~~Alpaca~~ Reynold's Diary, Part Three

They nodded frantically, their adorable expressions making me want to stroke their soft hair.

"Teacher, can we try Hellfire?" Moli blinked and asked me expectantly.

I hesitated for a moment. Hellfire wasn't easy to practice, and there weren't many occasions where I could use it freely and Hellfire. So I nodded. "Okay, but if you can't extinguish it yourself and I have to do it for you..."

"Tear up the novel!" Anna raised her right hand, as if issuing a tragic cry before charging into battle.

"Tear up the painting!" Moli's expression was also very determined. She clenched her fists, and her whole body burst forth with an almost tangible energy.

Excellent, it seems this method of educating apprentices is very effective, and I am very satisfied with the current results.

"Alright, let's go." With that, I took flight, and the two apprentices held hands tightly to keep up.

So we flew in the direction where Mel was.

Chapter 61 Alpaca (crossed out) Reynold's Diary Part 3

If you do the math, the time he spent pursuing Ciprins was quite long. Shouldn't young people with little romantic experience be more easily moved?

--Ciprins... catching up with him is really difficult, even more difficult than dealing with the most sarcastic and incisive journalists...

I tried to ask him out to dinner three times in one week, but he refused each time with the excuse that "the experiment wasn't finished," "I needed to organize my notes," and "I needed to guide my assistant's studies." And in my judgment, these were all genuine reasons, not some kind of excuse or a ploy to avoid me. The first time he refused me, he was holding a large, expired jelly-like thing in his hand, a sticky, purplish-green, eerie slime that kept wriggling. Every time he spoke to me, he would pinch that thing, causing it to ooze a sticky pulp, and it also emitted some indescribable smell.

How could he do that??? There were several undressed slimes trembling in the box at his feet... those things looked like the popular pet slimes of the last few years...

The second time was when the girl he often scolded told me, "My teacher is copying notes, and he wants me to hand them in to him tomorrow, so you definitely won't see him today or tomorrow. Don't go talking to him while he's copying notes; who knows if he'll get so engrossed in it that he'll throw a couple of curses at you, like turning you into a toad or something. If he's too absorbed and doesn't notice he's turned you into a toad, and then uses you as experimental material to juice you, that wouldn't be pretty."

... As she spoke, she touched up her bloody makeup, so I doubted the credibility of her statement.

But thinking about it now, Ciprins juicing magical materials is really disgusting. I didn't take Potions in school, and I never audited any classes. Now I'm really grateful to the God of Light. How did those Potions graduates manage to eat jam after finishing their studies?

I think next time I go to see him, I should check beforehand to see if he's making slime juice.

The third time... the third time was even more outrageous. The third time I found him in the office, and as soon as I walked in, I was almost hit in the face by a huge fireball—it was that same female assistant with exaggerated makeup, her face flushed red as she mumbled incantations. Even a thick layer of foundation couldn't hide the two red patches on her face, while Ciprins... Ciprins was so angry that he didn't even see me come in.

He was scolding his female assistant. "Moli! Even if you graduated with a degree in fire magic, you still need to chant the spell for Ice Arrow and conjure a giant fireball, right? Has your brain been taken over by fire elementals? Do you need me to check your bloodline to see if you're a warlock?"

... Female sorcerers rarely wear this kind of black makeup. As far as I know, dreamy purple is popular among the sorceresses of the Arcane Covenant in Holy Light City...

What I suspect is that this girl isn't related to Warden Crow, is she? Her attire makes her look like a ten-year-younger version of Crow, and my intelligence also indicates that Crow frequents certain... well... strange clubs after work. It seems Crow works part-time there, mainly whipping customers, and is supposedly very popular.

Fortunately, I didn't have much interaction with Warden Crow; I still prefer quieter types.

Immediately afterwards, I saw Ciprins, his eyes red with anger, point a long, thin finger at the fireplace in the office and say, "What is this? Is this your 'Gushing Spring Spell?"

I turned my head and glanced over, bursting with laughter—the female assistant had thrown a wall of fire into the fireplace, which was just a decorative fireplace. Luckily, there wasn't any real firewood inside, otherwise, it would have caused another office fire in a while.

The magical fire extinguisher in the room beeped, and I saw Ciprins wave his hand with a gloomy face. A real Gushing Spring Spell landed in the fireplace, leaving a charred mess. The guard's face quickly appeared at the door, but seeing that I was standing there, he wisely did not come in to disturb me.

"Go back and copy this book of 'Basic Water Spells' three hundred times tonight! If you don't finish, don't come to work in my group tomorrow. I don't need a warlock as an assistant!"

"Three hundred..." The girl stared wide-eyed, looking like she was about to die.

"What?" Ciprins glared at her sternly, but to be honest, Ciprins's features weren't sharp enough; even when he was glaring angrily, I thought he looked more like he was aggrieved.

The female assistant shuddered and immediately shook her head.

"The time you spend queuing to buy cosmetics and staying up all night reading novels could have been used to memorize ten spellbooks!" Ciprins angrily handed over the book.

The female assistant took the book with a nervous expression and hurriedly ran out, seemingly intending to go home and copy it. When she passed me, she paused, stared at me strangely for a long time, and then silently ran away.

Ciprins leaned against his desk, sulking.

To be honest, I rarely see someone who looks good even when angry. He lowered his head, looked down at his fingers, and rubbed his fingertips back and forth. I found his little gestures quite cute. He liked to rub his fingers when he was nervous, angry, or uneasy, or occasionally turn a ring on his finger. That ring wasn't pretty at all; it was just a bare gold ring. If it hadn't been on Ciprins's finger, I probably wouldn't have given it a second glance.

I wonder... if Mephistopheles would be this handsome when she's angry.

I sighed inwardly, trying to forget that figure, but he still keeps flashing in my memory. I even laugh at myself a little; could this be considered a lingering, innocent stirring from my teenage years?

Maybe I should try to forget him... I'm not even sure myself. Is it because I like Mephistopheles that I'm so tolerant of little mages like Ciprins? At other times, if a fireball dared to fly out of that office and hit me in the face, even if it didn't actually hit me, I would teach the owner of that office a lesson.

Hmm... his style when casting spells is indeed like Mephistopheles', and his attitude towards magic is similar, although his skill level...

So going out with Ciprins didn't improve the situation; in fact, it made it worse. Sometimes I would have the illusion that I was dating a great mage. I realized that I was indeed looking through Ciprins at another great mage that I admired even more.

Especially when I saw that look in him that was almost exactly the same as Mephistopheles '...

Fortunately, he was so engrossed in talking about magic that he never noticed my unusual behavior.

After I witnessed him yelling at his apprentice that day, he calmed down, noticed me, and returned to his usual gentle demeanor. He smiled at me and apologized. I noticed he was rubbing his fingers together again, but quickly stopped, and the tips of his ears turned red again. This made me a little hot-blooded, but I didn't want to appear too eager—after all, Ciprins wasn't the kind of young man who would just meet someone at a bar and go have fun. So I needed a specific approach to pursuing him.

"Can I get an appointment with you today?" I asked him, almost helplessly. "Let me take you out to relax, don't stay cooped up in the office. I'll wait for you no matter what time it is today. Tomorrow's the weekend, I'm off, and I don't think you'll be working either, right?"