The battle with the Heroic Spirit Legion had genuinely exhausted Yaxiu and the others.
Not only Yaxiu, who had driven the fight from start to finish, but even Sonia and Diya—who had spent most of their time acting as cheerleaders—were just as drained. Huddled inside the car, they had endured the constant threat of sudden death while battling the dizziness and violent impacts of high-speed racing, without a single moment of reprieve for their minds... Like springs stretched taut for too long, even after releasing their potential energy, tremors still lingered. They had yet to pull themselves out of that heart-pounding battle.
Even though Yaxiu and his companions had survived perilous fights before, those had merely been "dangerous"; the sorcerers had always had room to maneuver. But this battle against the Heroic Spirit Legion had allowed zero margin for error. If the sports car blew up, none of them had the strength to stand against the Heroic Spirit Legion on their own.
They had been dancing on the edge of death the entire time.
Using the terrain to lay ambushes, releasing poison amid a massive army to trap and kill thousand-feather bird-dragons, grinding down serpent-scorpion Star Swordsmen, fighting the Heroic Spirit down to the final second... Compared to this, slaughtering a Fishcleaver Dragon was practically a relaxing leisure activity.
After sitting for a while, Yaxiu and Sonia mostly recovered. Yet they remained seated against the sports car with zero intention of getting up, looking just like slackers whose bathroom breaks started at fifteen minutes.
Naturally, it wasn't that they were too lazy to stand. Exploring the Void Realm was essentially working for themselves, and self-employed entrepreneurs whose earnings scaled directly with effort still had plenty of passion for work. The reason they sat motionless was that they were waiting for the Witch to rest.
Sonia, who usually loved chattering away, didn't utter a word. Her legs, clad in black stockings, were lazily crossed as soft hums drifted from her nose, as if she were lounging in bed.
Yet the corner of her eye never stopped watching Diya's clownishly multicolored outfit, her gaze touched with worry.
Yaxiu's acting was not as smooth as Sonia's. He sat stiffly, doing his best to observe out of the corner of his eye Diya's chaotic hair, which looked as though a paint palette had been knocked over. His left hand still held Diya's wrist, just in case something went wrong.
After slaying the Heroic Spirit, Yaxiu and Sonia had reached an unspoken consensus through eye contact: the Witch's condition was very bad.
They had seen it clearly: as the battle grew increasingly dire, the Witch's hair color had turned muddier and muddier, and even her voice had shifted. Just now, when the Witch spoke, it had come out as a quartet, as though four different people were talking at once, while her hair continuously shifted through a gradient of mixed hues. No matter how one looked at it, this was an extremely ominous sign.
Rest was, of course, a way to unwind after the battle, but taking this break was also going with the flow to help the Witch recover. They could easily guess that the Witch's bizarre state was tied to the "sisters," yet psychological issues fell completely outside their capabilities; none of their sorcery spirits or miracles were of any use here.
Fortunately, both Yaxiu and Sonia possessed a Silver-rank mind faction realm. Even if they hadn't read many books on psychology, when faced with an event involving mental fluctuations, they could rely on the proper instincts: do not disturb the Witch, and let her slowly calm down.
Had it been the Sonia of the past, she would have probed and dropped hints asking how the Witch felt. As for Yaxiu, he would have been even more remarkable—he probably would have asked, "Have you ever considered shaving your head?"
Thanks to the intellectual intuition granted by their mind faction realm, however, they were able to nip in the bud any notions that might have made things irretrievable.
Only the ignorant are fearless; knowledge teaches one reverence.
Perhaps because the atmosphere they created was indeed soothing, the Witch also lazily sat down, closed her eyes, and leaned against the sports car. Her clothes slowly turned back to black, and her shifting long hair shed its gaudy rainbow sheen, quickly returning to the Secret Princess's solid hue.
She had fallen asleep.
This was the first time Yaxiu and Sonia had ever seen someone fall asleep in the Void Realm. The two quietly flanked the Witch, studying her eyebrows, lips, nose, eyelashes, and glasses for quite some time. Looking closely brought a pleasant surprise: while the Witch was already pretty on ordinary days, asleep she looked even gentler, like a timid fawn, making one yearn to pinch her cheeks.
When Yaxiu's gaze tried to drift past her neck toward the curves beneath her clothes, Sonia reached out, grabbed his chin, and twisted his face so he met her eyes.
*You wake her up.*
*Why me? You do it.*
*I only just met her. You're a better fit.*
*You're a girl; you're the better fit.*
*A girl is precisely why it's not a fit.*
*Why?*
*Are you a woman or am I? Don't women understand women best?*
*Damn it... you actually make sense.*
Having thoroughly lost this silent stare-down debate, Yaxiu had no choice but to take up the universally despised role of an alarm clock. But since the Sword Princess was so unwilling, he wouldn't hold back!
*Pinch~*
Yaxiu reached out and pinched the Witch's chubby cheek. It felt wonderful; supposedly, one's body in the Void Realm faithfully mirrored one's physical body in reality, which meant the soft, fleshy texture came through completely. If nothing else, this sensation completely cured the exhaustion Yaxiu felt from the preceding battle... So a girl's cheek really was this soft!
"Hey!"
Sonia chopped Yaxiu's hand away with the edge of her palm. "That's harassment!"
"I'm waking her up! According to surveys, attacking the face is the most effective way to wake someone from bed. Slapping them across the face, for instance, is guaranteed to wake them."
"Then slap her, why don't you?!"
*Good grief, even the most thick-headed, emotionally stunted college roommate I ever knew wasn't this savage. Only my brother could pull something like that.*
"Huh?"
Pinched awake, Diya rubbed her eyes instinctively and stared blankly at the two of them. "Eh? You guys... where... wait, how did I... am I dreaming?"
Sonia reached out with both hands and ruthlessly squished Diya's face like dough. "You dozed off just now! Snap out of it, we're still in the Void Realm!"
"Oh, oh, oh!" Diya nodded vigorously. "Right, I remember now! We beat the Heroic Spirit Legion... We actually won! Yay, hooray!"
Excited, the Witch immediately threw her arms around the Sword Princess in celebration. Touched by the scene, Yaxiu spread his arms wide and attempted to join the girls' celebratory hug, only to be shoved away by the Sword Princess. But the Witch noticed his gesture and bounced over to hug Yaxiu as well. "Watcher, your driving was incredible! Super amazing! Way cooler than any fairy-tale villain! Sword Princess was super awesome too, landing the final kill! And of course, I was great too—I held down that Heroic Spirit!"
"Yes, yes, yes. You did great this time, Witch. Thanks for your hard work."
Yaxiu gently ruffled Diya's hair with his right hand, smoothing down her proud cowlick, while raising his left hand high to show that all his actions complied with children's television broadcasting standards. Sonia snorted and stood up. "Then we should go collect the spoils we earned—let's hope they didn't think nobody wanted them and run off."
By now, the toxic mist in the cavern had cleared. Looking around, they discovered almost no loot to speak of. Whether there had been something wrong with how they killed them, or because those knowledge creatures were members of a Heroic Spirit Legion, when they died, they dropped neither Experience Orbs nor sorcery spirits.
There were only three spoils on the battlefield, all dropped by the Heroic Spirit.
The first was a manual, but when Yaxiu picked it up, he found it wasn't the sorcerer manual they had expected—
[Demilo's Commander Manual]
[Upon reading, choose one of the following rewards:]
[Sword Command (Basic): You know how to coordinate swordsmanship faction units in combat, and gain a large amount of swordsmanship faction experience.]
[Archery Command (Intermediate): You excel at utilizing ranged units to achieve tactical objectives, and gain an enormous amount of marksmanship faction experience.]
[Offense (Basic): Your commands are more threatening during an attack, and you gain a small amount of experience in all factions.]
[Logistics (Intermediate): Your troops march faster, and you gain a moderate amount of experience in all factions.]
How to describe the shock this commander manual gave the sorcerers? One look at the Sword Princess told the whole story—the moment she learned of the reward options, a "little trumpet!" burst from her lips, shaken so badly she couldn't even maintain her self-restraint.
If a sorcerer manual was a nutritious but foul-tasting vegetable, then this commander manual was a zero-calorie, zero-sugar, zero-protein, reality-defying, hyper-nutritious ice cream cake. First of all, its reward wasn't random; you could pick it yourself. Second, on top of granting a command skill, it came with faction experience—the equivalent of throwing in an extra Experience Orb.
And most important of all—it had no reading barrier!
Not every vegetable suited a sorcerer's palate, but who could resist a zero-calorie ice cream cake? Yaxiu and the others didn't even need to open the manual and read through the command experiences inside; they could claim the rewards simply by using it. Thus, even Sonia, with her rigid moral boundaries, could use it without issue!
Admittedly, this commander manual wasn't exorbitantly valuable—at the end of the day, it was just "a useless command skill" plus an "Experience Orb." The spoils from killing a single Fishcleaver Dragon weren't much different.
Yet the appearance of a commander manual broadened their horizons, letting them know that sorcerer manuals weren't limited to tough, unpalatable vegetables. Perhaps other flavors, offering even richer nourishment, existed in the Void Realm as well.
If they encountered a mutated sorcerer projection like a Heroic Spirit again next time, the Sword Princess certainly wouldn't stop Yaxiu from taking risks. They had taken a brave step into the unknown, and this commander manual was the unknown's positive reinforcement. Henceforth, their first reaction when facing unknown perils wouldn't be to flee, but to probe and gather intelligence.
Sorcerers who had tasted sweetness would gladly lick at any unknown secret, even if it might conceal bitterness or outright poison.
Silently, the taste of success reshaped their way of thinking. Just as the Flowing Gold River had nourished their ambition, hunting a Heroic Spirit fed their greed.
Without question, this commander manual naturally went to Sonia. None of the three had any use for the marksmanship faction, and the top priority right now was feeding Sonia's swordsmanship faction up to the Gold rank.
Sonia had also felt her utter helplessness deeply in the recent battle. Although she had delivered the final fatal blow, ninety-nine percent of the credit for the entire fight belonged to Yaxiu and his nearly incinerated sports car.
The true MVP that deserved praise and hugs was the car!
Yet the sports car was Yaxiu's power, putting him far ahead of her on that alone. The Witch, meanwhile, already had a Gold-rank sorcery faction, and her Water-Born Lines provided both damage and crowd control; on top of that, the Witch could read most sorcerer manuals... Calmly reflecting on it, Sonia realized that before she knew it, she was close to becoming the dead weight of the team.
The Watcher had explicitly stated that if she fell behind the team, she wouldn't receive favored resource allocation, nor would she enjoy special treatment. If the team ever decided to "streamline" its roster, the dead weight would naturally be the first to be downsized...
So this time, Sonia didn't act polite. She reached out and took the commander manual.
She wasn't the kind of woman to concede defeat quietly. If she really couldn't keep pace with the team's progress, she would eat the Watcher out of house and home, devour all his resources, and gorge herself until he had to keep pouring in more investment just to avoid wasting what he had already sunk in!
As long as she owed the Watcher enough, when the time came, he would be the one panicking, not her!
What was that called again... Right, sunk cost. A term the Watcher had once explained while venting about work. Sonia was very fond of that phrase.
The more you invest, the harder it is to let go.
Time, energy, emotions, shared experiences—everything would become shackles weighing on present decisions.
In her heart, she set a humble little goal for herself: become a sunk cost the Watcher could never afford to abandon!
Before using the commander manual, Sonia quickly flipped through its contents. True to expectations, it was terribly dry, filled entirely with battle-command experiences and tactical case studies, without a single shred of information regarding the person named "Demilo."
No wonder anyone could use a commander manual. It bore no imprint of a sorcerer's worldview and pushed no personal perspectives; it was just like an ordinary reference book. Of course it had no reading barrier.
Still, wasn't a sorcerer manual supposed to be the condensation of a sorcerer's entire life? How could there not be the slightest bit of Demilo's personal life?
The thought flickered through the country girl's mind before vanishing—probably some special mechanic of the Void Realm. If there was nothing to see, then so be it.
Turning to the very last page, however, Sonia saw a somewhat familiar photograph.
It was a star chart. Across a deep night sky with twinkling stars, three stars were connected by lines. The lowest star was labeled with the name "Demilo," but the other two were nameless.
She showed the page to the others. Yaxiu offered an astute assessment:
"It looks just like the clue about the killer that a victim scribbles right before dying."
Chapter 245