Two weeks had flashed by.
Angor finished reading his tablet near the end of the Month of Offering. He had gone through everything that might provide him an answer to the cause, and the remaining books were all low-level cantrip tutorials or worthless magazines.
He leaned back on his chair and moaned in frustration.
Is there nothing I can do? Should I speak to Professor Sunders after all? But... he probably hasn’t returned from the Abyss Plane yet.
Or should I find Greya?
He had two purposes for coming to the wizarding world, one of which was to prevent Jon’s fated death. Now he felt hopeless and powerless.
Auri was knocking on his door again, which she had been doing often during the last few days. This “personal maid” of Angor didn’t quite understand what Angor meant by “seclusion” and insisted on checking on Angor and bringing him a food cart now and then. In her view, human beings couldn’t live without food and water for too long.
Auri thought she was going to get sent away again, but Angor suddenly called to her using a tired voice, “Come inside.”
The maid perked up and quickly pulled her cart into the room. She then saw Angor slumped at his desk with a weary look.
“Are you alright, sir?”
“I’m fine.” Angor saw Auri’s look of disbelief and added, “Really.”
Auri wanted to get rid of the awkward silence but failed to figure out what to say since she had no idea what Angor had been doing, so she could only repeat some good-old caring words such as “take care of your health”.
Angor simply listened while watching Auri readying several dishes of snacks.
“Did anything interesting happen while I wasn’t looking?”
This was why Angor allowed Auri to come today. He wished to learn what happened to the refugees after Leon made a plan about them. However, he didn’t directly ask such a question, so Auri could only answer as she saw fit.
Most of what she described was about the Krakoks. With the help of the house servants, they had established the basic frames of a cozy little village. The servants of Padt Manor offered to help them build, but they were rejected by Kumomo, who didn’t wish to trouble them too much. However, Auri later heard the true reason from Latata—the Krakoks just didn’t want to use the “poor and disagreeable roosts” made by mortal hands.
“Oh, Mayor Latata asked me to deliver a message to you. They haven’t come up with a name for their new home, and they hope you can present them one the next time you visit,” said Auri.
Next was about Toby and Moonlily Fairy. For some reason, these two creatures who didn’t seem like proper partners at all would often head into the mountains recently.
Then there was Nano the Fibber. According to Latata, she and her “sisters” managed to save three pieces of silk from Nano before Nano could dye them, which of course, infuriated Nano for good. The Fibber had not shown up in public in two days.
What Auri said was mostly about the manor. She didn’t know much about what happened around the town.
“Do you know what Leon’s been up to?”
“Mister Viscount would spend most of the day away from us. I think he’s working on something at the refugee camp, together with Mister George.”
“What’s the situation at the camp?”
“I don’t know...” Auri was never someone to care too much about what was beyond the manor.
However, she still provided a piece of interesting info.
“When I went to the blacksmith the other day, he told me there were fewer refugees coming to town, and those who did come would all leave shortly after.”
So Leon already started restricting them? Angor pondered.
After hearing everything Auri could say and having his meal, Angor sent the maid on her way and re-deployed his nightmare domain in the room.
He then sat back in front of his desk and took out the Church of the Deceased.
First, he looked at Torras, who was chilling out on his bed while reading a book—*Dancing on Devil’s Tides—*in his compartment. It was an adventure storybook based on “Vile King” Torras, who was believed to be a legendary pirate from 2,000 years ago. Angor also read the book before, by which time he quite liked the heroic character in it.
However, he chose to forget everything he saw in the book as soon as he saw Torras’ young look that almost appeared as a teenager.
“I killed the legendary pirate ‘Red Beard’? Did I?! Maybe I did, but I forgot. Red Beard was so good though. This means I’m better than him!” Torras muttered out loudly while reading.
Angor rolled his eyes.
According to The Shining Age of Silver, the pirate called Red Beard was only a child of five or six when Torras was at the climax of his notoriety. These two had no chance of confronting each other. In addition, Dancing on Devil’s Tides was a fiction, not a historical record. It was totally acceptable if the author tried to make the stories more fun by slightly altering the facts.
He didn’t want to look at Torras’ boasting. He quickly moved his attention to another room in the church after briefly noting down the soul condition of Torras.
The neighboring room used to be Freud’s temporary residence. It was left empty after Freud remained at Ferran, but Angor still kept the room’s illusion here.
Freud left many written records, including the tutorial of “Dream Walk”.
Angor had been spending some time each day studying this cantrip. However, he didn’t make much progress yet because this one was completely out of his field of expertise, and he had to focus on reading the tablet.
But since he found nothing from the tablet, he planned to concentrate on learning the cantrip next. It would both help him look into Jon’s dream and handle the Dream Whelk more properly.
Most of the study required him to be asleep, which helped him make up for his lost vigor for the past few weeks.
After another week, he finally stepped out of his room for the first time in the month.
Each time he went sleeping, he tried to make a “lucid dream” happen so that he could observe or even control the dream better. Yet he never succeeded.
He decided to take a day off and go outdoors. At this rate, working too hard wouldn’t help with anything, if not counterproductive.
It was already evening. He released his spirit power and saw Auri and Mana cleaning the main hall of the manor, while Latata and several of her partners were chatting nearby.
Angot felt content, seeing how the Krakoks were doing well with the servants. At least he fulfilled his promise to the Grand Priest.
Without bothering them, he walked to the Milkberry Tree.
Toby immediately left his fairy partner and gave Angor a kiss on the cheek. It wasn’t wrong to say that Toby had considered Angor his family now. He meant to show his longing affection after being away from Angor for a month.
When Angor and Toby were done greeting each other, the Moonlily Fairy joined them while carrying a glass bigger than its body.
It was another glass of milk from the tree blended with candy syrup, and it was emitting a strong but lovely sweetness into the air.
Angor was slightly surprised to see the fairy’s gift. As he remembered, this creature used to be extremely timid and would hide behind Toby upon seeing anyone. It seemed that after spending some time in Padt Manor, this creature had changed.
He had no problem enjoying the drink.
A voice called from behind him when he was only halfway through the milk.
“Hey, Angor!”
Angor froze up and noticed Leon approaching him from the main gate.
Leon saw Angor’s lips still full of white liquid and tried not to smile too openly.
“Did you come out here in the dark for a sip?”
Angor wiped his mouth and feigned an inattentive expression. “The fairy just gave me this. It isn’t polite to reject it, right?”
Leon maintained a straight face as if asking “you serious?”.
“Ahem. It’s late.” Angor looked away in embarrassment. “Busy with the refugees?”