Book 3: Chapter 72 (1/2)

“See? That wasn’t too hard to find,” Tafel said and hopped off of Vur’s head. She landed on a path made of golden bricks leading up to a palace that shone in the sun. It was easily ten times the size of Tafel’s castle back on the central continent, and Vur had to tilt his head up to see the top of the building. “Practical experience is much greater than theory.”

Alice snorted and slid off of Vur’s face, using his cheek like a slide. “You found the biggest building to have ever existed, congratulations.”

Tafel rolled her eyes in response. “Yeah, well, you couldn’t find it even though you read all those books,” she said. “Speaking of books, we looted a lot from that dungeon, didn’t we?”

“Right, I look forward to reading them all,” Alice said.

“You sound really expectant.” Tafel tilted her head. “If I were you, I wouldn’t get my expectations up over some books we found in what seemed to be a living room, and those books in the kitchen were definitely cookbooks.”

Alice placed her hands on her hips. “I love reading all kinds of books, cookbooks included.”

“But you can’t cook,” Mr. Skelly said.

Alice whirled around to glare at the suit of armor that had slid off of Vur. “And you can’t eat. There’s no issue,” Alice said and snorted. “For the record, Vur and Tafel invited me to their party because Vur loved the way my food tasted.”

“Right, right,” Tafel said as she tugged on Alice’s sleeve. “Let’s move over a bit to the side, and Vur, please, turn back into a human.” Behind the group, there was what used to be a line of wagons. After a dragon landed on the road, the horses had scattered in all directions. A few people were screaming while others were crawling out of overturned carriages.

Vur’s scales lost their luster as his body shrank. “Ah,” he said, his voice garbled by his transformation. “We forgot Alora.”

Tafel stared at Vur, his wings shrinking into his back as his claws retracted and turned into nails. “How could you forget your cousin?”

Vur shrugged. “I remembered now.”

Tafel sighed. “I’ll record this location’s coordinates and teleport back to bring her along. You’re coming with me since I’m not sure I’ll have the mana to transport a dragon. And I don’t think she trusts me enough to let me teleport her.”

“Wait,” Alice said. “What do you mean you don’t think you have the mana to transport a dragon? You could teleport Vur and us without issues.”

“That’s because Vur cooperates with me,” Tafel said. “Whenever I need to teleport him, his mana works with me instead of against me. There’s something about his mana that makes it easy to use; it probably has something to do with the fact that he’s a blue mage.”