Sorcerer’s Handbook

“Lise Deya?”

Ashe’s lips quivered slightly, wanting to compliment how beautiful the name sounded, but the words stuck in his throat, instead feeling like a sponge that had absorbed all his strength, blocking his windpipe.

“It can’t be, you’re clearly called Lise, stop joking… and you’re not some naive girl, you’re skeptical and mischievous, how could you possibly, how could you possibly…”

“How could you possibly be the First Gospel!”

His last words were almost a roar, the first time he had ever shouted at the young girl before him. After taking a deep breath, trying to calm himself, the cold morning air seemed to sting his nostrils, making him cough twice, tears emerging from his eyes.

He wiped the tear stains from the corner of his eyes with his palm, but his face became dirtier and more smeared with each rub. He had tumbled in the rain all last night, and the bridge before the parking lot had nearly been broken by the aftermath of his battle with the Sanctuary Sorcerers, splashing up countless bits of dirt and mud. Riding back to the Royal Palace on the nearly wrecked Crow’s Non-Aerial Motorcycle had left a layer of grime on his face, which now smeared into a mess as he rubbed it.

“I’m sorry for showing you this,” Ashe tried to clean his face with his sleeve, his mouth curling into a slight smile, but the light in his eyes slowly dimmed. “All dirty and without having taken a bath, and then just falling asleep right here, I’m really sorry…”

“I’m sorry…”

His voice trailed off into a choked cry, covering his face and bending over, as if he couldn’t bear to face the person before him.

“Affection is a comedy, although it cannot move mountains or make the seas level, it can make you happy; intelligence is a drama, capable of revealing the dark side of humanity, but it also lets you hear the praises of human nature; only when affection and intelligence combine, it becomes a tragedy.”

Lise Deya cradled Ashe’s head in her arms: “Because you are intelligent enough to know the truth, yet affectionate enough not to deceive yourself.”

Ashe took deep breaths, trying to muster his spirits to look at her, but upon seeing Lise Deya’s face, he collapsed again, his heart feeling as if it had split open, gasping for air.

He thought he had escaped disaster-when he first lost Lise, he allowed Ashpel to invade his mind, not only for revenge but also to protect himself.

When it hurts, seeing yourself as someone else makes the pain go away.

But this time, without Ashpel as his Substitute, Ashe had to personally consume the self-service meal fate had offered him and witness how cruel reality could be. It was only now that Ashe realized how terribly he had treated Igor and Harvey-what right did he have to think he was any more normal than them?

The only difference between them was that Ashe was just now experiencing the worst day of his life.

Indeed, from the moment he saw the First Gospel altered, from the moment he saw her unharmed in front of him, from the moment he saw her familiar yet unfamiliar face, Ashe had guessed everything.

-Lise had become the deity’s sacrificial offering in his place.

“Where is Lise?” Ashe asked hoarsely. “Is she gone?”

“She’s still here, just asleep,” Lise Deya replied. “She wants to see you too, but she can’t. The Gospel eliminates all excess noise until only the voice that perfectly matches it remains.”

“But why do you still have self-awareness?” Ashe blurted out, immediately regretting it: “No, I mean-“

“You don’t have to apologize. I know you only care about Lise. To you, I’m just a stranger who looks like her,” Lise Deya said with a smile. “If I could, I would also wish for her to stay, not me. But only I fully meet the Gospel’s demands. Even if I gave my place to her, her consciousness would be eroded by the new Gosdeya… You wouldn’t want that to happen.”

Of course, Ashe didn’t want that, because he had experienced it himself. His spiritual original was brutally beaten by ‘Gospel Ashe,’ his soul forcibly invaded by Ashpel, slowly losing sovereignty over his soul, helplessly watching himself step towards annihilation… He certainly didn’t want to taste that helplessness a second time.

“As for why I can still retain consciousness, it’s because I’m too similar to the Gospel, plus a few adventures. So, when the Gospel was about to fully merge with me, I could stop it,” Lise Deya explained.

“If we were to compare ourselves to clothing, the Gospel wearing you would immediately feel uncomfortable, so you’d need to be transformed into ‘Ashpel size’ to fit; whereas the Gospel fits me perfectly, which is why when I intentionally leave one button undone, the Gospel remains comfortable and isn’t in a hurry to transform me into ‘Gosdeya size’.”

“This is why I can still retain some control over the Gospel’s powers and save Annan and the others. However, this is merely the Gospel’s mercy.” Seeing Ashe about to say something, she preempted him: “Twelve hours after the Gospel Ranking is updated, the rankings will be completely finalized. No matter how well I fit, it will smooth out all the wrinkles of the clothes, clean up the last bit of noise in my mind, and from then on, there will be no Lise Deya, only Gosdeya.”

“How much time is left?”

“Ninety-three minutes,” Lise Deya said. “That’s enough time.”

Ashe was too preoccupied to catch her implication, wracking his brain for other ways to survive: “Don’t you still have an elder sister, Nina? Could you ask her to come-“

“That was a lie,” Lise Deya stated. “Elder sister Nina was never a candidate for the Gospel Ranking; she is actually a ranked individual on the Ranking of the Unrelated and was my sacrificial offering.”

“The Yisuo Royal Family, to ensure each princess could become the First Gospel, would find a way to have another princess with a highly compatible destiny enter the Ranking of the Unrelated. By sacrificing the latter’s fate, they forge the former’s glory.”

“Elder sister Nina used to live in the Tower. The fact that you can’t find her means she has already left as one of the Unrelated.”

Ashe remembered that Lise’s wish was ‘to abolish the Ranking of the Unrelated’. He hadn’t asked more at the time, since he also wanted to abolish the ranking list. But if he had asked more questions then, thought it through, could he have seen through Lise’s lie, could he have-

“No matter what you do, she would have me come out to save you,” Lise Deya said. “Someone has to be upset, and she doesn’t want it to be herself.”

Ashe tugged at the corner of his mouth, as if trying to smile, “I’ve taken care of her for so long, been with her all this time, supervised her studies, played games with her, I’ve been so good to her, and she actually…”

“…is willing to let me be the one who’s upset?”

Lise Deya replied, “Forgive her final act of willfulness.”

“And what about you?” Ashe suddenly asked. “Who are you? Why can you replace Lise on the Gospel Ranking and push me out?”

“I am Lise Deya,” she repeated. “I am the true princess raised by the Yisuo Royal Family, the perfect candidate for the First Gospel. The Lise you knew was my sister, born while I was asleep.”

Ashe paused, pursing his lips in a bitter smile, “No wonder, I was saying she didn’t quite seem like a princess… Turns out she really isn’t.”

“She is,” Lise Deya said. “The time she spent with you was the happiest of her life. She may not be the princess of Yisuo, but she felt like your princess.”

“Running around with us, living a life of upheaval, you call that happiness?” Ashe looked down at the ground, “She’s still not grown up, never been to school, never dated, never had friends her age, never been to the Virtual Realm, never really walked around Nabistin, never been to Wonderland World a second time, never…”

Watching his shoulders tremble, listening to him talk about his plans for the future, Lise Deya reached out and gently touched Ashe’s head, “You shouldn’t punish yourself like this; it’s not your fault.”

Ashe was silent for a long while, then suddenly asked, “Will Lise really disappear completely? I mean, isn’t there any way… Yes, the Divine Sovereign’s Wish!”

Ashe fiercely wiped the stains off his face and grabbed Lise Deya’s arms, “You could use the Divine Sovereign’s Wish to create a new body for Lise. No, directly refuse a deity to possess her, or perhaps-“

Lise Deya shook her head, “The Divine Sovereign’s Wish does indeed belong to the First Gospel, but only after the Gospel Ranking is definitively settled and I fully become Gosdeya can it be obtained. By that time, my heart will no longer harbor joy, sorrow, or personal desires.”

“It doesn’t matter, there is a Pact between us!” Ashe declared. “Just like Ms. Annan can control Ashpel to cancel the First Gospel, I can control you to make a vow!”

Lise Deya shook her head: “No, it’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t have a Pact with me?”

“How do I not have-?” Ashe began but then realized something. “Could it be…”

“You only have a Pact with Lise. If Lise becomes the First Gospel, indeed, you could control her through the Pact,” Lise Deya explained. “However, I am the First Gospel, and you don’t have a Pact with me. Even if I were to switch to Lise, her personality would prevent her from becoming the First Gospel, and it would just revert to you.”

The Pact between Lise and Ashe was effective independently, not due to a twist of fate but because of their prior planning, specifically to switch personalities at a critical moment to act outside the terms of the Pact. What they hadn’t anticipated was that this Pact would prove to be so spectacularly effective that ‘single account binding’ would actually limit the power of the Pact.

“Then let me become Ashpel!” Ashe immediately responded. “Then let Lise control my vows!”

Lise Deya then asked a strange question: “Ashe, do you remember the nine ranking lists before the Weaving Festival? Do you think you are the type of person who would sacrifice your own life to save a Kingdom, even if it meant strangers applauding you?”

Ashe paused for a moment: “Sacrificing myself just for applause from people I don’t know? I couldn’t do that, especially when I still have someone I want to see.”

Lise Deya nodded: “Exactly, so why would the Weaving Festival weave a future where you, along with Mr. Harvey and Mr. Bukin, save the Kingdom from the Gospel? Even if this disaster was crafted by Ms. Annan, and even if you end up with her, do you feel responsible to rectify her mistakes? And Ms. Annan might not even think she did anything wrong.”

“The Weaving Festival has already given the answer to your anomaly: the one who wants to save the Kingdom of the Gospel is not you, it’s Ashpel. This means that although Ms. Annan controlled you to cancel the Gospel system, the deity still resides within your soul.”

Ashe’s heart grew heavier, while Lise Deya continued, “Ms. Annan detests the First Gospel profoundly. Regardless of her feelings for you, her primary desire would certainly be to destroy, repel, and seal the deity, not merely to dismiss the Gospel system lightly. After all, as long as the deity exists, there is a possibility of the Gospel’s reformation.”

“Not to mention, she definitely doesn’t want you to become a vessel for the deity. If there’s any possibility at all, she wouldn’t let you take Mr. Harvey and Mr. Bukin to save the Gospel.”

“So, Ashe, your idea is not feasible. Someone must become the First Gospel; even using the Divine Sovereign’s Wish can’t cancel it.”

Ashe asked, “What about a wish to coexist with the deity? I don’t need to destroy the deity, just want to preserve my self-consciousness.”

After thinking it over, Lise Deya actually nodded, “There’s a possibility of success in that existence.”

Overjoyed, Ashe exclaimed, “Then-“

“That’s why this can explain why the Gospel Weaves out improper relations between you, Qenna, Nona, Yvaren, and others, and why people like Mr. Bukin follow you,” Lise Deya explained. “In the world line where you become Ashpel, Ms. Annan must have wished for you to coexist with the deity, but you eventually merged with Ashpel, and his messianic will always dominates. The occasional appearance of you is responsible for Weaving the ranking list scenarios.”

“That’s why I won’t do it,” she said. “That’s just a path that leads you to a lingering death.”

“This won’t work and neither will that,” Ashe nearly ground his teeth, his body trembling, “Then let me-“

“Don’t you still have people you want to see?” Lise Deya said. “You have Lise, and many others need you; but without you, Lise has no one who needs her. She can bear to see you suffer, can you really bear to leave her to live alone?”

“Nikki Nalu is Lise Deya’s unrelated person, and Lise is Ashe’s unrelated person,” she smiled. “Take her fate, and leave this place.”

Ashe murmured, “Leave?”

“Yes.”

Lise Deya said, “You must leave the Gospel within eighty-nine minutes.”

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