Warlock Apprentice

“I think you should give up if she’s as powerful as a wizard.” Angor frowned. “But do you really think your own teacher put you in a hopeless situation which might even kill you?”

It was true that there were wizards who weren’t interested in teaching students, but as long as they accepted the students, they usually wouldn’t intentionally trick them. Wizards didn’t need tricks to kill apprentices.

There was the possibility that someone might have some twisted “hobbies” of watching someone suffer. Yet Angor believed that such people would at least leave a trace of hope in their trap. Putting someone in a hopeless situation meant the victim would simply wait for death, which wasn’t “fun” at all.

No matter how he considered, Angor didn’t really believe that Shadow’s teacher presented an impossible challenge. Shadow was almost a wizard now, as well as a disciple that inherited the same art as his teacher. Anyone in his or her sane mind would welcome new blood joining their ranks.

“You know, I agree. But I can’t beat Naga!” Shadow complained. He spent two days in a heated battle against Naga, and he didn’t even leave a scratch on her.

“At least your teacher doesn’t wish you dead since you can get away in one piece. Now, think about what you can get from this challenge while staying alive.”

Shadow somewhat got an idea from Angor’s suggestion. “Now that you mentioned it… I think there’s something…”

Shadow closed his eyes and thought about his previous battle.

“I think I got a theory,” Shadow muttered while walking to the door, “I’m going to try again.”

With that, he left Angor alone in the bedroom again.

Angor slumped down on his bed, not knowing what to do next.

Should I check on Felicia?

No. He didn’t know how to answer Felicia’s questions if she were to ask about his soul scar, and he couldn’t possibly tell lies in front of a wizard.

Leave the castle?

No. He was still concerned about Toby.

His mind got tired as he thought of more questions, so he simply emptied his brain and relaxed.

A while later, he was woken up by more thunderous noises outside. He walked to the window and noticed that the sky outside was once again hidden behind dark clouds and lightning snakes.

The scenery was mostly empty, apart from the occasional undead souls among the trees who would stare at Dark Castle with hatred in their eyes.

He suddenly got an idea and summoned a silver revolver in his hand.

He had yet to test the power of this weapon. Isabelle mentioned something about “Mystery energy” in the gun, and he wished to find out what it meant.

In order not to alert anyone, he simply jumped out of the balcony and walked away from the castle.

Of course this was not enough to conceal his movement. Felicia, who was in the castle hall, quickly looked up and glanced toward Angor’s direction. However, she didn’t say anything and returned to her wines.

Angor followed the small path leading away from Dark Castle.

He decided to name his enchanted gun “Prelude to Rebirth”. He got the idea when Prome used “Rebirth” to name the first gun, and he decided to use this word as well since it sat well with the nature of the weapon.

He was in a hurry then, so the gun didn’t have any careful engravings and decorations. Angor simply exposed the runes on its surface, which gave the gun a mysterious appearance.

Soon enough, he heard women crying among the trees in Black Forest. However, he didn’t go inside since he didn’t know the terrain well. Dark places could have deadly traps.

He planned to go to the graveyard.

The graveyard also had lots of undead spirits, and the open ground was suitable for testing Prelude to Rebirth.

Angor activated Infinite Reticence and moved to one side of the graveyard, where four souls were crying on gallows.

He lifted the revolver and took aim.

To the suffering souls, total elimination might be their best and final rest.

As the trigger was pulled, the magic array on the gun received mana and began to glow.

A series of silent ripples were unleashed from the barrel and covered a fan-shaped area in front of Angor, which completely engulfed the gallows.

Prelude to Elimination would kill souls by using special soundwaves to disrupt their negative energy. The soundwave was almost visible while it traveled in the air.

The attack didn’t show any immediate effect when it reached the souls, but they all stopped sobbing all of a sudden.

When Angor began to think that his weapon had failed, the souls suddenly began to release black smoke from their forms before they turned into ashes.

Angor was excited at his success. He did some more experiments around the graveyard and easily eliminated a number of undead souls.

Those smoke trails seemed to be the negative energy that supported the souls. If the energy were disrupted, the souls would disappear.

The weapon worked as intended, but he had yet to figure out the nature of “Mystery energy”.

Next, he moved to the giant crater near the graveyard gate. The pit was full of rotten corpses and armies of souls.

He held the revolver and shot into the pit.

There was no noise from the pit. Thick black smoke rose from it, which almost blocked Angor’s view.

Meanwhile, Angor got a feeling that something just came into his gun. It seemed to be a… white dot.

Am I seeing things?

Again, he moved around the graveyard to test. He didn’t see anything special again until he wiped out a large group of souls. He saw another “white dot” emerging from the smoke and entering his gun barrel.

What’s that? Is that the “Mystery energy” mentioned by Isabelle?

He spent more time doing research and realized that every killed soul would create such a “white spot”. But it was so weak that it was almost invisible to the eyes. Only groups of more than a hundred souls could leave something obvious behind, which was as small as dust.

In order to find out what the “white spot” was, Angor searched for more souls.

He almost cleansed the entire graveyard without finding the result, so he decided to check out Black Forest next. However, he didn’t mean to venture inside the woods for real.

About half a day later, he had slaughtered nearly two thousand souls, which was when he finally noticed something changing on his gun.

Prelude to Rebirth was shaped like an ordinary revolver, but the ammo cylinder was only a decoration since the gun didn’t need actual bullets.

At first, he planned to use physical bullets enchanted with different runes which could help him attack other creatures as well.

He did leave the cylinder design. However, without using the knowledge of expansion runes, the revolver only had room for six bullets.

Before Angor could spend time crafting more bullets for it, the cylinder of Prelude to Rebirth was cosmetic only.

However, something changed on the cylinder after he had killed two thousand souls.

The tiny white dots slowly gathered inside one of the six chambers and occupied the space intended for a physical bullet.

Angor wondered what did this thing do. Maybe this was the “Mystery energy” he meant to find out?

His spirit feelers told him that the white bullet did contain foreign energy, but he couldn’t tell any other details.

Which meant he had to “give it a shot”.

The bullet was probably meant for dealing with undead creatures too, so Angor looked around for more souls.

He failed. He had wiped out most of the souls around the edge of the forest.

He walked back to the main path and headed to the other half of Black Forest. But he was surprised to notice a single wandering soul in the middle of the road.

This one wasn’t weeping like the others. She was looking into the distance, in the direction of Dark Castle, and Angor could only see her back as well as her long, black hair.

Still, he felt overwhelming negative energy and the sharp emotion of malice coming from the soul.

“You’re next then.”

Angor held up Prelude to Rebirth and aimed at the strange soul.