Jebra had turned into a puddle of water and was swiftly traveling to the sea through a river.
When he arrived at the estuary, a human-shaped figure made of water element suddenly blocked his way.
“Professor!” Jebra quickly canceled his cantrip and addressed his teacher.
Flunza’s voice came from the water avatar, “I’ve heard about everything from Sliv.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I messed up...” Jebra lowered his head.
“Not your fault. No one could have predicted the Dream Whelk showing up here. While you did make more than one mistake, as long as you didn’t fight Angor for real, then you still have chances to mend your relations.”
“Do I go after him again, sir? I think he knows I’ve been following him. He told me to leave him alone.”
Flunza asked a question instead, “Did you mention anything about buying that water affinity enhancement item?”
“No. We almost started a fight back there, and Angor was wary of me. I didn’t bring that matter up.”
“Good.” Flunza tapped his temple. “Say, do you want to keep up with this job?”
“Absolutely not. Mister Sliv’s Detect Truth spell just confirmed it for us that Angor’s not involved with the missing Mystery item. But... if you still need me to get that music box...”
“Let’s give up since you don’t want to. In such a case, letting Angor see you again too soon will just disunite us further.”
“So we won’t go after that music box?”
“We will. As I said, I have the feeling the alchemy creation is vital to our organization. With it, those following us will quickly surpass the other members, by which time we will gain enough force to oppose Emmagan’s group.”
“But... how do we do it if Angor’s so suspicious of us?”
“Remember, everything in the wizarding world has a solution as long as you offer enough cost. Even the most distrustful enemies can sit down and have a nice talk if there’s enough profit at hand. Besides, Angor is far from being our enemy yet.”
“We’ll use more ‘bait’ to earn his trust then?”
Flunza nodded with a grin. “Mori has returned to us. During her travel, she discovered an abandoned laboratory left by Spivet the deceiving wizard and salvaged an item that can help Illusionists.”
Jebra quickly understood where this was going.
“I didn’t think this was necessary since you and Angor were going swimmingly.” Flunza continued, “But now... we can use this item to bargain with him. It’s fine. We have no Illusionist among our rank anyway.”
“When do I approach Angor again?”
“At least not any time soon. At his age, Angor needed time to fully get over the annoyance we caused him. Let me see... you shall remain at the Land of Revelation for now. Send some people to watch over the ports operated by the White Clam Association. When Angor finishes his home visit and is going back to Fey Continent, he’ll certainly show up on one of their ships.”
Jebra felt glad that he finally got to spend some time of his own.
“I have a bit more time before I remove this avatar. Do you have something else to tell me, such as the problems you encountered during your training?” asked Flunza.
“No, sir. But I saw something interesting in Freighting Town...”
...
Gondola traveled above the Whalebone Sea smoothly when Tulu slowly came to with a “where am I and who am I?” expression. But before he could figure out these questions, Angor asked him to take over the job as a driver.
Meanwhile, Angor rested on a chair while thinking about what just happened between him and Freud.
At first, Freud wasn’t willing to accept the Follower’s Oath and work on the “Dream Whelk Project” together with him. Then Freud offered otherwise once Angor made enough progress at the project.
This didn’t make sense.
To Angor, having Freud on board or not didn’t make much difference because he would always be the one who actually handled the whelk and used his illusions and skills to experiment on different theories, while Freud could only offer suggestions.
Even so, he didn’t mind fulfilling Freud’s wish since Freud was the one who initiated the project after all.
During the following days, Angor simply took it easy by spacing out during the day while studying Dream Walk at night by using Tulu as a practice target. Of course, he never forgot about spreading his spirit feelers into the sea to check if he had any unwanted followers.
He found none. It seemed that Jebra listened to his warning.
He no longer had to worry about the Centipede Guild or curious Prophets while under the protection effect of Crimson Aegis, which meant he no longer needed to keep using Glamor to maintain his middle-aged image. However, he found his fake look to go well with the days on Gondola, during which he mostly slacked off by either sea-gazing or napping. He knew it was unlikely, but Sunders would scold him for good if the gentleman saw his current condition.
When they were still together at Phantom Island, Angor noticed from Sunders’ inspective looks that Sunders always paid attention to his conduct even though the man never mentioned anything about it.
For some reason, Angor found it to be more comforting if he spent his “easy days” behind his camouflage.
Similar days repeated until almost a month had passed.
The Whalebone Sea was the last part of their travel before reaching Old Earth. According to Tulu’s estimations, they only needed a few more days before reaching their destination, or even faster.
Whenever Angor thought about seeing his family soon, he couldn’t help but get anxious, or even a little afraid.
He had only been away for four years, but during these four years, he encountered and learned too many things about wizardry and had his life endangered many times, all the while constantly worrying about his five-year promise to Jon. To him, these years appeared to be way longer than they should be.
All the memories he sealed in his mind were coming back in a burst along with uncontrollable excitement. He couldn’t wait to see Jon, his brother, Head Maid Mana, and everyone else back at Padt Manor, as well as all the townsfolk at Grue Town.
Gondola was fast. Yet nothing was fast enough in his eyes now.
Finally, in the middle of the Month of Blossom, they saw the coastal border of Old Earth.
It was the Month of Freezing Earth when he left home. He still had eight months before his promise expired.
They still needed some time before reaching Old Earth for real. While Angor anxiously waited for the distance to shorten, he suddenly frowned when he felt an obvious decrease in elements around him.
The otherwise active elements soon turned stale and stagnant. He could still use them, but only if he spent much more extra mana. Thankfully, he didn’t feel anything wrong when channeling his mana. Tricks that didn’t involve calling the elements in the environment still worked fine, such as illusions.
He never realized such a problem as a mortal before. Now that he was an apprentice capable of sensing and using elements, he could almost see that the element condition around Old Earth was different than anywhere else.
No wonder no wizards would come to this place, especially Elementalists.
When leaving Brute Cavern, apart from the recruitment quest, Angor also picked up another quest that asked him to investigate the particular lack of elements at Old Earth, which had been left neglected for decades. Since the quest didn’t have an “admission fee” nor did it incur any penalty for failure, he just accepted it to give it a shot.
But what he just felt told him that the quest was way harder than he thought. The number of elements in the air had no particular spread pattern and was scarce no matter where he looked, which meant he couldn’t follow the elements to find where they disappeared to.
To find the cause, he might have to spend several years searching every nook and cranny around the entire Old Earth, which still didn’t guarantee a sure result.
This was probably why nobody had come up with any useful clues for this quest even though many organizations were looking for helpers for it.
Thinking about this, Angor instantly decided to forget about this quest. He had to get home as soon as possible.
They landed their boat along a beach area where they saw no people or other boats.
Copying what they did first when getting to the Land of Revelation, they headed straight inland so that they could find someone to ask for directions.
When they flew over a small mountain, Tulu slowed down Gondola and pointed to somewhere ahead of them. “Mister Padt, I see smoke. Maybe someone’s there.”