Like everyone else who traveled on Gondola for the first time, Tulu was extremely astonished to see the masterful vehicle that sailed across the sky. While admiring the starry decorations and the trail of bubbles left behind, he couldn’t help but exclaim in awe, which helped him forget about his injury.
This lasted for a while until he got slightly used to it. He finally had time to talk to Angor.
“Are we going to Fey Continent right now, Mister Padt?”
Angor was leaning against the railing while pretending to be resting. He replied without opening his eyes, “Not yet. I’m recruiting more talents elsewhere. Our next stop is the Land of Revelation.”
Tulu looked at the Exodus Channel ahead and frowned. “But... Mister Padt? Aren’t we going toward Devil’s Water? I think Land of Revelation is in the opposite direction.”
Angor opened his eyes this time. “Devil’s Water?”
He looked toward where Tulu was pointing to and saw the Exodus Lighthouse, which suggested the supply depot they came across on The Limpet several months ago. He still remembered how the island folks welcomed their ship with great enthusiasm when they got out of Devil’s Water back then.
“But I was following the map...” He took out his sea chart and checked. Yet no matter how he looked, the landmark ahead told him that he had been going the wrong way.
“Ahem. I made a mistake...” Angor tried to hide his embarrassment. “Where should we go?”
“That way, sir.” Tulu read the map and pointed in another direction.
“Let’s do it then. I didn’t have time to make careful plans when I was too busy with my work. Okay, you take the map and take control of Gondola so that I have more spare time to resume my research.”
Without allowing Tulu to say otherwise, Angor immediately instructed him how to steer Gondola.
While Tulu could not channel magic to power up the boat yet, he had no problem handling the directions.
Tulu felt greatly excited for the new experience. And using his expertise as a sailor, they soon arrived at a brand new area—the Blackberry Waters.
This was supposed to be Nausica’s old territory. It could be seen that Nausica loved her former glory because she even called herself the “King of Blackberry” when fighting in Sky Tower.
When Tulu saw that Angor was casually enjoying the sea breeze instead of “doing research”, he offered to introduce what he knew about these parts.
Like most people, Tulu talked about Nausica’s name with great respect. And when Angor grew interested in his attitude, he answered while blushing a little, “It was Officer Helen who told me about Nausica. And man, her stories are awesome! A heroine that dominated the entire Blackberry Waters! That’s not much different from Torras the legendary pirate.”
Angor saw Tulu’s twinkling eyes and teased, “Who knows, maybe you’ll get to see both of them once you become an apprentice.”
However, he wasn’t going to explain what he meant by that. He felt his mood dropping again when mentioning Torras’ name, so he simply closed his eyes and emptied his mind.
...
While they enjoyed their travel peacefully, the southern wizarding world couldn’t say the same as a looming turmoil had added a great burden to the minds of many wizards.
It all started because of the grand exhibition at Devil’s Water that did not have an equally grand ending.
Many wizarding organizations sent their manpower there, only to find a “dead dimension” with nothing of interest inside. However, these wizards dared not direct their frustration for wasting their time against Song of the Deep or Summerdew Ridge, since they weren’t supposed to be there in the first place. Song of the Deep and Summerdew Ridge even spent great resources to deploy an anti-prophecy ward with obvious intentions.
But their grievance had to go somewhere. And here, they chose to put all blame on where the rumors came from—Mariyasah.
Mariyasah quickly became the target of many accusations, but he didn’t care much about them because such recriminations were pointless against a truth-finder wizard from Floating Mech City.
As people expected, this matter would slowly get forgotten by people as time passed by.
Yet things did not turn out this way.
One day, a famous magazine named Grove of Time
Grove of Time was edited by the congress of the City of Truth and was usually regarded as a very authoritative material in the southern region. The City of Truth was a major wizarding organization that ruled over an entire appendage plane and was mightier than Brute Cavern and Floating Mech City, both in size and strength. In fact, Mister Monkey from Moonfrost Union was once a member of the City of Truth. And even today, he remained as an important guest member of the congress.
For these reasons, people usually considered Grove of Time to be a reliable source of information, unlike the other magazines.
Grove of Time released a new issue every ten years, and the time for a new volume was pretty close. Conventionally, it usually provided important messages or newly discovered technologies. For example, this time, it used several pages to describe Sumesh’s achievement and another major column to talk about Greya’s new spell, in which Angor’s name was also mentioned.
But those weren’t important right now.
People were more interested in an article that described a new method for blocking prophecy spells, which was exactly the one used at Devil’s Water. Furthermore, the magazine openly pointed out a flaw in the anti-prophecy ward, much to the annoyance of Song of the Deep.
[Using what is available at hand, we successfully breached the ward that protected Silver Palm Isle. According to the energy signatures we recorded, there was indeed a Mystery item. By now, it is safe to say that the rumor regarding a tactical mystery weapon is truthful. Unfortunately, the item was already missing when the Leviathan fully opened the dimension entrance. We do not know exactly when the item was taken or where it went. Without a general direction to search, using a prophecy to locate the item will cost immeasurable resources, so no further investigation will be carried out for now.]
The article was originally intended to introduce the prophecy-prevention technology. But people were all concerned about the other clue, that Mariyasah wasn’t lying about the tactical weapon in the dark dimension.
More importantly, Grove of Time claimed that nobody seized the item during the hunt. Not even Song of the Deep or Summerdew Ridge. They made lots of preparations beforehand and were at an absolute advantage.
This had left people wondering about where the item ended up. And since Grove of Time also agreed to call the item a “tactical weapon”, everyone would also like to know what the item was used for.
They expected to see a wizarding organization claiming ownership of the item in due time, but no one did.
And because of this, people suspected that it was a smaller organization or even an individual who got their hands on the item.
No one spoke their minds out loud, but they all secretly prepared their own plans.
...
Inside a temporary magic hut in Abyss Plane, Sunders was also reading the newest edition of Grove of Time with a serious look while “Eventide” Kanter sat at the other end of the room.
Kanter glanced through the window and snickered at the apprentices who were constructing barricades outside. He then looked back and saw Samantha, who had been sitting nearby and giving Sunders a suggestive stare.
This world is so unfair... Kanter complained in his mind and picked up the magazine when Sunders dropped it. “Anything interesting in there? Why do you look so pissed?”
Sunders raised an eyebrow. Pissed? Me?
Kanter simply checked the page Sunders was reading.
“Tsk. You’re curious about this tactical weapon as well?”
“Who wouldn’t be? You don’t find many things that have ‘Mystery-level’ and ‘tactical’ in their names at the same time. But... guess we’ll forget about it. We can’t do anything while in the Abyss.”
“Then are you pretending that cool look just to...” Kanter smiled while glancing at Samantha, causing the woman to leave the hut impatiently.
“Didn’t I already say that I’m not interested in broken glass?” Sunders frowned.
Kanter thought about Samantha’s glittering lipstick that looked like shattered glass and smiled.
“Alright alright. What was on your mind then? Seriously.”
Sunders shook his head. “Angor is supposed to be heading to Marginalized Island right now... and he’ll go past Devil’s Water around this time. I hope he’ll not get dragged into it.”
“Oh chill. Devil’s Water is huge. How could an apprentice join those greedy bastards? He’s an ‘academism’. He knows how to stay out of trouble.”
Sunders smiled but didn’t reply.
As Angor’s teacher, he fully knew that, despite that innocent look, the little devil was no less a troublemaker compared to Flora and Sumesh. The boy even thought about destroying the world once.
“Let’s hope so...”