A Sorcerer’s Journey

It was a cool and crisp evening, and the sea was placid. All of a sudden, there were loud agitated noises coming from the deck. Glenn sped off there to see what was going on.

Far out at sea was a large, two-masted, 90-feet-long, and square-rigged brig, with “the Ocean Dragon” engraved on one side of its hull. The Ocean Dragon was approaching the ship that Glenn was aboard at full speed. Over twenty cannons and many swivel guns were mounted on both sides of the ship. About two hundred men could be seen waving their guns, scimitars, and cutlasses on the deck, and several men were perched on the masts with one hand, eyes intent.

They were all yelling strange words and phrases that made no sense to the students until a man shouted “Avast ye!” as he swung his hand before him. The man wore a poofy lived-in shirt, which was tucked into his ripped black jeans. A few buttons of his shirt were missing, revealing some of his bushy chest hair. The rest of the horde was more enlivened as he howled “Yo Ho Ho!” as an effort to mount the final charge.

Glenn was sure that the ship was a formidable adversary. Many ships would presumably have surrendered to her, without a single shot fired. For the first time, Glenn feared for his life.

“Come have a look! They are pirates!”

“They look so weird.”

The rest of the students didn’t share Glenn’s fear.

It took Glenn a minute to finally come to the realization that he was on a ship that had no chance of ever being defeated by humans. There was a crew of over fifty seamen, who were previously knights. Each and every one of them was strong and fully armed. They were said to have crushed all invaders in their voyages, not to mention Sorcerer Dior, who could overwhelm even larger and more powerful warships all by himself.

As the ship maneuvered towards Glenn, he noticed that there were no women on the ship. He was then told that a voyage at sea would be cursed with women onboard, a curse where grisly sea creatures would be awakened to hunt you down, suck up your blood and skin your flesh.

And the pirates had not ever been tempted to doubt that.

There was an abrupt stir on the deck of the Ocean Dragon, which kept racing towards Glenn’s ship at top speed. Glenn wondered if it was a rebellion against the captain, but in seconds, he decided that it was more likely that they were fleeing, because the man at the helm was fanatically swinging the rudder about after he heard the chest-hair-showing man roaring “come about!” several times.

“Are they escaping?” a student inquired as he was leaning over the bulwark to watch the Ocean Dragon.

“No reason to doubt it,” replied the student beside him dully.

The truth was that the captain, the man who wore the puffy shirt, concluded that the ship he was about to plunder was one that belonged to the Lilith School of Sorcerers He verified the fact not by seeing several dozens of full-armed knights and hundreds of students on the ship, but by the composure on the faces of the knights and the students, who were about to confront a ship of savage pirates.

The second the captain became conscious of the predicament he was in, he shouted the order “come about” to flee from his fate of taking on a ship of sorcerers.

So, a fight that was supposed to be fierce was foiled.

As the pirate-watchers left the side of the ship in their disappointment, a boy and a girl came out of Sorcerer Dior’s cabin, which reignited their curiosity.

“Why are they allowed to go into the cabin? How come…?” a student begrudged. “Are they related or are they simply born sorcerers?”

“Don’t you know? They are said to be geniuses. Sorcerer Dior said it himself,” responded another student in a coveting manner.

People on the deck who had been gazing upon the pirates now gravitated to make fervent comments on the two cosets.

The girl was blond and dressed in white. Her hair cascaded down her back like a golden river. Her blue eyes were glowing brightly in the sun, which made them irresistibly charming. She swept her innocent eyes over the crowd, which had been divided into two columns to make way for the princess-like girl. However, her innocence was betrayed by the domineering looks on her face.

Beside her, a boy was toying with a little white rat in his hand and displayed no interest in talking with the hustling and bustling viewers of his. It seemed that his rat had more significance than all of them combined.

“Kyrie, it’s boring. They took flight without a fight,” said the girl as she whipped her hair and left it drifting in the wind.

“Told you. Nobody has the guts to ransack a ship bound for the Lilith School of Sorcerers,” said Kyrie drily. “You insisted on coming. Now what? Shall we please leave this foul-smelling place?”

Irritated by Kyrie’s air of impudence, many students were throwing angry looks at him. But Kyrie ignored them altogether and strutted back to the Sorcerer’s cabin, followed by the pretty girl.

Another big scene was over.

…

Glenn was reading ‘Canine Olfactory Enhancement’ in his cabin when he was interrupted by a knock on the door. He frowned at the disturbance as he was so absorbed in the book that he didn’t want to be disrupted in any way. He was even more vexed by the thought that it might be Robinson, who had been repeatedly annoying him by asking him to hang out on the deck.

It turned out to be Chris and Nina. They had come to visit him to convey their gratitude for Glenn’s objection to the Triad’s rogue behaviors.

“I just don’t know what to say, but you saved my life. You saved my sister’s life,” said Chris in a manner that was much more adult-like. He had matured a lot after the scuffle he had had on the deck.

And Nina, still rather timid, said in a low voice: “Thanks, Glenn.”

Glenn treated the two with juice. The juice could be saved for up to two months before going bad since it was conserved using a special method.

“I was not helpful at all. It was Lafite who took down the big guy.” Glenn felt embarrassed at this unjustified gratitude.

“We are truly grateful. You made a difference and what mattered more was what your help represents.”

Nina then carefully drew out two stones from her dress and passed them to Glenn.

“Chris and I got some stones by accident when we were young, and they turned out to be sorcerer money – they use them as money on the Sorcerer Continent. They are called the Magical Stones.”

‘Magical Stones! Sorcerer money. I see. So, the stones that Wade had bribed Sorcerer Dior with were Magical Stones,’ thought Glenn, as he accepted them.