Angor led Mara to the stilt house where his teacher was.
“Mister Mara, my teacher must be resting inside. Please wait here so I can go in and inform him.”
Mara nodded and watched Angor go upstairs first.
“This is a peculiar house. Never thought I could run into such structures in Old Earth,” Mara silently commented on the appearance of the stilt house. He witnessed many buildings with strange shapes in the Fey Continent. This house showed great ingenuity, true, but it was a work of mortals after all. He praised its craftsmanship just because a mortal could build such an amazing sight.
Unlike Mara who was only merely interested in the house, Alan and Aleen could not hold back their curiosity and circled around the house in wonder. They even went under the rain to observe Jon’s vegetables and fruits near the wine rack.
They were still young. Trying to pretend to be mature did not help in concealing the childishness they occasionally showed. This pure innocence made everyone around them smile. Seeing how they were so interested in the grape trellis, Leon took out two bottles of red wine which had been preserved in the cellar for two years and offered everyone a glass.
The wine was rich and fragrant. As for drinking companions, Leon and Eton began chatting about the front line. Eton would like to get rid of the silent awkwardness too, so he happily chimed in with Leon and joined in the leisurely atmosphere.
After getting away from them, Angor came to the second floor and woke up the mute servant. He helped his teacher get dressed, then sent the servant away and told Jon why he came.
With his night sleep interrupted, Jon felt hazy for a moment, until he suddenly rose with a start when Angor mentioned “wizard”.
“Wizard? You met a wizard?” Jon grasped Angor’s sleeve as he exclaimed in disbelief.
“Yes. A Level-3 Apprentice Wizard, to be exact. At least Mara just called himself that.”
Confusion and curiosity appeared in Jon’s expression briefly. He then mumbled in enlightenment, “This is it. This is it! Everything is explained now. Wizards, wizards! This is why many physics formulas I researched on all these years couldn’t be used here… I was wrong from the very beginning. This is not an ordinary world, there are supernatural powers here!
“Ha… I always believed that I was superior to the locals here because of my vision. God, I was the one trapped inside my pitiful vision. Talk about digging myself into a pit!” yelled Jon while looking out of the window with a blank stare.
Those yells carried a strong emotion: unwillingness and repentance.
Everyone else staying in the hall on the first floor also heard this. Mara carefully listened to the regretful self-mockery and questioned, “What’s the meaning of that? It’s not our universal language is it?”
Angor never told him any details about Jon, his origins, or the fact that the Morning Dew was grown by him. Thus, Mara thought that this man called Jon was just a civilian of the empire.
“That was his home tongue. His home was called… China? I don’t know much about it,” said Leon. He was just as confused.
China? Mara searched his memory and did not find any place by that name. A small far-off country in some remote corner of the world maybe? He did not pursue the details any further. He was curious about the great emotion carried by the roar, but as an Apprentice Wizard, he was curious about lots of matters. It was not worth the precious time thinking about the problems of common folks.
Besides, he just became a High Apprentice. All he was thinking about now was to solve Angor’s little problem as fast as possible, leave this place, and get back to the academy for further studies. Nothing was more important than his own improvement in strength.
With that goal set in mind, Mara just closed his eyes and began to meditate.
It did not take very long. Angor soon came back down with Jon, who had recovered his usual temperament.
Jon did not ask Angor for support. Before his legs became wilted, he designed a wheelchair himself which could help him climb the stairs with the help of additional wheels and springs.
As Leon explained this tool, Mara quietly thought.
A true talent in mechanics. He would have made great achievements in the path of alchemy. What a pity that such talent wouldn’t be helping him now, as he’s just too aged.
The first impression Mara had on Jon was fixed on one word – aged.
Mara himself was approaching the age of 80 now. He was not a formal wizard, so he could only watch as time left its traces on him. He tried a number of means of recuperation though, so he currently appeared as someone who had just gotten past 60.
As for Jon… If Angor had not already told him that Jon was only beyond 50, Mara would believe the man in front of him was well above the age of 100.
“Pathology on the flesh? Failed blood flow? Or did someone put a curse on him that could quicken his aging?”
By mentioning the “big trouble”, Angor hoped that Mara could cure his teacher. This was why Mara’s first attempt was to try to ascertain the nature of Jon’s condition.
However, Mara frowned as Jon approached him. He felt strange, as though something very wrong was coming from Jon’s body.
He knew about this feeling. When he saw those otherworldly slaves captured by wizards back at the Crimson Auction, he had felt something similar, as if what he saw did not belong to this world.
This man was a visitor from another plane? Mara frowned harder.
Speaking of visitors from another plane, Jon did not really seem like one. Mara recalled reading a book from the library in the academy, Pros and Cons of Expeditions Against Foreign Planes written by the Great Twisted Wizard, Barzel. The book clearly explained that although there were sapient creatures in the other planes, no one had ever discovered identical humans out there.
There were, however, many creatures that looked like humans; the ones with three eyes, the ones with fish scales behind their ears, those as small as palms, winged ones… They looked similar to mankind, but people only gave them a common name: The Humanoids.
“Maybe this man is a humanoid from another plane?” thought Mara as he took a guess in his mind. However, he kept his kind smile on the outside.
It this was true, he could just capture Jon and sell him to the wizards which would win him at least ten Magic Crystals. Mara worked day and night for all these years, yet he only saved up a little less than a hundred of them.
With that in mind, Mara’s smile grew so big that his eyes were only thin slits again.
When Jon sat down before him, Mara cleared his throat and explained, “First, I need to use a Detect Disease on you. Once I find the right approach, there should be no problem in treating you.”
Mara did not even wait for Jon and Angor’s reply before he simply summoned his crystal ball and began mumbling something.
Soon, a pale green aura emerged from the crystal ball and slowly covered Jon’s body.
The amazement Jon felt upon witnessing such miracle gradually calmed down under the gentle touch of the aura, and his face regained its vigorous color. In the end, Jon closed his eyes and fell into a deep slumber.
Everyone else wondered about Mara’s method. They only thought that Mara was casting a cure. No one was aware that what Mara used was not the level 1 cantrip, Detect Disease, but a level 2 cantrip that only Level-2 Apprentice Wizards could barely manage to cast: Expel Deceit.
This was a support cantrip which could be used to help someone see through illusions or deceits. The spells could not be defined by a simple explanation. For example, Grease was used to obstruct people’s steps, but with a little tweak, it could also facilitate burning fire. Every spell had infinite possibilities, the fact that wizards pursue truth was essentially a process in which they made infinite possibilities into infinite absoluteness. This was also true for the Expel Deceit spell—with a little change, it could be directed onto another target in order to ascertain that target’s original race.
However, there was a prerequisite for this method to work; the target must accept it. If he or she held any will to resist, the cantrip would fail. Now, Mara was pretending to be helping Jon as a cover-up, Jon would of course not resist him.
The green aura persisted for half a minute. It first covered Jon’s head, and slowly moved down to his feet, like a scanning process. When everything was finished, the aura returned to the crystal ball.
With a shift of his eyes, Mara silently injected his spirit power into the crystal ball to read the result of the Expel Deceit spell.
“Human… One hundred percent, absolutely pure human??
“Of course,” Mara secretly reassured himself about the result. However, he still had a tiny bit of doubt, for he had trusted his instinct earlier. Yet he could not reach a reasonable conclusion after quite some thinking, so he could only choose to believe the result of the spell. Jon was human, he should not worry too much about helping him.
Since Jon was not an otherworldly creature, Mara lifted his misgiving and began to fulfill his promise to Angor.
He waved his crystal ball again, and quietly constructed a new cantrip pattern using his magic. This time, he was constructing the real Detect Disease spell.
