Warlock Apprentice

Chapter 357: Krakok

Seeking truth and practical technique was a good choice for doctors, so Angor decided to leave the matter here.

He took out a leather scroll from his pocket, which showed a black snake swirling on a long rod.

“Have you seen this thing before, Doctor Sherry?”

“No… Someone’s family emblem?” Sherry tilted her head.

Angor smiled and put the scroll away. “I have one last question. Have you heard of… Pocratee?”

Sherry stared at Angor and was confused by all these strange and irrelevant questions.

“Pocratee…” She thought for a moment and felt as if she knew it. But then, she couldn’t quite catch it in her mind.

Suddenly, a man in a fur uniform rushed into the clinic.

“A nightshift officer?” Sherry stood up.

“From the sea gate!” The man confirmed his identity. “Doctor Sherry, please come with me right now! There’s an accident at Tarot Port. A patrol ship is down, and we got lots of people who are wounded!”

Sherry quickly packed up her tools. “Alright. Any serious injuries apart from drowning?”

“Yes! Many are losing blood from their arteries. We tried to call every doctor that we could find!” the man explained anxiously and nodded to Angor as an apology, for he thought he just interrupted a patient. However, compared to this seemingly healthy young man, the issue of wounded sailors was the more pressing matter now.

Sherry found her scalpels and suturing tools.

“Oh, and they have burns too!” The officer added.

Sherry stopped her movement and looked at the man in shock. “My word! Are you sure it’s an accident and not a war?”

“No, it’s just, the patrol ship was broken from the middle and it started burning all of a sudden. I think it’s weird too. Those who have already escaped didn’t notice anything before it happened. It looks like someone actually cut the ship with a weapon. But… who the heck can do that? I guess the ship needs more maintenance after all these years.”

Sherry kept looking for more tools to be used for the different situations and arranged all of them in her medical box.

“I’m good. Let’s move!” Sherry joined the officer, but she quickly remembered she still had a strange guest in her clinic. “I’m really sorry, sir, you see, I need to—”

Angor sipped some milk tea and picked up his top hat. “Well, it’s late, I think I need to leave too. Thanks for your tea. It was really good.”

With that, Angor slowly left on his own and disappeared into the darkness behind the snowy curtain.

Sherry suddenly thought about Angor’s last question, which was about “Pocratee”.

She already found that name familiar, yet she couldn’t remember it a moment ago. Now, she just recalled that Professor Caroline once mentioned such a name during her class. It looked like some kind of sanctuary. Most of the details had slipped from Sherry’s mind. She realized now that Pocratee had something to do with the “Doctor’s Oath”.

And the strange gentleman also asked about the oath.

She didn’t have more time to think about it though since the guard officer dragged her toward the Tarot Port quickly. There were patients to be saved.

“Thank goodness your clinic is still up,” the officer moaned, “or I’ll have to run to the academy instead, by which time those people would all be dead. I guess a large city isn’t all about the good things.”

…

Angor felt a bit disappointed since Sherry couldn’t give him an answer, but it wasn’t anything serious. He didn’t expect to find information about a long-lost village in a small clinic anyway.

On the contrary, he was quite curious about the “incident”.

Several days ago, he also went to watch the patrol ships roamed around the Bay District. Those vessels were all at least 20 meters long. How could something that sturdy suddenly break in half for no reason?

Judging from the documentary movies from Earth, the keel structure of a vessel, which was the base support of a ship, was bound to undergo the most careful examinations often. Any breakdowns on it would have been discovered. It was very unlikely for maintenance staff to overlook something so severe.

The officer mentioned something about how the ship appeared as if it was cut by a man… This might seem impossible to mortals but not to wizards.

The supernatural meeting was drawing near. A bunch of rogue apprentices who didn’t belong to any wizard organization was very likely to do stupid things.

Angor assumed that it should be one of the apprentices who caused the accident. Probably a madman who sought fun in blood and chaos.

The snow started less than an hour ago. The streets were already covered under a thin layer of white, like a clean carpet which showed people a bright path toward the distance.

Angor suddenly stopped in his tracks.

He stood under a street lamp that illuminated an area of several meters around him.

Thump, thump…

A series of footsteps came in front of him, accompanied by a surge of powerful yet strange mana energy.

Angor remained still under the lamp and gazed toward the source of the footsteps quietly.

The first thing that came into the light was a pair of black, polished leather boots. After that, it was a pair of deep-blue flax trousers, black leather waist belt, checkered ocher vest, and a showy-looking black leather coat decorated by punk-style rivets.

The owner of these clothes was wearing a wide-brimmed soft hat. He was also smoking a cigarette, which provided a small light spot in the dark.

Angor looked at the man carefully without making any move. Meanwhile, the snowy scenery behind him began to blur and shift a little, which was followed by strange music and melodies that sent a shiver into the bones of anyone who would hear them.

“My my… an Illusionist? Such a rare sight…” the man in boots spoke in a pleasant and charming voice. He removed his cigarette and tossed it into the snow nearby, which released its last brilliance before it finally died out.

“Who are you?” Angor asked cautiously.

“Ha. I am-”

The man suddenly stopped and took several steps back. “An Acoustic Illusion? Oh my, that was close.”

Angor was surprised now. The man was correct; he did deploy an Acoustic Illusion just now. He was trying to trick the man’s mind by placing the right illusion nodes, which didn’t work since the man noticed his attempt soon enough. This strange figure would step into the effect of the illusion if he just moved one or two steps further.

Angor believed that whoever just came to him had to have superior reflexes.

“A Bloodline User?” Angor pondered.

“So hostile. I just want to see who disturbed my Krakok. And dear me, who would have thought a legit apprentice has come to the city?” the man muttered to himself. “Should I get him? Speaking of legit organizations… There’s only Silent Hill around here, and I certainly don’t want to get on their bad side…

“Oof, forget it. I don’t know how to explain it to my teacher.”

The man looked at Angor in a “you’ve met your luck today” manner. “Fine, I’ll let you go. But I should warn you. Don’t, tell anyone about the Krakoks.”

The man turned away and disappeared into the street.

Angor frowned at the sudden arrival and departure of the strange individual. He decided not to go after him for now.

“What is a Krakok?”

With this question in mind, Angor walked on the soft snow as he headed toward his own house.

…

The first thing that greeted his sight was Dodoro and Trusan, who were both looking at the canals from the mansion yard.

Trusan sighed in relief when she saw Angor coming. “Dodoro wouldn’t sleep ever since you left, mister.”

Angor looked at Dodoro and quickly sensed the familiar affection in those eyes.

He shook his head and chuckled. He thought Trusan’s education would gradually remove Dodoro’s “imprinting effect”. It seemed like it didn’t work out.

“I’m okay. You can go to sleep now.”

After sending Trusan and Dodoro back into their rooms, Angor returned to thinking about the strange man he saw.

He had already noticed that he might be another apprentice; a powerful one at that. From the man’s words, it was something related to something called “Krakok”. Unfortunately, for some reason, the man decided to change whatever he had planned and left the area.

Why? And more importantly, what’s a “Krakok”?

An answer came to him the next day.

…

In the morning, Trusan began her job of teaching Dodoro in the mansion yard. Her schedule required them to wander around the suburbs today. However, since Angor asked them to stay in the mansion for some days, she changed her plan.

During their lesson, Trusan saw a small boat moving toward them from the canal. A fat, violent-looking man with a scarred eye dismounted the ship and moved toward them on hurried steps.

Trusan stopped her lesson and watched the man, who was approaching them, anxiously.

Even though she didn’t know this individual, it was so obvious that this man wasn’t a kind figure. She was afraid that someone was here to seek trouble.

However, Trusan’s concern was soon replaced by doubt.

The scarred man suddenly screamed “GHOST!” and stumbled backward. Then he kept changing directions while stepping back, which caused him to tread around the same spot instead.

“He’s gone insane?” Trusan wondered.

After failing to get away from whatever he saw, the fat man’s face went pale. With a final yelp, he fell and fainted.