“In the wizarding world, even if you’re someone’s student, you still obey the rule of equivalent exchange. Knowledge is most valuable to wizards, so, what can you give me in return?”
A figure in the darkness revealed its bloody mouth. “If your talent isn’t enough, your life will be!”
The figure lunged at Angor. Angor felt the world in front of him breaking apart. The last thing he knew was lying on the ground, covered in blood, while someone was standing beside his corpse, laughing maniacally.
Angor bounced from his bed with his back wet with cold sweat. His enlarged pupils were filled with panic and fear. It took some time for him to calm his breath and wipe off some sweat drops from his forehead.
“A dream…” Angor rubbed his temples. He sighed, “And I hope it stays that way.”
Gentle sunlight shone through the window and cast mottled shadows on his soft hair, waking the little creature sleeping inside.
“Twee, tweet.” a bird the size of two palms named Toby stretched its wings as if it was yawning. He sat up from Angor’s blond hair.
Angor grabbed the creature in his hand. “You little chick. Messing my hair when I was asleep! Why do you like my hair so much anyway? I think I need to get a hat sooner,” Angor muttered.
Toby was not angry at Angor’s action. When Angor tossed him away, he flew to the side and picked out a small, bubble-like capsule from Angor’s bag.
Toby flapped his wings and placed the capsule in front of Angor.
It was a single-use space capsule left by Greya. It contained necessities for Toby as well as some reward for Angor.
This was the seventh day on the cloud whale. Angor never opened it. Considering Greya’s deep love towards Toby, who knew how much stuff was packed inside the capsule? And it was only one-use. If it could fill up several rooms with its content, where should Angor put them? This was the reason why Angor left it there. He was planning to open it when he found a stable residence at Brute Cavern.
But Toby dropped the capsule in front of him now, which meant… the bird was asking him to open it?
“You want me to break it open?”
“Tweet.” Toby nodded using its tiny head.
Angor frowned and tried to ask, “Are there a lot of things? If so, can we wait until we settle down at Brute Cavern?”
Toby blinked its innocent eyes as if saying “can’t understand you, sir!”
Angor’s lips twitched. Greya told him that Toby was smart enough to interpret human speech, right? It could not talk, true, but listening to him should be no problem, right?
Or was the little bastard trying to avoid questions it did not want to answer?
Angor looked at Toby up and down in doubt while the bird still stared at him with its adorable eyes.
Usually, Toby could understand him just fine. However, every time Angor tried to tell the bird not to stay in his hair, it always began to act innocent. The little asshole was fooling him all along!
“I can’t read a bird’s face, otherwise I’d have beaten you up for good!” Angor mumbled to himself. If Toby was a human, his expression must be saying something like “what can you do about it huh?!”
Angor considered and finally picked up the space capsule.
“What do you want from it so badly?”
Toby did not play dumb this time. It pointed a wing towards some clothes on the bedstand – those blue and white costume Toby had been wearing these days. Accompanied by a small pouch, they looked very similar to those mail pigeon garment in a fairytale.
Angor looked at the clothes, then back at Toby, who was not wearing anything now. “… You want to get changed?”
Toby quickly nodded.
“Why does a freaking bird need to change clothes, for god’s sake?! Your mailman garb is still good, why don’t you just keep that on for some days?” Angor nearly yelled that out. Even Nausica lifted her curtain from across and looked towards Angor’s direction in puzzlement.
Angor quickly nodded to her as an apology. Nausica gave the boy a charming smile and lowered her curtain back down.
Angor shut his curtain as well. Then he turned and glared at Toby.
Toby immediately returned to his “this cute little bird can’t get what you humans are doing!” posture.
Angor felt stumped. He sighed and walked aside with the space capsule in his hand.
Geez. Let’s hope there isn’t too much stuff in there…
Angor pinched the capsule with his thumb and index finger. The capsule popped open, followed by some blurry, watery and smoky objects that completely broke the law of dimensional space. When the space ripple vanished, a pile of things appeared in front of Angor.
The pile almost occupied a tenth of the tent’s available space. They did not look like much, but solid materials appearing out of thin air still shocked Angor. What frustrated him most was that 99% of the objects were… spare clothes.
Laced dress, shirts with contrast colors, gentleman attire, chef uniform… Are those armors and scale mails for knights? How could its tiny body fit in them?!
That was not all. Angor noticed a number of “animal costumes” in there. Bunny ears, fishtails, little bear… Why the heck did an animal need to wear animal suits? And was that a cat-girl cosplay suit? Was the bird male or female anyway?!
There was something else apart from the clothes, including dishes, cups, small blankets, and wooden beds.
Angor’s eyes brightened upon seeing the bed. “Now the bird won’t bother my hair, right?”
Angor arranged Toby’s stuff quickly and signaled the bird to choose what it wanted.
Instead, Toby dragged a small sack from under the clothes. A line of curlicue words was printed on it: “To Angor”
This must be Greya’s gift. With curiosity, Angor opened the sack and found about 30 coin-shaped transparent crystals in it.
He would not know what these were before coming to the cloud whale. However, he read many books in his teacher’s collection room and learned a lot of common knowledge. The transparent crystals in the sack were universal currencies used in this world. It was called “magic crystals”. As Angor recalled, Mara said that his annual income was less than 100 crystals, and the Ice Coffin of Healing scroll he gave Jon only worth a little less than 30 crystals.
How things changed… Angor thought he owed Mara a lifelong debt because of the scroll. Now, he had not even reached the wizarding world yet and he already owned 30 magic crystals. Maybe this was also a destiny?
Angor carefully put the small sack inside his pocket.
When Angor was done, Toby also chose a suit it wanted.
It was a black gentleman suit decorated with a claret-red bow-tie, added with a top hat in the same black color. Angor helped Toby get dressed. When this was done, Toby picked up the hat, walked in front of Angor’s face, and raised its head proudly, The meaning behind this gesture was clear.
Angor got a mixed feeling.
Did that little arse just sneer at him for having to go buy a hat on his own?!
Angor was confident in his idea. Considering Toby’s terrible nature, it definitely would do something like this.