Chapter 120: Chapter 120

After finishing his prayer, Jenkins stroked the unusually well-behaved Chocolate and took out the pencil again.

"Chocolate," he said, "our next move depends on this pencil."

The next steam train would undoubtedly spot the wreckage, but the railway company wouldn't dream of delaying its schedule over it. So, if this pencil could get me a fast way to Shire City, I'll stick to the plan. The Mysterious Realm's appearance has tangled the threads of fate; not even divination could determine which train I was on.

If the pencil didn't work as he hoped, Jenkins would have to wait here as a survivor and make contact with the local church's Enchanters when they arrived to investigate, identifying himself as a Scribe of the Legacy Sage. But that would waste a lot of time.

Jenkins was still worried. Why had Papa Oliver really sent him away from Nolan?

He placed his cane and the one containing the slender sword on the ground, sat down cross-legged, and pulled a notebook from his suitcase. With the pencil, he wrote on the paper:

"I sat on the ground writing, Chocolate by my side, the red and blue twin moons shining down on us. Just then, a gentle little pony trotted over from the distance, stopped before us, and proudly flicked its tail."

Jenkins, and Chocolate beside him whom he hadn't noticed, both looked up and scanned the surroundings. But nothing appeared.

"Alright, I guess that's not how it works."

Turning to a new page, Jenkins neatly drew a cube. Nothing happened.

He used perspective to add the unseen sides. Still, nothing happened.

He divided each face into nine squares and drew the internal axes connecting each small block. A tiny amount of his spirit was drawn out, and the world's first Rubik's Cube lifted off the page and came into being.

"A magic pencil, huh?"

He chuckled softly and began experimenting again. He soon discovered that for an object to be created from a drawing, it had to meet four conditions:

First, he had to completely understand the structure and function of the object he was drawing.

Second, the drawing had to include at least ninety percent of the real object's structure, with all parts drawn to precise proportions.

Third, the scale had to be one-to-one.

Fourth, it couldn't be raw materials like ore or metal that had no practical function.

"I'll have to take up sketching when I get back."

Jenkins mused. He smoothed a patch of ground with his hands, tore out a dozen sheets of paper, and pieced them together into a large canvas. Then, taking up the pencil, he carefully began to draw an old-fashioned bicycle.

Back when he used the Cursed Item A-10-2-9116 to draw the sword master, he could only manage an abstract sketch; it was only through the item's own properties that his mental image had manifested.

But a bicycle was different. Before he transmigrated, Jenkins had taken a course in engineering and mechanical drawing. The old professor's final project had been to draw a bicycle to exact specifications.

It hadn't been long since his transmigration, so Jenkins could still recall some of the proportions and mechanical structures of a bicycle.

After half an hour of work, with no train having appeared in the distance, a brand-new bicycle floated up from the paper. The price was further wear on the pencil and the near-total depletion of his spirit.

He was grateful for the spirit granted by the Mysterious Realm; otherwise, he never would have been able to draw the bicycle.

He beckoned to Chocolate, placing his canes and suitcase in the front basket. Chocolate stared curiously at this otherworldly creation, then leaped into Jenkins's arms. Jenkins set him in the basket, thoughtfully draping a coat from the suitcase over him to keep the cat from getting cold.

"So, I don't know anything about a Mysterious Realm. I just took the next train to Shire City."

He instructed Chocolate, then looked up at the moon before glancing back at the chaotic crash site. He offered one last prayer for the poor souls. Tightening his collar and gripping the handlebars, he swung his right leg over the top tube and wobbled away along the railway tracks.

As expected of an item made by a Bestowal, its quality was excellent. The bicycle's speed alone wouldn't have gotten him to Shire City by noon, but Jenkins had his [Flexible Legs] ability. And simply pumping his legs up and down didn't consume much spirit.

He had worried the bike might fall apart, but even as his legs blurred into a spinning pinwheel, the frame only began to creak and groan.

To prevent steam boilers from overheating and exploding, the Church of Creation and Machinery had set a speed limit for railway companies that wasn't actually very high. Jenkins sped along the tracks, ultimately arriving near the Shire City station just an hour later than the train's original schedule.

He was lucky the crash hadn't happened too far from Shire City.

Faint lights from the city were visible in the distance. Jenkins turned the handlebars, steering off the tracks and into the adjacent woods.

He and the bike crashed into a tree. Chocolate, ever prepared, leaped onto a branch, while Jenkins and his luggage flew half a meter through the air.

He had been riding so fast that the brake system had long since failed, forcing him to rely on this primitive method of stopping.

He pushed himself up, hands on his lower back. The bicycle was more or less completely wrecked.

Drawing the slender sword from his cane, he tore off the two rubber tires and tossed them aside. He infused a bit of spirit into the moon-white blade and hacked violently at the pile of scrap metal. Amid a cacophony of clangs and bangs, he reduced it to a state where, unless a master craftsman appeared, no one could ever tell what the pile of junk had once been.

Jenkins had never heard of a bicycle in this world, so he certainly couldn't be the one to "invent" it. He had to constantly remember the persona of Jenkins Williams to protect everything he now had.

The frame was taken care of. As for the rubber tires, he went deep into the woods, dug a deep pit, and buried them. This was unfamiliar territory, so this temporary solution would have to do.

Instead of entering the city, he carried his suitcase, tucked his canes under his arm, and held his cat, furtively circling the outskirts until he reached the public cemetery.

He hid the suitcase and the Spirit Striking Cane in a concealed spot, tucked Chocolate inside his coat to keep him from running off, and took the slender sword with him, preparing to dig up a grave. Seizing a moment when a dark cloud obscured the moon, he slipped through a gap in the cemetery fence.

The huntress's report had mentioned this place. The cemetery's keeper was an elderly man, a level-one Enchanter from the Church of Death and End. But he had recently fallen gravely ill, and the current caretaker was just a temporary hire, an ordinary person. Thus, the infiltration went exceptionally smoothly.