The Occamy is a magical creature with wings and two legs, boasting a snake-like body covered in feathers, stretching up to fifteen feet long—a rare and valuable fantastic beast in today's wizarding world.
The Occamy's ability to expand and shrink at will lets them adapt to all sorts of environments, and that's exactly why they're so prized—their skin is the best alchemy material for casting the Traceless Stretching Charm.
"Too bad, once the Occamy dies, it doesn't seem to turn up in the Misty Illusion Realm, or I wouldn't be whining about having no skin to use." Ian scooped up his heavy money bag and stood up. He didn't know where this desert ended, but hey, since he's already here, he might as well explore the area.
Who knows, maybe he'd even stumble upon the reason he was guided here in the first place.
"Shouldn't run into any scary wraiths—this place looks like even ghosts can't be bothered to live here." Ian pulled out his magic wand and gave it a casual wave.
And just like that—
The countless grains of sand began to churn, swirling together in front of him and shaping themselves into the outline of an off-road vehicle, its form gradually taking shape as if it might actually become the real thing.
"Swoosh~"
Yet, just as it was solidifying, it collapsed with a roar, even the colors that had begun shifting faded quickly, all the black sand tumbling back to the ground and returning to its original state.
"So, it's the connections between the sand grains… I knew this thing was interesting!" Ian was caught off guard a bit by his own failed Transformation Technique.
Still, he had noticed what went wrong. If only his money bag wasn't packed to bursting, he'd definitely stuff a few million more bits of black sand inside just to see.
"Fortunately, I'm a hexagonal warrior—a jack-of-all-trades!" Ian didn't get frustrated or disappointed; instead, after the transformation flopped, he pulled out his nearly finished Magic Cloak, at ninety-nine percent completion.
"Whew~"
A gentle toss over his back, cloak buttoned up on his front, and in the next second, Ian shot upwards toward the dark, gloomy sky like someone yanked from dry earth.
"Slow down! Slow down!"
"Fly lower! Fly straight forward!"
"Damn it! I didn't mean for you to just float along horizontally! Don't you get what 'cool diagonal flight' is about? I swear I never programmed you with those cheesy, low-budget TV flight effects!"
"Seriously! Ugh, ugh, ugh! Just because I yelled at you, you have to slam me into the sand?"
...
And so—
Ian's body bobbed and shook up in midair, swerving left and right, and even got his head stuffed into the sand multiple times, flying around like a drunken idiot.
Granted—
He did make good progress forward, actually faster than some laggy flying broomsticks, but in the end, this Magic Cloak was only ninety-nine percent done.
"I really shouldn't have tried to give you independent thinking!"
The unfinished part was, of course, the "wizard AI" training. Ian was seriously regretting it now, but alas, there's no antidote for regret. All he could do was coax his not-so-smart Flying Cloak as best he could.
"Does this count as a magical version of calming a machine's soul?" Once Ian finally managed to fly straight ahead, that sense of achievement flooded in again—no wonder little wizards' moods swing like a weather vane.
From up in the sky, Ian looked down at the endlessly deep black expanse below, having flown a good while along his path, but spotting absolutely no wraiths, plants, or animals.
Not even a single ruined building anywhere—it was as if no wraith ever set foot in this region, pure and primal, untouched by any other soul.
Everyone knows—
Whenever a wraith settles somewhere, their perception will change the place they've chosen, yet here in this desert where Ian now stood, not a single sign of alteration was visible.
It's as if it's always been this way—
Since the dawn of time—
"There can't really be some ghost out there that just likes living in a place this barren, right? Even the God of Death isn't that dull…" Ian pondered to himself why he'd been led here at all.
Can't be that the God of Death actually lives here, and already found out about his illegal entry? But if so, the God of Death should've popped out long ago to punish him.
"My Illusion Realm 'Experience Card' time is passing normally, and I can stay way longer here than before." This clear sense of his inner state gave Ian nothing much to worry about.
Still—
Teacher Morgan once said, not long after they first met, that magical power hitting the limit would trigger some kind of change, but that hasn't happened to Ian so far.
"Could it be Lady Ravenclaw's opinion is the right one? She said my magic power needs to break through the limits of human wizards before I'd experience that unknown transformation." With Morgan the Witch and Lady Ravenclaw's contradictory magical theories, Ian could only judge things by how he actually felt.
He'd definitely reached the limit of human magical power—though he'd already set foot on the Path of Legends, his magic is still growing, and he knows he hasn't yet broken through that bottleneck holding his power back.
"So it seems Teacher Morgan isn't all-knowing, not about every topic… At least regarding what happens once I hit the magic power limit, her guess is pretty much off?"
Ian wasn't sure of that either.
After all—
Who's to say his current location isn't itself a kind of unexpected change?