Wizard World

Bam, bam, bam! Heavy blows pounded against the door.

Inside the hut, Green was asleep beneath a threadbare quilt when the pounding jolted him awake. The numb cold in his feet made him suck in a sharp breath, but he didn't dare delay. "Coming!"

Ignoring his feet, which were nearly frozen numb, Green quickly pulled on his shabby clothes, grabbed the leather coat that served as a second blanket atop his threadbare quilt, and opened the wooden door.

The bitter winter wind swept in, carrying ice crystals. Green shuddered as it struck him.

Outside, Old Ham hunched over the rickety wooden cart, holding a whip in one hand and puffing on his pipe with the other. The cart had left two tracks in the rutted snow.

"Hurry up. The road's bad today. We'll get chewed out if we're late."

Old Ham took a hard puff from his pipe and nagged Green.

"Right, I know."

Green shut the door and nimbly climbed into the cart. It had become routine. Ever since he'd started this steady job with Uncle Hamm, he'd heard the same reminder every day.

Hamm didn't say much. He took one last puff from his pipe, then cracked his whip. The old horse gave a low snort and pulled the cart onward through the rutted snow.

Green leaned against the cart's broken railing, glanced at the pitch-black sky, then closed his eyes for another nap. From experience, on snowy days like this, the old cart needed at least half an hourglass to reach the Viscount's Manor in the city. By then, dawn would be close.

Leaning against the cart and breathing in the familiar smell of pipe tobacco, Green felt deeply grateful to Old Ham.

Green's earliest memory was of a winter day when snow fell in thick flakes. Everything before that was pitch-black, and no one had ever seen him before. It was as if he had appeared out of nowhere in this world.

After that, Green had often roamed Bissell City with a group of orphans, living off scraps and begging for food. Then one day, the elderly, childless Hamm noticed how quick-witted Green was. Thinking of how he had no children of his own, he took Green in.

Old Ham chuckled. "When I die, these two huts and the old horse will be yours."

To be honest, the two country huts and the old cart weren't worth much. Still, Green was filled with gratitude toward Old Ham and regarded him as the father who had given him a new life.

As for the work that kept Old Ham and Green alive, every day before dawn they went to the Viscount's Manor in Bissell City. They cleaned up the heaps of garbage left behind after the nobles' all-night revels, hauled it outside the city, then bought everything the nobles would need for their next night of partying on the viscount's estate.

The round trip took up most of the day.

Half an hourglass later, the cart rattled along the road. The surface grew smooth as stone paving appeared beneath the wheels.

Green, dozing in the cart, woke without needing Old Ham to prompt him. They had reached Bissell City and were nearly at the Viscount's Manor, so he hurriedly brushed the snow off himself, doing what he could to tidy his appearance.

Usually, by the time Green and Old Ham arrived at the Viscount's Manor, most of the nobles who had spent the night partying there had already left. Even when a few remained, those lofty noble lords never spared the two lowly servants a glance. Their appearance hardly mattered.

But the manor's old steward was a troublesome fellow. He was always giving servants like Green a hard time, looking for a chance to extort some benefit. More than once, he had used the shabby state of Old Ham's clothes as a flimsy excuse to squeeze silver coins out of him.

The two tall, muscular knight guards at the Viscount's Manor gate were exhausted after standing watch all night. They glanced at Old Ham and Green, whom they had known for years, and paid them no mind.

Old Ham offered a deferential smile. Green jumped down from the cart and entered the manor with his head lowered, not daring to look around. He headed straight for the lavish hall he had to clean every day.

Green and Old Ham had been listless, but today the atmosphere suddenly felt different. At the hall entrance, the old steward stood with a dark expression, glaring at them with his cruel, beady eyes. He hurried over.

The old steward hissed, "Wait here. Keep your ears shut and your eyes closed."

"Yes, yes."

Green and Old Ham hastily agreed.

Sounds of an argument drifted faintly from the hall. They couldn't make out much, but could tell that a girl was shouting.

Instinctively, Green and Old Ham knew this had to be someone important.

They waited for nearly an hourglass. By then, it was fully light, and they were stamping their feet in the snow, shivering from the cold.

The old steward, who had been waiting at the hall entrance, strode over with a grim face and snapped, "If you can't stand the cold, don't bother coming tomorrow."

Old Ham's expression changed. After hesitating several times, he pulled a silver coin from his ragged clothes and slipped it into the steward's hand, smiling apologetically. "We can stand it, we can."

"Hmph."

The old steward deftly pocketed the coin and paid them no more attention. He waited anxiously at the hall entrance, peering inside from time to time.

Green couldn't help muttering, "Damn it. He just took a bribe from us the other day, and now he wants more!"

"Ah, forget it. Let's just put up with it. Plenty of people would kill for this job. The old steward would be happy to see us go."

Old Ham sighed.

When you got old and were close to the grave, you learned to let things go. You weren't as quick-tempered as the young anymore.

Just then, a girl dashed out of the hall. She wore splendid noble clothes, but tears streaked her delicate face. She stopped beside Green and Old Ham and shouted back into the hall.

"I won't go to some Lilith's Cottage Wizard Academy, and I won't become a wizard!"

As if that still wasn't enough, the girl angrily pulled out a book and flung it away, then strode out of the manor.

"Outrageous! Outrageous! What are you two standing there for? Go after her!"

A portly noble lord, red-faced with rage, roared at the two armored knights beside him.

What Green couldn't believe was that the viscount, who was usually so lofty, now stood beside the portly noble with a helpless look on his face, smiling ingratiatingly as he tried to persuade him.

"Hmph! What does she know? The great wizards rule this world. Do you know what I've sacrificed for the test six months from now?"

In a frantic hurry, the viscount followed the portly noble out of the manor without so much as glancing at Green and Old Ham.

The old steward hurried after them as well, taking both gate guards along before disappearing into the snow.

In an instant, the courtyard stood empty and silent.

Seeing no one around, Green instinctively reached for the book on the ground. Old Ham stepped in and rapped his pipe against Green's hand, hissing, "Do you want to get yourself killed?"

Green winced and whispered, "It should be fine, right? If anyone asks, we'll say we swept it up with the trash. The young noblewoman just threw it on the ground."

Old Ham thought it over, then looked around to make sure no one was there. At last, he nodded, giving Green permission.

Green tucked the book into his clothes, then calmly helped Old Ham clean the hall. The enormous pile of garbage left behind by the nobles' all-night revelry was swept into the cart.

No one asked about the book before they left, so Green stopped worrying about it.

After all, it was common for the garbage to contain treasures the nobles didn't care for but the servants adored.

Creak, creak...

The cart, loaded with a mountain of garbage, slowly left Bissell City.

Sitting atop the cartload of garbage, Green no longer felt sleepy. Suddenly remembering something, he pulled the book he'd found from his clothes.

Frowning, he considered how servants like him, who worked for nobles, usually couldn't read. Old Ham, however, had once been an accounting apprentice at a shop when he was young. The shop had eventually closed, but he had learned to read and had taught Green over the past few years.

The reason Green was frowning was that the words on the book's cover weren't ones he encountered in everyday life. They were unfamiliar.

After a long while, Green finally made out the words.

"Hunting Nose Modification and Scent Atlas? What's this?"

Green stared at the cover. He had assumed it was a biography of a bard, the kind of book noble ladies and young lords liked best. He never expected the noblewoman to throw away a book with such a strange title.

Wait!

Green suddenly realized something. His eyes widened in disbelief.

Could this be a book about mysterious wizard magic and sorcery?

Wizards were a subject only noble lords had the privilege of discussing. Ordinary people might never see one of those elusive wizards in their entire lives.

In the eyes of commoners, wizards wielded mysterious sorcery and were both evil and enigmatic. Rumors claimed they slaughtered countless civilians, ate children's eyes, and used commoners as subjects for their wicked magical experiments.

Yet these wizards could easily kill commoners and even knights. They wielded extraordinary power, making them great and awe-inspiring.

Green had often wondered what those mysterious and mighty wizards relied on to wield such incredible power, and why ordinary people couldn't do the same.

If he became a wizard and mastered that mysterious, mighty power, he wouldn't have to put up with the nobles' scorn anymore, would he?

Still in disbelief, Green quickly opened the Hunting Nose Modification and Scent Atlas he had just acquired and began reading it word by word. Whenever he came across an unfamiliar character, he had to think it over carefully or skip it for the time being.

Slowly, a look of astonishment appeared on Green's face, as if a door to an entirely new world had swung open!

Smell was the result of the olfactory system detecting airborne particles from different substances. The most pungent odors accounted for half of the smells creatures could distinguish.

According to the Scent Atlas, a normal human could distinguish around three hundred to four hundred different smells. Some people with unusually keen senses could identify about six hundred.

But compared with certain other creatures, human smell was pitifully weak!

Take the Infant-Crying Chicken, a creature that could make a sound like a human baby crying. Experiments showed that it could distinguish at least six thousand five hundred different smells.

Then there was the Shadow Butterfly, a marvelous creature that could survive only by collecting foul odors. It could distinguish more than eight thousand two hundred smells...

The book mentioned that the creature known to detect the greatest number of airborne scents was called the Three-Headed Dog. It was a formidable beast that many wizards didn't dare provoke. It could distinguish all the known smells that wizards could isolate—a total of 17,852.

The Three-Headed Dog's sense of smell was simply unbelievable!

Hunting Nose Modification was a book of magical knowledge explaining how wizards altered their bodies to imitate the keen sense of smell of certain creatures, achieving a perfect evolution of their olfactory abilities.

The magical experiments involved all sorts of strange materials. And there was one word that appeared more than any other, a word Green still couldn't understand: cells?

"Green, Green!"

Old Ham had to call twice before Green finally came back to himself from the wonders of the spellbook. He hurriedly put it away and helped Old Ham dump the cart's garbage.

After they had dumped all the garbage, Green and Old Ham followed their usual routine and bought supplies from the viscount's estate for the nobles' festivities that night.

They worked until evening before delivering all the goods to the Viscount's Manor in the city. Then they took their handful of copper coins and headed back to the countryside. On the cart, Green was still absorbed in Hunting Nose Modification and Scent Atlas.

Old Ham glanced back at Green and sighed. "You're really bewitched today, kid. Is that book so good?"

Green grinned without saying much. His heart was filled with longing and awe for the mysterious Wizard World.

Did mountains really exist that could move and live?

Were there rivers that flowed down from the sky?

And what were those so-called otherworlds?

What was the principle behind the powerful magic and sorcery wizards wielded?

A string of questions surfaced in Green's mind, but there was no one who could answer them.

"Ah, you're seventeen already, aren't you? Hmm, next year I'll fix up the house. Maybe we can find a suitable girl from a nearby family to be your wife. I hope I can see my grandson before these old bones are buried."

Old Ham muttered.

Green didn't even look up as he mumbled, "What are you talking about? You'll live to a hundred."

"Heh..."

Old Ham smiled and continued driving the cart along the familiar road.