Above the raging, turbulent sea.
When Ian finally pierced through the last layer of thunderstorm barriers and reached the core, he saw an island shrouded in dense fog, and it looked as if the island was completely isolated from the world.
As he slowly approached the island, the scenery around him gradually became clearer: towering trees reaching into the clouds, brilliantly colored flowers, and a strange fragrance drifting through the air.
Everything felt both unfamiliar and fascinating. By the time he hurriedly landed on the island at the center of the storm, Ian hadn't had time to shake the rainwater from his feathers or transform back into human form.
"Splash..."
Suddenly, he saw a round, chubby stone ball whiz straight toward his face... an Accio to the head. Faced with an attack, Ian wasn't about to let a fist-sized stone smash into his forehead.
The stone wasn't even fast.
Even if someone was trying to bully him with a sneak attack, he could easily dodge it. After all, he wasn't a fifty- or sixty-year-old man whose reaction speed had declined from practicing Five Continuous Lightning Whips.
He dodged the stone effortlessly.
It rolled into a nearby patch of grass. It crashed into a coconut tree behind him, making the trunk wobble violently. Clearly, it wasn't light at all.
"What the...!" A sneak attack?"
Ian instantly dropped his raven form. He saw a little girl with braided, goat-horn pigtails hop out from the bushes. She walked forward with a confused expression and picked up the stone ball.
"So weird..."
The girl muttered to herself.
She picked up the stone and examined it carefully.
"How did it fail? Didn't they say this would help me catch a magical creature?" She seemed utterly puzzled, as if she doubted her own studies.
"..."
Ian pressed a hand on top of her head.
"Did you just try to Pokéball me or something?" He was completely dumbfounded, and the kid was no less shocked than he was when he saw a bird turn into a human.
"Oh, heavens! You can turn into a person!" The girl was utterly amazed, her little face filled with disbelief. She looked at Ian in pure shock.
"And you can talk!"
Her eyes widened, and the stone ball in her hand fell to the sand with a thud. She clearly had no magical abilities, so she had no idea that Ian had used Legilimency to access her thoughts and learn her language, allowing him to communicate with her without barriers.
Ancient languages were complicated. Ian had long ago developed the habit of learning a new language whenever he encountered a new species, but most of these languages would be useless in later eras.
Most would be buried by the river of history. They didn't hold any special power; they simply existed as languages.
"I'm not someone who can turn into a person, I am a person." Ian corrected her misunderstanding. Even in his eyes, she was just a child.
Probably seven or eight years old.
This made it difficult for Ian to consider beating her up. Having grown up in an orphanage as an elder brother, he had always been tolerant of younger children.
Back when he lived in the orphanage, there were plenty of mischievous little brothers and sisters. He couldn't beat them every day, so he had a lot of patience with this sort of thing.
Of course, when he ran into truly spoiled brats, Ian would still give them a proper lesson. But this clearly wasn't one of those situations. This was a little girl who had simply mistaken him for a magical creature.
It was a complete misunderstanding.
This misunderstanding gave Ian an intense case of déjà vu. He had just been in a storm where that long worm thing felt like Rayquaza, and now, upon entering the core, someone tried to catch him with something that looked like a Poké Ball.
If there were any Nintendo in this world, they'd probably be mailing cease-and-desist letters all the way back to ancient times.
Thois was absolutely ridiculous.
"Wow, no wonder I couldn't catch you... you're not an ordinary magical creature, after all." The little girl completely ignored Ian's explanation. Her tiny brain clearly had its own interpretation.
"Heavens! I've encountered a Legend-rank magical creature!"
She suddenly jumped around in excitement, waving her arms wildly. What she said made Ian's head spin, it was unbelievably surreal.
"Can you stop treating me like I'm some kind of Pokémon?" It was the second time Ian had reminded her that he wasn't a magical creature, yet she acted as if she were missing a chunk of her brain and couldn't understand human speech.
Maybe it was because no one on this island had magic, had seen magic, or had even heard of it—so to them, the idea of a human turning into an animal was impossible?
But even so...
What was with this overwhelming copyright-infringement energy?! Her completely misaligned worldview left Ian speechless. It was too absurd; he wondered if he had fallen into an illusion.
"Huh?"
Hearing this, the little girl froze for a moment. She blinked her big, round eyes, her face full of curiosity.
"What's a Pokémon? I only know magical creatures."
…
That sentence actually reassured Ian. It seemed that he hadn't crossed into another world during the storm and ended up in a fictional setting created by someone named "Sister Hui."
"It's… a video game about catching monsters. There's an animated show, too."
Ian suddenly choked on his words.
"What's a video game? I only know hide-and-seek and tag." What's an animated show?"
The little girl was clearly confused by Ian's vocabulary.
After all, she was an ancient human. Of course, she wouldn't understand concepts from future eras.
"It's just... a kind of fantasy," Ian gave a simple explanation.
The girl's jaw dropped.
"That's literally our everyday life!"
Her words plunged Ian into silence yet again.
"Can you tell me what this stone ball actually is?" After a long pause and repeatedly hitting communication barriers, Ian decided he needed to understand the situation first.
"Oh! This is our treasure tool for catching magical creatures."
The girl lifted the stone ball proudly as she spoke. The sphere was carved with ancient runes all over. "Every child receives a stone ball at age twelve. They can go into the wild and capture a magical creature to be their lifelong companion."
Hearing that...
The sea breeze kicked up sand, slapping against Ian's stiff face.
The air fell quiet once more.
"Lifelong companion? Do all of you live like this here?" Ian's eyes widened in disbelief. If Nintendo's legal department could cross worlds, they would sue this island into extinction.
"Yes! It's part of our tradition." The girl nodded enthusiastically, unaware of Ian's internal meltdown.
Ian's mouth twitched.
"My name is Bud!" The girl, completely unconcerned with Ian's expression, grabbed his sleeve excitedly. "Are you from outside the island? How can you transform into a magical creature?"
"Is it spiritual resonance? But where's your companion?"
The terms she used...
Ian couldn't understand a thing.
"My companion is law and justice," He said blankly. She continued questioning him. "So, all your magical creatures have to be caught with that ball?"
As she spoke, Ian's gaze fell on the stone ball.
To be honest...
The runes carved on it resembled Titan-creation magic. He suspected that a banished Titan had created all of this, though he had no idea where that Titan had gotten such a bizarre idea.
"Yes, yes!" Bud seemed to have absolutely no wariness toward Ian.
Maybe the people here were just naturally naive.
She began counting on her fingers: "My cousin caught a fire-breathing lizard. A big brother next door caught an invisible octopus. But the strongest is our village chief, Grandpa Chief! When he was young, he tamed a thunder dragon!"
As she spoke, Bud's face filled with deep admiration. Ian recalled the long worm he had encountered inside the storm and suddenly understood why it had been so aggressive toward him.
As a magical creature...
It had probably been threatened by humans trying to tame magical creatures. Some might have even tried to capture it. No wonder that thing probably had PTSD.
Thinking of this, Ian forgave the reckless knockoff "Rayquaza."
"This custom of yours..." Ian chose his words carefully. "How long has it existed?"
He suspected that these people were also Titan creations, just like Zeus and the others. He simply didn't know if this group had gone extinct or evolved in later ages.
"Ever since our great ancestor founded this village! But I don't know how long ago that was. We've always lived this way." Bud answered without the slightest guardedness.
"Can you tell me more about this place?" Ian decided to dig deeper into this mysterious island. He knew he was probably very close to the remaining Titan.
"Of course!" The little girl replied excitedly. "We have all kinds of magical creatures here, and everyone has their own companion. You can go into the forest to catch them. You can also join competitions to show your strength."
"Competitions? What kind of competitions?" Ian had a sinking feeling in his heart.
And sure enough...
"It's battles between magical creatures! To see whose companion is stronger. It's a form of training so that we can one day challenge the raging storms outside our world," The girl explained as she raised a hand and pointed toward the massive storm barrier protecting the region.
"..."
Ian truly had nothing left to say.
"That sounds like gladiator matches." He tried his best to help the bootleggers justify their "tradition."
"That's not all! We also hold festivals where everyone brings their friends and celebrates together!" Bud continued, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
"Your life really is full of color," Ian sighed.
"What about you? Where are you from?" The girl asked curiously.
"I come from a different world, one where we don't communicate with magical creatures the way you do. Nor do we have your kind of challenges," Ian replied.
"That's such a pity." Bud said regretfully.
Ian had no idea what she was pitying, though.
"But I'm very interested in your world now," Ian continued with a smile, deliberately not mentioning magic. "Can you take me to see your town?"
Maybe, starting with understanding this small town, Ian would be able to figure out exactly what the Titan did and from whom he plagiarized the creative blueprint for constructing this place. He already had a guess in mind.
But it still needed verification.
"Of course! But wait for me first!" Little Bud agreed without hesitation. Her eyes sparkled as she looked at a coconut tree on the side of the road. "I need to get some drinks."
Before Ian could react, the little girl with goat-horn braids hopped over to a coconut tree thick enough that two adults would need to hug it together.
She took a deep breath.
Then, her little fists slammed forward.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Over a dozen straight punches hammered into the tree trunk, shaking the canopy violently. With a tooth-numbing cracking noise, the twenty-meter-tall tree slowly tilted and crashed onto the beach with a thunderous hōng lóng, kicking up a huge cloud of sand.
"Done!" Bud split open the trunk and peeled it apart like a banana, easily pulling out several intact coconuts.
Ian's eye twitched violently.
The scene looked like Machamp from Pokémon had crossed over into reality.
No, it was even more absurd than that. After all, the games never featured a ten-year-old girl who treated coconut trees like sugarcane.
That Titan was way too faithful to the original reference material!
"Everyone on your island…" Ian's voice trailed off.
"Is everyone this brutal?"
"Eh?" Bud tilted her head, looking as innocent as could be. "Isn't this basic stuff? My younger brother, A-Mao, could do this when he was three. I'm a girl, so I'm not as strong."
Once again, her words inflicted silence.
Ian was stunned speechless.
Staring at the smoke rising from the distant town, he suddenly gained a brand-new understanding of the exiled Titan's twisted sense of humor. His silence didn't affect Little Bud at all.
She skipped forward cheerfully.
"Do you want to come see our town?"
She turned back to him and extended an invitation.
"Of course I do."
Ian quickly followed. Under her guidance, he entered a lively little town. Shops of all kinds lined both sides of the road.
To his surprise, the place had the technological level of the Middle Ages.
Not primitive savagery.
Well, that made sense.
Even the girl's clothing required some degree of civilization. Compared to Ian's world, however, their civilization had evolved in a rather skewed direction.
In the marketplace, a burly man competed in a weightlifting contest against a gorilla.
In a teahouse, noblewomen were having afternoon tea with elves.
The most horrifying thing of all, on a park bench, a couple was kissing their crystal snail.
"What are they doing?" Ian's voice cracked.
"Building their bond!" Bud said matter-of-factly.
"Partners connected by bloodline must be inseparable. Some even become bloodline-linked. I heard that the town chief's ancestors once tamed and married a western dragon."
She said this as if it made perfect logical sense.
At that moment, a flash of insight struck Ian.
"Wait... you said bloodline-linked?"
For some reason, his mind conjured images of pure-blood families in later generations who possessed special bloodlines, like the Dumbledore family, who could communicate with phoenixes.
So...
Was the wizarding world's "unofficial history" real?
(End of chapter)
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