Recommendation Guide

In the Void Realm, upon a small islet in the Sea of Knowledge, a battle was reaching its final moments. "The difference between swordsmanship and butchery lies entirely in precision." Professor Trozan's teachings seemed to echo in her ears. Sonia kept her breathing as steady as possible to keep her posture from faltering. Silently gripping the wooden sword, she pushed her sorcery power to a boil and thrust forward with all her might! The wooden sword sank into Yaxiu's back and pierced straight through his chest! "Ugh!" Yaxiu let out a muffled groan. The intense agony nearly loosened his grip. The Void Realm did nothing to numb a sorcerer's sense of pain; in fact, because it was direct soul-to-soul contact, pain was generally ten to twenty percent higher than in reality. It was by no means impossible for a sorcerer in the Void Realm to experience such overwhelming agony that they died of shock in the real world! A faint purple glow bloomed from the tip of the wooden sword impaling Yaxiu's body, and then— "Inner Wave Sword!" With Sonia's fierce shout, the wave sword-energy on the wooden blade erupted! Held by the shoulders by Yaxiu and impaled through the waist by Sonia's blade, the green-skinned orc unleashed a hysterical roar. Its burly, muscular body burst like a popped balloon, its lower half blown entirely away. Yet the vicious light in its eyes only flared hotter. Its hands locked around Yaxiu's throat in a death grip, nearly wringing his neck like a wet towel— Sonia decisively withdrew the wooden sword and lunged forward with a slash. The orc's neck, which had been practically impervious earlier, now split open like cake. As the orc's head flew off, Yaxiu collapsed onto the ground on his rear, gasping for air. "Are you all right?" "Aside from having my short life flash before my eyes and hearing what sounded like my ancestors calling to me, nothing much." Yaxiu coughed twice and looked down at the spot Sonia had run through. Naturally, even his trench coat wasn't torn now; the wound had healed in an instant. He had learned back in their very first battle that injuries sustained in the Void Realm were illusory. As long as one didn't die on the spot, a sorcerer could recover almost instantaneously. Of course, all miracles came at a price. Yaxiu noticed that his palms had become considerably more translucent, which meant his soul energy had been heavily depleted. If he took another wound that severe, he would probably end up handing over his first death in the Void Realm for real. He looked toward the orc's head as it began to disperse, still feeling a lingering sense of dread. This green-skinned orc was the strongest enemy they had encountered in the Void Realm so far. If Yaxiu hadn't sacrificed himself to play the taunt minion and draw its aggro so Sonia could seize the opening to strike, the outcome would still be up in the air. To be fair, in terms of sheer combat capability, this green-skinned orc wasn't much different from the gunner they had fought before; both were low-tier sorcerers with very shallow combat patterns. It was precisely because of this that "Void Realm Exploration" had deemed it a "worthwhile" adventure target, giving Yaxiu a false sense of security. Then the Void Realm immediately taught him a lesson: everything in the Void Realm carried risk. The waters of the Sea of Knowledge ran deep—too deep for you to wade in, kid. Even among low-tier sorcerers, the disparity between individuals could be greater than the gap between species. The two of them had dealt with the gunner easily enough, yet had been utterly routed by this green-skinned orc, simply because its specialized faction happened to be the one that countered them hardest: the ascetic faction! A bark-like luster had spread across its entire green skin, rendering it as hard as built-in armor! Never mind Yaxiu—even Sonia could do nothing more than scratch at it, incapable of dealing real damage. More importantly, the orc possessed abundant combat experience and seemed to have trained in pugilism. Whenever Sonia tried to critically injure it with her Wave Sword, it either grappled with Yaxiu or charged straight at her, constantly forcing her to pull her punches and tying her hands. As the battle dragged on, their stamina drained faster and faster, while the orc grew fiercer the longer it fought. Sensing things were going south, they held a brief consultation and decided that Yaxiu would take the initiative to pin it down and block its line of sight, creating an opening for Sonia to strike. The tactic proved a success. The orc was dead, Sonia's skill had sharpened, and Yaxiu had experienced a rare brush with death. Everyone had grown. With the battle concluded, it was naturally time to inspect the loot. The orc left behind two wolf-tooth ornaments, each housing a sorcery spirit: "Oak Skin" "One-winged sorcery spirit" "Restriction: The sorcerer must possess skin tissue encasing muscle." "Base Effect: Transmutes skin into a bark-like texture. When in contact with the ground, ten percent of kinetic impact absorbed by the skin can be transferred to the ground and dispersed." "Passive Effect: Daily physical conditioning can gradually transmute the skin into tree bark." "Note: Frost, scorching sun, bitter cold—every affliction gifted by nature will only make you more indestructible." Both sorcery spirits were Oak Skin. Yaxiu found it somewhat odd. "Why does it have two identical sorcery spirits?" Sonia explained, "Because the ascetic faction doesn't care much about active effects; they care about passive effects, and passive effects can stack. To push their bodies to the absolute limit as quickly as possible, ascetic sorcerers will often try every means to acquire multiple identical sorcery spirits to accelerate their cultivation." "Do you need them?" "No. Oak Skin isn't worth much, and it doesn't suit me. Even if I wanted an ascetic sorcery spirit to enhance my constitution, there are better choices. Besides, Oak Skin is just too ugly." *The main point is that it's too ugly, isn't it...* Remembering the orc's skin earlier, which had looked like a sheet of paper folded hundreds of times and then unfolded, Yaxiu felt a wave of aversion himself. He didn't care all that much about his appearance, but that was genuinely unsightly enough to constitute a public nuisance. Thus, the two sorcery spirits went straight into Yaxiu's bag to serve as reserve funds for top-ups. Sonia picked up a scroll that had dropped from the orc. After glancing at it twice, she tossed it to Yaxiu in disgust and muttered, "Don't tell me you can even absorb this kind of sorcerer manual?" Yaxiu took it and looked, and his whole body jolted. The scroll left behind by the orc was... how should one put it? To be poetic, it was an *Anthology of Fair Maidens*. To be proper, it was *Research Materials on Otherworldly Adult Entertainment*. To be vulgar, it was *The Hard-On Guide: Top Picks*. The first section of the scroll contained over a dozen artistic portraits of orc women. Though the aesthetic was rather rustic, Yaxiu hadn't seen any spicy pictures in two or three days, so he could still appreciate the feral charm. The middle section was where things truly got interesting. There were humans, elves, ogres, ones with fluffy ears, ones with scales, ones with wings, ones with horns, and even spiders—no wonder this orc was an ascetic sorcerer. Who else besides an ascetic sorcerer could possess the physical stamina to conduct such a thorough and diverse investigation?! There was only one point Yaxiu found somewhat disappointing: the orc's aesthetic was too one-dimensional. It pursued only size. Bigger was better; bigger was beauty. Not a single female in the scroll was under two meters tall; every one of them was a heavy-duty truck he could only look up to. "If you like it that much, why don't you take it back and savor it slowly?" Sonia crossed her arms, unable to hide the disdain in her eyes. "Hmph. Men..." "Soon. I'll finish looking through it in a moment. Just give me a second." Though he said that, the scroll was exceedingly long, listing at least several hundred females—more women than Yaxiu had ever known in his life. Truly, one man drowns while another dies of thirst... When Yaxiu reached the end of the scroll, he saw an ordinary orc woman who stood out distinctly: her portrait was the only one in the entire scroll where the subject was fully clothed. Judging by the preceding information, this likely meant the ascetic orc sorcerer had never engaged in reproductive activities with her. In the portrait, she was holding the hands of two orc cubs with a wooden cabin behind her. She was somewhat short and plump, but looked very kind. Even when she smiled to reveal savage tusks, she didn't feel threatening in the slightest. Wearing a grimy apron, she was plainly an orc farmwife. Because there was no accompanying text, Yaxiu could only speculate: Had this ascetic orc sorcerer fallen for this farmwife? Why hadn't they become husband and wife? Was it because the orc sorcerer had been on the verge of death, or had frequent adult services given him some sort of illness? What a strange orc sorcerer... As the scroll dissolved into wisps of smoke and vanished, Yaxiu gained two new skills: "Secret of Pleasure (Effective only on females over two meters tall)" "Feral Intuition" Yaxiu stared at "Secret of Pleasure (Effective only on females over two meters tall)," utterly dumbfounded. How should he put it? Even though he had zero actual driving experience, he had somehow qualified for a Class A heavy-vehicle commercial license. From this day forward, he was an armchair driver with a legitimate permit. The second skill, "Feral Intuition," on the other hand, was quite useful. It wasn't a racial trait of orcs, but rather a combat technique honed by the orc sorcerer through years of relentless battle, allowing one to effectively evade sudden sneak attacks from outside their field of vision in close-quarters combat. Having absorbed the sorcerer manual, Yaxiu watched as this legacy islet began to sink once more. Sonia sat at the stern looking at him, raising an eyebrow. "You really could absorb that manual... It seems the scope of your values is surprisingly broad..." "Not really. I just have rather flexible values." In truth, Yaxiu also vaguely sensed something was amiss. The Sword Princess couldn't absorb either of the two sorcerer manuals, whereas he could absorb every single one he came across. Evidently, the problem wasn't that the Sword Princess was too conservative, but that Yaxiu was too promiscuous—virtually a public bus. Yaxiu suspected it was a hidden feature of the game *Aurora's Sorcerer Handbook*, but since the game never displayed any relevant prompts, he could only fudge an answer to brush her off. "Let's head to the next area. Hopefully we'll run into a sword sorcerer's legacy islet... or even a fortuitous encounter islet with a swordplay sorcery spirit... Just as long as it isn't an ascetic sorcerer's legacy islet," Sonia complained lazily, leaning against the hull. Yaxiu nodded. It was hard not to second the motion; fighting an enemy whose armor deflected your strikes with every blow made for a truly miserable experience. He would rather a mudfish dragon come along and one-shot them instead. He opened "Void Realm Exploration" to check the prompts for the adjacent sectors, only to spot an orange prompt beneath the sector to the right that he had never seen before: "Wait a moment" Sonia waited for dozens of seconds. Seeing no sign of the boat moving, she grew puzzled. "Why aren't we moving?" "We have to wait a bit before we can go." "Why?" "I don't know." "Wait how long?" "I don't know." "...Fine, we'll wait then." Sonia stretched lazily. "Speaking of which, there was something I wanted to discuss with you. I almost forgot just now." "Discuss what?" "About my daily training." Sonia folded her arms. "Could you cancel my mandatory training schedule?" *What is with 2D characters these days? Refusing to generate surplus value now, are we?* *Truly the laziest batch of 2D characters I've ever seen.* *Back when I played gacha games, when did I ever run into something like this?* Many thoughts flashed through Yaxiu's mind, but on the surface he laced his fingers together, adopting the posture of an attentive leader listening to public opinion. "Of course. I respect your wishes, Sword Princess—but I'd like to hear your reasoning first."