Mage Manual
Chapter 663 - 523: Prison Experience Tester

Chapter 663: Chapter 523: Prison Experience Tester

"Has touring the prisons of every country become our staple vacation itinerary? If reality were a game, we could definitely unlock the ’Prison Experience Master’ achievement."

Ash felt his way along the padded walls and couldn’t help muttering to himself with a hint of self-deprecation.

"That’s not all, you could also unlock achievements like ’Defeated in One Second,’ ’Top Recipient of Beatdowns,’ ’Losing by a Bit Counts as My Win’ and so on." Igula lay on the soft padding, responding listlessly.

"Exactly, I was just a tiny bit away from turning the tables," Ash said, biting his nails. "Too bad I had such a short time to master the Tribulation Fire Technique, and she actually managed to mobilize the power of the four Great Skills to ambush me, a newcomer... If it weren’t for the wrong intel given to me by those Tribulation Fire Divine Sect believers, if it weren’t for my lack of sufficient training time, if it weren’t for her deceiving me with a non-combatant appearance, victory would surely have been mine!"

Igula glanced at him and said, "What I meant was not that ’you only lost by a little, so it counts as your win,’ but rather ’even if you’re left with only a little, it counts as your win’— despite being completely overpowered and unable to fight back, you still come up with so many excuses for yourself. What can I do? I can only count it as your win."

Ash crossed his arms and nodded repeatedly, "I have totally understood now that in your heart, I have already won. I am utterly moved!"

Igula’s expression twisted in frustration, and Harvey, who was beside him, snorted with a chuckle, saying leisurely, "However, this time it wasn’t really Ash’s responsibility, even the First Gospel couldn’t have turned around this situation... Maybe the All-Knowing Weaver anticipated this, which is why she sent Ash, the defective product, to make do?"

"It’s possible because the First Gospel is the agent of the All-Known Weaver, and this was supposed to be the perfect opportunity for the All-Knowing Weaver to infiltrate this kingdom. Yet the All-Knowing Weaver preferred to stuff Ash in here..." The Swindler pondered. "Either the All-Knowing Weaver couldn’t care less about this kingdom, or sending the First Gospel would be useless anyway, so she decided to cut her losses and bluff the Tribulation Fire Holy Temple with Ash."

"Can you wait until we’re out of here to roast me when I’m not around? Let’s focus on figuring out how to escape this cell," Ash complained. "Why does everyone relax like they’re back at home?"

Harvey said, "To be honest, your nervousness makes me kind of surprised."

"And why do you think we have a chance to escape?" Igula added. "Outside is the stronghold of the Four Pillars God Sect, even if we could break out of this cell, how far could we possibly get?"

Ash: "That’s not what you were saying just now. When you were in the Tribulation Fire Holy Temple, all you wanted was to get out. Now that the Four Pillars God Sect has caught us, you’ve just given up? How much did they pay you?"

"Because I didn’t know anything about the Tribulation Fire Holy Temple," Igula explained leisurely. "But the Four Pillars God Sect, if we count you the Cult Leader as well, we’ve come into contact with them for the third time. We might as well call each other old friends, right?"

"Besides," the Swindler sat up, patting the soft padded walls, "We can’t break out of this cell anyway, this must be—"

"Your office?" Harvey interjected.

Igula shook his head, "Although I’ve had a stint as a Psychological Medical Practitioner, I haven’t worked as a Psychiatric Rehabilitation Specialist."

This was a closed space of about 25 square meters, with floors, walls, and the ceiling all covered in deep blue soft padding, even the toilet resembled something made of soft slime-like material. Warm light filtered through the seams of the padding, filling the entire space, with not a shadow in sight.

Despite the Evil Trio never having been in such a place before, the environmental factors were all too complete—

This was a treatment room for the mentally ill!

After Ash was defeated, Igula immediately grabbed Harvey and surrendered. Interestingly, upon witnessing the Tribulation Fire Technique being taken away, the red-robed priests all lost their will to fight and completely gave up on resisting. The believers of the sect, who had fought and held out until then, also surrendered. The Four Pillars God Sect did not start a massacre, they just completely destroyed the Tribulation Fire Holy Temple, then sent people to take over the region, taking away all the mages.

The wars in this world seemed to have an unwritten rule — Great Skills equaled everything. If the Great Skills existed, all was permitted; if the Great Skills were extinguished, everything became vain.

Their modes of transportation were also extremely curious: magnetic levitation trains pulled by beasts of burden. Yes, magnetic levitation train carriages, floating above the ground and pulled by creatures that resembled both cows and horses, and they didn’t even need tracks. Such a postmodern combination of designs, let alone Igula, Ash and Harvey had to accept an aesthetic challenge.

To be honest, the "beast-drawn train’s" speed was not slow, and there was no discomfort in riding it, its stability even far surpassed the Floating Cars of the First Gospel. This process should have been their best chance to escape, but Ash was continuously kept busy by that woman’s questioning, and Harvey’s attempts at movement were suppressed by Igula. A few hours later, they arrived at the base of the Four Pillars God Sect.

The base of the Four Pillars God Sect was much like the Tribulation Fire Holy Temple; it was a city built upon ruins. Only when Ash and the others were locked inside this prison cell did they realize the original identity of these ruins — this place used to be a mental asylum!

It’s worth mentioning that the Kingdom of Blood Moon did have mental asylums, since the sickness could be both congenital and acquired, with the congenital cases naturally being reset, but there was nothing that could be done about the acquired cases — after all, they were biological and psychological mutations difficult for medical practitioners to intervene in.

Even though the Blood Moonians had developed the habit of frequently seeing psychological medical practitioners, the profession with the highest proportion of mentally ill people was that of the psychological medical practitioner — those always rescuing others from the mire eventually find their own feet sinking into it as well.

Although not every infant in Blood Moon had the right to survive, those who did were able to fully enjoy the benefits of Blood Moon, such as social care, medical pensions, and unemployment relief.

Yes, if you avoid consumerism, sugar, gambling, and mud-coffee tea-coffee, you could live in Blood Moon without working, just waiting to die, and Blood Moon would provide food and shelter until you become experimental material for the Blood Saint Clan. Besides enduring advertisements lasting several minutes when watching dramas and being required to be part of someone else’s gaming experience, the ordinary person could live well, freely enjoying modern technology.

However, in the anxiety-filled, discriminatory, manic, and tempting state of Blood Moon, it was impossible not to fall into depravity because there was no place they could truly call their own.

Thinking this way, the mentally ill were the only group that could resist corruption, after all, they finally had a place where they belonged.

The orthodox of the Tribulation Fire Holy Temple bath center and the Four Pillars God Sect taking over the mental asylum, while hard to accept, made sense upon reflection.

However, a second problem now arose: Ash and his companions couldn’t destroy this prison ward!

There were no restrictions on their Magic Power, no bans on their Technique Spirits, yet three Holy Sanctuary Mages couldn’t cause the slightest damage to this room!

The soft padding here was able to absorb a hundred percent of kinetic energy and all Magic damage! Ash’s sweet words and a hidden dagger, Harvey’s death aura corrosion, Igula even pulled out a silenced hand cannon from a Space Card to try, but not even that could leave a single mark on the soft padding.

No wonder the Four Pillars God Sect was so confident leaving them locked up here; they couldn’t even damage a toilet seat!

Ash and his companions even suspected that this was a custom ward designed to detain mages of legendary status gone mad, but Igula recalled seeing a slab of deep-blue soft padding hidden inside the clothing of the black-robed mages.

In other words, the Four Pillars God Sect must have dismantled the soft padding of the other wards in the mental asylum to make soft armor for their believers!

Yes, it made sense to use something that could withstand all harm as armor, but why would it be so extravagantly used as material for a mental asylum ward!