Among the wizards and apprentices who were bidding farewell to Frozen Wing, Angor saw several faces he knew, such as Balba and Dave. But compared to them, Hobson’s “panda suit” really stood out.
Hobson was frantically waving his short cane above his head to draw Angor’s attention. And when he did, he kept repeating something using his lips since Angor couldn’t hear his voice across the distance.
The toy! The toy!
Angor saw it and took out Hobson’s “bear ragdoll” from his bracelet.
“Oh, what is that?” Madelyne also saw it and asked.
“I think it’s just a common toy for a kid. My friend gave it to me. He said it’s really dear to him.”
“A memento of his, perhaps?”
Angor glanced at the pendant on the bear’s neck and nodded. “Must be. It kept him accompanied for a long time.”
Madelyne looked away and sighed. “I used to have something like this when I was still a mortal. But I lost it in an accident. Oh, how I cried back then... But I almost forgot about it after all this time.”
In the prolonged lives of wizards, the passage of time was enough to erase everything. Even the most cherished memories, given several centuries, would be covered under the curtain of age.
Angor looked at the toy in his hand again and wondered what Hobson wanted to tell him. Did Honson only mean to remind him of the toy?
As Angor remembered, it was Dodoro who asked Hobson to send this thing. But this action had not been of any use yet.
No matter how Angor checked, the toy was only a hand-made curio with nothing special in it.
He removed the pendant on the toy and flipped its lid open, revealing a small photo in it that showed a small boy and a woman with an obscured face.
The boy must be Hobson. As for the woman... Hobson claimed he didn’t know who she was.
Angor still had Hobson’s note, which came with the toy. The note said that when Dodoro told Hobson to give Angor the “most precious treasure”, Hobson presented this bear toy.
Angor always trusted Dodoro’s “prophecy”. Dodoro didn’t do this often, and even when he did, he did not easily tell it to others. But as long as the prophecy involved Angor, it was likely something very useful.
“Whatever did Dodoro see...?”
Angor shook his head and decided not to think about it for now. Perhaps it wasn’t time.
When he folded the note and was going to put the pendant back, he glanced at the bottom of the note, where Hobson left his signature.
[Hobson Seeley]
“Seeley?”
Angor usually referred to Hobson by name or simply called him “White Bear”. Now that he saw Hobson’s family name, he felt as if he saw it from somewhere before.
He quickly went through his memories, until he remembered his first visit to Lloyds, when he went there to retrieve Eureka’s goods from Rossum. Back then, Rossum referred to Eureka as “Miss Seeley”.
“Wait. Are Hobson and Eureka perhaps...”
A prophet apprentice with an odd character in Brute Cavern and a fugitive witch who was temporarily living in Padt Manor. Angor would never have put these two together.
“Hey, what’s on your mind? Is this ‘friend’ of yours your girlfriend?” Madelyne joked.
“No, he’s only... a common friend. By the way, Miss Madelyne, may I ask a question?”
“Sure, as long as it’s not personal.”
“Have you heard of someone called the ‘Bloodied Stabber’?”
Madelyne frowned. “Yes. But what for?”
“It’s just... I recently came across something that might involve her.”
“If this is true, I suggest that you stay the hell away from it. Bloodied Stabber badly pissed off Goman King and escaped with lots of shady secrets the Goman Kingdom would like to hide. Knowing something alone can get you into trouble. You can trust me. I came from the Goman Kingdom after all.”
“Yeah... I’ll be careful.”
“Good. So what do you want to know about her? Note that I can’t tell you anything about the treasure she stole. I don’t know a thing about it anyway.”
Madelyne believed that Angor, as an alchemist, simply wanted to know the Mystery treasure Eureka took from Goman King.
“It’s not that. Do you know Eureka’s full name?”
“Her full name?” Madelyne shook her head. “No... But I did hear that she broke into Goman King’s treasure vault because Goman King murdered her family. If you really want to know, you can check the execution roster of the Goman Kingdom. Though it won’t be easy because Goman King tends to kill lots of people every year.”
Angor then tried to remember what happened when he met with Hobson the first time.
Hobson claimed that he was born in the Goman Kingdom. After going through several miserable years and a taxing journey that took him 13 years, he came to Brute Cavern.
By “miserable years”, could Hobson mean to say that his family was wiped out by Goman King, which happened to be what caused Eureka’s betrayal?
Such cliché.
Angor wasn’t going to prove the theory he just came up with. It sounded fun, but it had nothing to do with him whatsoever.
“So Hobson gave me the toy just to remind me that he’s related to Eureka? Hmm...”
The floor below him suddenly shook greatly, interrupting his thoughts.
A space rupture, which appeared like a dark slice in midair, suddenly popped up just behind the right wing of Frozen Wing.
The security on the vehicle immediately saw it and sped up the vehicle to get away.
As soon as the space rupture came into existence, the space around it shattered as if someone punched a mirror. As a giant “spider web” spread beyond the ruptured point, a huge pulling force emerged from it and began drawing whatever stayed too close.
The anomaly did not last very long when another overwhelming power descended and restricted the area of the disaster within a small area. It was the world’s consciousness of the wizarding world attempting to “repair” damages caused by the coming plane fusion.
“Thank the gods that we didn’t run straight into it,” a guard on the vehicle exclaimed in fear. Even powerful wizards wouldn’t do very well if they fell into that thing.
However, people didn’t get to celebrate their peace for too long when they heard that another space rupture appeared right in their way. It was very likely for Frozen Wing to bump into it at this rate because the vehicle was moving at full speed when evading the previous one.
The personnel of the Moonfrost Union quickly scrambled to their posts. As they estimated, they had about ten seconds to slow down Frozen Wing, which should be enough.
Angor thought he could let the professionals handle the situation. But he suddenly felt a pulling force that dragged him into the air. It was Madelyne, who just carried him off the vehicle by dragging his shoulder.
“The vehicle should be able to get away from that, but we should be careful just in case.” Madelyne pointed ahead, where Frozen Wing was leaving with some of its passengers absent. It seemed many wizards just did the same by staying away from the vehicle.
Angor briefly observed the speed of the vehicle and quickly concluded that it would fully stop before reaching the space rupture.
But as he watched, the space rupture ahead suddenly began to gain more size, until it became a black hole several times larger than the previous one.
This time, Frozen Wing couldn’t escape from it.