Warlock Apprentice

Thanks to the road signs, Angor finally reached his destination after running into several dead ends. Still, he refused to admit that he was a terrible pathfinder. The caves were too chaotic! Yes, that was the only reason!

When Angor saw Sailum, the boy was eating some roasted meat and cardamom soup that he bought from the market inside the caves.

“Good to see you, Angor! Come, the meat is still warm. Have some?” said Sailum.

He looked really happy about Angor’s visit. He quickly tore his meat in half.

Angor waved his hand and showed Sailum his food bag, “I’m done in the market. I just brought some snacks for you and Nausica.”

Angor displayed a variety of food in front of Sailum. Glasses of milk, milk-made pantries… there were a lot of them, but they were all milk products. Cow milk, sheep milk… were fine. But the milk of narwhals, grass camels and ice coccus was a little bit… beyond common knowledge.

Sailum stared at the food display and wondered, “Angor? You… really like milk, don’t you?”

Dave took out a metal stick from his side pouch. It looked like a propeller or something.

“I’m an assistant working at Prome’s Alchemy Shop. This is my first alchemy creation, I call it the Propeller Flyer,” said Dave. He showed his tiny propeller around and revealed a frustrated expression as he said, “I don’t have enough materials so I could only make a small one. I can’t use it myself, and I need to find a small creature to test it. That’s why when I saw the bird—”

“I see. But birds can fly on their own, no?”

Dave paused for a moment and quickly realized his mistake, “Yeah right! I totally forgot this!”

He seemed like crying now as he said, “Oh jeez. I guess I’ll try to catch a rabbit near the river then…”

“It’s fine. Let’s test it on Toby. I’ll ask Toby not to use its wings as long as it’s not dangerous. Even if the test failed, Toby can still escape on itself instead of falling,” said Angor. He was also interested in the small machine.

Angor recalled seeing the kinetic illustrations in the alchemy books he recorded in Nightmare Realm. He was wondering which one Dave used.

…

A moment later, Dave affixed the propeller flyer onto Toby’s back.

“You can do it, Toby!” Angor cheered.

Toby gave Angor a disdainful look. When Angor went close, the bird slapped his face with a paw. Toby did not reveal its talon, or that would definitely leave four bloody gashes on Angor. However, Angor would still get a bruise out of this.

“Time to take off!” Dave had really high hopes on Toby.

Dave extended a finger and injected some mana into the energy source of his machine.

“Magic crystals are too expensive, so I’ll use my mana as energy for now,” Dave explained.

As the machine received mana, it slowly started to run. A red light on the stick shined, then the propeller began to spin quickly. With a dumbfounded Toby under it, the machine climbed up into the air.

And up.

And up…

They watched as Toby became a tiny dot in the sky.

Angor looked at Dave and asked, “How do you change directions?”

Dave gave Angor an innocent smile as he admitted, “I haven’t finished something like that yet.”

Angor widened his eyes in anger as he snapped, “Then what’s the point of your machine?!”

He looked up and yelled out, “Toby! Toby! Get rid of the machine!”

Toby, who was now carried into the clouds, was thinking about its colorful life as a bird as well as whether it should stay this way or throw the machine away. When hearing Angor’s faint call, Toby quickly acted.

With a fierce flap of the wings, the machine on its back was tossed away.

Next, Toby descended slowly and landed on Angor’s shoulder.

On the other side, Dave walked to them, head lowered and holding a broken flying machine in his hand.

Angor thought Dave was sad about his broken creation, so he planned to say something to comfort Dave. He was the one who asked Toby to drop the machine after all.

But when Angor walked closer, he realized Dave was not sad at all. Rather, Dave could barely hide his grin.

“Heehehehe, it flew! Brilliant! I succeeded!”

So… being able to fly meant success? Angor showed a sympathetic look at Dave. The young man got a really short-sighted expectation.

But Angor’s sympathy quickly turned into a complaint.

Can you please say it earlier if there’s some kind of flaws in your product?!

Thank goodness Toby understood human speech, and that he could fly. Another creature would be hopeless in that situation.

That would be murder!