Warlock Apprentice

Chapter 392: Secret Room

Angor looked around and tried to find someone or something who could explain all the bloodstains on the woman.

But he found nothing. It was an empty hallway, lit by the occasional lamps that hung on the walls, which didn’t provide much visual in this dark place.

Since there was his illusion to attract potential attacks, Angor cast Light and moved the spell around for a while.

Still nothing. There was not another soul around apart from the fainted woman.

More importantly, there were no bloodstains around the hallway. The blood under the woman suggested that the floors and walls didn’t have anything to clean themselves. So where in the world did the blood on her body come from? How did she come to the window without leaving her own trail in the hallway?

Again, Angor carefully looked around the passage. The pale-yellow floor was mostly clean, apart from where the woman just stepped on.

Did she just materialize out of thin air?

Angor moved to the woman’s previous hiding spot, which was the wall corner behind the window. He could see bloody footprints which suggested the woman was hiding here. But there was nothing else.

The woman wasn’t strong. Maybe a fresh level-1 apprentice. There was no way she knew how to teleport.

Walking through walls? There was only the drainage pipe outside, from which he just came—

“Wait, a pipe?”

He suddenly got an idea.

He peeked from the window and was shocked to realize that the pipe ended at this window. It only led to the third floor.

What was the point of this pipe then? It did enter the third floor, but there was nothing connected at the end.

He clearly remembered that when he was climbing the pipe just now, he sensed something flowing in the pipe. Where did that liquid come from?

There couldn’t possibly be something that was hidden in between—

Wait, it totally could! This was the wizarding world, anything was possible. There were whole new worlds that hid behind mirrors, so of course someone could hide something behind walls and pipes.

The owner of the castle was a wizard. She could definitely do it.

Thinking about this, Angor asked his phantom to go to the woman’s hiding spot and put a hand on the wall, while he carefully sensed for any energy ripples sent by his illusion.

As he expected, there was a space-expansion rune inside the wall, which meant there was a room “in” the wall.

This would explain where the woman came from.

It was very likely that the owner of all those blood was also in there.

Angor controlled his phantom to strike a dramatic pose as if he were going to attempt something really big. He had no idea whether someone was watching, and he would make sure that his illusion looked real enough.

It wasn’t difficult to enter the secret room. He simply needed to find the critical node of the rune.

As he successfully triggered the rune, the wall twitched a little and revealed a door.

He heard someone crying again before entering the room. He was now used to hearing about such noise.

While staying extremely cautious, Angor slowly pushed the door open.

He was ready to turn tail right away if there were another undead inside. These creatures couldn’t do anything serious to him, but the same went both ways.

Angor widened his eyes in shock when he looked at something even more surprising than undead.

The room contained one single bathtub filled with hot liquid. But it wasn’t hot water in there—it was boiling blood, which released crimson vapor into the air.

He always had his Purification Field on, or there was no doubt that he would both smell and see the terrible stench now.

Tap, tap…

Drops of blood came from a female corpse hanging down the room’s ceiling. There were a series of sharp hooks affixed on the ceiling, with more than 30 naked female corpses on them. Each hook seized a woman by her ripped-open chest, where more blood was coming down.

Hot, fresh blood full of resentment energy slowly entered the bathtub.

Most of them were corpses; a small number of them were still alive albeit barely since their hearts were badly damaged. Those crying he heard just now was their desperate mourning in their last moment.

So that was why all the corpses in the graveyard all had a giant wound on their chests…

Angor didn’t wish to imagine how many women were killed in Dark Castle like this. His face went pale a little. He couldn’t muster the courage to step inside.

It wasn’t fear. Something else in his mind refused to let him go.

A trail of footprints led from the bathtub to the door. It seemed the woman outside was enjoying her bath when she quickly moved to ambush him after she heard the climbing noises.

The drainage pipe was probably used to get rid of the “bath blood”.

Angor forced himself to go inside despite his instinct.

The room wasn’t rigged, but he preferred dealing with traps rather than facing the dreadful sight, especially when those still alive were staring right at him with pure hatred.

He didn’t know what to say to these dying women. It was not like anything could help them anyway. The basic Heal spell he just learned wouldn’t achieve anything at all.

Angor endured the terrible gazes for a while before he decided to say something.

“I’m not here to save you.”

His first sentence surprised the women.

“And I’m not your killer either. I just want to know how you ended up here, at Dark Castle.”

A moment later, a sharp, mad voice responded, “Dark Castle? This is DARK CASTLE? HA! I see it now! I’m gonna turn to a ghost and haunt everyone who lives in here, FOREVAH!”

Angor looked her way and saw a woman with long hair over her shoulders. Both her eyes and her body displayed energy ripples of madness. There was no doubt that this mortal would have her last wish fulfilled upon death.

As she struggled in her rage, a stream of blood came surging out from the center of her chest.

Angor quickly cast a Heal so that the woman wouldn’t die right away.

She seemed to be the only one who knew how to talk in this room, which meant the only individual who could provide information.

The woman breathed heavily and stared at Angor with an unyielding grudge. “Why did you save me?”

“I can’t save you. Your heart is beyond help,” Angor said in a plain voice, “but I need to know where you all came from, and how you came here.”

“Who are you? You’re not with that… b*tch?” While speaking, visible negative energy began to gather around the woman’s dying form.

“I’m not from Dark Castle. I’m here to… save someone.”

“Gah—haha! Save someone?? Gah—” The woman laughed and coughed madly while tears and blood emerged from her eyes.

The dark aura around her was growing quickly. Angor got a feeling that even a mortal would be able to see it now.

With another Heal, Angor prolonged the woman’s lingering consciousness just a bit further.

“Answer me. How did you come here? Did you see this man recently?” Angor spoke while releasing Shadow’s phantom.

No answer. The woman kept laughing and yelling in pain.

As her wound was patched by Angor’s spell and ripped open again for many times, her hatred intensified.

Angor realized that this woman was using him to strengthen her dark energy. Doing so would boost her initial strength as an undead spirit.

He considered and decided to go with her plan.

At first, the woman would say something insignificant so that Angor had to keep her alive. Eventually, she noticed that Angor was actually helping her and simply stopped talking.

As she forced the last bit of her life energy again and again, her negative power multiplied terribly.

Angor never expected a mortal woman to endure such pain which would otherwise totally destroy anyone. She would have become quite the heroine like Nausica if she wasn’t captured by Dark Castle.

Pity. She had bad luck.

When the woman realized that her limit had come, she gave Angor a final, gentle glance instead of the hateful glare before.

“I am… the 13th daughter of Goman King. When we lost our Crimson Crown, the elder princess framed me as the culprit, and the King depreciated me like a peasant. The princess then sold me off as a slave… After all kinds of torture, I’m here… Heh. I thought I was going to satisfy the filthy desires of some guy for the rest of my life. No. This is true hell. They bath in the blood of virgins… You already saw it.”

The last trace of life was visibly leaving the woman now. “I don’t know about the others. Cowards, slaves, sold here, like me. Maybe.”

Deep inside, Angor was very surprised to hear the name of Goman King. The Goman Kingdom wasn’t anywhere near Fairy World. It would take mortals their lifetimes to travel here.

Whoever that sold the slaves here wasn’t anyone ordinary.

Considering this, the “cold home” mentioned by Flowey might be another distant land. There were countless areas with cold climates in the southern wizarding region.

“I… saw him.” The woman pointed toward Shadow’s image with a trembling finger. “Hours ago, the b*tch monster fought him. Then he came inside, looked at us, and left. That woman came back after that, cursed his name, and took her damned bath.”

The dying woman’s eyes slowly rolled upward.

“Thank you.” Angor lowered his head in respect.

“Ha…”