The Sorcerer's Handbook

After leaving Montphera, the Funeral Agency repeatedly swapped their modes of transportation until they arrived safe and sound at their destination, Fedela.

Ashe had initially assumed Annan would have local contacts here. After all, by this point, they had offended nearly every faction in the Gospel Kingdom except for the goblins. If no one was waiting to receive them, whatever greeted them next would either be a bullet or a betrayal.

However, according to Annan, "This is a city where you can offend the entire world and still hide safely."

And she wasn't lying.

Fedela was the one region where the power of the Gospel was at its weakest. It wasn't some kind of anti-sorcery zone where the Gospel simply failed to function. The reason was far simpler. The people here were too poor to afford listening to it.

Listening to the Gospel required Gospel Points, and the sole source of those points was to earn a place on the rankings. While geniuses could climb the ranks on their own merit, ordinary people relied entirely on piggybacking on city and collective rankings. In those systems, cities distributed points to all citizens, and corporations shared them with employees.

But there was a catch. The ranking quotas were strictly limited. Naturally, some cities and enterprises were bound to miss the cut.

Azura, Vanmura, and Montphera were all top-tier hubs. Because their cities and corporations consistently raked in massive amounts of points every year, they could reinvest that wealth back into production. This created an insurmountable, irreversible first-mover advantage. One after another, they rapidly modernized and built up thriving second-layered cities.

Fedela, on the other hand, was a mere background character that failed to make any list. Its greatest purpose was to serve as a foil, highlighting just how excellent the ranked cities truly were.

What, you're asking why such a backward city doesn't try harder to catch up and become a model civilized society? That's like asking why single people don't just get into relationships, or why the author doesn't update, or why someone doesn't just dodge a bullet.

Governance, public order, productivity, and education. None of these factors existed in a vacuum. They were all deeply interconnected.

Setting aside Azura and Vanmura, which relied on Miracles to cheat, Azura was a prime example of a positive loop. Because everyone listened to the Gospel, public order was stable. People willingly pursued education, enterprises enjoyed a healthy operating environment, and the city's overall standard rose. As a result, it achieved higher rankings, citizens earned more Gospel Points, and they became even more motivated to listen to the Gospel.

Conversely, if a city failed to rank in any category, it meant it wasn't just lagging slightly behind. It was stuck at the absolute bottom and had never even entered a virtuous cycle.

Fedela was the textbook example. Despite boasting one of the top five populations, its direct competitors were first-tier powerhouses like Azura. The gulf between them could be described in a single sentence: Fedela had no schools.

Azura's public schools featured state-of-the-art education pods where anyone could lie down and receive a fully customized curriculum. Fedela had no such luxuries. It wasn't that the Empire refused to provide them, but that anything delivered there would be instantly dismantled and sold for scrap.

This led to Fedela's second defining trait. The Red Hats only policed the wealthy central districts. As for crimes committed in the rest of the city, they simply didn't care.

Lawlessness, a total lack of education, and zero governance. These were the three defining traits of Fedela.

It wasn't that the citizens genuinely valued freedom. Rather, the chaos was the product of a tangled web of incentives. Simply put, the Empire distributed annual subsidies based on a city's total population. Early on, Fedela's upper class decided that since the city could never compete with its rivals anyway, the subsidies would be wasted on infrastructure, so they might as well just pocket the money and spend it freely.

Left without administrative support, Fedela decayed day by day. Yet this ulcer of a city attracted a very specific crowd: mega-corporations looking to conduct dirty work in a lawless zone, and chaotic idealists longing to break free from the constraints of the Gospel.

Bribery, corruption, dereliction of duty, and systemic collusion, crimes that would have been exposed instantly by the Book of Gospel in any other city, thrived here through the mutual cooperation of all parties. As for the Red Hats, they simply buried their heads in the sand. As the lowest-ranked enforcers in the entire Gospel system, merely abstaining from active crime themselves was already the absolute limit of their professional integrity.

After decades of unchecked degeneration, Fedela had transformed into a chaotic haven of absolute freedom. Annan's choice to use it as a refuge was brilliant. After all, while the locals were too poor to afford the Gospel, Annan herself was a wealthy young lady who could easily purchase Gospel blessings.

Having witnessed the sheer scale of wealth possessed by her mother and Evelyn, Ashe had mentally reclassified Annan as "relatively rich." A moderately wealthy girl could operate on a completely different plane of existence in a place like Fedela.

Ordinary citizens here lacked the Gospel Points required to probe their identities. Furthermore, Annan had procured a fixed "random avatar blessing" for their safehouse. Whenever they moved within its bounds, their appearances were completely masked and randomized in the eyes of outsiders, eliminating any risk of exposure.

In a normal city, Annan would never dare use such a blatant blessing. Standard Gospel investigative toolkits included Miracles, spirits, and dozens of other detection methods. For just ten points, an investigator could scan every anomaly within a hundred-meter radius. Utilizing a fixed disguise in that kind of environment would be tantamount to shouting, "Look at me, I'm highly suspicious!"

But in poverty-stricken Fedela, the blessing was incredibly practical. Ashe had no doubt they could safely wait things out here until the Woven Festival concluded.

However, Annan's motives for coming to Fedela weren't entirely about finding a place to hide.

After washing up, Ashe and Harvey returned to the table. The room was small and the table even smaller, making it a tight squeeze for six people, but they had grown used to the cramped quarters over the last few days.

Once everyone was seated, Annan announced, "Breakfast is ready."

They began to eat. Today's spread consisted of cream pasta, egg-and-bacon bread, and milk tea.

Pankey spoke up, "This breakfast cost a total of thirty-two copper coins. I have seventy-three coppers left. Ashe, take it."

"Alright," Ashe replied, accepting the coins. He had taken charge of the household finances.

Annan turned to the necromancer. "Harvey, what's your schedule look like today?"

"Still doing construction work," Harvey said dryly. "The local morgues only hire people with connections. Since we aren't staying long anyway, I won't bother hunting for anything else."

"Iger, what about you?"

"I met Miss Martha yesterday and we hit it off. She agreed to let me use her divination club room for a few days," Iger said, offering a mild smile. "I'm going to try my hand at being a fortune-teller."

"I'm planning to change jobs," Pankey suddenly interjected.

Annan blinked. "Why? I thought your odd jobs were going fine?"

Pankey replied, his face completely expressionless, "Because the boss's daughter seems to have fallen in love with me. It wouldn't be fair to her if I stayed."

Iger let out a chuckle. "Isn't that a good thing? If you settled down here, got married, and had children, wouldn't that be exactly the kind of 'happiness' we're aiming for?"

Annan chimed in, a teasing grin tugging at her lips. "Yeah, exactly. Is she pretty?"

"Don't tease me," Pankey replied, his tone indifferent. "Miss, I am happy as long as you are happy. Nothing else matters. Besides, after spending so many years bound to the Gospel, I can't exactly deceive it anyway. At most, I can only cooperate with you."

Upon arriving in Fedela, Ashe and the others immediately grilled Annan about the nature of the next ranking.

Iger personally found the situation quite entertaining. However, Ashe, Lys, Harvey, and the rest, essentially anyone with zero interest in intellectual mind games, had already been deeply traumatized by the Schemer Rankings. They were determined never to give Annan another chance to pull the same trick twice.

Fortunately, the fourth ranking didn't need to be kept under wraps. Annan straightforwardly revealed that the theme of the upcoming ranking centered around happiness.

Under normal circumstances, Ashe and his companions would have absolutely no shot at making the cut. Even as foreign laborers brimming with endless potential, it was an impossible feat. After all, no matter how content they were, they could never compete with rulers like Evelyn, Quinna, and Mercury, who commanded absolute power and infinite wealth. The Gospel had hinted that Ashe and the others would one day dominate the Gospel Kingdom, but even then, the happiest person in their lineage wouldn't be them. It would be Ashe's future child.

After all, what could possibly bring more happiness than being born with a golden spoon in your mouth?

As for the platitude that the rich weren't truly happy, that was merely a lie told by the wealthy to keep the impoverished compliant. If society kept hammering home the idea that money ruled everything, the poor would eventually hang the rich from streetlamps and extract their oil.

However, in a future that was inevitably heading toward an apocalypse, the very definition of happiness changed.

In a dying world, happiness had nothing to do with power or status. When society collapsed and everyone lived in a state of constant peril, what use was a title? Could it order takeout? Could it even gather eight people to raid an Extreme-level Sovereign Blade-Carp stage?

Thus, everyone quickly grasped the true essence of apocalyptic happiness: life itself.

If a group could support one another through the end times, maintain their dignity, and preserve a quality of life close to pre-apocalyptic standards, that would be the ultimate happiness.

For this exact reason, Annan hadn't rented a spacious manor in Fedela's wealthy district. Instead, she opted for a cramped apartment in a chaotic urban slum. Ashe and the three other men shared a single room with bunk beds, while she shared a room with Lys. The goal was to simulate an apocalypse as closely as possible. After all, within the Gospel Kingdom, the lives of the impoverished were already the closest thing to an apocalypse.

To fully immerse themselves and deceive the Gospel's system, Annan established three strict rules. Firstly, everyone had to work for a living. Secondly, all expenses had to come strictly from earned income without touching their savings. Last but not least, living costs had to be minimized without compromising their quality of life.

It wasn't that Annan was a miser. Rather, her money was simply too powerful. The bank interest from the Dolan family fortune alone would be enough for Ashe and the others to live in idle luxury in Fedela. That might be a form of happiness, but it would undoubtedly cause them to fail the Gospel's evaluation.

Because of these three rules, they had barely scraped by with nothing to eat on their first day in Fedela, right up until Harvey and Pankey secured jobs and their situation finally stabilized.

Annan turned her attention to the person across the table. "Lys, how are your studies going?"

Everyone had to contribute, and Lys was no exception. While she didn't need to step outside for a job, she was required to study at home using the Book of Gospel. The results weren't as effective as the specialized education pods, but the textbooks provided by the Book of Gospel were at least free, professional, and packed with assignments and exercises. Studying this way was highly beneficial. It just demanded immense self-discipline.

"I-it's... all going pretty well..." Lys stammered, shifting uncomfortably.

Annan raised an eyebrow. "Let me see your homework results."

"I told you, it's really fine—"

"Cut the nonsense."

As the leader of the agency, the Purple Moth still carried absolute authority. Lys obediently opened the homework logs in her Book of Gospel and turned the screen over.

Annan's brow furrowed deeply as she scanned the pages. "Why are all your other subjects perfectly fine, but your math is an absolute disaster? The Gospel explicitly states that your mathematical thinking shows severe structural defects and strongly recommends you abandon the subject entirely."

Ashe gasped, completely blindsided. "What?! The Gospel actually said that? That can't be real, right?"

Annan blinked, looking between them. "Yes, it is. Why are you so shocked? Did you tutor her yourself? How did it get this bad?"

Ashe looked on the verge of a total breakdown. "I-I didn't just tutor her... She said it was too much trouble and forced me to do her math homework for her..."

After a brief, agonizing silence, Harvey was the first to push his chair back. "I'm done eating. Going to work."

"I'm finished too."

"Ashe, want me to handle the dishes?"

Ashe gloomily chewed on his remaining egg-and-bacon bread. "No need. Even if it's been a few years since I graduated... I shouldn't be this bad at basic math..."

Once Pankey and the others had cleared out, Annan walked over and wrapped her arms around Lys before leaning down to hug Ashe from behind as well.

"Do we really have to do this?!" Ashe complained.

Annan immediately locked him in a playful morning crosshold, teasing him mercilessly. "I'm the head of the household. Hugging you before work increases your 'authority weight,' so don't be ungrateful!"

After everyone departed for their jobs, Ashe washed the dishes and called out, "Study time starts in half an hour."

Lys cheered instantly. "Yay! Then let's squeeze in a game of Sorcerer Duel 14!"

"After I finish scrubbing these plates," Ashe clarified.

In reality, Ashe's assigned role in the household was a blend of housekeeper and babysitter. There were two distinct reasons for this. Firstly, Lys couldn't be left unattended and needed someone to keep an eye on her. Secondly, Ashe couldn't risk showing his face in public.

While the others could alter their appearances using cosmetics or Miracles, Ashe's Mask of Distortion was permanently active. No matter how he tried to alter his features, the mask remained firmly in place. Trying to work a public job while wearing a literal mask would scream that he had something to hide, so he was proudly designated to stay at home.

Once the dishes were dried and he had finished playing games with Lys, Ashe commenced his official duties.

He summoned his substitute to handle the heavy cleaning, which efficiently managed everything from sun-drying and ironing the laundry to scrubbing the bathrooms, washing windows, and making the beds.

With his substitute managing the domestic chores, Ashe sat quietly beside Lys, supervising her schoolwork while utilizing the downtime to review his own knowledge regarding the Virtual World, sorcerer systems, and Knowledge Creatures.

Over two hours later, after Lys had glanced longingly at him for the thirteenth time, Ashe finally closed his Book of Gospel. "Come on. Let's go out and buy a few things."

"Yay!"

Ashe pulled on his hooded coat and took Lys by the hand as they stepped out of the apartment building into the bustling streets of Fedela.

Despite being labelled a chaotic slum, a distinct, unspoken order had long been established over the years. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for ordinary people to find an environment where they could actually work. The neighborhood they lived in was known as the Salome District, named after Salome, the security enterprise responsible for maintaining order in the area.

Hospitals, pet shops, restaurants, cafés, balance-scooter dealerships, and convenience stores lined the streets. In other advanced cities, these businesses had long since been digitized and absorbed into online shopping networks. Yet in Fedela, they still stubbornly maintained a vibrant, brick-and-mortar presence.

Ashe held Lys's hand, guiding her toward a nearby supermarket. The grand, modern décor inside made it crystal clear that shoplifting was not an option.

As they passed the snack and dessert aisle, Ashe quickly covered Lys's eyes. "Don't look, don't look. We only have seventy-three copper coins left. We can't afford it."

When they passed the Lala Fat discount section, Lys retaliated by covering Ashe's eyes. "Don't look, don't look. We only have seventy-three copper coins left. We can't afford to eat that."

After a meticulous round of budgeting, price-matching, and sampling the free test items, Ashe and Lys finally headed back home carrying several large grocery bags.

Following a simple lunch, Ashe dragged a plush rug out onto the balcony, where he and Lys lazily settled down for a nap.

By the time they woke up, it was already nearing three o'clock. Ashe urged Lys to start her afternoon studies while his substitute got to work prepping dinner ingredients. Ashe himself lingered on the rug, stretching out the last few moments of peace.

Around four o'clock, Pankey was the first to return, heading straight for the kitchen to help with the meal the moment he stepped through the door. Next came Iger, wafting a faint, floral perfume. He had undoubtedly swindled a tidy sum out of some wealthy women today. Then Annan barged in, immediately commanding Ashe to pull off her stockings with the outrageous authority of a spoiled queen. Finally, Harvey trudged in covered in a thick layer of dust and was promptly banished straight to the bathroom to wash up.

As darkness fell, the ambient noise of the residential building melded into the night. The thin, shoddy soundproofing did nothing to suppress Fedela's nocturnal symphony. Downstairs, people were drinking and shouting; upstairs, someone was pacing around in heavy, high-heeled boots; and across the alleyway, glowing windows hinted at families watching dramas over dinner.

Slowly, Fedela's "dark forest" began to twinkle to life. It couldn't compare to the grand, centralized illumination systems of major metropolises like Azura or Montphera, but the scattered, uneven lights radiating from individual homes still offered a cozy sense of warmth.

The six members of the Funeral Agency gathered around a small round table. Once Harvey finished his shower and claimed his seat, Annan finally declared, "Dinner time."

The ritual of waiting for every single person to arrive before announcing dinner was sacred to her. According to Annan, this collective patience boosted their overall happiness index by 5%. To Ashe, however, it felt like just another power play Annan used to solidify her status as the undisputed head of the household.

This was the daily routine of the Funeral Agency, and perhaps the most peaceful, ordinary period they had experienced since arriving in the Gospel Kingdom. No one was hunting them down, their personal safety wasn't compromised, and everyone had gradually shed their initial guarded walls. In the rising steam of the home-cooked food, even the passage of time seemed to soften. Ashe almost managed to forget about the Woven Festival, the Divine Lord's grand wish, and the approaching apocalypse.

That was until everyone's Book of Gospel suddenly snapped open on its own.

A glowing bookmark pulsed with light, broadcasting a massive, high-priority announcement to everyone present.

"The Gospel..." Annan murmured, her eyes wide. "Has a new update just dropped?!"

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