When Toby finally stepped away from his plates with a round belly, the mayor’s father came back to the house with a sad look.
“Dad, how’s Kumur and Tulu?” the mayor quickly asked.
“Kumur’s fine. Well, his mom hit a ton on his bum and half the village can hear him screaming. Other than that, he’s well and kickin’. As for Scott’s lad… he’ll live. But he can’t hear anything from his left side now.”
An old woman walked out of the kitchen. “Ain’t it better than dropping dead? At least he’s not totally deaf.”
Annoyed, her husband tapped the floor using his walking cane. “Aye, I know you are sorta sick of the lad’s grandmother. But be nice to the boy, will ya?”
As the old couple went outside the door to argue, the mayor gave Angor an apologetic look.
Not interested, Angor stuffed Toby into his pocket and left a gold coin as payment for dinner.
“Thank you for your time, sir. I’ll go and check on Tulu instead of occupying your schedule.”
Without listening to the mayor’s following words that mostly meant to persuade him to stay, he stepped out of the house, located Tulu’s signal at Tulu’s home, and headed there.
He wasn’t surprised to learn that Tulu’s hearing was damaged—he predicted such an outcome as soon as he saw Tulu’s wound. He hoped that this would be enough of a lesson for Tulu to grow up more and learn how to stay safe in this world.
He knew that recruiters from various organizations tended to use certain methods to select capable talents, such as the “Death Chamber Matches” used by Sunders. Most of such methods sounded cruel and unfair. Yet they were pretty efficient for telling the talents about the harsh reality awaiting them in the wizarding world.
This was necessary for the talents to discard their moral standards as mortals and learn the “proper” way.
As far as Angor knew, all talents recruited by Sunders, meaning, the winners of the death matches, were doing well in the wizarding world right now except for Hookdick.
Since Angor already recruited four Krakoks, he needed only to find two more to fulfill the minimum requirement of his task. This was why he didn’t find it necessary to set up an “entrance exam”.
But when he saw Tulu’s childish act, he knew he had to do something to mend Tulu’s character, or Tulu would get picked clean by all sorts of shady figures in the wizarding world pretty fast.
After the incident today, Tulu got to have learned how NOT to be a hero of justice as he saw fit, and this was the result Angor hoped to achieve.
Since Angor still had to find one more talent, he made up his mind that he should be more careful when picking. Otherwise, he’d just send another innocent lamb into a pack of hungry wolves.
He saw a group of villagers gathering at Tulu’s door, who instantly moved away when he showed up.
Tulu’s house was a poor-looking cottage, which was only one room by itself.
Angor pushed the door open and saw Tulu on his bed on the other side while Ralph was taking care of him.
Similarly, Ralph grew scared upon seeing Angor’s arrival. After greeting Angor in a trembling voice, the fisherman ran outside.
Tulu sat up slowly and said hello. He could tell that Angor was unsatisfied with what he just did.
After getting over his mental trauma, Tulu had time to carefully think over his actions. And as a sailor who used to work for wizards, he easily realized his great mistake.
Angor had noticed Tulu’s change of attitude. While it was impossible for a man to completely switch to a different nature overnight, he was glad to see his “lesson” went through. As for what kind of person Tulu would become after spending some time in the wizarding world… that wasn’t something he had control over.
When Tulu grew uneasy and wondered if he should speak up and apologize, he heard Angor speaking to him first.
“Get some sleep tonight. We’ll leave tomorrow.”
Angor remotely closed the house’s door and closed his eyes in front of a lit stove in the room to wait for sunrise.
Tulu took a moment to admire Angor’s visage using the faltering firelight and suddenly felt envious.
Mister Padt must be a really cool dude in his place… When will I become so strong?
“Do you have something to say?” said Angor, without looking at Tulu.
It took Tulu several seconds to realize that Angor just talked to him. “Sir-sir, I was stupid. I thought that monster wasn’t much of a threat since it looked smaller than most monsters we dealt with before. I was wrong.”
“And?”
“From now on, sir, I’ll use my brain before letting my rawness get the better of me.”
“This doesn’t mean you have to discard righteousness completely,” said Angor. “Do something you can, or stay away from stuff beyond your strength. You need to learn how to tell them apart.”
Angor didn’t wish to affect Tulu’s way of judgment too much since being able to think independently was important when studying wizardry.
Tulu spent a long time digesting what he went through today. Eventually, his eyes showed true determination.
However, clearing his mind didn’t mean helping his physical condition.
“Um, sir, am I stuck with this wound forever?”
“No. You’ll find interesting things in the wizarding world, by which time you’re free to do whatever you want about your condition. You can either get a replacement or slap something better at another spot on your body. Anything you can think of, there’ll be a way to make it happen.”
Tulu sighed in great relief and slowly fell asleep while listening to the fire sparks.
Angor opened his eyes and threw an illusion at Tulu to prevent Tulu from suddenly waking up.
Next, he took out a miniature structure—the Church of the Deceased—from his bracelet and placed it on the floor.
While talking to Tulu, he had been keeping his attention on his bracelet, during which he made sure the Krakoks were doing well, and that nothing particular happened to the soul container.
His next move would be leaving Ferran, crossing the Blackberry Waters, and reaching the Land of Revelation in search of the “Dream Whelk”. He needed to confirm its location with Freud before departure.
People said that this Mystery item was mostly useless, but he really needed to get his hands on it and hoped that he could figure out how to craft such items.
After a brief conversation with Freud, he noted down the general route and gave Freud some more “illusionary books” to read since Freud had almost finished reading all the books he had.
To better keep Freud from boredom, Angor even left another “Monument Valley” illusion in Freud’s room.
Before he could retrieve Church of the Deceased back to his bracelet, however, he suddenly noticed that Torras was awake, after being unconscious for almost a week.
…
“Who am I?”
Torras felt his mind filled by complete chaos that occasionally showed him his past life.
“Right… I’m Torras, the greatest honor of my family, the conqueror of the Eastern Seas… I am Vile King! But… where did I come from? The Land of Revenant… yes, that’s my home…
“What am I supposed to do now?”
While asking the three questions of life, Torres found a lot of lost memories coming back. He remembered all the places he had been to and places he planned to visit next. But the most imposing piece of memory among all was somewhere dark. Somewhere devoid of life and vigor.
“An island… A filthy, stinky, and dead island! Right… I need to get out of here. I can go anywhere as long as it’s not here!”
