Warlock Apprentice

One aspect of the Nightmare Realm was that time felt frozen solid, while everything contained rich implications that suggested great stories and hidden plots.

Greya felt the ambiance of the Nightmare Realm coming from the mountain ahead of her as well, but it was not as strong as what she went through in Witch’s Town.

She was planning to look at all the sections in the illusion before deciding which one to explore next. Just now, she thought about going to the Tree Hotel since that beast on the tree looked interesting enough.

But she had completely forgotten about it when she saw this “Mysterious Mountain”.

Her heart was beating faster again.

This time, it wasn’t caused by Angor’s illusions. She believed she just felt Mystery energy.

She knew how this particular sense worked because Felicia’s Butterfly Spirit was a Mystery item. In fact, Greya owned the item before she handed it to Felicia. She did so because Butterfly Spirit never displayed its true potential in her hands. Instead, the item suited Felicia, who fused the bloodline of a Nether Butterfly in her body.

Still, Greya knew how to look out for signs that suggested Mystery items.

It wasn’t a big deal to sense such a thing elsewhere, but she was VERY surprised to sense it in Angor’s illusion.

Besides, it felt familiar to her.

She saw many Mystery items owned by other wizards before—she even fought some of them.

While it was true that the items possessed different properties, the “mysterious and discordant” impression they gave was the same.

For example, while fighting against Yorkshire in Sleepless City, Greya noticed Sunders’ “Cursing Puppet” as soon as he took it out. Even so, she only learned about the item’s name from Angor later.

While Butterfly Spirit appeared as something buoyant and hard to grasp, the Cursing Puppet would inject fear and horror in people’s minds as soon as it showed up in public.

Even so, the Mystery signature they gave out never changed.

Wizards in Sleepless City believed that a new Mystery item was hidden somewhere because they felt the particular aura but could not recognize the exact nature of it.

Now, Greya sensed something she knew.

When bound by Fox’s strings, Greya sensed two different types of Mystery energy.

One of them came from the strings around her, which originated from Fox’s harp. She never figured out where the other energy came from. However, she had spent enough time in her “prison”, which allowed her to tell that the other energy felt almighty and all-inclusive as if she were facing a god who knew everything.

She did not know how wizards from Origin World ranked their Mystery items, but she believed that whatever released that energy was better than Fox’s harp.

“Wait…”

After carefully sensing it for a bit more, Greya realized that the energy she felt right now was a lot weaker than the one in Sleepless City.

Maybe it’s an inferior item related to the one in Sleepless City?

Since Angor could place the energy in here, Greya thought he had obtained the item, but why would he put the item in here and allow her to see it?

Any wizard or apprentice alike would try to keep a Mystery item a secret should they ever get their hands on one. Angor, as someone who experienced Mystery energy before, should know how valuable such a thing was. Greya did not believe that Angor would show her such a treasure just to pay for her “golden invitation” to her restaurant.

Or maybe Angor learned how to rip the Mystery energy only and mimic it in an illusion? But how does that help?

In Greya’s view, this was very unlikely because Angor had to possess a Mystery item first. Besides, it wasn’t easy to fully comprehend Mystery energy and recreate it elsewhere. It required master-level alchemy skills, and Angor was far from it.

Nevertheless, she would have to go to the source of the Mystery energy to get her answers.

With that in mind, she calmed down and began exploring the mountain.

…

A week quickly elapsed.

Greya spent all her time looking around Mysterious Mountain without taking any rest. She could sense the faint Mystery energy coming from somewhere, yet she never found the source.

She knew the item she was looking for was somewhere around here. The Mystery energy couldn’t possibly exist without a medium.

There was one time she thought about forcefully breaking down the illusion to reveal what she was looking for. But her instinct sent her a warning that discouraged her. It told her that doing so would cause her to lose a great opportunity.

Wizards, especially Prophets, tended to trust their instincts although they weren’t always correct.

The same went for Greya.

This was why she decided to “follow the rules”. Yet she did not wish to proceed without a lead as that would only waste her time. On careful consideration, she canceled and left the illusion.

Surely Angor can tell me how to find the source since he made this thing?

Thinking about this, Greya stood up and left her temporary hut.

…

Angor had smoothly completed several of his plans, which included giving Freud a better place to live and sending his new alchemy creation to Dave so that Dave could decide how to advertise it.

With these jobs done, Angor retreated to his training room so that he could study a new cantrip—Narda’s Vision, which was also called “Alchemist’s Eye”.

It was used for identifying the materials and properties of an unknown item. A mandatory skill that every alchemist should learn.

Originally, this cantrip fell behind a lot of Illusionist cantrips on Angor’s to-do list because it was not so important. However, he changed his plan after receiving the strange crystal from Spotty. Since he could not ask for help from others because it would be better for the crystal to remain a secret between him and Sunders, he had to study the level-3 cantrip and check the item by himself.

At first, he thought Narda’s Vision was an extremely complex cantrip that required its users to train their eyes like how “Truesight” did. But later, he discovered that the main effect of Narda’s Vision depended on calculations and magic formulas rather than someone’s eye.

The cantrip mainly called for his knowledge base regarding alchemy items. When examining an unknown item, he had to base his tests on theories he currently knew.

What Angor had learned about right now was all about low-level materials he used before, and he knew little about rarer or more costly ones.

The difficulty in learning Narda’s Vision solely depended on an alchemist’s knowledge and insight. To those with enough proficiency in handling different materials, the cantrip was not so hard.

A master alchemist even claimed that someone who had seen through every single element in this world could well use Narda’s Vision to observe the ultimate truth. Of course, no one had proved it yet. Even if someone did “know everything”, they would probably not explain it to others.