Warlock Apprentice

Angor hoped to make something crystal clear, so he spent some time selecting materials with proper colors.

Next, he needed to choose a piece of music as well as an illusion that went with the music.

He already had something in mind; he would use “City of Sky”.

Now the question was, what kind of scenery suited the music best? Different people might have different views about this one since they all had different tastes. Angor did not expect to find a perfect answer. However, the least he could do was to try and find something commonly accepted.

He would go for something that was “relatively perfect” to accompany the City of Sky. Something that most people would find acceptable.

And he would do so by listening to the music carefully just like how people comprehended books by reading them a lot.

He opened the music folder and played the song.

The gentle melody quickly soothed his stressed mind. His brain grew less and less active before he finally fell into a deep sleep.

He dreamed about cruising the vast skyline on the back of a demon falcon. Floating clouds decorated the blue background which was Angor’s path. Even occasional thunderclouds did not stop the avian from advancing. Whilst flying, he could forget all troubles and concerns. His mind spread wide and became one with the great sky.

More dark clouds appeared in his way. They gathered and swirled, declaring hidden danger.

The demon falcon kept flying and dived inside the clouds.

Endless lightning surrounded Angor as if the god of thunder was fighting something with his powerful weapon. Each strike would tear up a part of the sky.

Angor advanced on the demon falcon and between the thunder strikes like the bravest warrior, oblivious of the danger around. After surviving the hellish place, the dark clouds in front of Angor slowly spread open to the sides, revealing light.

In the end, a giant floating island was shown in Angor’s view.

It sat there like a treasure, a reward for getting past the roaring thunders.

Angor’s first thought when looking at the island was that he might have stumbled into Phantom Island again.

But on closer look, he saw the island filled with structures built with concrete and steel, as well as green lands and colorful gardens. The island showed both highly-developed civilization and primitive nature, creating a fantastic yet harmonious sight.

Angor did not know for how long the island existed, but it had to be really ancient.

A silent, majestic being that connected stories from the past, the present, and the future.

It awaited someone to go there and discover the myths it held.

Angor suddenly opened his eyes and woke up. The “City of Sky” was still lingering around his ears. Thanks to the music, he felt as if the mysterious island at the end of clouds was still right in front of his eyes.

It was seven in the morning, which meant… he left the music going for an entire night.

Great innovation flooded his mind. Angor quickly found his pen and left every detail he remembered in his dream on the paper.

As he believed, few people could resist the thirst for new adventures, and he was going to fascinate people by creating a scene above the clouds, where an unknown city waited for eager explorers.

Who knew? Maybe Lady Mirror would love it.

Speaking of Lady Mirror… Angor got the feeling that he could do a better job if he placed the handsome figure of Sunders on the island.

But he quickly got rid of that strange idea. He still wanted to stay as Sunders’ “modest and cultured” student.

With the illusion, the correct materials and the draft of the item prepared, he only needed to get to it.

Before doing so, Angor went to his attic again.

But he did not find Toby there.

He had been too busy with his alchemy work to spend time with Toby these days. However, since the sack of dried fish was still sufficient, he did not really need to worry about the wellbeing of the bird. The only thing that might be inconvenient for Toby was that the bird could not change its clothes easily without a helper.

“Huh… Where did he wander off to? Did he find a wife bird outside?” Angor complained aloud.

He came here to get the Echo Flower he needed. The two flowers he received from Toby were used up in his preliminary experiments, which did not go in vain—he successfully learned how to solve the problem about how the flower could only replay something once.

He needed new flower as the main material to craft the music box. Not one, but two, since he also needed to give a gift to Lady Mirror. And Toby only had two flowers left.

He heard something flying past the air when taking the Echo Flowers.

A colorful shadow dashed past the window and landed in front of Angor. Toby was dressed as… a fairy in children’s tales. There was even a tiny garland on Toby’s head made from a number of beautiful flowers.

Toby pointed a wing to the flowers in Angor’s hand. “Tweet! Ack! Squark!”

“I need them for the music box. The ones you gave me are spent in a test,” Angor replied to Toby’s bird language like it was as easy as talking to people.

Toby gave Angor a doubtful look. He was quite impressed when listening to the City of Sky, and hoped that the young master could create the promised music box as soon as possible. However, it had been some time now. Toby was struggling to decide whether he should wait for the music box or keep the valuable flowers.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make it within today. I give you my word,” said Angor as he thumped his chest.

He did not consider that this was his first time trying to make something other than weapons, which meant he might fail.

Toby chose to believe Angor’s words and finally nodded.

“Alright. Just do something else while waiting. I have everything prepared. I’ll give you the box tonight if nothing goes wrong,” Angor spoke. He suddenly noticed a faint smell of mountain flowers coming off Toby’s feathers. “By the way, who gave you the flower dress? It’s new, right? Look, there are still dew drops on it.”

Toby waved his wings here and there while chirping quickly as an answer.

“You made a new friend? Nice. Just be careful not to get tricked by bad guys, okay?”

Angor was not worried about this in the least since Toby was probably many times more deadly than himself. Rather, Toby was the one who would get concerned of Angor’s safety, so the bird often followed Angor from afar to protect his young master.

However, Angor did not really believe that someone who weaved such an exquisite flower dress was a “bad guy”.

Angor took the two flowers back into his lab and immediately began working.

Various materials melted into strange-colored substances in his spell and became different components under the manipulation of Hand of Spell.

His crafting process was smooth. However, something went unbalanced when he was trying to apply runes onto the finished model and caused a giant explosion.

Thankfully, he noticed the energy disruption in advance and moved away in time.

When thinking about his mistake, he realized that he had placed the runes inside the area of the illusion.

He had to keep a stable mana flow while drawing the rune. Since the rune was located too close to the illusion nodes, the mana accidentally triggered the nodes and ruined the whole process.

It was nothing unsolvable though. He simply needed to finish and stabilize the rune first before applying the illusion.

He looked at the broken Echo Flower and silently apologized to Toby.

The second attempt went well. Angor carefully drew the Tranquility Rune onto the object before laying down the illusion nodes.

He had already learned the experience when creating the demon falcon statue in Sunders’ study, which helped him finished the micro illusion in a short time.

The next important step was to record the music into the music box and create a trigger for the Acoustic Illusion.

He had done many perfect simulations before, but he would act as cautious as possible when doing the real deal.

As the music started, Angor immediately determined it as a way to trigger the illusion.

To make the illusion appear more “comforting” to people, he made the illusion gradually materialize in the air like ripples on water surface caused by a cobblestone. This way, he could tell people that the illusion was harmless as well as allowing them to enjoy the smooth transition as if traveling through time and space.