Drip, drip, drip…

Sitting on the sofa, Ashe tracked the steady sound of water echoing from the bathroom. He closed the Book of Gospel and walked over to the freezer to retrieve a chilled can of Azure Lala Fat liquor.

The Azure Lala Fat stood out as one of the rare Lala Fat species unfit for consumption, yet the alcohol distilled from them was exceptionally refreshing and crisp. For someone like Ashe, who typically showed little interest in drinking, it was an immense pleasure.

Splash… drip, drip… tick… tick, tick… hissss…

He tried his best to anchor his focus, but the rhythmic cadence of running water filled his mind, vividly painting a picture of the scene unfolding inside the bathroom.

He had never specifically trained under the Brute Body Class to strengthen his physique, but mana functioned as a universal energy source, gradually refining a sorcerer's physical capabilities over time. The Swordswoman had once proposed an intriguing hypothesis: a sorcerer, at their core, was actually a spirit. By that logic, a Four-Winged sorcerer was fundamentally a Four-Winged spirit.

Compared to standard spirits designed for a single, specialized function, sorcerers possessed a vast array of abilities, such as moving, eating, learning, and reproducing. The crucial difference lay in independence; sorcerers executed these daily functions naturally without needing mana to drive them. Consequently, they rarely consumed their mana reserves merely to buff their own bodies.

Some scholars had wondered if a sorcerer could bypass spirits entirely, using raw mana to enhance...