Chapter 52: What Was Meieruita, as a “Traveler”, Thinking? Part 1

After shrinking, everything around him felt extraordinarily fresh.

An Luo looked around and thought to himself that it was a good thing he didn’t have a phobia of giant objects, or he might have fainted on the spot.

He sat down on a horizontally placed book, which was very thick. His feet dangled back and forth, his heels lightly tapping against the side of the book.

“After shrinking me, then what?” An Luo asked. “Where are you planning to put me?”

The wizard robe didn’t have an inner pocket. Was Meieruita planning to sew one right away?

“Here.”

Meieruita placed a waterdrop pendant in front of An Luo. An Luo bent down and poked it, discovering that its surface was soft.

“What is this?”

An Luo quickly searched his mind but still couldn’t recall what it was.

“This is a spatial wizard artifact I made myself,” Meieruita said. “The theories on time and space you told me about were very enlightening, but I need more time to comprehend and understand them. At my current level, I can only create a small living storage space.”

In terms of function, the waterdrop pendant was quite underwhelming.

Its capacity was also very small. Though it could hold living creatures, it was limited to small animals—not even a rabbit would fit.

But no matter how underwhelming, it was still a storage witch tool that could hold living beings.

The principles it touched upon were something a wizard apprentice fundamentally couldn’t master.

An Luo: “…I don’t get it, but I’m deeply shocked.”

Wasn’t this just too overpowered?

Meieruita said calmly, “It was indeed somewhat difficult to make. To get it to form, I had to give up on capacity. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have needed you to drink the shrinking potion.”

Somewhat… difficult…

A challenge that many wizards couldn’t overcome was just “somewhat difficult” in Meieruita’s mouth.

Even as the author, An Luo had no countermeasures against such an overwhelmingly powerful protagonist.

It was like he had cheats enabled!

He even began to doubt himself: Did I really assign the protagonist such high stats?

But too many changes had occurred here, greatly reducing the reference value of the original text.

In the original story, An Luo had arranged for Meieruita to upgrade step by step, each one steady and solid.

But here, for various reasons, An Luo had not only told Meieruita the entire plot but had even revealed some laws and theories that Meieruita only obtained later at great cost ahead of time.

Even so, in An Luo’s expectations, Meieruita shouldn’t have achieved results this quickly.

The research times in the original setting started in units of “years.”

How had the time units here become “days”?

“Come.” Meieruita didn’t say much more. He picked up the waterdrop pendant. “Get ready.”

An Luo took a deep breath. “Okay.”

The next second, he was already inside the waterdrop pendant.

The pendant was transparent, allowing a clear view of the outside world. At the same time, its inner walls were very soft—even bumping into them wouldn’t hurt.

Meieruita had considered everything thoroughly.

“I used water elements,” Meieruita explained after confirming the pendant worked. He released An Luo and hung it around his neck. “The inner walls made from water elements are not only soft but also breathable.”

A thin black cord threaded through the hole at the top of the waterdrop pendant, suspending the transparent droplet in the center of his neck.

It looked pretty good, actually.

An Luo didn’t plan to just sit there waiting for three hours. He suggested going to sleep.

“Okay.” Meieruita extended his hand. “Come.”

Meieruita cupped An Luo in both hands, like scooping up a handful of water, but An Luo felt it lacked security. He suggested, “You can just grab me like this.”

He demonstrated with one hand.

Pose reference: Tom Cat grabbing Jerry.jpg

Meieruita didn’t respond. He simply brought his hands closer together.

Fine, that worked too.

Meieruita placed An Luo on the bed. An Luo quickly burrowed under the covers and struggled out of the gray wool sock.

The sensation of his skin directly against the bedding made him a bit uncomfortable. An Luo had never slept naked before, and it felt unnatural.

But there was no other way right now.

After lying down, An Luo noticed Meieruita still standing by the bed watching him, which was a little embarrassing.

He could understand, though. Putting himself in Meieruita’s shoes, if Meieruita were in this situation, he would stand there watching too…

Human nature.

After staring at each other for a moment, An Luo tentatively said, “…Good night?”

“Good night.”

Meieruita blinked and turned toward the desk.

He pulled out the wooden chair, sat down at the table, and opened the Witchcraft Knowledge Handbook he had been reading.

After flipping a few pages, Meieruita realized he had no impression of the previous content, so he flipped back.

Originally, Meieruita hadn’t thought too much about it. His initial plan had been to create a storage witch tool with enough capacity for living beings, but because his grasp of the principles wasn’t deep enough, he failed repeatedly.

The shrinking potion was his compromise for abandoning capacity.

But… the shrunken An Luo stirred an indescribable sense of satisfaction in his heart.

An Luo, only the size of a palm, sitting on the book cover—after shrinking, he looked more fragile than usual, like a fledgling bird not yet out of the nest.

After storing An Luo in the waterdrop pendant, a abnormally dark thought surged in his heart:

What if I kept An Luo trapped inside forever?

Just the thought filled Meieruita with an intense longing.

Under the pretext of observing the experiment, he kept An Luo inside a bit longer. An Luo, oblivious to his intentions, innocently waited inside.

In the end, reason triumphed over the evil desire budding in his heart. Meieruita released An Luo from the waterdrop pendant.

For some reason, when he hung the pendant around his neck, he tightened the cord, pressing it closely against his skin.

Besides that, An Luo had questioned Meieruita’s overly rapid progress, even though Meieruita hadn’t answered him directly—he had already noticed the anomaly.

His progress was indeed too fast.

Meieruita’s comprehension of witchcraft advanced so quickly that even he found it hard to believe. When An Luo laid out the so-called “relativity of spacetime,” he found himself quickly grasping certain concepts of time and space.

Meieruita keenly sensed there must be a special reason for this.

Combining An Luo’s mention of the “Traveler” ending and An Luo’s claim that he had inexplicably traversed to this world after just sleeping, Meieruita formed a hypothesis.

He guessed that perhaps he was the one who brought An Luo here.

But for some reason, spacetime had rewound to the very beginning, he had lost his memories, but his past knowledge and experience hadn’t vanished, which was why his progress was so rapid.

Meieruita wasn’t opposed to this guess. He believed he must have had a reason for doing so, but he wouldn’t explain even half a word to An Luo.

An Luo was so attached to his original world. If he knew that the one who abducted him here was Meieruita, what would he think?

Would he hate me?

…Let’s just treat all this as an accident.

Meieruita’s gaze drifted aimlessly over the pages.

He would handle it properly.

Three hours passed quickly. Meieruita waited by the bed five minutes early.

An Luo was already asleep.

The originally narrow bed now seemed immensely vast to him.

Meieruita recalled a fairy tale An Luo had once transmitted through his soul.

Thumbelina.

Poor Thumbelina was abducted in her sleep, facing this huge, unfamiliar world. First, she was forced to become a toad’s wife, then she had to temporarily submit in a mole’s burrow, where the ugly mole proposed to her. To escape, she rode on a swallow’s back and finally met the flower fairy king. They fell in love and lived happily ever after.

Clearly, this was a story for innocent children, but Meieruita was no longer a naive child.

He even felt there was a clever hidden thread in it.

Thumbelina started out living under her parents’ care—happy, joyful, carefree.

If the flower fairy king had appeared before her then, Thumbelina might not have accepted him, let alone leave her parents and homeland to follow him to his kingdom.

But after being abducted, forced to endure crisis after crisis, with suitors either toads or moles, she hit rock bottom—alone, with nowhere to turn, fleeing in panic.

At that point, if the flower fairy king appeared again, winning her over would be a sure thing.

She might even throw herself into his arms. Compared to the toad or mole, the flower fairy king was such a perfect husband—wasn’t marrying him the natural choice?

And so they lived happily ever after, the fairy tale reaching a perfect ending.

Meieruita didn’t know why he, now a “Traveler,” had brought An Luo here, but wasn’t this beginning similar to Thumbelina’s?

An Luo had originally lived in his own world, leading a happy and comfortable life. He might encounter some troubles, but it was still better than falling into this dark wizard world from his pen.

What was Meieruita, as a “Traveler,” thinking?

The current Meieruita had no way of knowing, but he wouldn’t doubt his own decisions.

Whatever he decided must be beneficial to himself.

Even if there really was a “clever hidden thread” between him and An Luo.

It wouldn’t hinder the fairy tale from reaching a perfect ending, would it?

Time ticked by, and as soon as the five minutes were up, the shrinking potion’s effect wore off. An Luo returned to his original size.

He wasn’t wearing clothes; his fair shoulders were exposed outside the covers. Perhaps sensing the cold, he unconsciously shrank back a little.

An Luo’s fairness reminded Meieruita of porcelain. For some reason, Meieruita always associated An Luo with porcelain.

It was a delicate, soft white—warm and smooth to the touch.

Meieruita’s fingertip landed on An Luo’s fair skin as lightly as a dragonfly touching water.

Warm, soft, delicate.

An Luo frowned slightly and shifted a bit.

The dragonfly was startled and vanished in an instant.

Meieruita pulled the covers up and tucked them in, then turned and left.