Warlock Apprentice

The other people could not hear their conversation, but they still saw Flora’s expression changed dramatically. Shock and fear, mostly.

And they all wondered what could possibly scare a powerful wizard so.

Those who intended to “enjoy the show” as bystanders suddenly felt their hearts becoming heavier.

After talking with Flora, Sunders returned to the edge of the mist and continued tossing his glass shards while gathering mana.

Flora was currently the only one who knew what Sunders was up to—to sever the Nightmare Domain from reality. It was Angor who brought the Nightmare Domain here.

But could the boy make it through at his current condition? If he could, what should he do about his Nightmare Domain afterward?

When facing uncertainties, wizards tended to assume the worst. Now, the worst scenario possible was letting the ultimate monster broke through the barrier and allowed it to bring calamity to the wizarding world.

Naturally, these wizards were not going to rely on Angor to prevent it from happening. And if it did happen, they would all escape into plane passageways so the disaster went to someone else.

Throughout history, there were already cases during which the grand demons from the Abyss Plane descended upon the wizarding world. However, the world’s consciousness would always show up to deal with the situation. People simply had to hide for some years and wait it out.

That was always the best decision for wizards—to guarantee their own survival instead of entrusting their lives to other people.

And this was exactly what Flora would usually do.

Now, however, Sunders believed otherwise. The gentleman put faith in Angor that the boy could handle the situation. Sunders was now helping Angor by severing the Nightmare Domain so the boy could claim it in the end. No one knew whether Angor was strong enough to claim the domain. If he succeeded… his future would be unpredictable.

A level-1 apprentice who owned his own Nightmare Domain would make him invincible among his peers.

Flora was getting a little jealous. Lydia was right. Compared to what she went through, Sunders was using a way gentler approach on Angor.

“Angor… you…”

Flora closed her eyes to get rid of unnecessary thoughts. The situation was dire, and she should understand what was important.

She reopened her eyes while resuming her composed self and prepared for all possible circumstances.

…

In Angor’s view, the area which belonged to the Nightmare Realm appeared as a strange amusement park.

A place that could not be found in the wizarding world.

Colorful merry-go-rounds, exciting roller coasters, swinging pirate ship rides, circus and beast tamers… Apart from the circuses, Angor believed that he only saw the other facilities in the films from Earth. They did not exist in the wizarding world.

There was something else that did not belong to this world. Angor could see a team of card soldiers which looked very similar to the ones he saw the first time he wondered into Nightmare Realm. However, these card soldiers had different weapons and had different pictures drawn on them.

They were pokers, another foreign invention in the wizarding world. People used to play poker in Padt Manor, which was brought to them by Jon first.

Angor could not understand why all these foreign beings gathered in the Nightmare Realm. Could Nightmare Realm “project” something from Earth too? But as he assumed, the Earth and the world he was currently in existed in two different universes. Did this mean the Nightmare Realm projected something across another universe?

No. Angor could not believe it.

Then why was he seeing this scene? More importantly, he knew about all of the foreign objects which would otherwise make no sense to anyone else in this world.

Why?

Angor kind of lost himself in his thoughts again. When the poker soldiers approached him, he suddenly remembered Sunders’ warning.

Their stick-like limbs had all kinds of weapons on them. Lances, shields, swords, axes… wait, was that firearm?

The gun had a bizarre color, but since he now had the same thing in his pocket, Angor could recognize it as a revolver.

He shook his head quickly. He was getting distracted again.

Sunders never told Angor how to shut the passage between realms, so Angor had to think of something himself. He scratched his head desperately.

When the poker soldiers almost reached the mist, he just yelled to them. “No! Don’t go this way! Back! Back!”

The pokers halted for just a moment before advancing again.

Angor watched helplessly as the team of five card soldiers crossed the barrier in the middle of his vision and entered the Nightmare Domain.

More mist surged from the wound on his shoulder blade when the cards stepped out of the air and stood still in front of Angor.

As he looked in horror, Two of Clubs, Two of Spades, Two of Diamonds and Two of Hearts bent their thin legs and knelt in front of the fifth card with strange patterns drawn on its back.

The fifth card turned back, and Angor noticed that it was one of the two Jokers.

While the other cards only had static pictures on them, this Joker had a clown on it which could move freely on its flat surface as if the card was a screen showing cartoons.

With a vivid gesture, the clown bowed to Angor with great respect.

Before Angor could feel proud of the unexpected attention, he felt green ripples coming from his head again, which contained an emotion. “Go, and conquer more land for Her Highness!”

… So the card was bowing to the green toy owl on his head.

Sunders mentioned something about how the toy owl was as strong as a real wizard. What about these card soldiers then? Angor tried to observe but he could not sense anything on them. The cards were not displaying any mana ripples, nor the powerful aura possessed by mighty beings.

The Joker acknowledged the order and shot toward the air using its revolver.

Hearing the signal, all the soldiers rushed out of the mist, and Angor could do nothing to stop them.

“I’m sorry, professor. They don’t seem so strong, I hope you can do something about them.”

Angor simply closed his eyes and forgot about what just happened so he could focus on finding a solution.

…

The suture woman had to be someone really important to the monsters. Angor knew that the woman had been staring at him, and he never dared to return his gaze again. Looking at her would bring endless negative emotions into his mind.

Violence, cruelty, madness, and a thirst for blood… It seemed that all possible negative traits were gathered on that woman. She was a vessel who contained enough dark energy to destroy all.

In contrast to the suture woman, the other monsters in the amusement park did not seem so horrible. Rather, they all had adorable looks. Angor did not sense any dangerous emotions from them.

After the poker soldiers, Angor soon noticed something else approaching him.

It was a team of toy soldiers with red uniforms and white caps. Each was only as big as Angor’s hand, and they had a silly but cute expression.

Angor had no idea how dangerous they were despite their harmless look. He only worked his brain quickly to think of something to stop them.

He tried to think about the root of the situation. How did everything start?

Because of death. He did not want to die and miss everything he still wanted to achieve in his life, so as a last resort, he decided to construct an illusion.

Here, he remembered that Lady Mirror once mentioned something special about his illusions, that they simulated an element of Nightmare Realm — “frozen time”.

He was going to make an illusion to distract wizards and use the chance to bring Toby to safety.

As for how to distract the powerful wizards… he planned to create something so powerful that it might scare the wizards. He thought about mimicking Sunders first but gave up on that idea for many reasons. And he did not really know anyone else who could do the trick.

Then the image of the suture woman came to his mind.

Sunders mentioned to him before that the woman might be something stronger than legendary, so Angor believed if he could create just a tiny bit of the woman’s prowess, he might have a chance to trick Twilight.

With this in mind, he started making the illusion. However, as he continued his work, he noticed that the image of the woman as well as his memory about the Nightmare Realm became clearer and clearer.

The memory became so impressive that he actually felt something on his body—the wound on his back or on the back of his soul began to itch.

It seemed like a warning too. For a brief moment, he hesitated and wondered whether he should continue. But on second thought, giving up the only thing he could do meant absolute death. Thus, he kept on and let the strange itchy numbness grew stronger and wormed into his heart, giving bloom to a flower of death which greatly horrified everyone including Sunders.

Now that he remembered the cause of all, he wondered if he could do something to break the illusion nodes, destroy the illusion, and shut the passage.

He did not know whether this would work out, but he had to try.

He put the nodes inside his organs. It did not mean that he had to destroy his organs for real. An illusion node was only a way to express magic, and it could be “taken off”.

Nevertheless, forcefully removing the nodes would still hurt his organs a little.

To make sure whatever he was doing would work, Angor went for the core node which lay on his heart.