The Sorcerer's Handbook

Ashe had expected Varkas to react to what he had said, but it turned out he asked a question instead. Still, Ashe did have plenty he wanted to know.

"What happened from the moment after your death?" he asked.

Varkas showed no intention of keeping secrets and replied calmly, "After the Titan Executioner killed me, my soul left my body and was drawn downward by gravity. It felt like sinking into the deep sea, drifting down without awareness. But within that deep sea were layers of filters. As my soul passed through each layer, impurities were stripped away, and only then could it continue descending. After passing through six layers, I arrived at the Continent of Time, where I drifted endlessly without even forming self-awareness.

"But seventy-two hours after my death, a drop of blood within my soul began to erupt and spread. It bound me and simultaneously awakened my consciousness."

Varkas pulled open her black robe, revealing a blood lotus on her collarbone. For some reason, the blood lotus gave Ashe the impression not of a tattoo, but of something that had bloomed from within her body, resembling what Harvey had described to him many times as a corpse spot.

"And then I became the Tomb Keeper Commander."

Ashe blinked. "Wait. Where did that drop of blood in your soul come from? Why would there be blood in a soul?"

"I don't know. The only thing I know is that it was likely implanted during my time in Shattered Lake Prison. In other words, every condemned prisoner in the Blood Moon Tribunal has a Blood Seed placed within their soul. After I became a commander, I understood the mechanism behind it. When these Blood Moon death row inmates remain dead for more than seventy-two hours, the Blood Seed erupts within their souls. If they show commander talent, the seed activates their consciousness directly, turning them into Tomb Keeper Commanders."

She paused slightly. "All Tomb Keepers are born this way."

Ashe immediately grasped the intent of the Blood Moon Lord. So this is how commanders are chosen!

The Blood Moon Tribunal was not only a spectacle for public catharsis but also an execution platform for criminals. It was also a recruitment trial that the Blood Moon Lord conducted.

In fact, Ashe and the others had once discussed how the Divine Lord selected commanders. Every day, Gold Rank sorcerers died, and the Divine Lord could not possibly test them all personally. Based on the group's speculation, the creation of commanders likely required resources, meaning they could not be mass-produced. Otherwise, the Continent of Time would have long been packed full of Hero Commanders.

Therefore, the Divine Lord needed an efficient selection system, one that required minimal time and investment while still producing commanders with growth potential. They had once believed the most likely method was the use of Prophecy Class Miracles to directly identify sorcerer projections with commander potential. Sorcerers lacking prophetic abilities were normal, but surely the Divine Lord would not lack them.

Yet, of all the possibilities the group had considered, the Blood Moon Lord chose a far more elegant method—the Blood Moon Tribunal. Whether this stemmed from a limited proficiency in the Prophecy Class or from a belief that the tribunal itself was a superior method remained unclear.

The threshold for entering the Blood Moon Tribunal was actually quite high. Those condemned by public vote were not ordinary criminals who had merely killed a few people. They were individuals who stood firmly against the majority. People like Ashe, a notorious cult leader, or Fernandez, a high-ranking conspirator, for instance, were precisely the types most likely to possess commander-level talent.

By implanting Blood Seeds during the Tribunal and allowing them to activate after death, commanders would naturally awaken within the Virtual World.

The entire process required no effort from the Blood Moon Lord. A steady stream of potential commanders simply generated on its own, serving as a talent reserve for the Tomb Keepers. Ashe could no longer tell whether the Blood Moon Tribunal existed specifically to select commanders or whether commanders were simply a fortunate byproduct of it. In any case, within the highly industrialized system of the Blood Moon, even death had become a part of production.

The dead served the living, not the other way around. In that light, the Blood Moon truly deserved its reputation as Harvey's most beloved and most hated necromancer's paradise.

"Do you still retain your memories after becoming a Tomb Keeper?"

Varkas nodded. "Yes, but only the memories. The Six Layers of Hell stripped away all emotion."

"What does that feel like?" Ashe asked, genuinely curious. Any living person would find it difficult not to be curious about death.

Varkas said, "My memories are like books. Each one is written in the first person, telling a different story. I can flip through them at any time, but they are still just stories to me. I never truly step inside them. Anger, joy, sorrow, warmth... None of these can move my soul."

She pointed at her chest. "My soul is empty. I have no heartbeat. I cannot understand anything within those memories. And yet, because our consciousness is born from those memories, the only desire we Tomb Keepers have is to accumulate merit and request the Divine Lord to retrieve the fragments of our souls from hell, so we can regain a heartbeat. With each additional fragment of my soul, I can understand a little more of those memories. When I collect them all—"

Ashe interrupted, "You'll be resurrected?"

Varkas shook her head. "I don't know, and I don't care. We have no other desires beyond understanding our memories."

Ashe exhaled slowly. Even he found it difficult to resist the temptation of resurrection. The path was undoubtedly arduous, but at least it offered a possibility. For a moment, he even considered whether he should accomplish something significant in the real world, so that after death, he might also become a commander and make a name for himself again in the Continent of Time.

However, Ashe also realized that across both the real and the Virtual World, as well as from the moment of their birth to death, they had never truly escaped the Divine Lord's grasp. Even without hearing any direct doctrine, he could faintly perceive the will of the different Divine Lords. The selfishness of the Blood Moon, and the listening of the Gospel... all of these subtly shaped society from within, giving rise to different currents of civilization.

The power of the Divine Lords was not expressed through direct force, but through the execution of their will. Sorcerers, whether foolish or wise, rebellious or obedient, ultimately followed that will, becoming the forces that drove the evolution of their world.

"Take this."

Ashe looked up and hurriedly caught a spirit and a map.

[Varkas's Hand-Drawn Map]

[Conjuring Spirit]

Ashe opened the Virtual World map, and a system prompt immediately appeared.

[Map Information updated.]

However, compared to Demilo's map, which covered nearly one-sixth of the region, Varkas's map was clearly much more modest. It only recorded about one-twelfth of the Continent of Time, likely because she had only recently been assigned and had not yet fully familiarized herself with the Tomb Keeper territory.

The most notable feature of the new map was the three Tomb Keeper capital cities. Ashe noticed that the Tomb Keepers had one fewer main city than the Star Hall and asked why.

Varkas replied, "The Star Hall was the winner of the last Six Nations Grand Investiture, so it has the most capital cities. If nothing unexpected happens, it will become the primary target of all five major factions this time."

"What is the Six Nations Grand Investiture?"

"A large-scale war that occurs every fifty years. I don't know the reason behind it, but it always happens. Massive amounts of soul energy, subordinates, and even commanders are lost in that war until a final victor is determined."

Fifty years...

Hearing this familiar interval, Ashe's expression shifted slightly. "How long until the next Six Nations Grand Investiture?"

"Soon," Varkas said. "By real-world time, there are about seventy days left."

***

On the first layer of the Virtual World, the Sea of Knowledge.

A small bat flew through the white mist, weaving gracefully through the air. Suddenly, she sensed something and veered toward a region to her right. Soon, an island came into view, where an orc gun sorcerer stood waiting.

The moment the bat shifted into her humanoid form and landed, the orc immediately raised his heavy sniper rifle, attempting to blast the intruder apart with overwhelming firepower.

In return, the newcomer merely raised a hand lightly, and the orc sorcerer instantly went rigid. One after another, blood-red blossoms surfaced across his body, but none of them broke through his skin. The sight was vivid, yet nauseating.

Pop!

With a sound like a bursting blister, the orc exploded into a spray of light, vanishing like fireworks. Left behind in his place were only a floating spirit and a Sorcerer's Handbook.

It was not Syflin's first time witnessing this, but she still struggled to stomach the scene. "Do Necromancy Class Miracles really have to be this disgusting?"

Despite being a member of the Blood Saint Clan and specializing in Blood Class sorcery, she could never understand a necromancer's obsession with corpse spots.

Just now, Syflin had instantly killed the orc sorcerer's projection using a single spirit. This spirit was a privilege granted to every Blood Saint, the Flower of Death.

The Flower of Death had only one effect, which was activating Soul Blood Seeds within any soul inside a ten-meter radius. Once triggered successfully, the Soul Blood Seed would kill its host instantly, allowing Blood Moon sorcerers to secure victory effortlessly.

The creators of these Soul Blood Seeds were none other than the Blood Saint Clan itself. More precisely, these so-called seeds were a byproduct of the Blood Embrace Ritual.

During the ritual, Blood Saints would disguise themselves as healers to infiltrate prisons and implant their own Soul Blood into selected death row inmates. When those prisoners were later executed in the Blood Moon Tribunal, their sorcerous power would be drained by the Soul Blood. The Blood Saint would then retrieve it, turning the harvested essence into nourishment for their own Source Blood.

However, because a Blood Saint's soul and blood were fused as one, the Soul Blood would also infiltrate the prisoner's soul. While the prisoner was alive, a strong enough soul could resist the intrusion. But during the execution, the power of the Soul Blood was amplified to an unprecedented level. Combined with the moment of death, when the soul fell into stagnation, it would slither into the soul like a centipede, rapidly growing until it became a Blood Seed.

Even within the Virtual World, Blood Saint sorcerers could smell these Blood Seeds from a hundred meters away. By using the Flower of Death spirit, they could easily eliminate any projection carrying one.

Hunting for these specific sorcerer projections was usually like searching for a needle in the vast sea of the Virtual World. However, because Blood Saints could move swiftly through this realm and because they possessed generations of accumulated experience from the Blood Moon Tribunals, Syflin was highly efficient. She had already encountered three to four such targets today. It was, in effect, a privilege unique to the Blood Saint Clan.

While alive, these people were fuel for society and material for cultivation. After death, they became fertilizer in the Virtual World and nourishment for others.

Despite having lived under the Blood Moon for so many years, Syflin still found it difficult to accept this worldview, one where everything carried a price tag, where every tool was meant to be reinvested into production, and where emotions, memories, and meaning were dismissed as worthless extras. To this society, extracting the final ounce of value from a life was considered the highest form of respect for it. This extreme pursuit of maximum utility left Syflin, who preferred travel, photography, and harmless hobbies like card flourishing, deeply exhausted.

"Speaking of which... Ashe is already living in another nation by now, isn't he? What kind of place is it? What races live there? What makes it special? Do they still have outdated things like bloodline ties? Do their Divine Lords actually care for their people?"

Lost in thought while collecting her spoils, Syflin transformed back into a small bat and continued her exploration of the Virtual World.

Gulp.

She suddenly hovered midair. Her echolocation had detected strange, swirling currents in the nearby sea. A whirlpool?

Syflin had long since unfurled her Silver Wings, needing only a single breakthrough in her Blood Class sorcery to reach the Gold Rank. Yet, after months of venturing within the Virtual World, she had never actually seen a whirlpool. Curious, she flew closer to investigate.

Just as the small bat prepared to enter the whirlpool, a small boat suddenly emerged from within it. She had no time to dodge and slammed straight into someone on board.

"Ah? Sorry, sorry! Did I hurt you?"

Flapping her wings in a panic, the bat realized she had been caught right in the arms of a veela sorcerer.