Chapter 14 — The Wild Mage

Gao Yang did not draw his sword, but neither did he let his hand stray far from the hilt. He stepped into the hut keeping himself ready to strike at any moment: "We're just passing through. We're looking for someone—a girl about fifteen or sixteen, carrying a frying pan..."

But the man behind the table seemed not to hear Gao Yang's words. He only smiled dully and nodded slightly: "Please, find a place to sit. Annie is preparing lunch. Out here in the deep mountains and old woods there's nowhere to rest your feet—if you don't mind, stay and eat with us."

"Annie?" Gao Yang asked instinctively.

"My daughter," the man said with a smile. "A very good girl."

Just then a girl's startled cry came from nearby: "Master?"

Gao Yang looked toward the sound and saw Betty standing by a small door in the corner of the hut, her face full of surprise.

"Betty? I'm glad you're all right," Gao Yang said, relieved at once. "I've come to take you back."

But Betty shook her head slightly, and the man behind the table turned to look at the girl as well, asking gently: "Annie, is lunch ready?"

Betty nodded obediently: "Almost, Papa."

The girl turned and ducked back into the kitchen. Gao Yang and Amber exchanged a glance, and once they had confirmed that the strange man behind the square table had shown no reaction, they followed her in.

Betty was in the kitchen cooking, using that frying pan she treasured like a prize possession. A pale cluster of flames danced in the stove, and the sausages in the pan sizzled and spat.

Amber's attention landed on an utterly unexpected point: "You can actually cook inside the Shadow Realm?"

"What's going on here?" Gao Yang came up beside Betty and asked in a low voice.

From the girl's demeanor and bearing he could tell that she was not under any spell of mental control or the like, and yet by her own will she had stayed here to cook, and she called that strange man outside "Papa" which was genuinely a little odd.

"I don't really understand it myself," Betty said, her face wearing its usual touch of bewilderment, "but that person outside seems to have taken me for his daughter..."

Amber's eyes went wide. "So you just obediently let him be your father?"

Betty shook her head. "He's very pitiful... so I thought I'd cook him a meal before I go."

Gao Yang and Amber looked at each other.

Then Betty suddenly reached into the pocket of her maid's dress and rummaged about, pulling out an old, worn notebook and holding it out to Gao Yang.

"Master, here, this is what that man gave me. There's a lot in it I can't quite make out, but you should be able to understand it."

Gao Yang took the notebook—not a very thick one—with some puzzlement, opened it, and hastily leafed through the records on the last few pages.

Amber curiously stuck her head in closer. "What is it, what is it? Let me see, let me see... magical formulas? Rune sequences?"

The half-elf lady, her head spinning from those intricate symbols and equations, looked up and stared at Gao Yang in utter bewilderment. "So that strange old man was actually a mage?"

"Strictly speaking, a wild mage," Gao Yang said, rolling up the notebook and rapping it against Amber's head. "And couldn't you tell the moment you walked in and saw all those magical experiment apparatus?"