family…
When hearing this familiar but unfamiliar word, Mary felt a little dazed for a while.
It wasn't until a few seconds later that she slowly remembered that she had indeed told her mentor a few days ago that she wanted to see her family.
The young female mage pursed her lips, and looked at her mentor with some hesitation: "They are..."
"It's upstairs in the living room," Daniel stared at Mary with yellowed eyes, "you'd better wash before you go up, especially your hair."
"Okay... okay."
Mary hurriedly agreed, and then left the basement where the immersion cabin was located, a little distracted. She returned to the first floor, entered the public washroom, opened the water valve with her hand, and watched the clear water flow supplied by the magic water pump from the metal pipe. Flowing out, the sound of rushing water gradually calmed her down.
Her family member.
She can't remember what it was like when she left that home... An ignorant little girl, followed the older children to go on an "exploration" in the mountains. After dark, she got separated from her friends and stepped into magic by accident. The ancient tower of the teacher changed her life from then on and cut off the connection with her family. Now more than ten years have passed, and the memory of her childhood has long been blurred and weathered. The only impression she can remember related to "home" seems to be Just a low, airy old house, a dim lantern hanging by the door, and those bedtime stories used to scare children.
Unfortunately, many of those scary bedtime stories about dark wizards, old castles, monsters in the mountains and magical servants all became reality in the next ten years of her life.
The water was rushing, and Mary picked up the cold water and slapped it on her face.
She couldn't remember what her parents looked like, but she still wanted to meet them.
After leaving the bathroom, the young female mage gradually calmed down. She saw that her mentor was already standing in the corridor, looking at her expressionlessly. When she saw herself appear, the old mage in black robe just nodded. Then he walked towards the living room in silence.
Mary steps forward to follow.
When they came to the door of the living room, a servant immediately stepped forward and opened the door of the living room for the master.
Mary saw the scene in the living room.
The fireplace is burning quietly on one side of the living room, and the red light of the fire shines on the nearby copper shelf. The dark red sofa is placed in the center of the living room. An old couple with gray hair and wrinkled faces was sitting on the sofa.
They sat very carefully, most of their bodies were outside the sofa, as if they were afraid of soiling the luxurious furnishings here.
It seems that the tutor only brought her parents, but not her sister.
The old couple on the sofa also saw the person appearing at the door. They stood up almost instantly, showing awe and obsequious smiles at Daniel, and then they saw Mary standing behind Daniel. At this moment, the separation The family who had been together for more than ten years finally met.
Mary stared fixedly at the old couple, watched their cloudy eyeballs roll, and their eyes fell on her robes, watched them slowly reveal their expressions of humility and awe, and watched them slowly bend down.
This series of actions is like a conditioned reflex.
"Dear Mage." She heard the couple address themselves.
Mary was a little overwhelmed, she heard Daniel speaking from the side, his tone was cold: "This is your daughter, there is no need to salute."
The old couple straightened up and looked at Mary with a hint of surprise, but there was still obvious tension in the surprise. Mary didn't know what she was feeling at the moment. Squeeze out your voice: "Father, mother..."
She uses a very standard, citizen-style pronunciation, and uses more solemn, upper-class titles because no matter what her life has been like in the past ten years, her mentor has always been a person from the imperial capital, with outstanding knowledge and education. She is a high-level mage, and she has not learned other ways of speaking under the mentor's door.
The rural habits she had been exposed to in her childhood had long been blurred in her mind.
The old couple seemed to be taken aback for a moment when they heard Mary addressing them, then they nodded stiffly and repeated dryly: "Okay, okay, that's great..."
After everyone sat down on a few sofas, the living room soon became awkwardly quiet.
Mary tried hard to think about what she should say to ease the atmosphere, and it took a long time to form a complete sentence: "Is... everything okay at home?"
"Okay, okay... Enough food," the hunched man nodded repeatedly, "Are you okay too? Are there enough food?"
"...I have no worries about food and clothing," Mary said awkwardly, "do you... still live in the country?"
"Where else can I go?" said the wrinkled old woman. "The house and land are over there, and the cattle."
"How did you get here?"
"The sorcerer sent someone to pick us up," the old woman glanced at Daniel cautiously, "The carriage we're riding in is a big one."
Then she looked at the robe on Mary's body again, and couldn't help showing a trace of awe in her eyes, as if this awe had been deeply imprinted in her bones, so that as long as she saw something similar, even if she knew that the person in front of her was As for her own blood relatives, she would also involuntarily get nervous: "You are a mage now..."
"Yes, I'm about to be promoted to the middle class..." Mary said, but she wasn't sure if the old couple in front of her could understand what the middle class meant.
"Okay, you...you are promising," the hunchbacked man nodded again, with a flattering smile, he glanced at Daniel next to him, and then looked away, "You were taken away by the Master Mage Yes, this is your luck, your sister, your brother is not as lucky as you... "
Lucky... Mary suddenly felt that she didn't know how to deal with this word.
The available topic of conversation seemed to end quickly, or rather, the topic didn't exist from the beginning.
Mary felt more and more uncomfortable, and she believed that the old couple in front of her did the same.
They are strangers, related by blood, but separated by thousands of miles. They sit in a place that seems to be very close, trying to talk about topics that both of them feel comfortable with, but they can't even pretend.
Soon after the second awkwardness and silence began, the old woman began to look at the door frequently, and her husband became more and more embarrassed. They didn't know how to hide their emotions gracefully, and Mary could see through them at a glance. thoughts and feelings.
Sitting in this "luxury" place for such a long time, this old couple from the countryside is already restless. They didn't feel any joy of reuniting with their daughter from Mary. Those who come here, every minute they are here is a torture.
They occasionally sneaked a look at Daniel, and there was even a hint of begging in their eyes.
Mary stood up on her own initiative.
"Let's go here," she whispered, "I... still have some magic experiments to do."
"Oh, oh, good," the old woman stood up immediately, "Then...then go do your thing."
"How many days are you going to stay here?"
"No, no," the old woman hurriedly waved her hands, "The livestock at home still need to be taken care of, and we don't feel at ease if we leave it to others for too long."
Mary didn't say much, just nodded slightly, and then left the room as if escaping.
It wasn't even until she hid in a nearby side hall that she realized that she had recklessly abandoned her mentor. If this had been done a year ago, she would have incur terrible punishment.
Just as Mary realized that she had made a mistake, the door of the side hall suddenly opened, and Daniel stepped in.
The old mage in black robe just glanced at Mary quietly, and said casually: "I arranged for them to rest elsewhere for a day, and I will send them back tomorrow.
"If you don't want to see them again, you don't have to see them for a while.
"After that, I will send someone to take care of their lives."
Mary lowered her head and whispered, "...Thank you."
"No need."
"Mentor, am I... am I bad?" Mary raised her head boldly and looked at her mentor, "They are my parents..."
Daniel interrupted her indifferently: "They didn't want to come at first. They didn't want to come to meet you until the apprentices I sent showed their mage identity and gave them a reward."
Mary was a little dazed: "The reward..."
"It's not anyone's fault." Daniel said calmly.
"Teacher, did you foresee such a situation long ago?"
"Yes," Daniel said without any change in expression, "but this is your own choice, and it is also a situation you must face, so I did not intervene."
Mary bit her lip, then lowered her head, looking at the robe on her body and the silver badge representing the rank of a mage near the collar of the robe.
It is not only the separation of more than ten years that creates the gap.
"Mentor, is the... gap between extraordinary people and ordinary people really that big?"
"In most places, that's it."
Mary hung her head and did not speak for a long time.
Daniel turned around and left the room without disturbing his apprentices.
He still has tasks assigned by his master to do.
…
In Alder South, a dark alley in the Eastern District, a man with a messy beard, dark eye sockets, and an unremarkable appearance was staggering through the alley.
The man smelled strongly of alcohol, and he was holding a cloth bag containing food in his hand. His hair seemed to have not been taken care of for a long time, and the worn clothes on his body were like the standard of living of most people in this neighborhood.
The winter sky always darkens early, and the dim sky has shrouded Aldernan, and the sparse magic spar street lamps are lit up from far to near, illuminating the old and dilapidated streets in the East District. There are few pedestrians on the road, and those who go to work in the factory have not yet returned home. Occasionally, people who appear on the side of the road, if they are not unemployed people with suspicious appearance, are mostly low-level prostitutes who have just come to the street with heavy makeup.
A drunken man was walking on the street. Suddenly, an inexplicable palpitation came to his heart, which made the man in the shabby coat stop.
He seemed to be holding on to the wall next to him just because he was suffering from drunkenness, but he pressed his right hand on his waist calmly, and quietly held a spike made of gold in his hand.
There is a magical shimmer of light flowing on the surface of the spikes.
A homeless man with a scruffy beard walked past him, and when the two of them passed each other, the homeless man suddenly turned his head and looked over.
In the drunken man's eyes, the image of the tramp suddenly twisted and squirmed, transforming into a figure in a black robe with a face hidden in shadow.
A voice came to his ears: "Meet at No. 14, Black Iron Lane."
The drunkenness in the man's eyes had completely disappeared. He put away the golden spikes calmly, feeling another will beating quietly in his brain, and said in a low voice while changing direction under his feet: "Yes, Bishop."
The man turned and left the street, and there had never been a scruffy bearded bum on the road he walked, as if it was just an illusion from beginning to end.
…
A dazzling light pierced through the darkness and illuminated a plain shrouded in clouds. The plain was barren and dry, and the desolate building ruins and plant debris were buried by wind and sand. Between the sky and the earth, countless shadowy figures are trekking on the plain.
Their expressions were numb and their eyes were blank, as if this journey had no purpose and no end.
And in the distance of the plain, at the end of the light, stands a splendid city, the city hall is towering, resplendent and resplendent, like a perfect city in myths and legends.
In the sky full of dark clouds, two figures suddenly appeared.
One figure was wearing a long white dress, holding a flickering lantern in his hand, and the other figure was tall, thin and elegant, with black hair and a refined monocle.
"Bishop Selina," the elegant man wearing a monocle said to the woman carrying the lamp beside him, with a slightly respectful tone, "This area is the largest overflow projection discovered so far, and it is also the only one discovered so far. The overflow projection generated in the 'imaginary area' completely out of the dream city."
"It looks like a ruin here, a ruin that has existed for an unknown number of years," Selina Geerfen frowned, "All the previous overflow projections showed cities or towns that were functioning normally, while ours The hysteresis device has also successfully controlled the time flow of the No. 1 sandbox to a level that is synchronized with the real world. In theory, such an area that has been deserted for so long should not appear in the sandbox... Archbishop Yuri, what do you think?"
"Perhaps, the historical process in No. 1 sandbox has been split, and time is no longer distributed linearly," Archbishop Yuri thought, "or maybe the world inside it has expanded to such a large scale that some areas are operating normally. , some areas have literally been deserted for hundreds of thousands of years."
"...Unfortunately, this is just an overflow projection. All the interference we do here will not affect the operation of No. 1 sandbox."
Selina Geerfen said softly, she stared at the plain shrouded in darkness below, then fell silent for a moment, and gently waved the lantern in her hand.
The entire piece of overflow projection dissipated silently in the shaking of the lantern, returning to the basic black and white two-color grid lines, and the gray mist covering the sky.
"Call that Daniel next week," Selina said to the elegant man beside her, "I want to talk to him personally."
"So fast?" Archbishop Yuri couldn't help being a little surprised.
"Yeah, faster than expected because that Daniel seems to have noticed some problems and is conducting some investigations in private. Just in time, we can talk to him."
(Mom!!!!)