The Sorcerer's Handbook

Thump! Thump!

The serene illusion shattered violently. The sky erupted in a fury of thunder and rain, molten fissures ripped through the earth, and monstrous leviathans breached the ocean's surface.

However, this time was different. Before, it had been the "Evil Demon" inflicting an apocalypse upon the mind. Now, it was the Secret Guard who had actively unleashed a cataclysm across heaven and earth.

"You seem to know far more than Princess Lysdia should," the Secret Guard said, standing defiant against the howling storm as she unfurled the Book of Gospel. "If you think words alone can make me falter, you're sorely mistaken.

"I just need to confirm two things. First, that you are not Princess Lysdia, but a spirit deceiving and manipulating her. Second, that I must kill you to break free from this illusion.

"Submit to the judgment of the Gospel. To destroy your kind, to shatter the illusions ensnaring the princess, I will invoke the harshest punishment the Gospel can deliver."

Amid the world-ending chaos, the holy, solemn voice of the Gospel rang out with piercing clarity. Even as a prelude to execution, its melody seemed crafted to instill absolute despair in the condemned.

First came eight bolts of dark lightning, writhing like black serpents. These were the Eight Fangs, a Divine Miracle that had once pierced the depths of hell, leaving immortal scars that still echoed with the hissing venom of vipers.

The Eight Fangs instantly pulverized the Black Witch. The Secret Guard had no intention of stopping there. The Gospel in her hands shimmered with prismatic light. The storm above transformed into a golden deluge, converging upon the Black Witch to form a river of liquid gold that severed the heavens from the earth.

Divine Miracle, River of Golden Time!

The Miracle was derived when the Omniscient Weaver borrowed the power of the River of Flowing Gold, capable of decaying all tangible life, from the Continent of Time. Not even spirits could resist its rot.

Flipping to a new page in the Book of Gospel, the Secret Guard vanished, reappearing thousands of miles high in the stratosphere. Below her, a massive meteor tore through the clouds, shattering the air with a deafening roar before slamming into the earth.

Divine Miracle, Falling Star!

It was the apocalyptic technique of a foreign evil god, making it a perfectly fitting means of execution.

Then, a continent-spanning tsunami swallowed the land. Countless frenzied waves twisted into a colossal whirlpool, faintly resembling two enormous serpents chasing and entangling each other as they tore the world apart, crushing every living thing in their wake.

Divine Miracle, Twin Serpents of the Whirlpool!

The Omniscient Weaver had plucked this Miracle straight from ancient history. Even now, the violent currents of the Sea of Knowledge were said to be mere aftershocks of those Twin Serpents.

Suddenly, towering flames erupted from the murky deep, solidifying into a sprawling infernal fortress. Boiling magma churned the sea, and scalding air scorched the lungs as a vision of hell itself descended upon the world.

Divine Miracle, Hundred-Thousand Souls' Molten Hell!

This was a miracle of pure punishment, a literal fragment of the underworld captured by the Omniscient Weaver. Even the dead could not endure its steel-melting heat. Under its wrath, all emotions and thoughts evaporated, leaving behind only the purest essence of knowledge and memory.

As the molten hell gradually shrank and flickered out, the Secret Guard slowly closed the Book of Gospel.

The surrounding clouds coalesced, shaping a sacred palace in the sky. Standing upon its white jade floors, she looked down at the scorched, ruined earth like a deity surveying hell from the safety of heaven.

Yet, this was a mindscape. In this realm, Miracles could obliterate all physical matter, but they could not erase the intangible heart. Just as Ashe's demonic deterrence conjured an apocalypse merely to intimidate, the Secret Guard could only use these Miracles to torture her target, attempting to snuff out their inner light.

In a mindscape, surrender was the only true death.

The fear, pain, and torment inflicted by these Miracles were devastatingly real. Even watching from her safe vantage point, the Secret Guard trembled. She could not fathom the agonizing despair of the spirit standing directly in the heart of the storm, drowning in bone-chilling terror.

Theoretically, under the weight of such relentless, world-ending magic, the spirit should have collapsed within a second. But... the illusion remained unbroken.

From the burning ruins, a fragile, pitiful female voice drifted upward. "Pain... It really hurts..."

The Secret Guard shuddered, nearly dropping the Book of Gospel. In a panic, she flung the book open again. A meteor shower of liquid fire rained from the heavens, saturating the ashes in a cleansing blaze.

Yet, from the smoldering debris, a wisp of frail black smoke coalesced into a humanoid silhouette. With its first step, bones formed. With the second, flesh sprouted. By the third step, a web of raw, exposed nerves grew, and with a fourth...

Eight serpents of black lightning descended, tearing the form apart. Then came the River of Gold, storms and tempests, falling stars, vacuum distortions, the Corroding Black Coffin, the Molten Hell, and nerve chaos. Dozens, then hundreds of city-leveling and nation-destroying Miracles struck in a relentless, overlapping barrage. Yet this rapid layering of horrors, delivered like a flat recital of facts, failed to frighten the condemned and brought absolutely no comfort to the executioner.

Useless! Useless! Useless!!

The entire mindscape had been ravaged by miracles, twisted into a hellish wasteland. Here, the light could melt any tangible object, the air corroded all physical matter, and nails tore free from flesh to flee the chaos. Even neurons turned traitorous, attacking their own host.

If the Secret Guard had not been protected within the palace in the sky, a single second exposed to this cursed air would have torn her apart, leaving her body shredded and tortured to death by omnipresent malice. This depth of despair would drive any living being to abandon hope.

Hence, she could not comprehend why the spirit had not given up, or why it continued to press on.

Hah!

Defying countless divine obstacles, the humanoid silhouette finally set foot on the white jade floor. First, her bones formed, then her flesh sprouted, and her nerves wove together. In moments, the Black Witch's form was fully restored.

The sheer terror of this rapid flesh-and-bone regeneration was enough to shatter anyone's mental defenses. The Secret Guard stared in stunned disbelief at the woman rising from hell itself, her legs buckling until she sank to the floor. No armor, no matter how strong, could protect her fragility. No paradise, no matter how grand, could conceal her smallness. Her fighting spirit had been crushed, step by step, under the Black Witch's relentless advance.

She murmured, "What are you? How can you endure so much pain? Why won't you give up?"

"You ask questions I also want answers to," the Black Witch said, looking down at her newly formed hands. "I am not the same as I was then. Back then, I was only a year and a half old. I had never faced betrayal or setbacks. I had never seen disaster or death. I was like a flower in a greenhouse, hardened only in words, with nothing but a trembling, insecure heart inside.

"But my heart is far stronger now. The pain she endured would have been a thousand times worse than mine, and the torments I suffered are only a fleeting moment compared to hers. How did she crawl out of hell and pull you into the abyss?"

The Secret Guard stared blankly. "What are you talking about? I don't understand."

The Black Witch's lips curved into a faint smile. "That's fine. I'm not speaking to you."

She crouched in front of the Secret Guard. "Aunt... can you tell me why, when I am your niece, you show me no mercy at all?"

The Secret Guard's dazed expression twisted with sudden conflict. "I... I just..."

She faltered, unable to form a single word. Yet the Black Witch showed no impatience. She reached out, gently stroking her aunt's hair, and pulled the trembling warrior into her arms, comforting her like an older sister would a younger sibling.

Gradually, the Secret Guard relaxed, softening into the Black Witch's embrace. Her voice dropped to a whisper, almost inaudible. "I... I hate Lysdia."

"Why hate her?"

She muttered, tears finally spilling over. "Because she is the Empress's chosen heir... the future Empress. The future god of mankind, the living embodiment of the Gospel, walking the world as the Omniscient Weaver's envoy.

"I look just like Lysdia... even better in some ways. Yet she has all the luck, while I am forced to hide in this armor as a nameless secret guard, untouched by happiness. I want to wear dresses. I want to fall in love. I want to be cherished... What did I do wrong to deserve nothing? I hate Lysdia. I envy Lysdia. I hate myself for not being her... so, so I—"

Hearing the heavy sobs in her arms, the Black Witch gently stroked her aunt's hair. "I understand. I understand it all. I know what it feels like to desire something and never receive it. I only hope... You can understand me, too."

The Secret Guard stared up blindly as the Black Witch cupped her face, wiping away her tears with a thumb.

"Someone once told me that making up for regrets is just self-comfort. I know that now. Even if I exact my revenge here, it won't ease that person's suffering. But I've always wondered. If the one who died that day had been me instead of Red, would everything have been different? I am not here to make up for regrets, nor am I here for revenge... I am here to... Choose again."

Whoosh!

Four inky-black wings unfurled from the Black Witch's back. The Secret Guard, cradled in her arms, was struck with an indescribable shock. A Four-Winged... spirit?

"Thank you, Aunt."

The Black Witch held her aunt tight as the palace in the sky began to fracture and crumble around them. Together, they plunged into the burning world below.

"You've let me fulfill my wish."

***

With a sudden, guttural roar, the Black Knight sent a concussive, square-shaped shockwave ripping through the air. The blast slammed Ashe straight into the wall.

Groaning against the impact, Ashe lunged forward with his Sword of Joy, but aborted the strike as he saw the Black Knight collapse. She was clutching her helmeted head on the ground, writhing and screaming in pure hysteria.

Ashe remembered the effects of his Demonic Coat and relaxed his stance slightly, letting out a cold grunt. "Hmph. This is what you get for looking at me."

Beside him, Dia stood stunned. Could the rewards of the Woven Festival really be this potent? Strong enough to overwhelm even an Imperial Secret Guard?

Before they could process it, a small hole fractured open in the ceiling near the window. Iger's dust-caked, blood-stained hand reached through the gap as he shouted down to them, "Get up! The Secret Guard carries a Miracle blessing that absorbs all damage! You cannot kill her! Run!"

Damn. An invincible blessing? How am I supposed to fight that?

Ashe didn't hesitate. He dashed toward the opening, gesturing urgently for Dia to follow.

"Ugh... aaah..."

Behind them, the Secret Guard felt her once-weightless armor grow unbearably heavy. Stomach acid burned the inside of her helmet. Every bone in her body felt as though it were decaying, while her nerves twisted and every vein reversed its flow. The agony radiating from deep within her soul surged outward, violent enough to threaten reality itself.

Through a haze of pain, her jelly-like consciousness squeezed out its last traces of rational thought as she caught a vague glimpse of the princess running toward a man.

A Four-Winged spirit... Lysdia... Isa Royalty... the embodiment of the Gospel... jealousy, discontent, longing, loneliness, the Woven Festival... A chaotic tangle of fractured emotions bloated her mind until she recalled a single, pre-departure conversation:

"If something happens that even the Gospel cannot reach, the princess will fall into someone else's hands forever...

"Then she will no longer be the princess."

Trembling, the Secret Guard raised her right hand. The Book of Gospel materialized faithfully before her.

"For..." The word left her lips in the real world, marking her first spoken sentence in over ten years. "...the Gospel."

The moment she struck the Book, her consciousness plunged into an endless abyss of pain.

Simultaneously, Dia, who was sprinting toward Ashe, suddenly lost her balance. She stepped into nothingness.

The ground beneath her crumbled to dust layer by layer, shearing away to reveal a gaping hole in the Senheiser Building. Through the rupture, the open night poured freely.

Ashe leaped just in time, catching Iger's hand to save himself from the collapse. Seeing Dia miss her footing, he twisted the hilt of his Sword of Joy, extending it as far as it would reach.

Dia gritted her teeth and reached out desperately. Yet, despite her best efforts, her fingertips remained over a meter away from the blade.

The only thing that connected was her gaze meeting Ashe's. Then, she arced backward through the night sky, falling into the sweeping darkness.

Once again, she was falling from the tower. But this time, the Bronze Dragon was not there to watch over her.