Chapter 41: Recommendation Handbook

On a small island in the Virtual World's Sea of Knowledge.

Ashe and Sonya faced off against an orc. The battle had reached its climax.

Professor Trosan's voice echoed in Sonya's mind.

"The difference between swordsmanship and slaughter lies in precision."

Sonya steadied her breathing to keep her movements from faltering. She gripped the wooden sword firmly, pushed her mana to its peak, and thrust forward with all her strength.

The wooden sword pierced Ashe's back and drove straight through his chest.

A muffled groan escaped him. "

Ugh!

"

Pain clawed through him so fiercely that he nearly lost his grip. The Virtual World never dulled a sorcerer's sense of pain. In fact, the soul's direct contact with each blow often amplified the sensation by ten to twenty percent compared to the real world. Some sorcerers had even died in reality from injuries sustained in the Virtual World.

As the sword sank into Ashe's body, its tip glowed faintly violet. Then...

"Reverse Wave!"

Following Sonya's sharp cry, she unleashed the sword energy from the wooden blade toward the orc.

Ashe had braced the orc against his shoulder and used himself as a conduit for Sonya's strike. When the sword pierced the orc's waist, the creature let out a frenzied roar. Its massive body burst like a balloon, and its lower half was blown clean away.

But the fury in its eyes only burned brighter. It clamped its hands around Ashe's throat and was close to wringing him like a wet towel.

Without hesitation, Sonya pulled out her wooden sword and stepped forward for a clean strike. The orc's neck that was once nearly impossible to cut now split open like butter. As the head flew from the body, Ashe collapsed to the ground and gasped for air.

"You all right?"

"It's nothing," he rasped, "just... reliving my life in flashes and hearing voices that sound like my family."

He coughed, eyes dropping to the spot Sonya's blade had pierced. His coat was untouched, and the wound had already vanished.

In the Virtual World, injuries were illusions. As long as one didn't die outright, recovery was nearly instantaneous.

But every miracle came with a cost. Ashe noticed his palms had grown slightly transparent, which was a sign that his soul energy had heavily drained. One more hit like that, and he might truly hand out his first death to the Virtual World.

He turned his attention back to the orc's severed head and still felt a lingering sense of dread. The green-skinned enemy had been the strongest they'd faced so far. Without Ashe throwing himself forward as bait, Sonya's strike might never have landed.

In raw strength, the orc was comparable to the gunman they had fought earlier. Both were low-level sorcerers with shallow fighting patterns, and that was exactly why the Virtual World had labeled this encounter Worth a Visit, lulling Ashe into a false sense of security.

The lesson was clear. Every threat in this world carried risk. The Sea of Knowledge ran deep, and the unprepared would drown.

Despite all of them being low-level sorcerers, the orc’s skill exceeded theirs more than its species’ natural advantage should have allowed. The orc’s proficiency in the Brute Body Class far surpassed theirs, which explained why they had crushed the gunman with ease, while the orc had nearly torn them apart. Its entire green hide had hardened to a wood-like texture, essentially functioning as its built-in armor. Not even Sonya's attacks left more than scratches.

Worse, the orc was battle-hardened and versed in close-combat techniques. Whenever Sonya tried her Wave spirit, the orc either entangled with Ashe or charged straight at her, holding her back and leaving her unable to strike freely.

As the fight dragged on, the pair's energy waned while the orc grew only more ferocious. Recognizing the danger, they quickly devised a plan. Ashe would hold the orc in place and block its vision, with Sonya searching for the right opportunity to strike.

The tactic worked. The orc fell, Sonya's technique improved, and Ashe narrowly escaped death. They all grew stronger from the encounter.

After that came the loot check. The orc left behind two fang-shaped trinkets, each containing a spirit.

[Oaktree Bark]

One-Winged Spirit

Requirement

- Sorcerers must have skin covering their muscles.

Basic Effect

- Converts skin into bark-like material. When in contact with the earth, transfers 10% of the incoming impact force on the skin to the ground.

Passive Effect

- Skin gradually hardens into bark through daily training.

Signature Quote

- Wind, sun, and frost. All of nature's tribulations make you strong and unbreakable.

Both spirits turned out to be Oaktree Bark. Ashe frowned. "Why are there two identical spirits?"

Sonya explained, "The Brute Body Class doesn't care about active effects. They value passive effects, and passive effects can stack. To push their bodies to the limit as fast as possible, Brute Body sorcerers often acquire multiple copies of the same spirit to accelerate their training."

"Do you need them?" Ashe asked.

"No. Oaktree Bark isn't particularly valuable, and it doesn't suit me. Even if I wanted Brute Body Class spirits to boost my physique, there are far better options. Besides... It's just too ugly."

That last point hit home for Ashe. He recalled the orc's skin, wrinkled and creased like a sheet of paper folded hundreds of times, and shivered slightly. It wasn't that he cared about looks, but that level of grotesqueness was practically a public hazard. Naturally, the two spirits ended up in Ashe's bag as emergency funds.

Sonya picked up a scroll that had spilled from the orc's belongings. After a cursory glance, she tossed it to Ashe with a look of pure disgust. "You're not planning to absorb this kind of Sorcerer's Handbook, are you?"

Ashe took it and froze. The scroll was essentially... a sophisticated way of saying, A Compendium of Beauties. Its more direct title might be Cross-World Sex Industry Research Notes, or, at its bluntest, the "Are You Hard Yet" Recommendation Handbook.

The first section featured "artistic portraits" of a dozen orcs. Their tastes were coarse, but Ashe hadn't seen anything erotic in days and found himself oddly appreciative of their raw charm.

The middle section grew wilder. It consisted of humans, elves, ogres, women with fur, scales, wings, horns, and even spiders.

Ashe thought,

No wonder the orc practiced body-enhancement sorcery. Who else could possibly endure such an exhaustive, far-reaching survey?

Nevertheless, he couldn't help feeling disappointed.

The orc's taste was way too one-dimensional. He was obsessed with size. Big was good. Big was beautiful. Not a single woman in the scroll was under two meters tall. Every one of them was a giant he had to crane his neck to look at.

Sonya folded her arms with disdain written all over her face. "

Hah.

Men... if you like it, take it and savor it."

"I'm almost done. Give me a moment," Ashe replied.

Despite his words, the scroll was incredibly long. It listed at least several hundred women, which was more than all the women Ashe knew combined. By the time he reached the end, he came across a very ordinary orc woman. What made her stand out was that she was the only one in the entire handbook wearing clothes. Judging from the earlier entries, she likely hadn't been involved with the Brute Body orc sorcerer.

In the picture, she held the hands of two orc children and stood before a wooden hut. She was slightly short and plump, but gave off the impression of being kind and gentle. Even her sharp-toothed smile felt non-threatening. Her dirty apron marked her as a typical orc farmer's wife.

No notes accompanied the portrait, leaving Ashe to speculate.

Had the sorcerer fallen in love with this farmwife? If so, why hadn't they become a couple? Had he died? Or had he gotten sick from overdoing it? What a weird orc sorcerer...

𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

As the scroll dissipated into smoke, Ashe gained two new abilities.

[Pleasure Secret (Effective only on females over two meters tall)]

[Savage Instinct]

He stared at Pleasure Secret, completely baffled. It felt like obtaining an A1 license for large trucks without ever having driven a vehicle, which was a purely theoretical skill with no practical use for now.

The second ability, Savage Instinct, was useful. It wasn't an innate trait of orcs. Instead, it reflected the orc's honed combat experience, allowing Ashe to anticipate and evade attacks from outside his field of vision.

Once he absorbed the Sorcerer's Handbook, the Inheritance Island began to sink again. Sonya watched from the stern with her brows raised. "So you really could absorb that manual... Looks like your worldview is quite flexible."

"Not exactly. I just have... an adaptable worldview," Ashe replied. He, too, sensed something was off. Sonya couldn't absorb either of the last two manuals, yet he had absorbed everything effortlessly. Clearly, the issue wasn't her being conservative, but his own excessively open, almost public-transport-level, absorption ability.

He suspected a hidden mechanic in the Aurora Sorcerer's Handbook, but since the game offered no prompts to explain it, he could only bluff his way through.

Leaning back lazily, Sonya complained, "Let's move to the next area. Hopefully, we'll find a swordmaster's inheritance island... or at least a Sword Class spirit. Anything but another Brute Body sorcerer's island."

Ashe nodded in agreement. Fighting enemies who reflected every attack was miserable. They'd much rather take on a Mudfish Drake and be done with it.

He opened up the Virtual World Exploration and checked for nearby area indicators. Beneath the region to the right, an unfamiliar orange prompt appeared.

[Wait.]

Sonya had been waiting for several seconds. Seeing that the boat still hadn't moved, she asked, "Why aren't we going?"

"We have to wait."

"Why?"

"No idea."

"How long?"

"No idea."

"Fine. We'll wait," she stretched and added. "Speaking of which, I had something to discuss with you. I completely forgot."

"What is it?"

"It's about my daily training," Sonya said, crossing her arms. "Can you cancel my mandatory schedule?"

Ashe blinked.

What is wrong with NPCs these days? They're not even interested in generating surplus value anymore. This is the laziest generation I've ever seen.

Not once in his mobile games had he encountered anything like this.

Several thoughts raced through his mind, but outwardly he interlaced his fingers and assumed a pose of democratic consultation. "Of course. I respect your wishes, Swordswoman. But I'd like to hear your reasons."