Warlock Apprentice

Angor never planned to get involved in any matter related to a Leviathan and get himself killed against the wizard-level monster, no matter how much fortune was waiting for him.

After returning to Erwin’s house, he forgot everything about Roman and the Leviathan and continued learning Empty Ballad. With the help of his tablet, he successfully mastered ten runes for building the magic array under a week, which left him five more to go.

One day, Erwin came back from the association’s office and came to him.

“Mister Padt, I’ve collected all the files I can find. But this is not the headquarters where they keep EVERYTHING recorded. The oldest timestamp was 2,000 years ago,” Erwin said as he dropped a large bag as big as his body onto the floor.

The files contained in the bag, which were the weather reports of all charted regions at Devil’s Water, occupied an entire side of the room. By checking these files, Angor wished to find the “area with everlasting sunlight”, as told by Lucas.

It seemed the files only described what was reported by sailors during each journey. In order to ascertain the overall weather conditions of a region, Angor still needed to further arrange the info he found.

And this was an extremely taxing job since the files included over 200,000 voyages during 2,000 years.

Thankfully, he could use his tablet to quicken his work again by putting all the data into the device and let it figure out a general report in another manner.

The result came out within several minutes, which summarized the weather patterns for each known sail route. Then he took several hours checking for anything related to Lucas’ story.

“So there’s no such a place that is always sunny. But…”

He fixed his attention on a particular name—”Nautilus Pond”. The last bad weather recorded at Nautilus Pond was 1,800 years ago, after which… the place remained free of rains and thick clouds.

Fair weather for a thousand and eight hundred years!

Of course, there were also occasions where no ship was there to watch the weather. But since the report suggested that at least five or six ships used this route each month and none of them ran into bad weather in such a long timespan, then there was a great chance that Nautilus Pond stayed sunny for real.

“But Lucas was from the Age of Gold, which was 3,000 years ago…” Angor rubbed his forehead. “It happened again.”

The logbook composed by a ship’s captain was supposed to record recent events, and in this case, Lucas had to write down what happened around him three thousand years ago.

However, the “ever-sunny waters” mentioned by Lucas was only possible starting from 1,800 years ago.

Similarly, the flowerbed on the sea, in accordance with Nayah’s story, happened during the Age of Silver, which was about 2,000 years ago.

Then there were the “island spirits”, which showed up as giant undead spirits at Specter Basin instead. However, Angor had not confirmed that these were the same things yet.

Angor had realized that Lucas’ logbook was very questionable, but at the same time, truthful in a very strange way. It seemed everything Lucas said could be confirmed by some methods, but a lot of details were off.

“Don’t tell me this Lucas is a talented Prophet too? He kept his prophecy in his book? But no… that can’t be right.”

He stepped out of his door after being confined in his room for a full week. He was heading to the library of Yothur City to check if there were books about Lucas.

The library was built at the Academy District, which was not very far from Erwin’s department. But his trip wasn’t peaceful—the guard of the library denied his entrance because of his poor dressing style.

“Oh, Marcel, bless us! It’s against our rules to let a panhandler enter our palace of knowledge!” The guard openly discriminated against Angor’s getup even though he himself did not look much better.

Angor glanced at his clothes and realized that his “lazy and vulgar middle-age look” did look a little odd among the library patrons. Even so, he wasn’t going to waste time arguing with a mortal. A simple and harmless nightmare illusion was all he needed to walk past the guard.

The library had different sections, many of which required their visitors to possess passes to enter.

But none of these meant anything to Angor as long as he used Infinite Reticence.

He spent a day in the library and managed to find a lot of books about Nayah the Charmer, but not Lucas.

A bit disappointed, he returned to Marcel District and saw someone at his door again. However, it was not Erwin. Instead, it was Helen this time.

“Never once did we arrive at our destination with a full crew on board. Captain Erwin always considers it his job to pay visits and pension money to the families of the deceased,” Helen explained. “It’s fewer, but we still had several comrades who died. There was one man who came from the Ivy City of Aureum. Captain Erwin took a carriage to that place yesterday. Guess he’s still on his way.”

Angor did need a little help from Erwin right now. But since he was absent…

“Officer Helen, do you know Yothur City well?”

Helen tucked some of her hair behind her ears. “I guess. This is my second home, I’d say.”

“Can you help me find someone who’s good at history? Especially about the Age of Gold and Silver.”

Without asking why, Helen got to the job right away.

After she left, Tulu came and asked for some days off.

“Mister Padt, I want to check my village. My grandma is no longer there, but I still have friends back home. I… don’t know when I can ever come back again, so I might need to pay them a visit when I have the chance.”

“Sure. Stay there for a while, if you like. That won’t be a problem.”

“Uh, I can?”

“I’ll probably travel to the other parts of Ferran Land later,” Angor explained, “to find more talents. I’ll get you when it’s time to depart.”

“When will that happen, sir?”

“A month or two. You’re free to stay at your village or at Yothur City in the meantime.”

Tulu was glad that he got extra time to practice meditation for real. The bumpy ride always prevented him from trying out the first steps of Circular Cut Channeling properly.

“Understood, sir. I’ll go back to the village and wait for you there.”

Since it wasn’t easy to find extra talents, Angor gave Tulu two defensive scrolls as a “parting gift” so that he didn’t fail his quest by accident.

He was now left alone in Erwin’s house, and he quite enjoyed the peace.

It took him two days to comprehend the 11th rune of Empty Ballad. During the afternoon on the 3rd day, Helen came to him again with a tired look. There was also a stylish-looking man wearing a gentleman’s attire following behind her.

“Mister Padt, in Aureum, only nobilities are allowed to record history, so I have to ask for Neet for help.” Helen pointed at the gentleman, who stepped up and bowed to Angor.

“Glad to see you again, Mister Padt.”

“You… look familiar.” Angor looked at this man up and down.

Neet scratched the back of his head. “I was among the sailors who told you about Nayah the Charmer, sir.”

“Oh, I remember now. You’re the guy who told a different story than everyone. It was Nayah the Cruel, right?”

While Angor tried to get used to Neet’s new style, Helen explained that Neet came from a hereditary noble clan that originated from the Anrum Monarchy. His family enjoyed relatively great fame and wealth, but he preferred freedom and ran off to Yothur Academy with the excuse of studying abroad. Then he failed his lessons and ended up as a sailor on The Limpet instead.

For some reason, Neet completely discarded the characters of a nobleman and was attracted to the hardship of sailing.

As a nobleman who lived a bizarre life himself, Angor quite admired Neet’s lifestyle.

“Can I ask for some history lessons from you, Mister Neet?”