The Sorcerer's Handbook

Chapter 125: The Treatment Room’s Syflin

Inside the treatment room.

Syflin worked until sweat soaked her entire body. With both her hands coated in fluid, she said, ”You can’t escape.”

Ashe watched her work with open admiration, letting out a contented hum. ”Don’t be so absolute. Maybe a miracle will happen?”

”Miracles are something you create yourself, not something reality takes pity on,” Syflin replied calmly. ”In the Blood Moon Kingdom, travel, consumption, and even vagrancy all require verification from the Miracle Chip. Yes, you managed to completely remove the Miracle Chip from your body while in prison, which is impressive. But that also means you’ve lost the qualification to live in modern society. You won’t be able to use any public facilities. From now on, your only shelter will be cardboard boxes under overpasses.”

”I can live in the wild,” Ashe said.

”And what about salt? Shelter? Can you even hunt for food? Sure, some drifters survive in the wild, but that’s only because the Heresy Court ignores them. You’ve caused too big an incident this time. They’ll hunt you down relentlessly.”

”But that’s still better than staying here to die.”

Syflin pressed down harder with her hands while glancing at him. ”The Blood Moon Tribunal might let you live, maybe. But escaping from prison? That guarantees your death. Not even the Human Rights Association will intervene. The Heresy Court will issue a Special-Grade Arrest Order, which means Bloodrage Hunters can kill you on sight.”

Ashe let out another low hum. ”At least I get to choose how I die.”

Syflin shook her head. ”I never thought you were this unyielding.”

She wiped her hands with a tissue. ”Alright, the bleeding has mostly stopped. By the way, what were you groaning about earlier?”

On the bed before her lay an ogre with a grievously injured abdomen. The wound had nearly rotted away. Syflin had forcibly scraped off the decayed flesh and bandaged it, stabilizing the creature’s breathing before he passed out.

”Thanks. Back where I’m from, no one could treat someone that badly hurt,” Ashe said, raising an ear pick in his hand. ”I was just cleaning my ears. It felt so good I couldn’t help making noise. Sorry about that.”

”Does cleaning your ears feel that good?” Syflin asked.

”Maybe because I was sitting down. There isn’t even a chair in the toilet. Besides men’s thighs, there’s nothing to sit on.”

He stepped closer to check on Fernandez. ”Is he going to be okay?”

”Ogres recover quickly. He’ll wake in a few hours,” Syflin said.

Then, she asked, ”How did he get hurt?”

Ashe looked helpless. ”If I told you it happened because he glanced at someone, would you believe me?”

Half an hour earlier, Ashe had taken Fernandez to the main hall to register him in the Sinner’s Directory before locking the mayor in his cell. During registration, Fernandez glanced at Harvey, the officer in charge. Harvey instantly flew into a rage, turning his fingernails into sharp gray claws and stabbing Fernandez’s abdomen like a spear.

Ashe barely managed to stop the enraged necromancer. He doubted the ogre mayor would feel grateful once he woke up.

In Shattered Lake Prison, a confused, ignorant death was perhaps the most merciful way to die.

The escape team knew about the grudge between Harvey and Fernandez. They didn’t mind letting Harvey take his revenge, as long as it happened after they left. In theory, only the prison’s processor could track Fernandez’s life signs, but what if something went wrong?

For the same reason, after Ashe used the Slash Me Miracle to neutralize the Miracle Chips of the five escapees, and Harvey imposed necromantic restrictions on all prison guards via the processor, they didn’t kill or even injure anyone. They limited only the area the guards could move in.

It wasn’t morality, but risk that held them back. If the guards’ deaths triggered the processor in Caimon City and alerted the Heresy Court, escaping prison would be the least of their worries. They might not make it out at all.

None of them had healing magic. While Harvey could stitch wounds, as sewing corpses was part of a necromancer’s skill set, Ashe didn’t dare let him stop Fernandez’s bleeding, so he turned to Healer No.222 instead.

Throughout the process, he didn’t remove the restrictions on her mana. She used only gauze and bandages to stem the flow. Healers often relied on spirits to shortcut treatments, but they still knew the basics of care.

”Looks like your companions aren’t very reliable,” she remarked.

”Of course not. I’m the only normal one on the team.”

”That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in your prison break.”

”Tell me about it. The whole team depends on me to carry them, but even so, it’s better than staying here and waiting to die.”

Ashe’s gaze lingered on her crow mask. Syflin met his eyes unflinchingly. She asked, ”Do you really think so? Do you really think staying in Shattered Lake Prison guarantees death? You’ve managed to establish your standing inside the prison in under a month.

”Even if someone outside framed you, do you truly have only one path left? Compared to breaking out and making enemies of the entire Blood Moon Kingdom, wouldn’t it be safer and easier to exploit loopholes and survive within the prison?

”If your only goal were survival, you’d never attempt an escape. It’s the most dangerous option. You must be chasing something else, something worth staking your life on.”

Ashe froze. Replaying the past half month in his mind, he realized he had never once considered accepting legal punishment or taking the blame for Heath and spending the rest of his life behind bars. From the beginning, his focus had been on escape. The Aurora Sorcerer’s Handbook, the Swordswoman, and Iger had all been catalysts, tools to achieve his goal. Escape itself had rooted itself so deeply in his mind that he had never wavered.

Did he not know the odds of success were slim, and the risk of death high? Did he not realize that even if he escaped, what awaited him would be relentless pursuit and a life without peace? He could almost foresee his future, where he would never get to eat his fill, dress warmly, and sleep soundly. Everyone he met would become an enemy, and the Blood Moon Kingdom would no longer have a place for him.

An individual could never stand against the collective. The only option was to merge with it.

In truth, if survival had truly been his only aim, safer paths existed. He could have leveraged his knowledge to become a copyist, boosting his Contribution Points and proving his value. Or he could have carefully prepared a stand-up or cross-talk routine, turning the Blood Moon Tribunal into his stage. Countless other paths would have been safer and far more likely to succeed.

So why, right from the very beginning, had thoughts of submission or compromise never even crossed his mind?