Chapter 458: The Witchs Skill

Chapter 458: The Witch's Skill

Could a kingdom exist where the Four Pillars Cult successfully overturned the established order and rose to dominate an entire region? A place where the cult leader reigned as a theocratic sovereign; where non-believers were systematically imprisoned; where everyone was bombarded day and night with endless spam messages from the deities, with no option to reply "TD" to block them...

Yes, such a place actually existed.

Ashe flipped through the Sorcerer's Handbook in his hands. Along the way, their vehicle had casually run over a sorcerer projection. After glancing through the dropped book, the Witch noticed it contained information about the Four Pillars Cult, a topic of universal interest among them, so she handed it over for Ashe to read. This arrangement was largely because White Queen and her sisters strictly forbade Dia from looking at anything related to those evil gods.

As for Ashe, he didn't care. If the Four Pillars truly possessed the power to corrupt minds, the cult leader's true form must already be nothing but filth, without a shred of humanity left. Besides, the curse from his Everlasting Wanderer profession still lingered heavily upon him. Worrying about being corrupted by the Four Pillars was like a Lala Fat worrying about whether it might turn into food. It simply wasn't something they had the luxury to decide.

The handbook had belonged to a temple-affiliated sorcerer skilled in firecraft and firearms, once known by the title Explosive Knight. For convenience, Ashe simply referred to him as Explosion.

The book was structured like a standard battle record, documenting nine significant fights from the man's birth to his death. It didn't sound like much, but Explosion had omitted all the battles he could win easily. These nine encounters were either evenly matched or overwhelmingly one-sided; nearly every single one had been a desperate struggle on the brink of life and death.

Of those nine battles, five were against the Four Pillars Cult. Through Explosion's changing impressions of his enemies, Ashe and the others could practically witness the cult's meteoric rise. At first, they were dismissed as "insignificant heretics," then upgraded to "troublesome thieves," later recognized as "rivals of the temple," and eventually feared as "formidable foes" and "inescapable nightmares."

The conflict began as a confident suppression campaign against the cult, then devolved into a war of continuous losses, and finally ended in a desperate defense of the temple itself. It was glaringly obvious that the cult had steadily advanced until they completely crushed the temple.

Strangely, it all felt like an alternate version of Ashe's own path, one where he might have killed Gerard instead of being arrested, overthrown Caimon City, and ultimately dominated the Blood Moon. Was the Four Pillars Cult really that easy to thrive within that nation?

One particular detail stood out. Even in the final battle, Explosion never believed the temple would lose. He repeatedly wrote: "As long as the temple deploys its ultimate weapon, these heretics will surely be annihilated."

As a Two-Winged sorcerer, his confidence was far from baseless arrogance, yet the temple's main base had still been utterly destroyed.

The reason, recorded in his own words, came down to: "That woman actually seized control of the weapon and defected to the Four Pillars Cult."

This left Ashe and the others deeply puzzled. The strongest asset of a major sorcerer organization wasn't an actual sorcerer, but an external construct that could be hijacked and controlled?

It wasn't that they were being arrogant. They all understood that it was perfectly normal for individual sorcerers to be weaker than artificial creations. Most Two-Winged sorcerers couldn't match firearms in raw destructive power, were inferior to drones in reconnaissance, and as for mobility? It wasn't even worth mentioning. Even Sacred Realm-level sorcerers preferred riding in vehicles over flying by their own power.

However, firearms eventually rusted, drones could be shot down, and a single explosion was all it took for hovercars to become moving coffins. A sorcerer's true strength lay in Miracles that transcended physical rules, powers like teleportation, explosive blasts, mental suppression, and the manipulation of time. Before such reality-bending abilities, mundane artificial creations faded into insignificance. The only thing that could truly contend with a sorcerer was another sorcerer. ℯℯ𝑙.

The temple Explosion belonged to must have possessed Sacred Realm sorcerers, perhaps even Legendary ones. If their ultimate asset was still an external weapon, it meant this nation possessed the technology to create constructs rivaling Angel-level power.

Then the realization hit Ashe. Does that mean the Four Pillars Cult over there actually gained an Angel-level force on their side?!

Ashe had no fondness for the cult, but the thought that his own story had begun as a desperate survival game while others got to start with a full-scale strategy game still left him feeling a faint sense of resentment toward the Four Pillars Deities.

Thankfully, Everlasting Doom had set the absolute baseline for misery; otherwise, Ashe might have genuinely believed he was the most unfortunate regional cult leader in existence.

"Still..." Ashe murmured, studying the details of the final battle. "That description of 'the woman who defected'... doesn't it feel strangely familiar?"

Sonya and Dia nodded in unison. "It does."

However, news from a distant nation was ultimately nothing more than an idle diversion. After finishing the handbook, Ashe absorbed the lingering memories within, gaining a new skill called Mounted Combat Mastery. True to its name, Explosion had actually fought while riding a motorcycle, making him a high-speed, mounted marksman sorcerer. It sounded brutally exhilarating.

In any case, it was far more useful than something like Fishing Mastery. Lately, their primary mode of travel across Nabistin had been motorcycles. With this new skill, Ashe could finally race against Annan on equal footing.

Ashe glanced over at Dia. "Witch, how many skills have you learned by now?"

Since arriving on the Continent of Time, every Sorcerer's Handbook they collected had been prioritized for the Witch. Every night, they would run over three to four sorcerer projections. Thinking about it now, Ashe suddenly realized her reading volume had become absurdly high.

"Huh?" Dia blinked, tilting her head as she pondered. "Most of them aren't very useful for combat. White Queen and the others only considered a few worthwhile, like Financial Analysis, Political Strategy, Human Anatomy, Social Ecology Research, Expression Management, Hydraulic Engineering, Cryptography, Love Hunting..."

Dia casually listed more than a dozen skills before adding, "And dozens more besides those. Honestly, most of them aren't very useful. Since I've never had a formal, systematic education, I can only rely on reading Sorcerer's Handbooks to pick up different kinds of knowledge..."

At this point, both the cult leader and the village girl were completely dumbfounded. They had never expected that the most knowledgeable person among them would turn out to be the seemingly airheaded Witch.

So the real illiterate... was me all along!

"You could easily become an empress with all that," Sonya said, a hint of envy creeping into her voice. "With so many practical skills, they must be a huge help in your daily life, right?"

Dia blinked. "Huh?"

She thought back to how Lys' hair was always taken care of by Aunt Perskin, how Ashe accompanied her to sleep, and how she only needed to study a little each day before spending the rest of her time eating, drinking, and having fun. "I guess so?"

Unlike Dia, the village girl didn't have the luxury of reading such a broad range of Sorcerer's Handbooks. She couldn't help but feel a twinge of envy, though it wasn't bitter jealousy. After all, most of the team's high-value spirits were still allocated to her, which she could exchange for real gold and silver.

It was precisely because she had achieved financial security, even earning enough to send money back home, that she could afford to be highly selective about the opportunities offered to her, rather than selling herself short for a quick payout.

Take endorsement deals, for example. The offers she received before and after the Meteor Calamity differed by as much as twentyfold. Even so, she still couldn't compare to top-tier film stars, proving that her commercial value still had plenty of room to grow.

If she could secure first place in the intercollegiate league, she could ride that momentum straight into film and television, release her own albums, and quickly rise to the level of a top celebrity like Didarose. Even without noble status, Even without noble status, she could still establish her own elite status!

And when that day came, even keeping a Legendary sorcerer as her dependent would be well within her means!

That was Sonya's little goal. To earn enough money to "keep" a Legendary sorcerer. After all, no matter how powerful the Watcher had been before his rebirth, he had probably only been at the level of a Legendary sorcerer, right?