How to Raise a Dumb Wolf - Chapter 26

A week passed in the blink of an eye. While the news Salman had started—that Major General Wolf had found himself a human girlfriend—spread throughout the army, the unaware Aisha finally reached the day of her departure for Wold.

“I’m sorry, Aisha. We won’t be able to accompany you to the Heart of the World.”

With only a few hours left before she was due to leave, Hock looked at Aisha guiltily.

Aisha smiled and shook her head to show that she did not mind.

Only a few months had passed since the war ended, and there was still a great deal of work to be done. Both Tina and Hock held fairly high ranks in the Federation military, so neither of them could get away at a time like this. Aisha understood perfectly. Besides, a round trip from Vitas to Wold could take more than ten days. She did not want to become a burden to her parents.

Of course, on her first journey so far from home, Aisha could hardly claim she was not frightened at all.

Seeing how considerate and well-behaved his daughter was only made Hock feel guiltier. He looked up and exchanged a glance with his wife, then paused and took something out from behind him.

“But…” Hock pressed his lips together. “Your mother and I have a present for you.”

He held out a long white box with an elegant blue ribbon tied around it. It looked pristine and lovely. Aisha paused, not having expected her parents to prepare a present for her. Only after a few seconds of hesitation did she reach out and accept it.

Tina stood beside Aisha with one hand on the back of Hock’s chair. Watching her with a mixture of nerves and anticipation, she urged, “Aren’t you going to open it? We had it custom-made over a month ago. It was only finished last week.”

At that, Aisha stopped hesitating. She tugged at the bow and pulled it loose in one motion. After setting the ribbon casually on the table, she lifted the lid of the box…

A brown wand rested quietly on a velvet cushion. Aisha did not yet know much about judging the quality of wands, but even she could see the elegance of its lines. Looking closer, she could make out fine magical patterns carved along its length—the very patterns that allowed a wand to help a mage channel magic more effectively.

At the end of the wand, deeper strokes had been used to engrave her name:

Aisha, from Ryan.

Aisha’s eyes widened slightly.

She needed a wand anyway, so an ordinary one might not have been important enough to surprise her. But engraving it made all the difference, especially when the words engraved were her own name.

A wand’s function came from the core embedded inside it and the magical patterns carved into its body. Those patterns were extremely intricate; even the slightest error could affect how the wand functioned. As a rule, no decorative designs could be added beyond the magical patterns. If someone insisted on engraving words onto it, the patterns had to be altered in equally complex ways to accommodate them… which meant the time and cost rose exponentially, with the exact increase depending on the complexity of the additional engraving.

“Do you like it?” Tina’s grip tightened around the back of the chair. She looked a little nervous.

“…Of course!”

Aisha finally recovered from her surprise. Over the past few days, her parents had helped her buy everything she would need in Wold except for a wand. Since neither Tina nor Hock had mentioned one, Aisha had assumed she was supposed to buy it herself at the Heart of the World. She had never chosen a wand before, and it was the most expensive of all a mage’s tools, so she had worried about it for a while. Now, however, she hardly knew what to say.

“Um, thank you. I…”

Seeing that she truly was delighted, Hock and Tina both relaxed. They exchanged a glance, and Tina smiled.

“Happy birthday, Aisha.”

“Huh?”

Aisha blinked and instinctively turned to look at the calendar on the wall. February twenty-seventh. She had checked the date many times because it was the day she would leave for Wold, but it seemed only now that she realized it was also her birthday.

When she lived in Philray, her father had not always been able to return on the exact day of her birthday. Celebrations came early or late so often that Aisha had never been particularly sensitive to the date. And lately, perhaps she had studied so hard that her mind had begun to blur…

She could not quite name what she was feeling. Her eyes reddened.

Yet the sight only made Tina and Hock feel guiltier. That their daughter could be so moved by something as ordinary as receiving a present on her birthday was, in a way, proof that they had not been especially good parents over the previous decade and more.

Tina lowered her head and wrapped Aisha in an embrace. “I’ll take your wolf to the harbor in a little while,” she said softly. “Once you arrive safely, remember to write to us. Hock and I will write often too. After you’ve studied for a while, we’ll even be able to contact each other with magic.”

Aisha nodded at once and hugged Tina back. She felt her mother tremble faintly and hold her even tighter. Hock hesitated for several seconds, then reached out and stroked Aisha’s head.

…

Compared with the thirteen years she had spent in Philray, the few months Aisha had lived with her parents in Vitas seemed especially brief. Hock accompanied Aisha to the harbor, and Tina arrived soon afterward with the giant wolf. With such an extraordinary animal in tow, their family attracted a great deal of unnecessary attention.

After a reluctant farewell to her parents, the enormous ship bound for the Heart of the World unfurled its vast sails and slowly gathered way beneath the sea breeze. Aisha and the giant wolf stood on deck looking back. As the ship picked up speed, her parents’ figures on the pier grew smaller and smaller until, before long, they vanished altogether.

Several days later, Aisha arrived in Wold.

She followed the stream of passengers away from the docks. Even though she had prepared herself, her first sight of the legendary island still left her awestruck.

If anyone asked which region was the most advanced in the world, the same name would likely appear silently in everyone’s mind: Wold.

The island lay at the very center of the Divine Sea. It was the only place where all five peoples lived together in large numbers: a land of eternal peace, home to the world’s largest free-trade market and its most extensive and sophisticated center of research and education. While the continent shifted ceaselessly between war and fragile peace, Wold had continued to develop undisturbed, like a fortress far removed from worldly conflict, nurturing a secluded paradise of its own.

It was because of its location and its prosperity in every sphere that people admiringly called the island the “Heart of the World.”

It was currently admissions season, and most of the people pouring out of the harbor were students who had come to sit entrance examinations. All five peoples were represented. It was the first time Aisha had seen so many different peoples gathered in one place. Most of the humans were looking around with open curiosity. There were winged darkfolk, numerous beastfolk carrying luggage in their mouths, and even a few extremely rare elves and several dwarves walking in a perfectly straight line. The elves and dwarves had lost their territories on the continent many years ago. Only the few descendants of those who had escaped the wars that had nearly exterminated their peoples still lived here at the Heart of the World.

Perhaps because the harbor held such a bewildering variety of peoples—and because lions and black bears were strolling all over the docks—Aisha did not stand out at all despite having an enormous wolf beside her. That came as a relief. The days of being stared at aboard the ship had not been comfortable.

According to the candidate handbook, the Tower of Magic would have someone waiting at the harbor to meet its applicants.

Aisha walked a little farther, found an open place to stop, and opened her case. After taking out her examination permit and stamped registration form, she began searching the crowd for whoever had come to meet her.

Ahead of her, several young darkfolk with luggage were shaking one another frantically by the shoulders and shouting, “Women! Women! Women! I’ve never seen so many women in my life!” The only woman among them silently folded her wings tighter and edged away from the group… Probably not them.

To the left, a group of hamsters had somehow entered into a confrontation with an elf. Neither side would give way, and they were locked in a standoff… Probably not them either.

Aisha looked to the right, then paused.

Among the crowd stood a broad, sturdy young man with black hair, black eyes, and sun-browned skin. He did not look like a mage, yet he was holding a sign that read: *Joint Reception Desk for the Tower of Magic and Wold Warrior School. Thank you for applying to our schools.* Unless something unexpected was going on, he was probably the person Aisha was looking for. What startled her was not that the person meeting the Tower of Magic candidates was clearly a warrior, but that…

He was staring at her.

No, more precisely, he was staring in utter shock at the giant wolf beside her. His eyes looked ready to roll out of their sockets.

Les frowned. It was already too late to hide.

He might have been the last descendant of the Ancient Direwolf Clan, but that did not mean he had no relatives at all. Les’s maternal great-grandmother’s elder brother had married a black panther. After a long and tangled succession of family ties, one of his remaining relatives from that branch was now probably best described as a distant uncle.

The moment Les saw the black-haired young man in the crowd, a very bad feeling came over him.

Then his premonition came true.

That distant uncle’s son was Pal Paisla, a distant cousin Les had met a few times and whose beast form was a black panther. The instant Pal met his gaze, he lost all control and blurted out in utter shock without so much as a moment’s thought:

“Les?! What are you doing here?!”