Warlock Apprentice

A green energy beam was gently caressing Angor’s wounds.

The level-1 spell used by Sunders—Resuscitation—mended all damage left on Angor’s body and soul almost instantly. However, he still needed time and more meditation to recover mana and soul energy.

Angor still looked depressed, but he was in better shape now. A lot better.

Without waiting for his student to enjoy the regained vigor, Sunders lectured him, “While it is true that Soul Link will greatly improve your strength, try not to use cantrips in your soul form unless it’s necessary.”

Unleashing mana from one’s soul would temporarily make it vulnerable to foreign or even hostile mana in the environment, which would in turn dangerously burden their soul. The intelligence in the crystal also told Angor as much.

Angor acknowledged the suggestion with a nod.

“Since the crystal gave you enough knowledge, then there’s not much I need to tell you. Just be very careful.” Sunders returned to his writing desk. “Sigh… Thankfully, I’m no longer in the right age to envy other people. What you just gained under an hour is an extremely effective means of escaping from danger, which took me nearly 30 years to fully learn.”

Angor didn’t respond, but he was complaining in his mind. Then why did you almost beat me to a pulp back there?

On the outside, he maintained the modest look of a loyal student perfectly so that he wouldn’t receive more beating.

Sunders had been keeping his full attention on Angor’s face, and he felt rather happy when he saw the boy trying very hard to stop those twitching eyebrows.

He was so satisfied with the “lesson” he gave Angor just now that he didn’t feel so bad when thinking about the spotted puppy, which he failed to capture.

“We should forget about that dog for the moment. Sleepless City has turned into a real forbidden zone. Those who get inside can never get out again. That animal probably went back to the Nightmare Realm. Should we run into it again… we’ll decide what to do then.”

Angor nodded and stood up from where he was sitting.

Compared to Sunders, he wouldn’t want to capture Spotty by force since it helped him many times in Sleepless City. He got to save Nausica and escape in the end, all thanks to Spotty.

And it was not like he could catch Spotty if he wanted since the creature could slip from Sunders easily.

He stretched his sore limbs a little and noticed that the five demon falcon statues were placed on Sunders’ desk. He was sure they weren’t there when they just entered the Gravity Garden.

“Sir, did you find the manifestations in them already?” Angor pointed to the items with a curious look.

“I did, and I’ve finished noting down the results of my examination. Here, you can take a look.”

Angor accepted a pile of papers from his professor.

The first thing he saw was the title of a new subject: How To Set Off Manifestations Of Mystery

Like always, Sunders arranged the content of his research in an orderly manner. He also left Angor’s name on the paper as a “coordinator”.

The project contained an extensive range of discussions, such as Angor’s theory regarding the factors that affected the duration of a triggered manifestation. Here, Sunders mathematically re-performed the calculations and even came up with several equations used for working out different durations.

Next, Sunders recorded the different results he observed from Angor’s illusions and inferred their connections with each other as well as how certain known theories could be used in this case.

The report had taken all possible aspects into account. Angor felt a bit ashamed to see that his professor created such grand and comprehensive work just by looking at five illusions, whereas he only reached some minimal ideas after looking through dozens of them.

Sunders left his current summary at the end of the report—”Insufficient samples did not provide enough types of manifestations. No definite conclusion is presently available.”

“You mentioned that the manifestations can appear as gas, animals, or natural elements. I saw none of these cases in your statues, so… we need more tests later. And there’s the ‘theoretical concept’, which we also need to look at.

“Build more illusion items if you have time. Tell Goode if you need materials. I can only find more useful information by seeing enough samples.”

Angor considered. “I think I’m free these days, apart from the plan to test my Prelude to Rebirth.”

“Then you should definitely get to it. I’ll remain at Brute Cavern for about one month before departing for a mission, and I hope we can finish the project before then.”

Sunders was lost in thought again when he pondered over his coming task, which required him to go to the Abyss Plane.

“What about Lady Greya?”

Angor knew that Sunders needed to help Greya retrieve her body from the Nightmare Realm, and it seemed pretty urgent too. Was his professor going to enter the Nightmare Realm again when that giant scar had not healed yet?

According to Greya, her body was probably being watched by a legendary monster. Angor grew a bit anxious when thinking about this.

“Are you going to help Lady Greya this month, sir?”

“That… can wait until I return from Abyss Plane, actually.”

Angor felt a little bit relieved. “Will Lady Greya follow you on your quest?”

“No, she won’t. Because of Mister Monkey’s grand plan that might provoke a Grand Demon, wizards have enough trouble avoiding that place, let alone going there.”

Monkey invited many wizards to join him on his mission, such as Ness. When Ness “wasted” a huge amount of his power on Angor, he did not blame Angor too much because it was a good excuse to reject Monkey’s request.

Then there was Greya. As a master gourmet wizard, she was very likely to receive an invitation or even a dictatorial order from Monkey as well, if she were not missing in the Nightmare Realm. Greya did not stay with Felicia because of the same reason—she would like to avoid Monkey’s attention.

No one would go to the Abyss Plane in such a situation, apart from certain wizards who would take any risk for profit.

“Um, is Lady Greya going back to Candy House then?” Angor would like to know why Greya followed Sunders all the way here if they would not go to the Nightmare Realm any time soon.

“She will use Brute Cavern as her temporary shelter since her condition is not fit for long travels. Here, Mister Rein will protect her. This shouldn’t be your concern since Greya will not harm you in any way. However, you should avoid her nonetheless after what happened today, because people will keep their eyes on her.”

“I understand.” Angor nodded and decided to keep talking about their research. “Professor, you didn’t learn any new spells from the five illusions, right? I didn’t see anything like that on your paper.”

Sunders showed a weird look. “There was one cantrip. But…”

Sunders put a hand on his desk, and as Angor watched in confusion, the desk suddenly grew larger.

“See for yourself. This is a level-2 cantrip, I’ll call it… ‘Enlarge’ for the time being. As you can see, it makes things bigger. But it only works on common objects without special properties. There are restrictions as to how large an item can get, or how long the effect will last.”

Sunders chuckled and shook his head. “I’m sure your manifestations show us completely random wisdom. And you have to have enough knowledge first, or you won’t learn anything at all.”

Angor agreed. When experiencing the manifestations, he felt somewhat enlightened but could never tell what exactly he gained from them.

Also, this had told them that readily studying spells from the manifestations was almost impossible since someone erudite like Sunders could only find cantrips from them that were almost useless.

However, a well-prepared wizard might receive enough assistance to finally create a new spell on their own, as shown in Greya’s case.

“Just like the last time, I can’t make sure whether the cantrip really belongs to me, or if it was simply a prank,” said Sunders as he shook his head again. “I still have a lot of questions about getting new cantrips. I’ll perform further assessment when you bring me more samples.”

Next, Angor took about half an hour to fully read Sunders’ research papers, while Sunders patiently answered some of his queries.