Warlock Apprentice

Angor and Sunders left Sleepless City together on Angor’s Gondola.

Angor glanced back at the dark dome that covered the outer city. “Professor? But we only saved about half of them…”

He meant to ask why they left so soon while leaving so many possessed behind, but he wasn’t sure whether this was a proper question.

“Those are apprentices from organizations that did not join our agreement. Saving them does not grant us any profit.”

Sunders’ reply was quite expected. Before entering the Purification Garden, Angor once asked Nausica about the situation in Midnight Sovereign. Her answer was, Midnight Sovereign had returned to being the “relatively peaceful city” where citizens enjoyed their lives.

Angor knew what she meant, that after he went missing, Sunders removed all parasites from the common citizens.

But Sunders would not help the remaining apprentices in this case, which confused Angor.

Sunders didn’t seem concerned when Angor asked about this. “I saved Midnight Sovereign because someone posted a quest in Brute Cavern. By doing so, I get paid for it.”

Angor considered Sunders’ answer. He didn’t believe that whoever posted such a quest prepared enough reward worthy of his professor’s effort. Sunders helped Midnight Sovereign probably because he simply adhered to his personal discipline, that he would provide help as long as he got something in return. As for whether he was satisfied with the reward… that was another question to be discussed beforehand.

“How did you remove the parasites at your end?” Sunders suddenly asked.

While inside the undercity, they split ways to deal with certain sections in their own ways. Sunders remained cautious in the meantime and never saw his student using Nightmare Domain at all.

But somehow, Angor only needed several seconds to “cure” large groups of clowns.

Angor scratched his now longer hair. “I just told them to get out. And they did.”

“You ordered the parasites to leave and they listened to you?”

Angor nodded. At first, he planned to use his Nightmare Domain to force the parasites away like how he did before. But when thinking about how a parasite listened to Froggy’s command, he tried to copy such a move and was glad that it worked well.

This made his job a lot simpler. He only had to give the word and be done with it. No need for spending mana.

Sunders shook his head. “As I said before, monsters in the Nightmare Realm are divided into different ranks. I think your rank is higher, and these lower rank ones can’t oppose you.”

He glanced at Angor’s right hand, which had his old glove on.

Shava, “Your Highness”… Sunders muttered in his mind. We have so many mysteries regarding this Shava character we need to solve.

Meanwhile, Angor was thinking about his rescue mission earlier.

Sunders did not tell him to save people for free. There were several special sections in undercity that even possessed apprentices would not approach because these places had possessed wizards.

It was Angor who saved the wizards. By letting him do so, Sunders meant to help Angor earn respect from these wizards, which would prove to be most valuable in the future.

…

Gondola had taken them away from Sleepless City and away from the darkness-infested sky. They could still occasionally see stray parasites, which couldn’t do them harm.

When they first encountered the parasites in Midnight Sovereign, these creatures would die almost immediately the moment they left the nightmare mist.

But the parasites in Sleepless City had wandered so far from the city.

Sunders captured one of them and noticed that the parasite could live because of a tiny, golden spot on its body, which was almost imperceptible to human eyes.

Using a strange magnifying tool, Sunders managed to see that the golden spot was in fact, a tiny portion of a broken golden string, which had intact runes drawn on it. This was what kept the parasite alive by releasing a small amount of nightmare energy around it. But it wouldn’t last long.

“So it is Yorkshire who gave these parasites a new way of survival…” Sunders said.

“Sir, the crisis in Sleepless City… We can’t remove it at all, right? Is Yorkshire going to remain there for a long time?”

“Maybe.”

“But there’s a ‘hemi-passage’ that connects to Nightmare Realm. Will that queen be able to arrive at our wizarding world?”

Sunders sighed. “We have enough coming crisis which would soon strike the southern region. We don’t have enough time to worry about all of them. Besides… if that ‘queen’ wishes to invade this world, she already has an available passage at Pocratee, about which you told me last time. Yet she did not. There must be a reason that stopped her.”

They had no idea what exactly could stop such a mighty monster from coming. Perhaps it was the world’s consciousness or an even stronger being in the Nightmare Realm. Or perhaps she wasn’t interested in attacking the wizarding world at all.

There was no point in making blind guesses since this was obviously not something they should interfere with.

They spent a moment in silence.

It was Angor who spoke again when he noticed that Sunders was steering Gondola toward another direction.

“Uh, we’re not going back to Brute Cavern, sir?”

“No. To find out more about your right hand and why it absorbs nightmare energy, we need a place full of nightmare energy. We’re heading to Fairy World. To that plane passageway in which you gained a level extremely fast. I believe we can find an answer there.”

…

They arrived at Edge of Night first. Using a teleportation array in Edge of Night, they could travel to Floating Mech City, then to Silent Hill.

After leaving Silent Hill, which was located inside “midworld”, they returned to the “real world” and used Angor’s Gondola again to go to the strange lake in Angor’s memory.

Angor was worried about something else right now.

Will Sunders kill Akeso if they encounter each other?

He had full reason to believe so because he had witnessed how much money one could earn by selling wizard-level monster parts.

But when they dived through the lake and arrived at where Akeso’s nest was supposed to be, Angor noticed that the giant serpent was not here. Even the air was free of that particular smell of animal feces.

However, they still saw the “graveyard”, which was full of the bones of villagers from Pocratee.

Sunders made sure that these mortal bones held no interest before leaving.

After going through another waterway, they arrived at the stagnant and oily water, which was the “dead lake” located just next to the Pocratee village.

Angor came out from the water and realized that the abandoned village did not look very different than before. Not that it could get any more desolate.

Even the rainbow dragonflies greeted him by praising him joyously like last time.

When Angor told the insects not to annoy Sunders, they comprehended the order and moved away from Sunders as far as they could.

While Angor waited near the nest, Sunders traveled around the underground area before he returned to the village.

“Telling from the traces I saw, this place was already deserted one thousand years ago. I’m afraid our visitors from the Nightmare Realm caused this.” Sunders rubbed his forehead. “So the nightmare passage has been here for a thousand years? But there was no record about this. Who placed the passage here and what do they want?”

Angor wondered if this was another of the queen’s “outposts” mentioned by Yorkshire.

“Leave this matter aside,” said Sunders, “let’s go to that plane passageway first.”

They walked around the dragonfly nest and saw a portal behind it.