Mage Manual-Chapter 285 - 245 The Sunk Cost of Striving to Become an Observer_2

Chapter 285: Chapter 245 The Sunk Cost of Striving to Become an Observer_2

"Ah?"

Diya, roused from sleep, unconsciously rubbed her eyes and looked at them bewildered, "Huh? You guys... here... but how did I... was I dreaming?"

Sonia pinched her face hard and turned it into a pancake face, "You just fell asleep! Snap out of it, we are still in the Void Realm!"

"Oh oh oh!" Diya nodded vigorously, "Right, I remember now, we won against the Heroic Soul Army... we actually won, yay, yay!"

The Witch immediately excited herself, hugging the Sword Maiden in celebration, and Ash, moved by the sight, stretched out his arms trying to join the girls’ celebratory hug but was pushed away by the Sword Maiden. However, the Witch noticed Ash’s gesture and also came over to hug him, "Observer, your driving skills are so strong! Super amazing! You’re even more formidable than the villains in fairy tales! Sword Maiden is super amazing too, finishing the final kill, and of course, I am amazing too, it was me who held back that Heroic Soul!"

"Yes yes yes, Witch, you did great this time, thank you for your hard work."

Ash gently rubbed Diya’s head with his right hand, taming her proud errant hair, and raised his left hand high to indicate that all his actions were up to the standards of children’s television channels. Sonia snorted, stood up, and said, "Then we should also go collect the spoils we deserve—let’s hope they haven’t thought themselves unwanted and run off."

By then, the toxic fog in the cave had cleared, and they looked around only to find hardly any spoils; it was unclear whether it was due to the way they killed them or because those sentient beings were members of the Heroic Soul Army, they not only didn’t burst out Experience Treasure Orbs but also didn’t drop any Technique Spirits.

There were only three spoils left on the battlefield, all dropped by the Heroic Soul.

The first was a handbook, but when Ash picked it up, he found it was not the Mage’s Handbook as they had imagined—

"Demilo’s Commander’s Handbook"

"Read to acquire a choice of reward (selectable)—"

"Sword Command Technique·Junior: You know how to make the Sword Technique Faction cooperate in battle and gain a great deal of Sword Technique Faction experience."

"Shooting Command Technique·Intermediate: You excel in using ranged factions to achieve tactical intentions and gain an enormous amount of shooting faction experience."

"Offensive Technique·Junior: You pose more of a threat when commanding an attack and gain a small amount of experience from various factions."

"Intermediate Logistics Skill: Your troops move faster during marches and gain a moderate amount of experience from various factions."

How to describe the shock this Commander’s Handbook gave the mages? Sword Maiden’s reaction said it all—she blurted out ’mind-blown’ in disbelief, too shocked to maintain her composure.

If a Mage’s Handbook was like nutritious but hard-to-eat vegetables, then the Commander’s Handbook was like a high-nutritional ice cream cake defying the laws of material with zero calories, zero sugar, and zero protein. First, its rewards weren’t random, but selectable; secondly, besides awarding Command Skills, it also granted faction experience, essentially offering additional Experience Treasure Orbs.

Of course, the most important aspect was—it had no reading prerequisites!

Not every vegetable fits the taste of every mage, but who can resist zero-calorie ice cream cake? Ash and his companions didn’t even need to open the handbook to read the command experiences inside; they could directly use it and acquire the rewards, so even Sonia, with her relatively rigid moral baseline, could use it!

Although the Commander’s Handbook might not be of very high value—after all, it essentially just offered "an unusable Command Skill" + "Experience Treasure Orb," and the spoils they got from defeating the Fish-Slicing Dragon were not much different—

the emergence of the Commander’s Handbook broadened their horizons, letting them know that a Mage’s Handbook doesn’t only contain tough vegetables. There might be other flavors of Mage’s Handbooks in the Void Realm that are even more nutritious.

If they encountered a projection of a Mutated Mage like the Heroic Soul again, Sword Maiden definitely wouldn’t prevent Ash from venturing into danger. They bravely take a step into the unknown, and the Commander’s Handbook is the positive feedback reward of the unknown, so their first reaction upon encountering unknown dangers in the future wouldn’t be to flee, but to probe and gather information.

Mages who had tasted sweetness gladly licked any unknown secret, even if it might contain bitterness or even poison.

Silently, the success of their experiences influenced their way of thinking. Just like how the Flowing Gold River nurtured their ambitions, hunting Heroic Souls also enlarged their greed.

There was no doubt that this Commander’s Handbook was naturally for Sonia. After all, among the three of them, no one needed the Shooting Faction, and the current urgency was to elevate Sonia’s Sword Technique Faction to the Golden Level.

In the recent battle, Sonia had deeply felt her own powerlessness, although she had delivered the final lethal blow, 99% of the credit for the entire fight had to go to Ash and his nearly burnt-out sports car.

The true MVP that deserved praise and embrace was the car!

But the sports car was a manifestation of Ash’s power, by which he far surpassed her; and the Witch also possessed a Golden Level Magic Faction, with water lines that combined both output and control, plus the Witch could read most Mage’s Handbooks... Sonia realized, upon reflection, that she was unconsciously becoming the drag of the team.

The Observer had explicitly stated that if one couldn’t keep up with the team, they wouldn’t receive resource support nor favoritism. If the team needed to optimize its structure, naturally the one dragging behind would be the first to be optimized...

So, Sonia did not hesitate this time and took the Commander’s Handbook.

She was not a woman who would simply concede defeat, if she truly couldn’t keep up with the team’s pace of progress, then she intended to exhaust the Observer, consume all of his resources, and force him to increase his investment to avoid wasting his prior investments!

As long as she owed the Observer enough, the one panicking at that time wouldn’t be her, but the Observer!

What was this called again... right, sunk cost, a term the Observer had once explained while criticizing work. Sonia quite liked this term.

The more one invests, the harder it is to give up.

Time, energy, emotions, experiences, everything would become shackles affecting current decisions.

She set a small goal in her heart—to become the sunk cost that the Observer couldn’t abandon!

Before using the Commander’s Handbook, Sonia rapidly skimmed through its contents; unsurprisingly, it was extremely dull, all about command strategies in battle and nothing about any personal information on "Demilo".

No wonder the Commander’s Handbook could be used by anyone; it didn’t bear any ideological imprint of a Mage, nor did it provide any point of view, just like a common reference book, thus no reading threshold.

But wasn’t a Mage’s Handbook a condensation of a Mage’s life? Why was there not a bit of Demilo’s privacy?

The thought flickered through the Village Girl’s mind and then disappeared—it might be due to the special mechanisms of the Void Realm, if there’s nothing to see then so be it.

On the last page, however, Sonia saw a somewhat familiar photograph.

It was a star chart, the profound night sky, twinkling Star Clusters, with three stars connected by lines, the bottom one labeled "Demilo" but the other two were nameless.

She showed this page to the others, and Ash made a precise comment:

"It looks like the information on the murderer given by a victim just before death."

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