Thanks to the road signs, Angor finally reached his destination after running into several dead ends. Still, he refused to admit that he was a terrible pathfinder. The caves were too chaotic! Yes, that was the only reason!
When Angor saw Sailum, the boy was eating some roasted meat and cardamom soup that he bought from the market inside the caves.
“Good to see you, Angor! Come, the meat is still warm. Have some?” said Sailum.
He looked really happy about Angor’s visit. He quickly tore his meat in half.
Angor waved his hand and showed Sailum his food bag, “I’m done in the market. I just brought some snacks for you and Nausica.”
Angor displayed a variety of food in front of Sailum. Glasses of milk, milk-made pantries… there were a lot of them, but they were all milk products. Cow milk, sheep milk… were fine. But the milk of narwhals, grass camels and ice coccus was a little bit… beyond common knowledge.
Sailum stared at the food display and wondered, “Angor? You… really like milk, don’t you?”
Angor froze up. “Huh? Oh no. Why do you say so?”
“But these are all milk! My room is full of milk smell now,” said Sailum as he pointed at all the food.
“Uh, hehe…” Angor looked away before he said, “You’re still young, so these things are good for your growth. I don’t really love them.”
“Really?”
“Come on, go get Nausica already,” said Angor as he pushed Sailum out of the room. When the boy disappeared into the passage, Angor finally sighed in relief.
He could not ruin his image in Sailum’s mind simply because of these milk products. Angor silently told himself that he would never bring these things again. They did too much damage to his reputation!
Sailum returned by himself.
“Miss Nausica is still meditating. She said hi, but she won’t join us for now,” said Sailum. He sighed and revealed a worried look as he said, “Miss Nausica could not manage to get calm during her meditations and she’s anxious about it. She kept trying but didn’t make much progress.”
“It’s a must-have challenge during our training. Nausica’s an adult, so she got more things on her mind. She’ll be fine once she gets through this, and her experience will later help her save a lot of effort,” Angor said.
It’s almost a month, and Nausica had not achieved her first step yet. It was normal for her to be anxious.
“What about you? Found your spirit power yet?” Angor asked Sailum.
“Not quite, but I have a lead. I think I can do it soon.”
When Sailum heard that Angor was already progressing toward the third step, Sailum was a little surprised. But he was not jealous at all.
“You’re ahead of us again. Looks like I need to work harder,” said Sailum. He seemed really enthusiastic now.
Angor bid farewell to the boy after chatting about their recent situations. Next, Angor took some of his food and walked toward Nausica’s room.
Nausica was still meditating on her bed.
Angor looked around her room. Aside from some additional necessities, it was not that different from a month ago. Her room appeared even simpler than Sailum’s.
And from such a detail, Angor realized how hard Nausica was pushing herself. She had spent most of her energy on her training and did not pay attention to anything else.
Angor saw Nausica’s long-handled pipe on the dirt platform and picked it up. The pipe was completely void of tobacco, and the handle had collected dust, proving that its master had not been using it for a long time.
“Why are you here?” asked Nausica. Her voice was still attractive in a mature manner, but it sounded a bit hoarse now.
Angor lifted his bag and asked, “Some food for you. Ladies love milk and sweets, right?”
Nausica flipped her hair and said, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Angor handed the bag to Nausica and showed her the smoking pipe.
“Where do you keep your tobacco?”
Nausica pointed at a pouch made of snakeskin in the room’s corner. She then asked, “Why? You want to learn to smoke? Better not. Kids should drink more milk.”
Angor did not mind her joke. He put some tobacco into the pipe, lit it up, and handed the pipe to Nausica.
“Nah. It smells terrible. I’d rather not try it out,” said Angor.
“Then why did you take it?” Nausica asked.
“For you, duh. Maybe smoking can help you clear your mind. There are many things with more than one solutions. Sticking to only one of them means trapping yourself in there. Just change your mood, try something else, be yourself, and maybe you can get out of the trap. I’ll take my leave now. Hope you’re in better spirit the next time we meet.”
Nausica watched Angor as he walked away. She then looked at the burning smoke in her hand, seemingly enlightened.
…
Angor returned to the apprentice town. When walking through a small alleyway, he saw a young man dressed in a strange style trying to attract a bird wearing a checkered suit. The man was holding some bird food in his palm while mimicking some “tweeting”, obviously hoping that the bird would come to him.
The bird was, naturally, Toby. As for the young man… Angor did not know him. Judging from his strange clothing, he should be an apprentice wizard.
Angor’s arrival soon caught their attention.
The young man looked around cautiously. Using the occasional sunlight which slipped past the Tree of Eternity, Angor was able to see him clearly.
The man was wearing a round and weird-shaped metal hat. There were… screw nuts and antennas on top of the hat. Angor could not make out his face because he was wearing a pair of brown goggles which took up half of his face. His remaining clothing was fine. Brown coat, green pants. He also had a red scarf around his neck.
The young man was also checking out Angor at the same time.
Angor reached out a hand, which caused the young man to back away cautiously. The man soon realized that Angor did not mean to greet him at all. The bird, which had been ignoring his attempt, circled around in the air and perched on Angor’s extended hand.
The young man watched as Toby showed friendliness to Angor and wondered, “That’s your familiar?”
“Familiar? No. He’s my friend, Toby,” said Angor as he put Toby on his shoulder. He then pointed at himself and said, “Name’s Angor. I’m a new recruit who just joined Brute Cavern this year.”
Seeing how Angor introduced himself and the bird, the young man removed his goggles, somewhat bashfully, and revealed his face which was troubled by some freckles. He said, “I’m Dave, from 2nd grade. Although I’ve been in Brute Cavern for five years. I’m 16 by the way. Oh and don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything to Toby. I just wanted it to help me test out my new flying machine.”
Dave took out a metal stick from his side pouch. It looked like a propeller or something.
“I’m an assistant working at Prome’s Alchemy Shop. This is my first alchemy creation, I call it the Propeller Flyer,” said Dave. He showed his tiny propeller around and revealed a frustrated expression as he said, “I don’t have enough materials so I could only make a small one. I can’t use it myself, and I need to find a small creature to test it. That’s why when I saw the bird—”
“I see. But birds can fly on their own, no?”
Dave paused for a moment and quickly realized his mistake, “Yeah right! I totally forgot this!”
He seemed like crying now as he said, “Oh jeez. I guess I’ll try to catch a rabbit near the river then…”
“It’s fine. Let’s test it on Toby. I’ll ask Toby not to use its wings as long as it’s not dangerous. Even if the test failed, Toby can still escape on itself instead of falling,” said Angor. He was also interested in the small machine.
Angor recalled seeing the kinetic illustrations in the alchemy books he recorded in Nightmare Realm. He was wondering which one Dave used.
…
A moment later, Dave affixed the propeller flyer onto Toby’s back.
“You can do it, Toby!” Angor cheered.
Toby gave Angor a disdainful look. When Angor went close, the bird slapped his face with a paw. Toby did not reveal its talon, or that would definitely leave four bloody gashes on Angor. However, Angor would still get a bruise out of this.
“Time to take off!” Dave had really high hopes on Toby.
Dave extended a finger and injected some mana into the energy source of his machine.
“Magic crystals are too expensive, so I’ll use my mana as energy for now,” Dave explained.
As the machine received mana, it slowly started to run. A red light on the stick shined, then the propeller began to spin quickly. With a dumbfounded Toby under it, the machine climbed up into the air.
And up.
And up…
They watched as Toby became a tiny dot in the sky.
Angor looked at Dave and asked, “How do you change directions?”
Dave gave Angor an innocent smile as he admitted, “I haven’t finished something like that yet.”
Angor widened his eyes in anger as he snapped, “Then what’s the point of your machine?!”
He looked up and yelled out, “Toby! Toby! Get rid of the machine!”
Toby, who was now carried into the clouds, was thinking about its colorful life as a bird as well as whether it should stay this way or throw the machine away. When hearing Angor’s faint call, Toby quickly acted.
With a fierce flap of the wings, the machine on its back was tossed away.
Next, Toby descended slowly and landed on Angor’s shoulder.
On the other side, Dave walked to them, head lowered and holding a broken flying machine in his hand.
Angor thought Dave was sad about his broken creation, so he planned to say something to comfort Dave. He was the one who asked Toby to drop the machine after all.
But when Angor walked closer, he realized Dave was not sad at all. Rather, Dave could barely hide his grin.
“Heehehehe, it flew! Brilliant! I succeeded!”
So… being able to fly meant success? Angor showed a sympathetic look at Dave. The young man got a really short-sighted expectation.
But Angor’s sympathy quickly turned into a complaint.
Can you please say it earlier if there’s some kind of flaws in your product?!
Thank goodness Toby understood human speech, and that he could fly. Another creature would be hopeless in that situation.
That would be murder!