4-4 minutes

“Chapter 203: Thundercloud Boat”

How? I’m sure the cloud was further away from us. Did it move? Did we not realize how close it actually was?

– Careful with the lightning! Don’t worry. You’re safe here~

– This voice…

– Tell the dragons to keep going straight and you’ll reach the deck of our boat.

– Boat?

– Ah, you’re so oblivious. Apprentice, go get them.

A pink-haired girl with twintails emerged from the depths of the gray clouds.

– Heeey~ It’s been a month, huh? How you doing?

– Arueetel-san!?

– Right-o! I’m the apprentice of the captain of the thundercloud ship! We soar the skies-

– Can you shut your mouth already and get them inside? D̲u̲m̲b̲a̲s̲s̲

– Sure…

The clouds around us took the form of a hand and carried us into the center of the thunderstorm.

The deeper we went, the calmer the storm became.

And sure enough, a boat was floating in the middle of the clouds.

– Over here!

On the deck of the ship was a wizard waving her hand at me.

Eyes golden just like Arueetel, blonde hair, and wearing a robe with gold ornaments that looked more expensive than anything I’ve ever worn.

– Sorry for startling you. We saw a pair of dragons flying with an unnatural group of adventurers and I thought we had to investigate.

– I’m Takaya, disciple of the Sage of the Forest. Who are you?

– Ah, right, sorry. My name is Rifaiv. I’m the captain of the Rumble Fisher. And sometimes I go by the title of Sage of the Clouds(*)

So this is the next sage I meet…

Ever said all the sages have an extravagant side, but for now Rifaiv seems normal.

– So you’re the famous kid that the Sage of the Forest raised, huh?

“Famous”?

– So? What were you guys up to? Why were you flying on dragons? Sightseeing?

– Something like that. We were headed to Wols. My friends are from there.

– Ah, to Shamsheel’s place? The Sage of the Volcano lives there.

– There’s a sage in Wols!? (Akane)

– Yeah, but she spends all day in her crater so we rarely get to see her.

The sudden slam of a door interrupted our conversation.

– YO! Are you the Level IX kid that Aru and Shiori mentioned?

A young man was showing me his pure white teeth with a huge smile.

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(*) Hey folks! It seems that I have made my first crucial mistake (Crucial, though thankfully I realized this early on). Arueetel is not, in fact, the Sage of the Clouds! I re-read the sentence where she introduces herself for a good hour when I translated it and no matter how hard I tried I could barely make sense of it. This is the main reason why I wanted to catch up on chapters, to ensure that mistakes like this don’t happen. The more I do in advance the less likely it is for these things to happen, so hopefully everything should be perfectly accurate after a few chapters. Should, tho I’m just a human. I’ll make sure to let you know if I make another mistake this big. Thank you for reading and sorry for my terrible Japanese <3

(I will change the original sentence so if you’re reading this after 25/07/22 nevermind this message)