The Sorcerer's Handbook

Chapter 225: Harvey Takes the Lead

”Ah—oo...”

The morning sunlight pried Lys awake. She clutched her little teddy bear with her left hand and rubbed her eyes with the right, looking utterly sleep-deprived. The night before, her sisters had returned in the middle of the night and stayed up talking endlessly, forcing Lys to get up to use the bathroom. By the time she returned, they were still deep in conversation about the Virtual World. Drawn in, Lys had listened intently, and the result was exhaustion born from too little sleep.

In truth, if she hadn’t been controlling the body, she would have slept perfectly fine. When a sorcerer entered the Virtual World, their body was left in a state of suspended animation, slipping into a deep sleep the moment their mind departed. Most creatures alternated between light and deep sleep, with deep sleep offering the most rest but occupying only a fraction of total slumber.

Sorcerers, however, could choose to enter deep sleep at will. Two hours in the Virtual World could restore enough energy for twenty-two hours of activity. Unless fate intervened, most sorcerers explored for about four hours, emerging practically overflowing with vitality.

This was one reason sorcerers stood among the elite in every kingdom. It wasn’t merely brute force, but their surplus of time and tireless energy that set them apart from ordinary people.

Sorcerers possessed not only greater talent but also more time and a stronger drive to work. Even mundane tasks like manual labor could be completed faster and with greater efficiency.

More importantly, they operated within a far more rewarding feedback loop. For ordinary people, effort did not always lead to results. For sorcerers, however, every effort brought some form of gain. Even idling in the Virtual World led to steady growth.

In this ”game,” the only true players were sorcerers; ordinary people existed merely as NPCs, there to enrich the world around them.

When Dia entered the Virtual World and left Lys in control of her body, she effectively gave up the benefit of Virtual World-assisted sleep. In a child’s body, they now needed a full nine hours of rest just to recover, which was why she felt so tired. It was a great deal of effort for very little gain, done for a single purpose—to conceal the fact that she was a sorcerer.

Instant deep sleep was both a gift and a symbol of being a sorcerer. Anyone who fell into such rest, showing no movement and waking fully refreshed in under five hours, had to be a sorcerer. Conversely, tossing, drooling, wetting the bed, or sleeping more than seven hours was proof of the opposite.

Three years ago, when Dia first summoned the Mask spirit and ventured into the Virtual World, she had managed to fool everyone with this trick, including the most perceptive sorcerers of the Sacred Realm. To them, Lysdia remained the innocent little princess who could only sleep while clutching her teddy bear.

Now that she was no longer a princess, hiding her sorcerer identity remained essential. If Annan discovered that little Lys was a sorcerer, all her efforts would be wasted. Dia had also grown accustomed to leaving a sister behind to watch over her real-world body; without that, she would feel exposed and unable to focus fully on her Virtual World exploration.

Lys yawned as she washed up in the bathroom. When she emerged, Ashe, Iger, Harvey, and Pankey were already at the breakfast table, wide awake and clearly fresh from a night in the Virtual World.

Annan appeared from her room just then. Lys untied her roughly made twin tails and, holding an elastic band, tugged at Ashe’s sleeve. ”Daddy, fix my hair.”

Still chewing his custard-filled Lala Fat, Ashe glanced at Annan but did not object to the audacious request. He picked up Lys and attacked her hair with all the force he could muster.

Ashe was a master of destruction. One messy attempt completely ruined Lys’s delicate appearance, like turning the finest custard-filled pastry into an unappetizing mess. Her bangs were pulled tight, stretching her eyes so that even their usual beauty seemed distorted.

He didn’t mean to torment her; he simply lacked the skill. His mother wore short hair, and his brother had sported a buzz cut for over twenty years. When had he ever needed to learn to style hair?

Yet Ashe’s incompetence barely mattered. Every time he mangled Lys’s hair, it was as if the room itself intervened, activating an automatic aesthetic correction to undo the disaster.

He held Lys in his arms, and they both stared at Iger across the table.

Stare ( =⊙ω⊙= )~

Stare ( =^ω^= )~

One second... two... three. When Annan finally sat down, Iger could no longer tolerate the silence. ”Come over here. I’ll braid your hair. Ashe, your hands are only good for carving patterns into shit.”

”Next time, just ask Aunt Perskin,” Ashe said with a mischievous grin as he set Lys down. ”To protect her own eyes, she’ll gladly agree.”

Iger pulled out his personal comb and began tidying Lys’s hair. Meanwhile, Harvey had finished his breakfast. He strolled onto the balcony, lit a Catnip cigarette, and asked, ”Young Mistress, any plans for today?”

”Maybe. Maybe not,” Annan replied lazily.

Suddenly, the Crimson-Gold Dragon Lizard appeared on her shoulder. Annan tore off a piece of bagel to feed it and said, ”Today is May 4th. Your official work doesn’t start until the 10th. Until then, you’re free to do as you please. No need to follow me around.”

Harvey narrowed his eyes. ”Free? You call this freedom? Cut off from the outside world, forbidden from breathing fresh air or studying any sorcery classes?”

He hadn’t and couldn’t possibly make any move to attack. Even so, the young steward, Pankey, had already stepped forward silently, positioning himself between the necromancer and the Young Mistress.

Ashe glanced at Iger. Focused on braiding Lys’s hair, he merely exchanged a subtle look with the cult leader. Not my problem. I’m not colluding with Harvey. He started this on his own.

”What kind of freedom do you actually want?” Annan asked, swiveling her chair toward the balcony and tilting her head slightly. The amethyst earring on her ear caught the sunlight, sparkling brilliantly. ”I doubt it’s simply strolling outdoors, smelling flowers, basking in the sun, or enjoying the scenery, right?”

”I want to go to the sewers on the first underground level,” Harvey replied.

The sunlight seemed to take on a violet tint, and a cold, mercurial chill filled the room. Ashe set down his Lala Fat, and Iger instinctively pulled Lys into her arms.

They almost forgot that, despite being recruited through underhanded means, Annan was a Two-Winged sorcerer herself. Compared to a Mind Class sorcerer weak in direct combat, a necromancer heavily reliant on battlefield conditions, and a slacker sorcerer stepping onto the Continent of Time for the first time last night, the Purple Moth, with her cunning to take on the Four Pillars Cult, was probably stronger than all three of them.

Nearby, Pankey, the over-aged ”youth” in his sixties, observed silently.

”Is that from the Book of Gospel?” Annan tapped her earring, and a soft ding rang out. ”I take it you found that info by searching for keywords like ’where in Azura can one kill without drawing the Red Hats’ attention’?”

”Actually, it was ’where in this city are corpses most likely to appear.’ I expected a cheap hospital, but Azura’s medical system seems surprisingly decent.”

”I may not have said this,” Annan said, her eyes tinged violet, ”but adherence to social ethics and public morals is a critical reference in the Book of Gospel rankings. Without my orders, you’re forbidden from killing anyone, not even a Lala Fat.”

”I never said I intended to kill anyone,” Harvey replied, taking his last puff and flicking the cigarette off the balcony. ”A necromancer has plenty of legal ways to obtain corpses—”

The young steward raised a hand. A spike of ice shot from his fingertip, freezing the cigarette midair. With a flick, he guided it in a gentle arc, catching it in his palm.

Pankey said calmly, ”You can do whatever you want inside the house. But tossing a cigarette outside violates both the High-Rise Residential Security Ordinance and the Public Security Management Regulations. Do not engage in actions that could harm your own value. The Book of Gospel is watching.”