Mage Manual

Chapter 122: Chapter 112: Myself at Different Times Is Not Myself

According to Ash and Sonia’s situation, asking the golden fish was undoubtedly the most cost-effective choice.

Technique Spirits, although they lacked them, Fate Q&A couldn’t possibly just toss out a Technique Spirit—this was a Q&A, not a wish machine.

Miracles, they didn’t really lack these, and with their number of responses, the Void Realm would most likely not answer with a detailed Miracle Technique. At most, it would point them in the direction of specific Miracle research.

As for how to quickly improve one’s standing within the Magic Faction realm, the fastest method was undoubtedly to consume Experience Treasure Orbs, and the source of these orbs was knowledge creatures. The Void Realm could at best point out where suitable knowledge creatures were; it couldn’t possibly extract an orb directly from within a knowledge creature and hand it to them.

Thinking it over, Technique Spirits, Miracles, and faction realms were all factors that merely gilded the lily. What truly determined a mage’s combat power had to be the number of Void Wings and the level of their Magic Power!

As long as one advanced to being Two-winged, one could venture into the Time Continent and obtain a Two-winged Technique Spirit!

As long as one advanced to being Two-winged, one’s Magic Power could continue to grow!

As long as one advanced to being Two-winged, Ash could use Golden Technique Power to drive the Two-winged Technique Spirit ‘Earth Sword’ at one hundred percent efficiency, drastically improving the defense of the Miracle ‘Sword Barrier,’ making a jailbreak even more secure!

Wasn’t Ash’s eager desire to nurture the Sword Maiden’s swordsmanship faction to Golden Level precisely in the hopes that she, once advanced to being Two-winged, would take him along to smuggle themselves into the Time Continent? Now there was an even better smuggling opportunity!

However, directly asking the golden fish, the Void Realm would surely not answer in much detail.

Yet, there was an obvious loophole in the Fate Q&A: no matter how many correct responses the mage had, if the mage posed a true-or-false question, the Void Realm was bound to give a correct answer!

For example, if a mage researching a certain Miracle Technique hit a bottleneck and, having trialed all possibilities with only two AB research directions remaining, asked the Void Realm if direction A was correct, the Void Realm could only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Naturally, this would also reveal whether direction B was correct.

If one were a master of logic, they could even construct a complex true-or-false problem to get the Void Realm to eliminate multiple doubts for them.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated on ɴονǤօ.ᴄο

For instance, if Ash whimsically asked, ‘Will I see the Sword Maiden sleeping beside me when I wake up on a certain day ten years from now?’ The key elements here were ‘a certain day ten years from now,’ ‘wake up,’ and ‘the Sword Maiden sleeping beside me.’

‘Waking up’ was inevitable; Ash couldn’t possibly stay in the Void Realm every night. Sleeping in was a luxurious and delightful pleasure, and Ash would surely want to experience it occasionally.

And ‘the Sword Maiden sleeping beside me’ was a controllable element; Ash could completely remember this event, and in the future ask her to pretend and sleep beside him.

The only uncontrollable element was ‘a certain day ten years from now.’

If the Void Realm answered ‘yes,’ then naturally there would be nothing more to say, and Ash could directly call the Sword Maiden his wife with confidence.

If the answer was ‘no,’ then there were two possibilities: either by that time Ash had already fallen out with the Sword Maiden, so she wouldn’t even be willing to pretend, or the Void Realm thought Ash simply wouldn’t live to see ten years later.

So when the Void Realm was stingy with answer quality, asking a true-or-false question was the most cost-effective choice, at least you wouldn’t get useless information.

After a brief discussion, the two of them decided to pose different questions to the Void Realm in turn:

“Does the golden fish require a specific ritual to be seen?”

Questions like ‘where is the golden fish’ and ‘how can one find the golden fish’ definitely wouldn’t yield detailed answers; the Void Realm would most likely answer with correct yet useless statements like ‘in the Sea of Knowledge’ or ‘look with your eyes.’

These two questions actually stemmed from speculations by Ash and Sonia—Sonia had inquired from Professor Trozan that the Time Continent was also an extremely vast place, not much smaller than the Sea of Knowledge. Logically, with such a vast Time Continent, the golden fish must also be vastly enormous, but why couldn’t mages see the golden fish in the Sea of Knowledge?

Given the precedents of ‘Vortex Secret Poison’ and ‘Exorcism Secret Poison,’ it was natural for them to speculate that the golden fish was probably ‘non-existent’ in the Sea of Knowledge and would only appear before a mage once a specific Void Realm mechanism was activated through a ritual.

However, the answer surprised them: “No.”

The golden fish can be seen without a specific ritual? That is to say, the golden fish is present in the Sea of Knowledge at this very moment?

After a brief discussion, they asked their second question:

“When does the golden fish float up from the bottom of the ocean?”

In any case, Ash and Sonia were certain that normal sailing would never encounter the golden fish; after all, even Ash, who held the ‘Void Realm Map,’ had never seen a trace of the golden fish, so other mages were even less likely to find it.

Since it wasn’t on the surface, it naturally sank beneath the sea. Furthermore, since the golden fish could be seen without specific rituals, they guessed that perhaps the golden fish periodically surfaced from the deep sea to the surface. Therefore, they directly asked when the golden fish would come up so they could take their chances and look for it then.

As it wasn’t a true-or-false question, they were anxious about the chance of the Void Realm giving a noncommittal answer.

The result was still a shock to them: “The golden fish is always floating on the surface.”

The golden fish is always floating on the surface and can be seen without a specific ritual?

Although this conclusion was completely contrary to Ash and Sonia’s Void Realm exploration experience, they had no choice but to believe it. If Fate Q&A’s answers about the ‘future’ might not happen, the golden fish they asked about was information the Void Realm surely possessed— the Void Realm was the authority in this regard!