Chapter 24: She Was Not Worthy!

Chapter 24: She Was Not Worthy!

Now, Stuart was able to become Louis’s shadow, letting Louis gain all of its power boosts. And even normally, 10% of Stuart’s strength belonged to Louis.

Louis’s strength increased by 0.38, his dexterity increased by 1.8, and his mana increased by 0.8.

Louis took out a gold coin and felt the extra dexterity. He flipped the coin between his hands, so fast it seemed like the coin was dancing on his ten fingers.

‘But it seems I don’t need dexterity. When I cast spells, I don’t need to control hand gestures or pay attention to wand-waving rhythm. I’m not really interested in potions or alchemy either.’

[But a qualified warrior…]

Before the Storybook’s narration could finish writing, Louis closed the ethereal book in front of him.

Seeing Stuart still staring dumbly at him, Louis snapped his fingers. Immediately, Stuart transformed into its Nightmare form, looking completely stunned.

Louis leaped onto the flaming warhorse three meters away as nimbly as a skilled warrior, then began weaving through the Ethereal Dream Tower. Most royal knights couldn’t mount a horse that smoothly.

It seemed Stuart could ignore all terrain. And it could fly.

Unintentionally, the pair accidentally burst into the lounge of the student dormitories on the tower’s top floor. The Ethereal Dream Tower was Yordle Academy’s tower. Luckily, it was a holiday today.

So only one beautiful ghost lady was there, resting her chin on her hand and thinking about something. At that very moment, a flaming Nightmare Knight rose from the ground right before her eyes.

Both stared at each other in dumbfounded silence for a long moment. Then the beautiful ghost lady stiffened and lay flat on the sofa, starting to snore.

[Miss Ophine hasn’t slept for over five hundred years. Ahem, some rest is good for her health.]

“You can make ghosts sleep?”

[Boss, even plants dream.] the Nightmare boasted.

Louis looked at his character description where he’d just learned ‘Nightmare Curse Lv1’ and made a note of Stuart’s words.

After playing around for a while, Louis went to an empty classroom. He treated Stuart like a puppet and practiced Marionette.

“By the way, what were you saying earlier?” Louis asked while playing. He planned to listen to the story casually during practice. “Go ahead, share what you know. You can speak freely now.”

Stuart shuddered.

Was this the first test from his master?

But what exactly does he want to hear?

Why does he look like he’s listening to gossip?

After thinking for a moment, Stuart spoke: [Sir, I believe you recently joined the Academy within the last two years. There are certain taboos here, and some things in the Black Prison. All are things you need to know. Let me first tell you about the conflicts among the Saint Oak Wizards and the history between white and black wizards…]

Stuart didn’t dare slack off. He shared things he thought were explosive enough. But as Louis listened, the corner of his mouth began to twitch.

It was all trivial nonsense.

But the evil spirit seemed to think these little things were incredibly significant.

The wizards seemed to feel the same way…

Or rather, their infighting and disputes were like children playing house!

And apparently, in everyone’s eyes, killing a single person and knowing a few forbidden lethal spells made someone an evil Dark Lord or a Mysterious Man.

[No one knows who ‘ta’ is. Except me.] Stuart’s voice was mysterious: [Because she was my previous boss—Ocris’s mother.]

“???”

“Ocris’s mother?!” Louis blinked hard.

[Exactly.] Stuart said mysteriously: [Her public identity was the Witch Queen, but secretly, she was the leader of the Hermetic Order—a great leader of a magical revolution. But she failed. So the wizards gave her a disgraceful name—‘Dark Lord’—claiming she tried to spread dark magic throughout the world.]

“What did she want to achieve?”

[Sir, wizards are the most powerful overlords in this world, powerful enough to make gods and dragons fear. And this power comes from a mysterious wizard who arrived here three thousand years ago after traveling from the outer realms.]

[His name was ‘Anthony’. He called himself an ‘Astral Traveler’ from the ‘Dawn Sanctuary’. He left behind some knowledge. Unfortunately, no one could understand it, and those who did panicked at its implications.]

[Just a portion of that knowledge caused panic among wizards worldwide… They believed it would overthrow this world!]

[Because, this was magic only gods could use!]

[Finally, the Ministry of Magic passed that proposal. The wizards labeled these as ‘Forbidden Teachings’ and destroyed them. Only methods to increase mana remained—and those were held only by the Great Family Nobles.]

[This made the world grow more distorted—wizards’ mana grew higher, yet magical development worsened.]

[Her Majesty ‘Frankischko’ was utterly disappointed by the wizards’ actions. Thus, the Hermetic Order was formed.]

[Her Majesty believed that knowledge hadn’t been destroyed. And she successfully found it…]

It turned out, the Twelve Great Wizard Clans who followed Anthony long ago didn’t completely destroy that magic. Instead, after destroying some, they divided the rest into twelve portions—one kept by each Great Clan.

[It’s unimaginable. Her Majesty only integrated two out of twelve portions, yet it made her invincible!]

[A magical revolution began…]

[But that revolution also ultimately failed…]

[Magic remained in the hands of the few. Many didn’t even know wizards and dragons existed in this world…]

Stuart seemed a little downhearted.

[Now Her Majesty Frankischko has vanished along with the Hermetic Order. People think the Dark Lord was the Dark Lord and the Witch Queen was the Witch Queen, but they were actually the same person.]

[But Her Majesty left a seed—her adopted daughter, the current Witch Queen ‘Her Majesty Delphinia’.]

[Compared to her own flesh-and-blood daughter, Her Majesty Frankischko believed her elder daughter Delphinia was more suited to inherit everything… Ocris was better off going to Dragon Nest City—she should rule the Dragon Clan, though that might mean marrying into their race…]

[In the end, Delphinia inherited her master’s everything, as well as Her Majesty Frankischko’s legacy—including that ‘Book of Fate’!]

[That was the Spellbook of Anthony the Great Sage.]

[Her Majesty believed the Dawn Sanctuary was a mysterious place that fostered the God of Magic! And within that sacred sanctuary, the Forbidden Archmage—the greatest among each generation of Forbidden Wizards—was the God of Magic!]

As Stuart narrated, a vague memory in Louis’s mind slowly cleared—it was his time studying at the Forbidden Sanctum.

Forbidden Wizards were Dawn Wizards—though, to help Louis hide his identity, the Storybook altered this world’s ‘fate’, replacing the ‘Forbidden Sanctum’ in people’s minds with ‘Dawn Sanctuary’.

In Louis’s memory, the Forbidden Sanctum was once a Magic Academy from an advanced magical civilization that existed sixty million years ago.

It was also the origin of numerous magical civilizations.

Now, it had vanished in the river of time, but wizards could still occasionally explore this sacred land of knowledge in dreams and illusions.

Fundamentally, it was a place that nurtured the God of Magic.

Of course, in the eyes of Forbidden Wizards, they weren’t really gods—in their view, only those capable of devouring stars deserved that title.

As for Anthony, he could indeed be considered Louis’s teacher. Inside the Forbidden Sanctum, there were phantoms of many great sages who had taught Louis magic.

And Anthony was the previous ‘Forbidden Archmage’—essentially, Louis’s guide.

Anthony had traveled to this world three thousand years ago, and this world was also the last one Anthony ever visited.

He destroyed this world’s ‘gods’, turning their leader, the Moon Goddess, into a dotted image.

And he ignited the spark of magic in this world.

After completing this work, Anthony’s journey reached its end—he vanished alongside the Forbidden Sanctum, fading from memory.

Perhaps it was because his power in this world crossed the threshold of existence—meaning his presence became too faint…

However, before vanishing, he managed to link his diary to this world’s fate energy, preventing the diary from disappearing with him.

This diary was the ‘Fantasy Travel Storybook’. It could alter fate and draw energy from it, solving the presence issue. It also recorded the Forbidden Sanctum.

It could reopen the Forbidden Sanctum that existed in fantasies. And Louis had opened this DLC, becoming the last Forbidden Archmage.

Now, the Forbidden Sanctum had vanished—or rather, Louis’s knowledge was the Forbidden Sanctum itself.

[Anthony left a book, incredibly miraculous. Rumors say it connected to a sacred land for wizards…]

[This book was once opened by Her Majesty Delphinia, but she was shocked to find it had no words!]

[Later, somehow Delphinia activated the book, and text appeared—three questions.]

[One was about star patterns—well, wizards study star patterns. The answer was simple—‘center’.]

[One was a religious philosophy question. Wizards dislike religion; they see its followers as liars. But since it asked, she answered based on common sense—Sun God and Moon Goddess, right?]

[But the third question was truly bizarre—the book told the Witch Queen that getting the first two wrong was okay. It had lowered the difficulty based on her knowledge level. So, as long as she got the last one right, she could still enter the Dawn Sacred Land—though, with her intelligence, she might struggle to graduate past junior high.]

[Yet this excited the Witch Queen beyond belief—she didn’t understand ‘junior high’, but her foster mother had mentioned it. Graduating could make one the world’s most powerful wizard, she’d heard!]

[Then it gave her a math problem… A math problem! This book was toying with her!

What did accounting have to do with magic? Delphinia wasn’t an accountant; she was the Witch Queen! She declared it beneath her and scribbled an answer. Admittedly, the question was tough. We even asked several accountants; they probably got it wrong too.]

[Then, the book destroyed itself, leaving one final message—She was not worthy!]

Louis scratched his face. He’d seen these three questions in a part of the Storybook before his transmigration. Preceding the questions was a note: “To prevent my travel diary from being found by monkeys, please answer a few questions (difficulty adjusted situationally).”

The first question was: ‘Describe the location of the land you stand on in the universe.’ There were three choices: one was ‘center’, another ‘near the sun’—representing geocentric and heliocentric models.

The third was a fill-in-blank.

It was obviously ‘Milky Way Galaxy · Orion Arm · Solar System.’ But Louis hadn’t filled it in or written anything—he felt it was a children’s book. Who’d bother doing fill-in-blanks in a fantasy travel story for kids?

However, bored, Louis got slightly curious after seeing the question. He put down the book, looked it up online—and naturally found that long chain of answers starting with the Laniakea Supercluster.

The second question wasn’t philosophy; it was: ‘Briefly explain the energy source of stars.’

Obviously nuclear fusion. What did Sun God and Moon Goddess have to do with it?

As for the third question—it completely changed Louis’s impression of the book.

This question was hard.

It asked how to turn a completely sealed sphere inside out.

But Louis knew it was a math problem involving four-dimensional space.

Though his specialization wasn’t physics or math, he found such topics fascinating.

He remembered watching a similar video on BiliBili during one of his late-night internet sessions. The explanation matched this. So later, he rewatched it, then consulted his mentor. He even used the book as scratch paper, jotting down his solution and some interesting math formulas, intending to show off to friends later.

After that, he threw the book aside—never reading another word. Only recently, bored enough, did he read the fantasy stories inside.

Given the Storybook’s nature, it probably counted him as answering when he pondered the first and second explanations. So when he flipped to the third page, that question became incredibly complex.

As for the Witch Queen, by the time she answered, the difficulty had likely been reduced twice. Could it be the last question was super simple? Testing if a monkey had picked up the diary…

I truly scorn you!

Clearly, this Witch Queen likely possessed terrifying mana, but perhaps was a bit brash and brainless.

Or perhaps, to these ‘Great Family Wizards’, mana trumped magical knowledge.

Strong mana indeed made some unbelievably powerful—like gods. They often overcame technique with raw power.

Others were knowledge-focused—mostly within the ‘Magic Enthusiasts Association’ in the Kingdom of Sorrento. While their individual power was modest due to low mana, great minds continuously emerged among these self-proclaimed enthusiasts.

Though their mana was ordinary, these knowledgeable masters could achieve much with little—solving mysterious events that even god-like wizards found deeply troubling. Even the Witch Queen would reluctantly but respectfully call them ‘teacher’.

Compared to mana-focused wizards like Witch Queen Little Dai, Louis was firmly part of the knowledge faction.

But even his mana could improve.

[Of course, don’t forget to boost your presence. Otherwise, once your power becomes too strong, you might vanish…]

[Perhaps that’s why Anthony chose Louis—this guy excels at stirring up trouble.]