The Sorcerer's Handbook

Annan couldn’t help but burst out laughing. ”Pfft.”

Pankey’s lips twitched, struggling to maintain a straight face. Lys was the only one who didn’t care about the tension, jumping up and down excitedly while throwing her arms around Ashe.

”Daddy, you’re amazing! The Harbinger of Disaster! The Source of Chaos! One of the Doomsday Triad... wait, what about me? Am I on there?”

Ashe looked at her with a completely deadpan expression. ”You grew up into a massive, lazy shut-in. You stay locked in your room all day playing games and binging dramas. When I tell you to go get a job, you just scream at me to get lost. And if I dare interrupt your gaming, you call me an old fossil.”

”That’s impossible! I’m going to grow up into a suuuper beautiful girl!” Lys spread her arms as wide as they could go, emphasizing that she wouldn’t just be ordinary pretty, but spectacularly beautiful. ”And there’s no way I could ever hate you, Daddy!”

Ashe turned his gaze toward Annan. ”Miss, didn’t you say something exactly like that when you were a kid? Like, ’I’ll never hate mom’ or something along those lines?”

Annan shot back defensively, ”Of course not!”

”She did,” Pankey corrected gently.

The young butler glanced at the lady of the house, who was currently boring holes into him with a razor-sharp glare. He shrugged lightheartedly and wisely shut his mouth.

Iger, meanwhile, stared at the projection with a deepened frown. ”Enough. This ranking... is strange.”

The rest of the group nodded in silent agreement. They had all noticed how fundamentally different the Happiness Rankings was compared to the previous three lists. The wedding guests on screen clearly knew Ashe’s group incredibly well, even casually throwing around a title like the Doomsday Triad.

This raised a massive, logical contradiction regarding the mechanics of the Woven Festival. If people could see the future ahead of time, wouldn’t they naturally try to avoid it? And if they actively avoided it, wouldn’t that future inevitably change?

The most glaring example of this paradox was the Schemer Rankings. Many of those who successfully secured a rank on the list were the victims themselves. If they had already watched their own downfalls unfold on screen, why would they still stupidly walk right into Iger’s traps?

The reality was that they did still fall for them, but not because of some mystical force of fate correcting the timeline. It was simply a testament to Iger’s terrifying personal competence. Even Iger himself would never willingly play his part exactly as the ranking dictated.

In other words, the exact microsecond the Schemer Rankings was published, it effectively ceased to be the definitive future. Under normal logic, the Gospel should have been forced to recalculate and generate a Schemer Rankings 2.0. But once the public saw version 2.0, they would pivot to avoid that too, forcing a 3.0, then a 4.0, then a 5.0...

An infinite loop of algorithmic recursion like that was obviously impossible for the system to sustain. Therefore, when the Gospel weaved the future, it had to rely on a vital, hidden assumption, which was that the people featured inside the rankings had not actually seen the festival.

It was a highly practical assumption, and it rarely hindered overall accuracy. In most scenarios, even if the future deviated from the rankings, the distortion wasn’t drastic enough to matter. Out of ten rankings, perhaps only seven or eight suffered from noticeable timeline drift, which was a perfectly acceptable margin of error.

Character-based rankings typically experienced the smallest deviations anyway. Event-based rankings were far more volatile, but because those future events were usually highly beneficial, the people involved would often deliberately try to replicate the vision exactly to secure their rewards.

However, lists like the Schemer Rankings or the Family Rankings, which dealt in pure, unadulterated misfortune, were rare anomalies. In a stable, prosperous society, Harvey and Iger would have been hunted down and neutralized by the Red Hats the moment they popped up on a screen. There would be no political vacuum allowed for the Ten Great Families to rise, nor room for the Ten Great Schemes to play out. Such grim lists only existed because the current world was actively collapsing into an apocalypse.

But the Happiness Rankings broke the Gospel’s core assumption entirely.

The NPCs existing inside this projection had clearly already witnessed the Woven Festival. They recognized Iger as the Rusty Crow and Harvey as the Necromancer. They even knew that Ashe Heath had somehow been resurrected from the dead, explicitly labeling them the Doomsday Triad.

The surreal experience was like starting a New Game Plus in an RPG, only to find that the local villagers still remembered every single thing you did during your first playthrough.

On screen, Daphne steadied her trembling breaths and protectively shielded her younger brother, Carlos, behind her back. ”Ashe Heath...” she spat, her voice tight. ”Are you here to attend our wedding?”

”Correct,” the onscreen Ashe replied smoothly. ”Though to be precise, I’m here to crash it.”

Before he could even extend a hand toward them, Daphne fiercely slapped his arm away. Furious, her chest heaved as she glared at him with pure hatred. ”We don’t know you at all! We’ve never done anything to you! Why are you targeting us?!”

”The way you know me is the exact way I know you,” Ashe replied calmly, completely unfazed by her outburst. ”Ranked tenth on the Happiness Rankings, Daphne and Carlos. The very moment I saw your names flash on that list, I made up my mind to strip your future away.”

***

Back at the table, Annan turned slowly to look at the real Ashe. ”Really? So you’re sitting here thinking about crashing a real wedding right now?”

Lys looked at him in absolute shock. ”Daddy... you actually like stealing other people’s brides...”

Ashe’s mouth twitched. ”Can you all please focus on the important part? Didn’t you notice? The Ashe inside the projection explicitly mentioned the Happiness Rankings. That means he saw the ranking first, then deliberately attended the event listed in it. And now, the live Happiness Rankings is broadcasting him doing exactly that.”

Before the scene had even finished playing, the people inside it had already read the script and acted on it.

The utter absurdity of the paradox hung heavily in the air. Before Ashe’s onscreen appearance, the wedding had seemed like a perfectly normal future. But the moment he stepped into the frame, it mutated into a layered, multi-loop timeline closer to their current reality, yet exponentially more chaotic.

On screen, Daphne’s voice trembled. ”Why? This wedding is almost over. There’s nothing here worth taking from us—”

The onscreen Ashe smiled, his expression chillingly serene. ”I’ve already told you. What I want is you. You are the future chosen by the Gospel. Simply defiling that choice excites me beyond measure. Take them away—”

Daphne’s hands suddenly flared with a bright blue light. ”No! I won’t let you get what you want!”

”Really?” Ashe’s voice dropped, smooth and heavy like a devil’s whisper. ”You might not care about the safety of these guests, but what about your lover? Your younger brother? You don’t want to lose this hard-earned happiness, do you?”

He continued softly, the malice wrapped in a gentle cadence. ”I’m not a monster. I don’t need to tear you apart. As long as you behave and cooperate, I can still allow you two your time together. A warm little home. A pair of children. A lifetime to grow old together... You are just one single step away from it all. Are you truly willing to throw that away?”

Crushed under the weight of the psychological threat, Daphne slowly collapsed to the ground, sobbing hysterically. ”I didn’t do anything wrong... why is this happening to me...”

***

Back in the room, Annan and Lys were now staring at the real Ashe with open, unadulterated disdain.

Feeling the heat of their glares, Ashe felt compelled to clear his name immediately. ”This is absolute slander! I am a pure, zero-pollution, completely additive-free knight of true love! The worst thing you can accuse me of is throwing my weight around and bullying the weak, but I would never abuse my authority to ruin lives!”

Lys countered, ”But why would the Gospel frame you like that for no reason? Daddy, shouldn’t you reflect on whether you’ve said or done anything that made the Gospel misunderstand you?”

”Impossible. The only females I can interact with right now are you and the Lady. I’d be overjoyed if you weren’t sleeping on my stomach. As for the Lady, she’s the one harassing me.”

”Really?” Annan asked, raising an eyebrow. ”Do you truly have no inappropriate thoughts about me at all?”

”Of course...”

Ashe trailed off, his voice suddenly losing its confidence as he remembered the few pieces of compiled imagery he had bought from Evelyn. He cleared his throat and muttered in a tiny voice, ”None...”

On screen, the projection continued.

***

”You’ve made a wise decision,” the onscreen Ashe said cheerfully. ”Take them away!”

Two Crow-feather guests stepped forward. Daphne collapsed to the ground in despair, completely losing the will to resist as they reached out toward her—

”Eh? Wait, what?!”

Daphne watched in utter confusion as they walked right past her, grabbed her younger brother Carlos, and started hauling him away instead. She scrambled to her feet. ”Why are you taking Carlos?!”

Ashe blinked. ”What do you think? From the very start, we were here for Carlos. In the future shown by the Gospel, his talent is exactly what we need.”

”Then... then what about me?” Daphne asked blankly.

”Are you by any chance interested in joining the Four Pillars Cult?” Rusty Crow chimed in. ”We could really use someone with your social skills.”

***

This sudden reversal left everyone in the room momentarily stunned. Back in reality, Ashe immediately puffed up with smug satisfaction, while Annan quickly averted her gaze. Lys tried to sneak back to her seat, but Ashe caught her by the collar and pulled her back, forcing her to squeak out awkwardly, ”I mean... I actually always believed in you, Daddy...”

”Believe I’m a bad guy? Believe I like other people’s wives? Believe I can only get a girlfriend through coercion and mind control?” Ashe asked, baring his teeth in a mock snarl.

Iger suddenly raised his hand. ”Ashe, I’ve always believed in you.”

”Tch, take a look, Lys. Even Aunt Perskin—”

”I believe that you at least have some self-awareness.”

Ashe’s face fell. ”Harvey, can you throw that box of cockroaches onto Iger’s bed?”

Harvey replied with total seriousness, ”Ashe, no offense, but wasting food is wrong.”

While they were bickering, the projection finally faded, and the Book of Gospel returned to the ranking’s main page.

[Happiness Ranking No. 10: The Happiest Wedding]

Synopsis: Daphne Bonabar and Carlos Bonabar had been lovers for ten years. Having weathered countless joys, sorrows, and life’s bitter hardships, they finally became husband and wife. The day they wed in the Sky Garden marked both the grand finale of their trials and the beautiful dawn of their happiness. They would remain together forever, never to be parted, using their profound love to endure endless difficulties, and in the future, also achieve... but due to interference from Ashe Heath and others, this ranking is rendered invalid.

Reward: Void

Culprit: Ashe Heath

Ashe froze, staring at the screen. ”How is this still my fault?! What, if the sun doesn’t rise tomorrow, is the Gospel going to blame me for that, too?”

Iger turned to Annan. ”Annan, has there ever been a case of a ranking being voided like this before?”

Annan frowned thoughtfully. ”No. On top of that, the future described in this ranking is completely different from previous ones. This is the first time I’ve ever seen the people inside a ranking mention the ranking itself.”

”Ashe’s behavior is also strange,” Iger continued, rubbing his chin. ”Would he really go after the tenth-ranked couple just to desecrate the Gospel? And why did Harvey and I not object to his plan at all? We aren’t that bored.”

Annan bit her lip. ”An invalid ranking, intruding variables, voided rewards, and an early update... When you put it all together...”

”It sounds like the author rushed the patch and ended up producing a buggy piece of garbage,” Ashe concluded.