Warlock Apprentice

Dark clouds gathered and made the day black as night.

In the dim ambiance, a glowing “umbrella” over a hundred meters in width slowly emerged from the water and remained afloat.

Meanwhile, the souls attached to it gradually left their host and scattered about the area.

The whole sight didn’t look bad if people didn’t look at the dotted jellyfish. When looking from afar, the floating souls perfectly illuminated the area like flying lanterns.

But the sailors were not enjoying this at all when being so close to the monster. The disturbing frequency coming from it combined with the swarms of souls only deepened their fear and despair.

Angor and Toby were the only two individuals unaffected by the creepy scene right now. In fact, Toby was admiring the show with twinkling eyes.

Next, he looked at Angor and waved his wings around. “Tweet, tweet!”

Angor was very confused to sense the ominous and violent energy coming from the giant jellyfish as the energy felt exactly the same as those observed from undead creatures.

And due to its size, the jellyfish exhibited several times more negative energy compared to other souls.

“Is that thing a soul as well?”

While it was possible for monsters to remain behind as souls upon death, this was only likely when the monster was intelligent to a certain extent in its life.

But as far as Angor knew, jellyfish was supposed to be a type of witless plankton unable to develop much wisdom.

He looked again and was sure that the jellyfish gave him the same feeling as undead souls.

“I just need a little test then.”

He took out Prelude to Rebirth and decided to see whether the creature could be killed by it.

The monster sure looked strong, but since he did not feel suppressed too much, the jellyfish should not be a wizard-level monster, which meant he had a good chance of taking it on.

It seemed the jellyfish “shook off” the undead souls clung to its body to search for The Limpet, which was hidden by Angor’s illusion. The illusion did a good job of keeping the ship out of view. Yet it wouldn’t help the ship completely disappear from the sea. So many souls would detect it sooner or later, and Angor had to distract the souls before that happened.

He tapped Toby’s head and crouched down for a jump. “Use your Griffin power again. Let’s have a good talk with that guy.”

Toby didn’t answer.

Puzzled, Angor looked aside and saw his partner giving him a pleading look for some reason as if Toby really wanted something.

“Wait, you want a jellyfish costume? And it needs to shine?”

Toby nodded rapidly.

“Oh come on, it’s not the time for that. Let’s kill that thing first, then we’ll have time to talk.”

Toby looked away, disappointed.

“Fine! Help me get through this, and I’ll make you a bubble skirt based on it, alright?” Angor almost squeezed the ridiculous offer between his teeth.

With his wish promised, Toby happily leaped into the air and started to glow with fire.

Angor glanced back and noticed there were only two people who seemed able to hear his words. One was Helen, while the other was Tulu, the young man who told him about Nayah’s story before. They probably had stronger spirits compared to the others on the ship.

“Tend to the ship, Helen, while I and Toby deal with the monster. I’ll try luring it far from here. Look for a chance and go for Death Loop,” he ordered using Voice Transmission and hopped onto Toby’s back.

Helen felt as if she had returned to being the small girl suffering from seasickness when she joined the crew for the first time. Still, she endured the terrible dizziness and nodded to Angor.

Toby’s bright form instantly attracted all the wandering souls in the air. Like hungry wolves who smelled fresh meat, they rushed at Angor’s position madly as one.

Angor lifted his gun in a somewhat relaxed way and took two rapid shots, which covered the entire area in front of him.

Without putting up a fight, the souls caught in the range of the attack scattered as puffs of smoke.

While keeping the souls away, Angor glanced at the flying jellyfish and was disgusted again by its horrible presence.

He thought the monster had released all the souls it carried. But no—there were still countless ones half-submerged on its skin with small parts of them exposed, such as a head or a foot. And this looked really, really unpleasant.

“Are you sure you want a suit based on THAT?” Angor teased Toby.

The jellyfish had been floating about slowly without making any moves. When Angor almost eliminated half of the undead army, it finally did something.

It began to release another strange frequency into the environment.

The souls caught in the “signal” halted their moves and slowly retreated, which astonished Angor again.

These souls were the aggregations of negative energy and should not possess any self-consciousness at all. How did they know what “retreating” meant?

Or was the jellyfish forcing them?

The wandering souls had once again gathered on the creature, which made its perilous might even graver.

As Angor watched the last soul returning to its “host”, the jellyfish began releasing yet another frequency.

And this one was directly aimed at him.

Unlike the “broad signal” intended to command the souls, this one was extremely fast. Angor found himself fully covered up by the unknown attack under a second.

“A spiritual attack?” The torrential energy invading his mind soon told him what was going on.

It was pretty powerful too. He soon felt tearing pain wrecking his head from the inside. However, it was still bearable. Compared to the insufferable agony inflicted by the strange wall in the Nightmare Realm, this was nothing at all.

Thanks to his heightened spiritual resistance, the attack unleashed by the jellyfish had little to no effect against him. There was only Toby who was howling in pain since he never went through resistance training before.

Angor lifted his gun again and shot at the jellyfish. He planned to wipe out all the souls protecting the monster before fighting it.

But to his surprise, the jellyfish released several “puffs” in the air like a broken balloon and nicely dashed out of harm’s way.

Angor was sure it wasn’t actual air, but small groups of souls being shaken off the jellyfish, which helped it gain speed.

The monster wouldn’t do such a thing if it wished to protect the souls, which meant it was trying to avoid the shots.

Angor grew more and more confused as what he saw from the creature made no sense. The monster must be intelligent since it knew how to create traps to block ships, control undead souls, and avoid danger. For this reason, it couldn’t be an undead creature itself.

So why was it running away from the revolver’s attack that only worked against the undead?

“An intelligent undead maybe? Is that possible?”

If this was true, then a lot of textbooks in the wizarding world would need to get revised.

For now, Angor still needed to land a successful hit on the jellyfish to ascertain whether it was an undead creature or something else.

The spiritual attack was quickly weakening because the monster was desperately trying to evade, which allowed Toby to recover.

“Use your gravity power and get close to it as fast as possible,” said Angor.

Toby shook his head to clear his mind and acknowledged the order.

By going all-out using his gravity-enhanced speed, Toby reappeared right beside the jellyfish as if he knew how to teleport.

Angor lifted his gun and almost pressed the barrel at the monster.

“Let’s see how you dodge this one.”