Sorcerer’s Handbook

“If I could hate you, completely despise you, and even avoid you whenever I see you…”

Igor hummed the theme song of a TV drama softly while jotting down his thoughts in his notebook. This meant he had just finished watching another series that ranked in the top ten of this year’s hot TV drama ranking list.

Yes, even entertainment works have their own ranking lists. The points rewarded by the Gospel ranking list are proportionally distributed to investors, producers, actors, and behind-the-scenes staff. Because of these rankings, the quality of TV dramas in the Gospel Kingdom far surpasses those in the Blood Moon Kingdom.

It’s not that Igor is biased against his own country. For instance, the Blood Moon Kingdom currently has a market dominated by traffic, where the most influential actors take the lion’s share of the benefits. In contrast, the TV dramas here are led by screenwriters. Screenwriters have as much say as directors, not only receiving the most benefits but also having the right to intervene in shooting and casting. Thus, the more popular the drama, the more perfect its story pacing becomes, turning viewers into relentless binge-watchers who just want to see the next episode from the very first second.

Apart from the script, the shooting equipment, techniques, dialogue skills, and actor selection—all aspects of the Gospel Kingdom’s entertainment industry, both in terms of software and hardware, overwhelmingly surpass the Blood Moon Kingdom. The gap between the two is as vast as that between the Time Continent and the Sea of Knowledge—they’re not even on the same level.

Igor increasingly believes that the Blood Moon Kingdom is the most worthless country in the world. Its cities can’t compare to those of the Gospel Kingdom, its culture is inferior, and even its cult leaders are weaker than the Eternal Presence of the Gospel Kingdom. Besides having a rounder moon, the Blood Moon Kingdom has nothing of value.

However, he wasn’t just idly watching TV dramas. He had been watching them at 8x speed over the past few days to observe the desires of the Gospel Kingdom.

Entertainment works are reflections of contemporary people’s inner worlds, and the more popular they are, the truer this is. For example, romantic dramas in the Blood Moon Kingdom often start with a sudden accident, reflecting the Blood Moon people’s yearning for extraordinary relationships and their dissatisfaction with their mundane lives.

Similarly, many crime dramas feature protagonists being framed by companies, council members, and government affairs operators, representing the common perception among the Blood Moon people.

Even babies being taken to the wrong orphanage, where high-potential infants are sent to low-level orphanages and low-potential infants to high-level orphanages, and their lives intertwining later in urban emotional dramas, reflect the Blood Moon residents’ obsession with orphanages.

In recent years, apocalyptic dramas have been popular in the Blood Moon Kingdom. Sudden disasters destroy everything, and the protagonist rises to power amidst the chaos, representing the need for expansion plans in Blood Moon Prisons.

Igor’s previous preparation involved investigating what types of dramas clients liked to watch. If the client enjoyed apocalyptic dramas, the conversation would steer towards criticizing society and expressing misanthropy. If the client liked romantic dramas, he would share his own love stories. Given his good looks, any love story seemed plausible for him.

The entertainment preferences of clients could reveal their desires, and the nation’s favorite dramas naturally reflected its most superficial conflicts.

Igor gained a lot from his observations. First, the two most popular types of dramas in the Gospel Kingdom were ‘professional dramas’ and ‘domestic dramas,’ sometimes merging into one.

Professional dramas focus on specific professions, including but not limited to Red Hats, professional gamers, cat’s cradle competition players, fashion designers, healers, chefs, and so on. The basic plot usually involves the protagonist joining a new industry, gradually learning and growing within it, and eventually making it to the Gospel ranking list, achieving success in both career and love.

Domestic dramas revolve around family feuds, often featuring a scenario where the older male protagonist lacks talent, while the younger illegitimate male protagonist makes it to the Gospel ranking list at a young age. The two sides engage in open and covert battles for family inheritance.

When these two genres merge, the result is a story where a rebellious protagonist, forced to inherit the family business, enters the ancestral trade, eventually becomes the top in the industry, and makes it to the Gospel ranking list.

For Igor, these were all very interesting genres. Professional dramas subtly conveyed the idea that “no profession is superior or inferior.” Unlike the Blood Moon Kingdom’s hollow propaganda, the Gospel Kingdom’s concept of professional equality was rooted in equal treatment. As long as your industry had a ranking list and you ranked highly, even if you were just a social drifter writing novels, you could earn points equivalent to those of a spellcaster professor.

Domestic dramas, at first glance, seemed to be just about ordinary people’s curiosity about big families, but they clearly had a substantial real-world basis—inheritance distribution.

Through intense binge-watching, Igor could now barely grasp the concept of family, though as a Con Artist, he still couldn’t understand why anyone would fight for their offspring. Nevertheless, he accepted the existence of this strange phenomenon.

If he understood correctly, parents in the Gospel Kingdom would leave their inheritance to their descendants, including the professional skills they had accumulated over their lifetime. If the parents were Chosen Ones on the ranking list, their children would find it easier to become Chosen Ones as well.

It would be simple if there was only one child, but what if there were two? What if one child was talented and hardworking but not favored, while the other was favored but had no talent?

This was the fertile ground for domestic dramas. The storylines resonated with the audience to varying degrees, which is why the ratings were so high.

Whether it was professional dramas or domestic dramas, there was a key element in both: the Gospel ranking list.

In fact, there wasn’t a single drama without the presence of the Gospel ranking list.

It might be the trigger for conflict, the protagonist’s dream, or the driving force behind the plot. Everything could be traced back to the Gospel ranking list.

It seemed that as long as you could make it onto the ranking list and become a Chosen One, all problems could be solved. Conversely, those who didn’t become Chosen Ones were the failures in the story.

But that was no big deal. In the Blood Moon Kingdom, those without power or money were also considered redundant trash. Here, it was just replaced with ranking list positions.

There would always be something people chased after, a criterion that distinguished high from low. Even in an orphanage, the cute kids who were often praised held a more esteemed position than the snotty, unattractive ones.

Igor didn’t think the ranking list was bad. On the contrary, he thought it was almost too good.

Fair, just, and directly overseen by the Divine Sovereign… Igor only used these labels when deceiving particularly naive clients.

Even a con artist like him found the Gospel ranking list absurdly overpowered, which spoke volumes about its influence.

Compared to the Blood Moon Kingdom, which relied on the Moonshadow for societal stability and the Blood Saint for technological advancements, with other clans serving as cogs and fuel, the ranking list system of the Gospel Kingdom was superior by miles. It effortlessly drove people to strive for a lifetime, squeezing out everyone’s potential.

When it came to utilizing the populace, the Blood Moon Sovereign should probably attend a master class with the Omniscient Weaver on efficiency.

He flipped through his notebook, noting that TV dramas also revealed peculiar psychological profiles of the citizens. For instance, most female protagonists were firmly established from the beginning, and no third party could interfere. There were also frequent eerie rumors about the “sewer,” with varying content, but they all highlighted the Gospel people’s fear of it.

However, Igor was puzzled by the absence of court dramas.

He was quite curious about the royal family of the Gospel Kingdom. The general public likely shared his curiosity. But since such dramas didn’t exist, it suggested that the royal family had banned their production.

There were a few fairy tale animations featuring royal content, but Igor never watched cartoons. They were for children and a waste of time for him.

Checking the time, Igor left the Audio-Visual Room and went to the living room for breakfast. He saw Ashe grumbling as he emerged from the game room.

“Were you playing virtual games all morning?”

“What else could I do? I haven’t spent any money, so I have to spend time leveling up and getting gear,” Ashe replied irritably.

“No, I mean, don’t you have anything better to do in the morning?” Igor was somewhat displeased. “You don’t really think you’re here on vacation, do you? At least spend some time gathering intelligence, reading books, or watching documentaries.”

Ashe thought for a moment. “I’m investigating the characteristics of players who enjoy virtual games, profiling their demographics, and trying to identify their pain points to empower our as-yet-unwritten plan…”

“Any results?”

“I just got killed for the tenth time in the wild. Shows that the players here are a bunch of bastards.”

“Then why don’t you just stop playing?”

“But it’s fun. The storyline is good, the graphics are great, and even though I can’t beat other players, I can still beat the monsters. The combat feels amazing.”

Ashe gritted his teeth. “Actually, if I just spent a little money, I’d have a much better gaming experience. At least I could escape even if I couldn’t win. But I’m broke… When is Annan going to give me some money?”

“If Annan doesn’t give you money, can’t you earn it yourself?”

“How?”

“Create a female character and lure male players to give you gifts. Not only can you bypass the wristband restrictions, but Annan also won’t be able to control you.”

Ashe looked troubled. “But I don’t know how to act like a cute girl. I might not succeed in luring male players.”

“You’ve already skipped the psychological barrier of ‘acting’ and are thinking about how to be cute? If I had met you earlier, you might have become my partner.” Igor quipped. “Your daughter is quite cute, isn’t she? Just mimic her usual behavior.”

“Imitating a little girl is too weird. No way, Aunt Bukin.”

Ashe playfully sparred with Igor while asking, “By the way, Igor, do you know any quick ways to calm someone down—without using a spirit?”

“I’ll teach you. Like this—make your hand into a knife shape, then chop at someone’s neck at a 45° angle. They’ll probably calm down—forever.”

“Come on, Mr. Igor, please be merciful and teach me.”

Igor looked at Ashe, who was clasping his hands together in a pleading gesture and winking. His mind went blank for a moment.

This might be the first time he’s asked me for something… Igor, scratching his head impatiently, walked behind Ashe and chopped at the back of his neck with his hand.

“If you don’t want to say, you didn’t have to hit my neck!”

“To calm you down,” Igor replied irritably. “For someone like you, this method is enough. Different ages, appearances, heights, and races all have different ways to calm down. If you don’t get specific, this is all I can offer.”

“Oh oh oh!” Ashe highly valued the advice of professionals. “Hmm, the person in question is a well-built, skirt-loving, slightly shorter than me, 19-year-old beautiful human female who frequently changes her hair color and style. She’s lively, composed, aloof, and cunning, primarily using the Fist-Claw Sect’s techniques…”

“Annan?”

“No, not Annan.”

Igor was shocked. “Σ(っ°Д°;)っ When did you meet another wild woman?”