The Sorcerer's Handbook

Hundreds of bare winter cedars jutted skyward like the legs of a dead centipede, rigid and lifeless. Sparse streetlights barely illuminated the brownish-yellow ground, and the air was thick with a sweet, metallic tang mixed with the scent of damp earth.

”What is this place?”

Iger glanced down at his boots, which were already caked with mud and decay. The soles were effectively ruined on their very first day of use.

It’s not just the fraudster. Everyone had changed into a new set of clothes because Annan had insisted on it. Clad in thick leather jackets and full-coverage filtration masks, they walked silently through the empty forest. The scene looked less like a casual stroll and more like a covert operation. Anyone who happened to witness them would surely suspect they were up to something illegal.

”A forest park,” Annan replied.

”Miss, no offense, but my subtext is, why are we here instead of just leaving Vanmura directly?”

After fleeing the Senheiser Building in the flying car, Iger had assumed they would head straight out of the city. Instead, Annan had gone the opposite way, bringing them to the forest park right in the city center. Upon arrival, Pankey had immediately pulled clothing and protective gear from his spatial toolbox. It was clear that even without tonight’s sudden chaos, Annan was in a rebellious phase and would have led them on a runaway adventure sooner or later.

Pankey said calmly, ”You and Ashe were not on the eighty-sixth floor, so you do not know that the ones chasing the lady were those bastards from the Good Moonlight Agency.”

Annan gestured toward the sky. ”Tonight is clear with no fog. All the people of Vanmura are off duty, so no one is driving anywhere.”

Ashe quickly caught on. ”So the Good Moonlight Agency outside the city only needed to check the traffic data from the Book of Gospel to track us precisely. Since their specialty is hacking any smart device, trying to escape by car would be like delivering ourselves to them on a silver platter.”

Unlike Ashe, who focused solely on enemy intelligence, Iger caught the faint edge of resentment in Pankey’s words and followed the thread. ”So it was the Good Moonlight Agency. Last time we barely survived fighting just two of their guys, and now the lady is taking on an entire squad by herself? Harvey, if you two move any slower, is she just going to wipe them all out herself?”

Annan laughed. ”Not a chance. Last time, those two agents hijacked every single drone in the city, but Vanmura barely has any smart robots or drones to begin with. The Good Moonlight Agency’s strategies revolve around intelligent machines. Once I took out their robots, they had to rely on old-fashioned numbers to overwhelm me. Honestly, if Pankey and Harvey hadn’t shown up when they did, I would’ve completely run out of mana.”

”But that still required your exceptional strength to hold out until they arrived,” Iger said, marveling at her. ”If it had been us, we would have been caught long ago. You move too fast, my Lady. We have to push ourselves just to keep up with you.”

Annan hummed happily, and Pankey shot Iger a quick glance. His mask might have covered most of his face, but Iger could tell from the softened look in his eyes that his subtle flattery had landed perfectly.

Failing to help Annan earlier would have left a permanent stain on his relationship with both of them. The only difference was that while Annan hid her annoyance, Pankey made his dissatisfaction obvious.

Iger knew that trying to explain himself would be pointless. When survival was on the line, the primitive mind panicked and chose self-preservation, while reason scrambled afterward to invent countless excuses justifying why it had to happen. Rather than dwelling on his failure to save her, the solution was simple. He just had to subtly glorify the lady instead.

Pankey treated Annan like a daughter, so praising her was a hundred times more effective than defending himself. If Iger’s judgment was correct, Annan had grown up in an environment completely lacking genuine encouragement.

Her mother, Quinna, was an obvious source of coldness, but Pankey was the butler who raised her, and he was not the type to lavish praise either. When Annan achieved something, Pankey would likely respond with a simple acknowledgment or suggest celebrating with a cake. Those compliments were too ordinary, too bland, and filled with a condescending tone that made them tedious over time.

Thus, Iger only needed to subtly guide Annan into mentioning her accomplishments and tickle her ego just enough, and that thorn in her heart would naturally be removed. For Pankey, as long as you praised the Purple Moth, you were automatically a good half-brother in his eyes, and his resentment would dissipate.

Of course, this method could not be overused. Annan was, after all, in her twenties. If Iger constantly showered her with praise, her threshold for it would quickly rise. Whether it was praise, criticism, or love, the rarer it was, the more precious it became.

Iger noticed Ashe mouthing a score of eighty points. He had intended to ignore that idiot for at least twenty-four hours, but seeing this, the fraudster could not help giving him a disdainful look. He muttered under his breath, challenging Ashe to show him a perfect hundred-point move instead.

Ashe cleared his throat and simply called out, ”Annan.”

Annan glanced at him, clearly noting how audacious it was for him to call her by her name so casually. ”What’s wrong?”

”Quinna has agreed to our marriage.”

Iger stumbled slightly at the declaration. Lys was resting on Ashe’s back at the time. Upon hearing it, she let out a surprised squeak, and Pankey stiffened in shock. Because of the distance between them earlier, Pankey had not actually heard Ashe’s conversation with Quinna on the game floor.

Annan, however, remained surprisingly calm and asked, ”What happened?”

Ashe explained how he had disguised himself as her fiancé to survive. ”Then Quinna decided to cover for us and get us out. You’re not going to blame me for seizing the opportunity, right, Miss?”

Lys let out a long, relieved sigh. ”You scared me! So, Daddy, you were just lying about the marriage, weren’t you?”

Annan interjected, ”If we hadn’t left Vanmura, it wouldn’t have been a lie. Even if the story is false right now, if Quinna’s protection depends on you marrying into the Senheiser family, she’ll make it true. She never loses on a deal.”

Panic gripped Lys. ”But Miss Annan, you don’t want this! Big Sister Quinna can’t force it if you refuse!”

”What I want doesn’t matter. All Quinna cares about is Ashe marrying into the family. Whether his wife is me or someone else is irrelevant. What matters is that she secures a Senheiser. Luckily, we acted fast. If we hadn’t, Ashe, judging by Quinna’s plans for you, she would have bled you completely dry.”

At the words ”completely dry,” Iger couldn’t help but glance at Ashe. The man’s eyes had gone a little unfocused... or perhaps wistful.

”But would Quinna really protect you just because you marry into the family? She can’t be that naive, can she?” Annan murmured, sending a cold sweat down the spines of both Ashe and Iger. ”Is there some other tangled interest here that I don’t know about?”

”Look!” Iger shouted suddenly, pointing toward a nearby underground stairwell. ”Is this our escape route?”

Annan nodded. ”Yes, this is it. Let’s go.”

Just as they were about to step into the passage, the usually silent Harvey abruptly stopped. He sneezed, raising a hand. ”Wait a moment.”

The necromancer tilted his head back, inhaling sharply as his nose traced an intricate figure-eight in the air. He murmured an eerie observation, ”Ah... the mucous membranes are screaming, the heart rate is accelerating, every nerve is curling, every pore expanding... A hundred thousand? A million? Ten million?... Ha!”

He convulsed briefly. Then, as if suddenly entering a state of absolute Zen, he stilled. When he spoke again, his voice was light and brisk. ”Alright, I’m ready to go down.”

”Well, we’re definitely not,” Ashe and Lys stammered, trembling. ”What kind of hellhole is down there? I’ve never seen Harvey like this. He’s more hyped now than when he smokes ten catnip cigarettes at once.”

Iger raised an eyebrow. ”Is this the tomb of the Six Emblem families?”

”It’s more than a tomb. In fact, you should be familiar with its other name,” Annan said, looking down into the dark. ”It’s the Mermaid Weed Farm.”