Inside the basent of a luxury villa in Cailleach.
The five contracts dissolved into wisps of smoke. In the next mont, all five felt their souls grow slightly heavier.
Adele looked around curiously. "The contracts are signed. So where's the treasure? Wait, is it hidden in the tables and chairs? Do we need to shave off the wood to find it?"
Her guess wasn't without reason. Aside from the furniture, there was nothing else in the basent. Everything lay in plain sight, with no corner or crevice suitable for hiding anything.
"The treasure isn't here," Felix said.
Adele frowned. "Not here? Then why did we even co?"
The others didn't seem surprised. Louisa pinched Adele's cheek in exasperation. "Pay more attention in class! We're sorcerers, not ordinary people. If we wanted to hide sothing, why would we hide it sowhere in the physical world like everyone else?"
"If it's not in the physical world... then where would it be... Oh! The Virtual World!" Adele finally caught on. "So that's why we need a spirit to open the treasure!"
Compared to the real world, where accidents, disasters, and upheavals were common, the Virtual World was the perfect vault. It never changed, suffered no calamities, and remained completely uninhabited.
The Virtual World had never been just a training ground for sorcerers. It was the foundation of the entire sorcerer system. Even now, no one dared claim full understanding of it. Almost every month, sorcerers developed new techniques within the Virtual World.
Storing objects in the Virtual World was not new, but it had never been comrcialized. It remained a Miracle reserved for high-level sorcerers. The principle was simple in theory. A sorcerer first needed to fix the Virtual World coordinates behind the Door of Truth. Once they did and secured permanent access to that location, it would naturally beco their personal vault.
However, that was only in theory. In reality, the Door of Truth appeared randomly within a spirit, making it impossible to secure the coordinates. This challenge led to the establishnt of a discipline known to few, called spirit relationship studies.
Spirits were intelligent and thus emotional. Under normal circumstances, sorcerers below the Sacred Realm could not directly perceive a spirit's joy or anger. However, when multiple spirits interacted, they were bound to experience so degree of emotional change. If a sorcerer could identify the patterns and stabilize a spirit's emotional state at that mont, the Door of Truth within it would cease to wander, turning it into a permanent coordinate in the Virtual World.
Felix summoned his Wave spirit. "The mont the Wave spirit shows a change in expression, move the Killing Intent spirit closer. Ready?"
Sonya nodded and called forth the Killing Intent spirit.
Felix took a deep breath and summoned his Affection spirit. It was a One-Winged spirit that manifested in the form of a pure, adorable teenage girl.
The Wave spirit appeared as a cold, stoic swordsman. The Affection spirit fluttered around it, tugged its hand, and even shook it playfully, yet its expression remained unchanged.
Then, without warning, the Affection spirit leaned in and kissed him. The ice etched into the Wave spirit's face finally cracked. A faint, almost imperceptible blush appeared.
Now!
Sonya moved the Killing Intent spirit closer. It manifested as a red-haired swordsman wielding twin blades. It was clad in crimson and enveloped in a red aura. The Affection spirit darted behind the Wave spirit.
The Wave spirit did not flinch. Black waves of energy surged violently from its body as it faced the Killing Intent spirit head-on.
[Spirit Relationship: A Battle for Pure Love, achieved!]
Felix's gaze sharpened. He sank his consciousness into the Wave spirit and searched for the Door of Truth.
Expand!
A gray speck shot out from the spirit's body and rapidly swelled into a translucent, hazy bubble.
The bubble continued to grow slowly in midair, with lightning flickering within it. Everyone instinctively stepped back.
The Door of Truth could be expanded, but it served little purpose for sorcerers in the real world. This was because only a sorcerer's soul could enter the Virtual World. No matter how large the Gate grew, it would never allow physical objects to pass through. In other words, material simply could not enter the Virtual World. The reverse, however, was a different matter.
Objects from the Virtual World could pass into reality. There had even been cases where Knowledge Creatures seized the chance to escape into reality, took on physical forms, and wreaked havoc.
This principle also ford the basis for the birth of spirits. By using knowledge, sorcerers could trigger resonance with the Virtual World, through which they drew fragnts of truth into their understanding. A spirit was born when knowledge and truth rged.
That was why Sonya and the others had retreated to the staircase and were ready to flee at the first sign of danger. Virtual World coordinates suitable for personal storage rarely corresponded to safe locations. A sorcerer who stored items on a calm, peaceful island would not only risk discovery by other sorcerers but also face the threat of Knowledge Creatures coming to hunt for them.
By choosing to expand the Door of Truth rather than enter it himself, Felix made it clear he knew the corresponding Virtual World location was extrely dangerous. Anything could happen there. A well-known joke at the academy told of a sorcerer who opened the Gate only to be knocked unconscious by a shockwave, likely because a battle was underway at that coordinate. Being killed by one's own Door of Truth was counted among the most foolish ways a sorcerer could die.
The gray bubble continued to swell, while the lightning phenona within it intensified. An almost irresistible urge to flee gripped everyone in the basent. Felix's face drained of color under the severe strain on his mana. A muffled groan escaped his lips as an incomplete silver wing unfurled from his back.
Sonya's eyes locked on the half-ford wing, narrowing slightly as she assessed its progress.
The bubble kept swelling. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning shot out and struck a nearby chair, reducing it instantly to charcoal.
"Whoa!"
"What do we do now?"
"Maybe we should co back when the weather's better?"
The others cast subtle glances at Adele. Since when has weather been a thing in the Virtual World...
Just as Felix was nearing his limit, a box suddenly dropped out of the gray bubble. He imdiately cut off his mana. With a sharp pop, the bubble vanished, and the scattered energy coalesced into a gentle breeze that washed over everyone present.
Adele dashed forward and examined the box curiously. "So this is the treasure? It looks... hey, why did it disappear? Wait, it's back again. Am I imagining things?"
The box appeared to be made of obsidian, with nothing particularly remarkable about it. Yet every ti Adele blinked, it vanished, only to reappear the mont she focused on it again.
"Unmorable Wood," Louisa murmured softly, as if she feared that raising her voice might scare the chest away. "The mont you stop paying attention, you lose sight of it. You overlook it, and eventually, you forget it entirely. This is a precious material found only in the Virtual World.
"Its most important feature is that it can be hidden within the soul and carried out of the Virtual World by a sorcerer. Naturally, it can also be brought back inside.
"When crafted into a sealed container, nothing inside will leak, not even the slightest trace of it. It can even hold physical objects from reality and transport them into the Virtual World..."
Everyone made sounds of realization, marveling at the material's properties without thinking too deeply. Louisa was the only exception. She cast a subtle glance at Felix, with doubt stirring in her mind.
Thanks to her family background, she was well-inford about rare commodities. She rembered that Unmorable Wood ca from the third layer of the Virtual World, the Distant Sky Domain, and that anyone below the Three-Winged Sacred Realm could not possibly obtain it.
In other words, the box itself was likely worth far more than whatever it contained. An item capable of crossing between reality and the Virtual World was no longer about price or availability. It was a treasure capable of sparking conflict and even bloodshed among sorcerers.
Louisa had expected little from Felix's so-called mother's inheritance. She had assud it would be a few tools suitable for a Silver Rank sorcerer.
But the mont the Unmorable Wood box appeared, Louisa found herself reconsidering her earlier assumptions. Using a Three-Winged sorcerer's container to store One-Winged tools suggested that Felix's mother lived far more extravagantly than he did.
Or perhaps, in his mother's eyes, an Unmorable Wood box and a Silver Rank artifact carried the sa weight. Just as Louisa would never choose cheaper clothes over better ones, not out of indulgence, but because the difference ant almost nothing to her, Felix's mother likely felt the sa way.
She surely had other thods to preserve her items, yet she deliberately chose a box made of Unmorable Wood. That could only an such a thing barely registered in her mind. So what level of sorcerer was Felix's mother exactly? Three-Winged Sacred Realm? Four-Winged Legend? Or sothing even higher?
Realizing she had been dragged into a trap by Sonya, Louisa swallowed hard. This was an internal matter of the Vlozrada family, one a rchant's daughter had no business entangling herself in.
But regret ca too late. She had already signed the confidentiality contract.
Felix opened the box. "It's open."
A burst of golden light surged out, illuminating the basent.
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