The sand in the hourglass shifted. Suddenly, Sunders addressed Crow with a question, “Mister Crow. Did you come to the wizarding world by normal means?”
Crow looked at him without speaking.
“So my guess is correct. Your life is near the end, no?”
Crow threw his head up. His questioning gaze towards Sunders was filled with coldness.
“What are you implying?” asked Crow as he used the same foreign accent.
“Nothing really. I only want to tell you one thing. Smuggling yourself to the wizarding world is no small matter. Oh, also, you shouldn’t trust wizards’ promises too easily.”
With that, Sunders looked at Sliv again.
“‘Sorcerer of Big Fish’ Sliv. Next time we meet each other, I hope you bring a Residential Permit for Crow. Otherwise, you will be meeting someone else instead, the law enforcers from Supreme Cult.”
Next, Flora threw her scroll in the air under Sliv’s shocked stare.
A strange-shaped rupture appeared in front of them.
As Sliv watched in disbelief, Sunder led Flora into the rupture and disappeared.
Sliv could not believe his own eyes. He messed up a sure chance! And how in tarnation could they use their teleportation?!
Sliv directed an angered look towards Crow.
Crow shook his head. “The Psychic Space Barrier wasn’t triggered. They didn’t leave via a plane passageway.”
Sliv extended his spiritual feeler as well. There were no space ripples around.
Damn it! Then how did they escape?! A replacement spell? Can’t be. There weren’t spell ripples either.
Sliv almost went mad. He was not planning to let Sunders live at all. He already ordered the wizards from Song of the Deep to prepare to keep Sunders here forever no matter what the man chose. Otherwise, they would face terrible consequences.
Retaliation from Sunders or Brute Cavern was another thing. The biggest problem was Crow’s identity.
A wild smuggler from another plane was not a big deal, but an extremely power smuggler was. If the Supreme Cult accused Sliv of “exposing wizardry secrets” because of Crow, he would be in real trouble.
However, just by revealing secret would not help Crow get into the wizarding world if he did not have a guide.
Sliv did not reveal any secret for that matter. He only made a deal with Crow. He hired Crow as an in-house bouncer for Song of the Deep while paying him Life Extension Potions. If the Supreme Cult investigated him, his best bet would be claiming that he only made a deal with Crow around the potions. However, if something went wrong, the cult could accuse him of revealing secrets about alchemy potions to a smuggler from another world. That would be disastrous!
Damn it all!
Sliv clenched his fists with nowhere to vent his anger.
His bold move did not earn him anything besides grudge from Sunders. To prevent being investigated by the Supreme Cult, he must do something about Crow as well. Everything went wrong!
What Sliv was not expecting was that something even worse was waiting for him.
…
The cloud whale glided leisurely under the thunderclouds.
After being showered by the lightning bolts several days ago, the ranch outside was in a bad shape. Thank goodness the weather turned better. The thunderclouds were still there, but the lightning grew weaker.
Angor moved back to his own small tent.
Today, Angor took a nap at noon and left the tent with a great spirit. Without Sunders and Flora around, he felt relaxed. Even Toby did not disrupt his good mood by tweeting on top of his head.
He strolled into Sunders’ beautiful tent. Toby launched itself from Angor’s hair, circled around, and flew towards the dining hall. Butler Goode made a small compartment for Toby. There were all kinds of food and toys for the bird in there.
Angor went straight to the book room and shut the door and curtain. After making sure he did not miss out anything, he took out a bronze pocket watch from his clothes.
Aleen gave him the watch when he left The Redbud.
The pocket watch had an oval-shaped flip cover, which was decorated by an embossed flower pattern. Opening the cover would reveal a white and clean dial inside.
Angor did not open the cover. Instead, he screwed the back cover open and revealed the delicate gears and springs behind it.
He carefully picked up a square crystal as thin as insect wings from the side of one of the gears.
The thin crystal was a valuable gift left by Jon—the hologram tablet.
To keep it safe, Angor never took it out while Sunders and Flora were still on the cloud whale. Since they left, Angor would well use the tablet as best as he could.
Sunders said that Angor was free to read all books in the library before they reached Fey Continent. There were a lot of books here. More than a hundred thousand paper books were placed on the bookshelves in good order. Angor could not remember them all, so he only chose a few to read before reaching Goman Kingdom, and he only finished about a hundred of them.
Now that Sunders was away, Angor got a new idea.
The tablet could record images, so he could keep all the books in it!
On the second day after Sunders left, Angor became a cameraman and spent most of his time photographing the books.
This was the fifth day of his “career”. He had finished recording 99 percent of the books. There were only a few leather collections left.
It went smoothly. When the oil lamp on the desk dimmed, he finished the last book.
Angor checked the time. It was still too early for dinner, so he activated the tablet to arrange all the pictures he took.
He did not check the content of the books during these days but he still had a vague idea about the distribution of books in Sunders’ collection room.
All the books seemed to be collected by Sunders personally. There were 11 double-sided bookshelves, all of which were four meters high. There were about more than a hundred thousand books on them.
The first two bookshelves mainly contained books related to apprentices and common wizardry knowledge.
Starting from the third bookshelf were books about formal wizards. The third shelf was mostly aged leather books. Most of the leather covers were cracked. The books mainly contained traveling stories of wizards in ancient times or anecdotes. There were also some ancient spells. The book Initial Glory which recorded the creation of the very first meditation method was also here.
The fourth held more books about wizards, but there were more biographies and tips on wizard training than spell books. The fifth to the tenth shelf were most attractive for Angor. There were many miscellaneous arts, such as Drawing Spell Patterns , Basic Alchemy , Material Extraction , Illustration Manual for Monsters in Abyss Plane … They were only elementary books though. Sunders’ book room did not contain anything about in-depth content.
Angor guessed that Sunders arranged the books before letting him in, to make him find his own path by reading about various knowledge.