Sorcerer’s Handbook

Virtual Realm, Time Continent.

“What are you thinking about?”

Ashe was slightly startled and turned to see the Sword Princess leaning in close, their faces almost touching. Their breaths mingled, and Ashe could even see his reflection in her mischievous eyes.

In a split second, Ashe suppressed his instinct to pull away with his strong mental fortitude and maintained eye contact with her.

One second, two seconds, three seconds passed. Sonya’s alabaster face started to blush faintly, but she seemed determined, refusing to blink as she stared at Ashe. Suddenly, she stuck out a small part of her pink tongue and lightly licked her lips. The smile spread from her curved lips, crossing her cute face and leaping into her clear eyes. The chemistry between her nervous pupils and her smile invaded Ashe’s nerves like a virus, making him want to laugh too.

Smack!

As Sonya turned her head toward the source of the sound, Ashe immediately raised his fist in victory. “I won!”

“I wasn’t playing a staring game with you! How childish can you be?”

The village girl was furious, glaring at the Witch who had fallen outside the carriage and interrupted them. “What are you doing?”

“I-I was just thinking about whether to walk away and give you some space…” the Witch said sheepishly. “You see, the Rain Curtain of the Reverse Golden Rain is quite effective at blocking the view. If I walk just ten steps away, I won’t be able to see you at all. It’s very safe! Sorry for disturbing you. I’ll leave now!”

Deya had originally planned to sneak away quietly, but because she was trying to be too careful, she lost her balance and tripped on the carriage door, hitting the ground headfirst. She was quite regretful herself—after all, she had only seen the prelude in fairy tale picture books before. She and her sisters were very curious about the thousands of words of text that followed the Sword Princess and the Observer.

Even though Sonya had practiced her acting in front of a mirror, she was still embarrassed by the Witch’s words. Her face turned red, and her ears started to burn. She quickly went over to pull her back. “You’re not disturbing us! Come back and sit down!”

“So, what were you two doing just now?” Deya asked curiously.

“We… we were just playing a staring game!” Sonya explained. “Whoever looks away or blinks first loses!”

“Sword Princess, you’re so childish,” Ashe sighed, shrugging helplessly. “How old are you? Can you be a little more mature?”

The village girl’s face turned bright red again—this time out of anger. She felt like her fury was about to burn through her stomach, and she was sure that if she drew her sword and performed the Blood Moon Blossoms on the Observer, it would be a guaranteed critical hit.

“By the way, I found some interesting information in the Sorcerer’s Handbook earlier,” Deya said. “It’s about the investigation of the Rainbow Tail.”

Earlier, Ashe and Sonya had run over another sorcerer projection that had been wandering carelessly on the road.

The spirit dropped by the sorcerer projection was handed over to the Sword Princess to sell, while Deya usually handled the Sorcerer’s Handbooks. Only particularly difficult handbooks were passed on to Ashe. Honestly, Ashe was quite satisfied with this recycling mechanism. Deya filtered out most of the ‘ordinary’ handbooks, so Ashe only ended up with the especially sensational ones, each containing at least a dozen R18 tags, refreshing his understanding of biological diversity with every read.

At the mention of the Rainbow Tail, Sonya immediately extinguished her inner fire, and Ashe began driving in pursuit of the White Bull.

“The handbook’s owner collected a lot of information about the Rainbow Tail and, after field verification, disproved most of the hypotheses,” Deya said. “Among the hypotheses he knew, the most likely ones are the Three and a Half Sorcerers Hypothesis, the Seven Sorcerers Hypothesis, and the White Bull Hypothesis.”

“The Three and a Half Sorcerers Hypothesis and the Seven Sorcerers Hypothesis are essentially the same. Sorcerers believe that the ‘rainbow’ in Rainbow Tail refers to the color of a sorcerer’s virtual wings. Although we have Silver Wings and Golden Wings, if you examine closely, each person’s virtual wings have different colors and shapes. It’s not an exaggeration to say they are different colors.”

“Therefore, some sorcerers think that if you can gather seven different virtual wings, it might trigger the virtual realm mechanics to generate the Rainbow Tail. The Three and a Half Hypothesis is a simplified extension of this idea. If everyone is fully developed as two-wings sorcerers, then three and a half sorcerers could collectively gather seven virtual wings.”

“There’s another version of the Golden Seven Sorcerers Hypothesis: only fully condensed golden virtual wings count as one ‘color.’ Silver virtual wings are not counted, so seven two-wings sorcerers are needed to trigger the Rainbow Tail. This hypothesis has some basis-sorcerers believe that when they gather seven Golden Wings, they will become ‘seven drops of rain’ and fall upwards with the Reverse Golden Rain.”

Ashe and Sonya nodded repeatedly. Although the reasoning process seemed far-fetched, compared to the Golden Fish Secret Toxin, this Seven Sorcerers Hypothesis was quite convincing.

Moreover, the advanced version of the Golden Seven Sorcerers Hypothesis considered the Reverse Golden Rain, the largest mechanism on the Time Continent, making it highly persuasive. Even Ashe felt that its possibility was very high.

Despite having only experienced the Golden Fish Secret Toxin, Ashe had a vague premonition: the Virtual Realm’s smuggling mechanisms likely belonged to the category of ‘brain teasers,’ ‘hidden in plain sight,’ ‘impossible to figure out until you know, then it seems straightforward,’ much like the intricate and obvious murder methods in detective novels.

However, this did not mean that smuggling in the Virtual Realm was easy. On the contrary, sorcerers had to meet extremely stringent conditions. Take the Golden Fish, for example. It had no specific location requirements; you just needed to be able to fly. But aside from sorcerers like Ashe and the Sword Princess, who grew up together as ‘childhood friend sorcerers,’ other silver sorcerers needed exceptional luck to meet and convince another sorcerer to team up for flight.

Therefore, the Rainbow Tail was also likely something that could be triggered anywhere on the Time Continent, but the conditions were particularly harsh, making it almost impossible for a single sorcerer to meet them. The Golden Seven Sorcerers Hypothesis encompassed all these factors, leading Ashe to believe it might be the truth, but…

“Three and a half is manageable, but seven sorcerers… that’s a high bar.”

Deya nodded. “The handbook’s owner once gathered three and a half sorcerers by chance, but despite trying everything, they couldn’t trigger the Rainbow Tail mechanism before the static domain caught up with them, so the Three and a Half Hypothesis is likely incorrect. The Golden Seven Sorcerers Hypothesis has not been disproven and is considered the second most likely option by the handbook’s owner.”

“The second most likely?”

“Because the White Bull Hypothesis, which hasn’t been disproven, is considered even more likely,” Deya explained. “Sorcerers believe that the White Bull’s four legs are the gateway to the Rainbow Tail.”

Ashe and Sonya immediately looked up at the distant white pillar on the horizon.

“Right,” Sonya suddenly remembered something. “When white light passes through a prism, it refracts into a rainbow… that’s basic knowledge of the Light Sect!”

“Yes, the handbook’s owner wrote about that,” Deya nodded. “The White Bull Hypothesis suggests that the white bull’s four legs are actually four tails. If a sorcerer can enter the white bull’s legs and use their soul as a prism, they can refract into the Rainbow Tail and ascend along the light pillars to the Third Layer of the Virtual Realm.”

Ashe decided to retract his earlier statement: the White Bull Hypothesis was indeed more convincing than the Golden Seven Sorcerers Hypothesis. After all, the latter required gathering seven sorcerers, something even Ashe couldn’t achieve without recruiting four more operators. Moreover, that hypothesis only ended with turning into raindrops falling towards the sky. The White Bull Hypothesis, however, provided a direct ascension path, and the scientific reasoning of “white light refracting into a rainbow” greatly appealed to Ashe.

“So what prevented the handbook’s owner from verifying the hypothesis?” Sonya asked.

“The white bull is too fast,” Deya explained. “The white bull never stops; it moves forward by several seconds every second. Moreover, its front legs are usually in the breach area of the Golden Flow. It’s almost impossible for a sorcerer to bypass the Golden Flow and enter the front legs.”

Ashe said, “What about the hind legs…”

“The hind legs are surrounded by the static domain,” Sonya pondered. “If a sorcerer fails to maintain relative stillness with the hind legs and gets thrown into the static domain, there’s no saving them.”

“And no one knows if the white bull’s four legs are even dangerous,” Deya continued. “The handbook’s owner’s most successful attempt only got him within ten meters of the front legs. He never saw anyone enter the white bull’s legs, so they might be crushed by the bull.”

“Moreover… he felt that the white bull’s legs might not exist at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Although we can see the white pillar clearly from here,” Deya said, “once you get close to the legs, the white pillar becomes invisible. The handbook’s owner only inferred the position of the front legs by the density of the Golden Flow. He once pursued the hind legs but was thrown into the static domain upon turning around. The closer he got, the less he could see the hind legs, almost as if…”

“Almost as if it were a rainbow,” Sonya concluded.