Yaxiu the Stowaway

"So this is... a sorcery spirit." In his private dorm room at Shattered Lake Prison, Yaxiu gazed at the sorcery spirit fast asleep in the palm of his hand. Clad in blue-striped pajamas, it resembled a human toddler, and a sensation of blood kinship welled up inside him. During their final venture into the Void Realm tonight, the pair had headed toward a white-mist area marked "Welcome!" and discovered a fortuitous encounter islet within. Unlike an inheritance islet, a fortuitous encounter islet was devoid of any danger or trial. There were only wild sorcery spirits romping and laughing across the island. When the two stepped onto the islet, the spirits scattered in an instant. Sharp-eyed and quick-handed as they were, they only managed to catch two. Resigned to their bad luck, the captured spirits readily acknowledged them as their masters. One spirit for each of them. The one Yaxiu received was the slumbering human toddler in his palm—"Substitute." [Substitute] [One-winged sorcery spirit] [Restriction: The sorcerer must be a sapient primate.] [Basic Effect: Creates a phantom identical to the target that shatters upon impact. If the target is a sapient being, it will obey the sorcerer's commands.] [Passive Effect: Slightly dulls pain perception.] ["If it hurts, just pretend you're someone else. That way, it won't hurt at all."] Meanwhile, the Sword Princess had obtained a water sorcery faction spirit, "Torrent." [Torrent] [One-winged sorcery spirit] [Restriction: Ownerless liquid must exist in the immediate surroundings.] [Basic Effect: Blasts a jet of water possessing kinetic impact.] [Passive Effect: Increases mastery over liquids.] ["A gentle flow is life; a turbulent torrent is change. Nothing is constant except the flow itself."] According to the Sword Princess, Torrent spirits fetched a steep price back at her university. It was a rare, high-burst offensive spirit within the water sorcery faction, capable of deriving numerous potent miracles, but exceptionally difficult to summon. Consequently, its price was exorbitantly high, even surpassing some two-winged sorcery spirits. Though Yaxiu badly wanted to retort, *What does a 2D anime girl need money for?*, on second thought it might just be the game's automatic upgrade system. Besides, he still needed to cling to her coattails. This was definitely not the time to clash with the Sword Princess—during a critical phase of a project, the last person you wanted to offend was the sole technical expert doing all the work! And so, the two merrily completed the division of their spoils. The Sword Princess was thrilled, and Yaxiu was even more pleased, because the Substitute spirit happened to be one of the indispensable core spirits for the Severing Self miracle! Yaxiu's top priority was to assemble the spirits needed for the Severing Self miracle and completely crush the control of the chip on the nape of his neck. Otherwise, he wouldn't even qualify to attempt a prison break! Fixing his gaze on the Substitute spirit resting in his palm, he quietly stirred that peculiar mental energy in his mind. Upon returning from the Void Realm, Yaxiu had discovered that his mental consciousness had transitioned from intangible to tangible. It felt as if his imagination had genuinely materialized into a physical force, or as if he had gained an invisible phantom limb with which he could wield mental power to touch everything in reality. Without having to ask, Yaxiu knew this mental energy was the sorcery power the Sword Princess had mentioned time and again. Sorcery power was the universal energy source for sorcerers and the underlying foundation for driving sorcery spirits. Without it, a sorcerer was no different from an ordinary person. Conversely, as long as you possessed sorcery power, you were a sorcerer, even if you were the clumsiest one alive. Yet Yaxiu distinctly remembered that prior to entering the Void Realm, he hadn't possessed a single shred of sorcery power. He knew very well where this sorcery power came from. As he sailed through the Void Realm with the Sword Princess, every layer of white mist they cleaved through had not only tempered his mind, but also gathered stray knowledge for him, giving rise under their dual influence to that universal energy: sorcery power. Thus, upon returning from the Void Realm, Yaxiu possessed both a sorcery spirit and sorcery power. In other words, he was now an upright, high-purity sorcerer. And yet... Yaxiu tried extending his mental tendrils to explore the Substitute spirit's form, but the feedback he received was like the listening comprehension section of a high-level foreign language exam. Not only was the whole thing incomprehensible when strung together, he couldn't even make sense of a single sentence. It matched the Sword Princess's words perfectly: *Unless you summoned the sorcery spirit yourself, you won't even be able to analyze its structure.* Since he couldn't analyze it, Yaxiu naturally had no way to locate the Gate of Truth within the Substitute spirit. Which meant Yaxiu was a sorcerer who could not enter the Void Realm on his own! This ran completely contrary to the sorcerer system described by the Sword Princess. Every sorcerer, whether brilliantly talented or dense as rotten wood, whether born of noble blood or starting out as an orphan, without exception summoned a sorcery spirit through study and training before ever entering the Void Realm. From antiquity to the present day, an uneducated, ignorant sorcerer had never once existed! The very term "sorcerer" literally meant a "master of the craft." Every sorcerer was qualified to instruct others in an art! Yet now, an exception had appeared! Yaxiu Heath, an uneducated, wandering soul from another world, had bypassed the threshold of knowledge to become an official sorcerer! He suddenly recalled the legend of the Golden Fish and the stowaways that the Sword Princess had just recounted. *A Silver Sorcerer who finds the Golden Fish can stow away to the Time Continent and become a Gold Sorcerer. Meanwhile, I hitched a ride on the Sword Princess's boat and stowed away into the Sea of Knowledge to become a Silver Sorcerer...* When others stowed away, it was mobility within the sorcerer hierarchy, akin to internal migration between different regions of the same country—at most a domestic matter. But Yaxiu's passage was like leaping over a wall from a primitive tribe into a developed nation; it was practically an invasive species event. *This secret must never, ever be exposed,* Yaxiu thought to himself. If other sorcerers found out he was a stowaway, they certainly wouldn't spare him just to preserve biological diversity. *Substitute!* Yaxiu chanted silently in his mind. Nothing happened. The Substitute spirit remained fast asleep in his hand. The next instant, a light screen popped up abruptly, and a stream of data cascaded past his eyes. [Warning: You are attempting to output sorcery power! This is a prohibited action!] Yaxiu slapped his own forehead. Right—since the chip barred him from entering the Void Realm, of course it would restrict him from using sorcery power! To activate a sorcery spirit and cast a miracle, he had to bypass the chip; to bypass the chip, he had to activate a sorcery spirit and cast a miracle to cleanse it... Damn it, another vicious cycle! "Sword Princess-emon, save me—" "Sword Princess?" Yaxiu called out twice, but the dorm room remained empty. The elusive Sword Princess did not appear this time. On second thought, she had spent the entire night running around the Void Realm with him and was bound to be exhausted. Even 2D characters needed their rest, so he shouldn't disturb her today. *"If you've been hurt enough, use a pair of hands to cut away yesterday's curse without regret. Awaiting dawn as night falls, only scars remain..."* Yaxiu looked up and realized it was already eight in the morning. The prison's morning wakeup song blared right on schedule. It was time to get breakfast. The Death Match Club still had a match waiting for him. *** Inside a meditation chamber at Sword Flower University, Sonia slowly opened her eyes. She reached out a hand, and a maiden sorcery spirit clad in a long white gown manifested on her palm. If this spirit were made public, it would undoubtedly draw immense attention. Finding any harvest on one's very first day in the Void Realm was extraordinarily rare, not to mention that Sonia had secured such a precious spoil of war. She hadn't lied to the Watcher; the Torrent spirit was indeed highly sought-after on Sword Flower University's spirit trading platform. Even across all of Jialesi, it ranked among the top tier of one-winged spirits. Yet she hadn't revealed the entire truth: the Substitute spirit's value was not low either. In truth, generic spirits were inherently priced a tier above specialized spirits. Unless their utility was overly narrow, a one-winged generic spirit could easily sell for the price of a two-winged specialized spirit. After all, specialized spirits were only in demand by sorcerers of specific factions, whereas generic spirits could be utilized by anyone. With demand vastly outstripping supply, high prices were a given. So why had she concealed that fact? She wanted the Watcher to notice this little "scheme" of hers. Back in the Void Realm, Sonia had noticed that the Watcher could no longer read her inner thoughts. Perhaps it was due to the restrictions of the Void Realm, though it made little practical difference—the Watcher could listen to her thoughts again once they were back in reality anyway. When they obtained the Substitute spirit and Torrent spirit, even though Sonia couldn't see the Watcher's expression, she could tell from his body language that he desperately wanted Substitute. Thus, Sonia had gone with the flow, yielding Substitute to him. Once back in reality, the Watcher would learn from Sonia's inner voice that she was fully aware of Substitute's worth, yet chose to share only half the truth, feigning that taking Torrent was a massive bargain just so the Watcher could accept Substitute without guilt. A slightly calculating girl whose schemes were entirely for your own good, and whose clumsy methods were so transparent that you saw right through them—even if that couldn't score a critical hit on the Watcher, it would at least boost his favorability toward her tremendously. *You thought I was on the first layer and you were on the second, but you saw through me on the third layer; yet the truth is, I was on the fourth layer all along, waiting for you to see through me.* However, the premise of all this was that Sonia had to conceal that she was actually on the fourth layer. That was hardly difficult for her—after two days of mental training, Sonia had already gained preliminary control over her thoughts, allowing her to think only what she wished to think. Sonia recalled the Torrent spirit and stepped out of the meditation chamber. *Watcher, I'm heading back to shower. Remember to look away.* *Watcher?* Exiting the meditation building, Sonia glanced around, confirming that the Watcher truly wasn't there. Over the past two days, whenever Sonia called, the Watcher would manifest from a blind spot out of her line of sight without fail. His absence after several minutes could only mean one thing: After undergoing that Void Realm exploration, the Watcher had been forced to rest, halting his round-the-clock surveillance of her. Yet Sonia felt none of the joy of regaining her freedom. Instead, she felt as stifled as someone who had brought a cake back to her dorm room to eat, only to discover that the dorm toilet had exploded! *I went through all the trouble of preparing a sugarcoated bullet, and you just ate the sugarcoating and ran away?!*