wait any longer."

Pankey said, "Follow me. I've already mapped out the route out of this abyss."

The squad began moving along the abyss passage. Once Harvey finally concluded his private conversation with Alice, Ashe caught up and asked, "So, were you lying back there, or did you eventually have a change of heart?"

Harvey looked at Ashe, then glanced at Iger. "Are you asking me? Or are you asking Iger?"

Compared to a necromancer, terms like lying and change of heart certainly felt far more applicable to the fraudster.

Ashe pressed. "The recording explicitly stated that you act out of a love for life, which is why you create such massive numbers of half-living undead. But just a moment ago, you swore you would never defile life. Either you will change in the future, or your present self is lying and doesn't truly believe in that principle.

"After all, the Woven Festival doesn't fabricate things out of thin air. It only predicts based on existing variables."

Annan and Lys stared dead at Ashe, their eyes silently demanding, What about you and Quinna, then?

Ashe didn't feel the slightest bit of shame, and frankly, he had no reason to. He and Quinna shared absolutely no intimacy. Their closest interaction was when Quinna once licked blood off his face... but that was entirely different! He had been Annan's fiancé at the time, and Quinna's actions had been completely justified under the circumstances!

Harvey pondered the question for a moment, then shook his head. "I did not lie, and my future self will not change.

"As long as I walk the path of necromancy, I will always uphold the boundary between life and death. When necromancers claim that life and death are equally important, it isn't an empty slogan, nor is it a matter of vague professional ethics.

"Consider this. What truly separates a corpse from a lump of rotten meat? Why can a corpse be reanimated into the undead, while rotten meat can only decay? That's because a corpse preserves the traces of a living being's entire existence.

"The living experience joy and sorrow, endure storms and trials, and achieve spiritual insights and cultivation. After death, the soul carries the bulk of those memories into the underworld, but a fraction of those traces remains embedded within the physical shell left in reality. What necromancers care about is not the flesh itself, but the data woven into it, which includes time, mentality, and the remnants of whatever sorcery classes they practiced.

"It is precisely because they fought so desperately to live that their corpses can bloom into a more brilliant form of rebirth under a necromancer's hands, transforming into power for the living.

"Think about it. Every organization or nation encourages its people to struggle and strive. Yes, the individuals eventually die, but their lifelong achievements become the strength of the collective and the foundation for the next generation... When you strip away the semantics, isn't that essentially necromancy?"

"It's not just kingdoms and organizations. The world itself operates on the exact same principle. As sorcerers, we will eventually die and have our emotions stripped away in the underworld. Yet, we leave behind pure memories and cultivations within the Virtual World, continuously adding depth to it. That data becomes power for future generations... Strip away the semantics, and isn't that also necromancy?

"To me, the Virtual World itself is the greatest necromancer of all. Even the laws of human society are just a perfect imitation of necromancy.

"Would a farmer harvest crops before they mature? Would a chef serve half-finished dishes to customers? Would a functional nation ever suppress the ambitions of its youth?"

Harvey spread his hands wide. "Now do you understand... Wait, why are you all looking at me like that?"

His throat had grown a little dry from speaking, and only then did he notice that everyone had stopped dead in their tracks. They were staring at him intently, as if watching a common cockroach suddenly metamorphose into a magnificent rhinoceros beetle.

After a long, heavy silence, Annan suddenly asked, "What level was Harvey in that recording?"

Pankey replied, "Definitely not an Angel. But to wield a Five-Winged Divine Spirit with a mortal body... if he wasn't a Legendary sorcerer by then, he would at least be at the Sacred Realm level."

"Sacred Realm or Legendary..." Annan exhaled slowly. "Even if the Woven Festival misjudged other things, on this specific point, its assessment is probably correct."

There was a profound reason for their shock. As fellow sorcerers, they could clearly perceive Harvey's current power level. If their own sorcery classes were still just a matter of techniques, then Harvey had already begun touching the absolute edge of truth.

Harvey did not treat necromancy as a mere tool, but as a core methodology for understanding the world and himself. In truth, every sorcery class was supposed to be a path for sorcerers to explore the world outwardly and themselves inwardly.

Even Ashe, the accidental "border collie" who had somehow infiltrated this pack of elite sorcerers, could vaguely sense the weight of it.

Take swordsmanship and the Swordswoman, for example. He wasn't entirely sure whether her personality had shaped her swordsmanship or if her swordsmanship had carved out her personality. But the result was undeniable. She had become increasingly sharp-edged and decisive. After spending time with her, Ashe often felt that if he ever truly wronged her, she would probably impale him without a second thought.

Most ordinary sorcerers could never perceive this depth, and even if they caught a glimpse of it, they could not bridge the gap. Without reaching a certain tier of power, one simply could not take in such a vast landscape. They could only rely on fragmented descriptions from others.

Still, that didn't stop Annan and the rest from recognizing the staggering scale of Harvey's vision. Because they themselves could already glimpse parts of that horizon, they knew his words were no mere exaggeration.

At this point, the only things limiting Harvey's growth were time, reality, and the Virtual World. His conceptual bottleneck in necromancy had completely ceased to exist.

This was why Harvey was so certain he would never change. For him, necromancy was practically a political ideology. Anything less than absolute loyalty was an outright betrayal of his own mind. If he ever truly changed, it wouldn't be a shift in morals. Instead, it would be a sign that he had found an entirely superior methodology and abandoned necromancy altogether.

"So, did the Gospel make a mistake?" Ashe murmured.

Still tightly holding Ashe's hand, Lys suggested, "Is it possible that Uncle Harvey was actually forced into it?"

"Hm?"

"Daddy, it's just like the question you asked me before. If I'm holding a rail switch and have to choose between letting the train continue, where it'll hit five people, or changing the track and letting it hit just one..."

Annan thought for a moment, then said, "So no matter what you choose, it's bad. You just pick the least bad outcome."

Pankey looked at Ashe. "Do you usually say things like this to your daughter?"

Despite having his own parenting skills called into question, Ashe remained completely unbothered. He simply said, "Compared to my problem, Lys's response was actually far more impressive. She claimed she values absolute fairness above all else. Crushing five people would be unfair to those five. Crushing one person would be unfair to that one. Therefore, her only logical solution is to connect both tracks and crush everyone."

"......"

The young butler, possessing the high emotional intelligence that he did, merely offered his usual deadpan response. "The student has truly surpassed the master..."

Annan glanced between them. "You might as well be honest with me. Are you two actually father and daughter? I won't hold it against you for keeping it a secret."

Ashe paused, shifting back to the main topic. "So, based on what you're saying, something so outrageous is going to happen in the future that even Harvey won't be able to stand it. That's why the Gospel predicts Harvey would rather create an entire undead family than live in a world like that. Something so inherently disgusting that even a necromancer finds it intolerable... Harvey, do you have any clues?"

Harvey thought it over for a brief moment. "Like... the Gospel Kingdom implementing a mandatory cremation policy for everyone? A wasteful rule like that would indeed make me absolutely furious."

"Damn. That actually sounds exactly like you."

In truth, the group didn't particularly care about the prediction that "Harvey would become the source of all evil." First of all, they knew this future was just the result of them successfully tricking the Gospel. Secondly, it had nothing to do with them. Harvey wasn't planning on turning them into undead thralls.

To Ashe's group, they were outsiders to this kingdom anyway. As for Annan and Pankey, just moments ago, when Annan had Ashe locked in a brutal cross chokehold, she had only demanded to know why he was so close to Quinna. She hadn't expressed a single word of protest against Harvey turning Senheiser into a Mist Spirit.

Compared to Harvey's bizarre undead schemes, they were far more preoccupied with figuring out what kind of catastrophic future event could be so extreme that even a necromancer would recoil from it.

Furthermore, one of the Blood Moon Corpse King's traits was complete immunity to Weaving Miracles, which led Ashe down a strange path of speculation.

While watching Annan and the others debating further ahead, Ashe suddenly noticed that the fraudster at the back of the line had remained entirely silent. Throughout their entire interaction, he had kept his head low, not uttering a single word. After a moment of thought, Ashe patted Lys on the back. "Go find Big Sis Annan. Hold her hand tightly. If you get lost down in this abyss, I'm not coming back down to look for you."

"Tch," Lys pouted, but she obediently walked ahead and grabbed Annan's sleeve. "Aunt—"

Annan immediately flicked Lys's forehead. "Call me Annan."

Ashe slowed his pace until he was walking side-by-side with Iger. "I'm starting to think you're planning to run away."

Iger shot him a sharp look. "Hmm?"

His eyes practically screamed, What kind of nonsense are you babbling about now?

Ashe explained, "The Gospel probably figures that you'll eventually flee to another kingdom to commit crimes and cause chaos, which is why you didn't show up in the projection. Besides, didn't you say you wanted to go exploring ancient ruins once you got rich? Harvey and I aren't exactly the traveling types, so it makes total sense that we'd eventually part ways."

Iger glanced at him but offered no reply.

"Or maybe the next set of rankings just hasn't been revealed yet," Ashe continued speculatively. "There could be a Ruin Exploration Ranking, a Conspiracy Ranking, or even a Mud Cafe Male Escort Ranking. That's probably where we'll finally see your true colors..."

Iger maintained his stubborn silence.

"Or, perhaps the most realistic scenario. You got yourself taken in by some incredibly wealthy woman, and you just don't need your broke friends anymore. You know what I mean?"

Iger finally snapped, nodding slowly. "I get it now. You're intentionally picking a fight, aren't you?"

Ashe scratched the back of his head. "Huh? No, I'm just saying you shouldn't worry about not showing up in the Woven Festival. Setting aside the chance that you might appear on a later list, it actually might be a blessing that you aren't on this one at all. Look at the rest of us. Not a single one of us has managed to escape the Gospel's schemes. As the only one who slipped through the cracks, you should be celebrating."

Out of the current two rankings, Annan, Ashe, and Harvey had all made appearances. Among those left out, Pankey was already in his sixties. I was perfectly logical for him not to be around in another fifty years. Lys was only about ten years old, meaning she would naturally grow up, leave Ashe's care, and forge her own path. The only person who logically should have left a trace but was entirely absent was Iger.

While there was still a way to get around Ashe and Annan being suspected of a secret, private rendezvous, there was absolutely no reason for Ashe and Harvey to be operating as a duo. Yet, bizarrely, only Ashe and Harvey had appeared in the projection, while Iger was nowhere to be found.

No one had spoken this realization aloud yet, but everyone had already quietly weighed the grim implications behind it.

"You think I'm terrified of dying?" Iger asked.

Ashe blinked, gently patting Iger's shoulder. "If you aren't, why have you been looking so miserably depressed? Hey, being afraid of death isn't something to be ashamed of. I won't mock you for it."

"Hah, how could I possibly be—"

Iger cut himself off, pausing before a slow smile crept onto his face. "Alright, fine. Maybe I am a little worried. But looking at you makes me realize I was completely overthinking things."

"Why's that?"

"Did you forget? Our contract is still active. You still owe me a wish. If I truly end up in mortal peril, I'll just use it to make you die in my place." Iger roughly brushed Ashe's hand off his shoulder. "You had better pray every single night that nothing happens to me, or you'll be the one facing a terrible end."

Only then did Ashe remember the contract between them. "Wait, that might not even work. What if I'm not even around when you die?"

"Hmm, that is a legitimate flaw in the plan. Tell you what, look over here," Iger suddenly raised a hand and snapped his fingers directly in front of Ashe's eyes. "There. I've just implanted a psychological suggestion. If I happen to die before my wish is spent, this suggestion will automatically trigger and replace the wish."

Ashe instantly began rubbing his eyes repeatedly, as if trying to physically scrub the suggestion out like a speck of dirt. "W-what kind of psychological suggestion?!"

"It's quite simple. It will alter your mind and permanently erase anything deemed unnecessary."

"And what exactly counts as unnecessary?"

"Any memory that doesn't involve me," Iger said, a faint, cryptic smile playing on his lips. "That way, only I will remain in your mind. You will truly believe that I am your most precious, irreplaceable companion, and you'll spend the rest of your miserable life trying to drag my soul back from the depths of hell."

Shocked, Ashe vigorously shook his head to clear it. "How could a spell like that even exist?! No, wait! Even if I only remembered you, I still might choose not to revive you! What makes you so confident I'd actually do it?"

Iger froze slightly, the smile faltering for a fraction of a second. Then, he burst into a laugh. "Alright, alright, I was just messing with you. There's no psychological suggestion that convenient. And even if there were, a mere Two-Winged sorcerer like me could never pull it off. I was only silent earlier because I was calculating our future. With you and Harvey causing this much catastrophic trouble, I'm bound to get dragged into the chaos whether I want to or not."

Cold sweat was already dripping down Ashe's neck. "R-really? There's truly no suggestion?"

"I don't think you'd believe me regardless of whether I said yes or no," Iger replied smoothly, his eyes narrowing playfully. "How about this? I'll just use your wish right now to rewrite your memory so you'll stop doubting me entirely—"

"Alright, fine! I'm done bothering you! Think whatever you want!"