Warlock Apprentice

Angor’s body turned into a flurry of shadows before he reappeared in front of Leon’s bed in the next instant. He then gazed at the strange creature cautiously.

“Who are you?” He would like to talk to the hound before making other moves, if possible. It was unlikely that a wandering monster could get past two wizards and enter Padt Manor, so this thing might be related to one of them.

On closer look, he saw the fur on the creature’s body blowing as if there were a strong wind, even though he didn’t feel any. The eyes on one of its heads were covered by a sleep blinder, while the other one was giggling at him after hearing his question.

“Don’t worry, Angor. That’s Soby, my teacher’s familiar,” Leon said from behind him.

Angor nodded. He expected as much.

“Soby” nodded to Angor slightly and spoke to Leon in a rather unpleasant voice.

“Remember what I said. I’m leaving.”

The hound hopped away from the window and disappeared into the distance like a stream of fire.

Angor made sure the creature was gone before turning around to look at Leon.

Leon’s face still had that unhealthy hue, and most of his body was wrapped in bandages. However, he seemed happy for some reason. It was just that he couldn’t smile too much, or it would cause him more pain.

“Something good happened?” Angor summoned a chair and sat down.

“Yup. Soby was here to tell me to stop my training, cause I’m at the limit. It’s time for me to start my meditation.”

“Did it give you a channeling method as well?”

“Not yet. It asked me to talk to my teacher once I can get off my bed. Mister Thewis will test my talent orientation before deciding which channeling method is better. Finally, my days have come! Hah-aw aw aww…”

Leon quickly stopped his laughter and showed his extreme delight using eyes only.

“So Mister Thewis is officially accepting you as his student, I see.”

As another unspoken practice among wizards, giving Leon the talent test meant Thewis had admitted Leon. Leon looked so cheerful probably because he also knew this.

“As long as Soby wasn’t pulling my leg. But God, this hurts—”

Leon strained something and caused a patch of red on his bandage.

Angor changed the subject so that Leon would not get hurt out of excitement again. “Here’s something to keep you safe better.” He took out several scrolls from his bracelet. “Two Energy Barrier scrolls, a Shadow Mask, four Energy Blasts. I have more, but those don’t work well at the Old Earth, so you’ll have to make do with these.”

“Thanks a lot.” Leon didn’t reject the offer. “Soby also told me that it was you who got rid of some spider poison from me.”

“Glad I did. It was just an unfortunate accident. That was some harsh training you were doing.”

Angor wasn’t going to complain because he knew Leon kept it a secret so that he would have one less burden. Besides, the training had concluded.

“You did fine on your own before. What happened that day all of a sudden?”

Leon laughed it off—he couldn’t possibly tell Angor that he was distracted by Angor’s boat. That would embarrass both of them.

“Well, whatever.” Angor shook his head. “Just make sure you have some… safety measures at hand the next time you do something so dangerous. At least have a servant to watch over you so—”

He stopped talking as he noticed Leon wasn’t paying attention.

He didn’t want to be a blabbermouth and affect Leon’s decisions too much, but he still decided to give Leon a better tool later. They were brothers after all.

After some random talks, Leon was slowly falling asleep again before nightfall, so Angor said his goodbye and headed back to his bedroom.

In the hallway, he heard someone yelling outside and saw a dark-skinned man shouting at a tree in the yard.

After several “HA”s and “AH”s, the man unleashed a cloud of vapor from his hand, which did nothing more than remove some dust from the tree’s leaves.

Seeing his result, the man slumped his shoulders in defeat and walked away.

Angor raised an eyebrow when he noticed Tulu’s exceptional talent.

He had been focused on Jon recently, so he mostly neglected what was going on with Tulu. What Tulu just did might appear as something insignificant, but it was quite impressive when the Old Earth was poor in elements. If Tulu put that effort elsewhere, the useless vapor might turn into stronger attacks, such as water arrows.

Tulu had not slacked off on his meditation, that much was plain. Being able to cast cantrips before officially becoming an apprentice meant Tulu was very likely to receive a golden poster from a wizard.

Angor rubbed his temples as he wondered if he should send Tulu to Brute Cavern earlier. Keeping Tulu here was a giant waste of both Tulu’s talent and time.

In fact, Angor had plans to return to Brute Cavern briefly so that he could mention Jon’s matter as well as the dream wasteland to Sunders. Even if Sunders were in the Abyss Plane, there was bound to be someone in the organization that could contact him.

However… it would take lots of time to travel to Brute Cavern across the sea… unless he had faster means of transportation, such as a plane passageway.

But before all that, he would like to know if Jon wanted to be “studied” by other wizards first.

Back in his room, he put the concerns behind his mind and found some materials from his bracelet. It would be best if he finished Brulee’s monocle first so that the bird and Eureka would not urge him later on.

He spread Eureka’s draft on his desk. Just as he was prepared to begin, he suddenly felt someone’s spirit power descending upon his room.

It was clear that Eureka or Thewis wanted to take a peek at his work. Well, it was not really a “peek” since whoever sent the spirit made it obvious.

Still, he expanded his nightmare domain to block off the detection. The monocle was no secret to anyone. He just didn’t like it when someone uninvited watched him doing alchemy.

In the sky and beside the Demeter, Eureka and Thewis exchanged a disappointed look.

“What a bummer. That illusion though… It’s definitely Mister Phantom’s teaching.”

Since they couldn’t observe Angor working, Thewis decided to inspect the strange illusion instead.

Naturally, he failed to learn anything from it until Angor canceled it.

At the same time, Brulee eagerly flew into Angor’s room.

A moment later, the owl returned to Eureka with its new charm over one of its eyes.

“That only took him one night. Enchantment alchemy, I guess,” said Thewis.

Eureka took the monocle and examined it. It seemed this one was even better than the broken one.

“Low-tier. Angor has some serious Tooling skills.” Thewis also took a moment to inspect it. “Oops, it seems he’s not happy with this job.”

“What do you mean?” asked Eureka.

Thewis pointed to the item. “He didn’t leave his ‘signature’ on it. Meaning, he didn’t want to show anyone that this is from his hands.”

“That must be why he asked me for a new design instead of coming up with one. Heh.”

“Such a pity.” Thewis handed the item back to Brulee. “With his emblem, this item will sell for a lot more money.”

Brulee hooted to protest.

“Chill. I’m not actually going to sell it. It’s a fact.”

The owl wasn’t going to worry about some emblem. It only wanted the effects of the monocle, as well as the good look.

“Whatever he thinks of us, it’s fine as long as we’re not enemies,” said Eureka. “Profit makes people cooperate.”