Originally, Angor was making the music box as a gift for Toby. However, since Sunders mentioned to him that Lady Mirror loved interesting trinkets, Angor decided to make a second one for her. Lady Mirror did save his life, and Angor currently had nothing else to repay such a big favor, so he had to rely on his innovation.
Since it was a gift, the music box had to at least look good on the outside. Even if Lady Mirror would not mind it, for good faith, Angor was still going to try his best.
He took out his pen and paper and began to design.
He learned how to sketch before. Soon enough, the basic shape of a music box appeared under his pen tip.
A small, golden box which revealed a black stage inside, where a dancer dressed in white danced on her toe tips.
It was the same music box Angor saw in his mother’s bedroom during childhood. When wound up, the music box would create crystal tones, while the dancer would dance around along the melody.
Angor inspected his sketch and frowned. It looked like a typical music box that one would find in any toy shop. A child might find it fun, but Lady Mirror should be a real aged being who existed for gods-know-how-long. Angor did not believe that Lady Mirror would be tempted by such a simple doll toy.
He quickly drew several more designs. Heart-shaped, round ones, square… he found every available music box design in his memory.
And no matter how he looked, something always felt wrong about them.
He rubbed his hair and tossed the paper away.
Typical music boxes all needed a certain space to contain the necessary components such as cylinders and springs. But the one he was trying to make was based on Echo Flowers, which did not need all those. He could try to make something a lot different.
But how?
Usually, alchemists who sought new ideas could easily do it by traveling around the world and seeing new things. Angor, however, did not need to do so. When he realized that his vision and experience were still too limited, he simply gave up on thinking further and took out his “cheat”—the hologram tablet.
The system always held more things to discover.
The Earth only witnessed the era of science for a few hundred years, yet thanks to various indescribable human natures, people from Earth had created many ways to satisfy their spiritual needs.
From some of the novels, Angor could see that humans from Earth had not achieved total prosperity. Even then, many of them tended to idle their lives away in pleasure. One of the authors from the novels created a world in which everyone admired young idols, while the main character, or the author himself, became the one that “owned” the idols in the end, and he began to show off his wealth and ego to everyone, gaining much self-satisfaction.
The novel might be exaggerated stories. However, Angor could tell that people from Earth knew a lot of things to entertain their spirits.
The wizarding world also had similar concepts, such as entertainment magazines, adult books, and various story collections. However, they only had limited audiences, unlike what was offered during the era of information explosion on Earth.
Angor found the entertainment section and looked through the folders one by one.
He never checked these files much. He only once read several novels to kill time when he had nothing else to do on the cloud whale. But ever since he came to Brute Cavern, he barely had enough time to meditate, study spells while doing other jobs, so he never checked them again.
The last time he opened these folders was when he chose a piece of music to play.
He went for random files this time, believing that there had to be something that would give him the inspiration he needed.
“Literature… no, they kill too many brain cells. Cheap novels? They always make something big in another world and do everything that looks fun, they don’t have much professional knowledge. How about science articles? I guess not. Cuisine recipes…?”
Angor checked through several food menus out of curiosity. The pictures of different bright dishes quickly reminded him of Jon’s cooking. His mouth watered.
A folder named “art galleries” caught his attention.
He opened the folder and saw various artworks performed by all kinds of famous artists around the Earth.
Angor’s eyes widened again and again when looking at the masterpieces displaying their creators’ great emotions and ideas.
The paintings from both worlds all had similar levels. Well, maybe the wizarding world was better since this world existed for way longer than the history of civilization on Earth.
Angor saw many modern pictures as well, which showed sky-piercing buildings, streams of vehicles and crowds, as well as all kinds of strange-looking shop signs that shined with different colors.
His curiosity about Earth rose again. He really wished to find out how a metropolis that accommodated tens of millions of people looked like.
And he was answered soon enough.
He saw a folder called “films and movies” and wondered what “film” meant until he opened one of the files within and realized he had been missing out a whole new world.
The file was called “Mystery of The Deep Blue”. Under Angor’s command, the tablet projected a new reality around him.
As a narrator told a story in a gentle voice, the scene of an ocean appeared in front of Angor, and the camera suddenly went down from the air and dived into the water, causing schools of fish to scatter around their coral homes in panic…
Angor was shocked speechless by the wonderful display. So this was what “film” meant!
He could not understand the narrator. However, he could see subtitles below that explained the speeches in the same language he learned from Jon, which told him that “Mystery of The Deep Blue” was filed by a foreign storyteller group which meant to tell knowledge about the sea.
Angor quickly got an idea. Since there was something that described the sea, there had to be films about cities!
He quickly scrolled down the files and saw a film called “A Man and A City”. Upon opening the file, someone spoke beside his ears in a language he knew well—Mandarin.
This was the first time Angor heard the language again after leaving Jon. It felt even better when the narrator talked in such a clear, emotional tone.
As the storyteller spoke, beautiful scenery emerged in front of his eyes.
The film described a number of cities with the views of the local residents.
Angor’s dream of learning about the cities of Earth was finally satisfied today. He had been dreaming about the fantastic and mysterious places since he was young, and now he got to witness them by his own eyes.
Angor quickly grew addicted to the film and completely forgot about his original plan. He spent the entire day watching films until midnight.
After “A Man and A City”, he watched a number of films of different genres, including romance, sci-fi, even ancient wuxia.
And he felt greatly satisfied. Of all the films, he preferred watching documentaries, which always helped him learn something about Earth with their neutral, unbiased comments.
When he grew tired, he finally realized it was already the next morning.
Angor looked at his blank draft paper and sighed in frustration. He planned to find innovation from the films and only got dragged into them instead.
He spun his pen between his fingers while trying to recall what he watched. He was not thinking about the music box at all while watching the films. Now that he calmed down to think them over, he noticed he just learned a lot from them which could be helpful in his creation.
Using the great ambition still lingering on his mind, Angor quickly expressed a new idea on the paper and created something with an exotic yet intriguing design.
A number of crystal tubes climbed downward in a spiral manner. Each turn on the rubes was marked with a star, which meant there would be an illusion node placed.
The tubes all moved in different patterns. The simple twists and turns created an overall design which looked like a growing tree.
Angor placed a flower-shaped component in the center of the tubes. This idea came from a gramophone he saw in one of the films. Instead of copying the bronze-colored flower-shaped speaker, he used transparent crystals plus pale paints to express the form of shifting sea waves.
The simple sketch on the paper already looked luxuriously artistic. Angor hoped that his final product could be as astonishing.
Since the shape and illusion nodes were determined, Angor would need to find proper materials and decide which music and illusion to use.