Warlock Apprentice

A small tour told him that the bottom of the sea trench was not much wider than its entrance. About 500 meters in width.

He found nothing other than strange deep-sea creatures. There weren’t even any fish here.

He didn’t know whether he should move forward or back. After sensing the water current that appeared almost stagnant in this place, he chose a particular direction.

The walls beside him were slowly moving apart as he moved forward. Here, most things that moved were plankton, invertebrates, and arthropods such as shrimps. These creatures usually stayed hidden under the surface; they would show up when Angor disturbed their home by walking by.

After going for half an hour, he noticed that the oxygen in the water was getting denser.

When the trench grew even wider and had less sediment under his feet, he finally saw another building.

He couldn’t recognize the purpose of this one. It looked like a rock-based structure that sat on an isosceles triangle base about 20 meters high. A circle was fixed on the tip of the triangle, where two harpoons were placed over each other, creating a cross.

“Is that a statue or something?” He moved closer.

The triangle base was built by piling up stones, while the circle was carved out using a giant boulder. The two harpoons that were slotted inside the circle could also be taken away.

Angor took a harpoon and noticed it looked similar to the one used by the Toad Skins. There was no supernatural property on it, but the spearhead made from a polished fish bone looked pretty sharp.

“A weapon rack?” Angor shook his head to deny that idea. Even a primitive tribe would not leave their weapons in the open like this.

He moved on and saw more of these strange structures along his way.

He was sure they were all the same things since they all looked like “a circle supported by a triangle”.

“Are they graves? Maybe the weapons are used to commemorate them?” He stopped in front of one of them and used mana to shock its base open.

There were only more stones underneath. He didn’t find a corpse.

“Not graves, not weapon placement… Then, totems?” Angor recalled certain stories that described tribes who built totems to worship their gods or to scare off people by hanging the heads of their enemies on them.

The next structure had a skull affixed on the circle.

It belonged to an unknown beast. A reptile, probably. This one somewhat helped Angor confirm his previous idea.

So what kind of enemies are they trying to scare?

It was unlikely that the Toad Skins needed to “scare off” the harmless shrimps around here.

So is there something more dangerous? The owner of this head?

While thinking about all these questions, he reached an energy barrier and saw the ground inside tidy and clean. Obviously, someone had been taking care of the place.

He reached out a hand and felt no obstruction upon touching the barrier, so he simply walked inside. The inside of the barrier had air but no water, which further proved to him that a sapient race lived here before.

But there was no light.

With Infinite Reticence on, he walked deeper inside and found a dozen houses built with broken stones as well as the other end of the barrier.

He didn’t walk very far into the barrier, which meant the protected area wasn’t big. Most of the stone houses were shattered, but they didn’t seem like they were long abandoned. At most, only two years or so.

Using his spirit feelers, he checked and found no creatures inside them.

The houses didn’t hold many things either. There were only some shells and decorative corals.

He approached the house in the very center that had a round roof and a width of about ten meters. It was the biggest, least damaged house among all, but it was still smaller than the fortress he found earlier.

He pushed the door open and was immediately welcomed by several arrows.

He dodged them by tilting his head in time. It seemed a trigger affixed on the door just activated a trap.

When he stepped through the entrance, his ears twitched, and he immediately looked back.

There was only darkness.

“Something’s not right…” He was sure he heard rustling sound behind him just now.

But his Light cantrip did a really poor job at helping him securing the environment.

“Am I hearing things?” He wondered if his spirit was too tensed up while traveling in this natural abyss.

Nevertheless, he chose to stay cautious.

He checked the room and didn’t find anything useful. Although he saw similar wall paintings on the ceiling, which meant this place also belonged to Toad Skins.

He also discovered a metal weapon with fine carving on it. This suggested that Toad Skins had learned metal smelting skills. However, he didn’t see a place for doing such work around here. There were probably more settlements out there.

There were also fabrics weaved out of special materials that definitely did not originate from this trench.

Again, unknown noises interrupted his thoughts.

He quickly jumped out of the room and looked around without finding anything. Even if there was something, it wasn’t easy to see it in this darkness.

Taking another tour around the settlement didn’t yield any results. He planned to leave and move on to see if there were more of such places ahead.

Before he reached the barrier, a pair of green, glowing dots slowly approached him from behind, quietly.

Angor stopped moving. When he sensed an attack coming, he jumped and did a swift back-flip. He then landed behind whoever just attacked him.

The ambusher was clearly surprised as it believed it didn’t make any noise just now.

Angor cast Fear at the monster, and it started to tremble badly. Meanwhile, he moved his Light forward so that he could observe it better.

The strange, reptile-like creature had a beak full of rodent teeth growing within. It was about 5 or 6 meters long. Its head looked similar to an alligator’s or lizard’s, yet its body formed a fine and smooth curve like a fish. Meanwhile, a pair of wide, fan-like fins grew on both sides.

Also, it had been floating in the air.

As Angor watched, the creature’s eyes suddenly became red.

“Oh crap. It resisted my spell.”

Fear was used to arouse the most fearful memory in one’s mind, but it took more than intelligence and a keen eye to resist the spell. In fact, creatures that were easily angered would usually do well against it.

Clearly, this unknown creature had such a simple mind.

Its eyes were literally glowing in rage. The monster roared loudly, and it shocked Angor into a daze for a while, allowing it to see a chance to charge and ram into Angor’s stomach.

It grew wilder at the smell of blood. Under the monster’s continuous and swift attacks, Angor’s lack of physical strength quickly put him at a disadvantage—he couldn’t get enough time to cast illusions. His only choice was to keep rolling and jumping out of harm’s way.

After some close-quarter wrestling, the monster accidentally stumbled out of the barrier for moving too fast. Using the valuable chance, Angor downed a bottle of Glowing Velvet Potion and chanted Spirit Mantra.

He saw the reflection of the monster’s eyes on the barrier. Earlier, he saw it coming from behind in the same way. Now, he could also use the pair of light dots in the dark to tell where the monster was.

The creature was sneaky but far from smart.

In his soul form, Angor carried his body and skillfully dodged several more attacks until he saw an opportunity when the creature opened its mouth wide to bite him.

A gravity bullet precisely sunk into its throat.

Bam!

The bullet exploded from inside the monster’s body and tore its body into scraps that scattered everywhere.

Angor sighed in relief, but before he could go and check the monster’s remains, he felt the ground shaking. In addition, there was something in the distance that made a lot of noise.

A noise that echoed in the depth of the sea.

When he looked toward the source of the ruckus, he saw a torrent of water heading right this way.