Warlock Apprentice

Angor returned to Sunders’ mansion and saw Dodoro already awake. The man was sitting still on a bed, seemingly thinking about something.

Dodoro smiled brightly when he saw Angor coming and quickly stood up.

“Awake?” Angor asked Dodoro to sit beside the desk. He then asked Papaya about Dodoro’s condition. According to Papaya, Dodoro was already awake in the early morning, but he never spoke to anyone.

Angor nodded. Dodoro was always like a newborn child despite his mature look. He only fully opened up to Angor.

Angor asked Papaya to return to the Krakok building and looked at Dodoro gently.

“Yesterday, I saw—” Dodoro quickly tried to speak when he received Angor’s attention.

Angor covered Dodoro’s mouth. If Dodoro was truly talented for Prophecy, then the man needed more “indirect” ways to explain what he saw. But as for now, Dodoro was still bad at talking. This could be a little too hard.

Angor pondered and decided to proceed in a “quiz and answer” manner.

“Listen. So, you saw me at the bottom of the sea? Tell me yes or no.”

Sweat drops appeared on Dodoro’s forehead. An unknown power just showed up and prevented him from talking. His cheeks soon became red when wrestling with it.

As a mortal, there was no way for Dodoro to openly use his powers yet.

Angor quickly stopped him from trying. “Don’t say anything. Use your eyes if you can.”

Dodoro’s eyes were just clear and innocent like children’s, which meant what was on his mind was clear to observe. Also, Angor was really worried about this.

Can someone as naive and sincere as him become a prophet?

Without a problem, Angor read the hint from Dodoro’s determined eyes as a “yes”.

“I see. Do I look fine or am I in a bad condition?”

Dodoro hesitated. It seemed like he couldn’t tell.

“Do I look younger or older?”

No.

“Did my hair grow longer?”

No.

“Am I alone?”

No.

“Someone’s with me?”

Yes.

“Is my companion a man?”

No.

Angor asked several more questions while using illusions to facilitate them. A moment later, Angor stopped and tried to collect useful information from what he learned, while Dodoro looked pretty happy that Angor managed to understand him merely by looking at his eyes.

Angor realized there was a lot to go by. While arranging his thoughts, he noticed that all the clues all led to the purification garden.

According to Dodoro, he didn’t have any change in age or even his hair length, which meant what Dodoro saw wasn’t anything too distant from now. By using the right illusions to go through all possible individuals he might encounter, Angor successfully ascertained his “companion” in Dodoro’s sight. It was a young lady wearing red dance shoes—Keely.

There was only the garden challenge that met with these conditions. It seemed he and Keely were heading to some pit at the bottom of the sea.

It wasn’t something shown by Dodoro; it was Angor’s own assumption. It could also be the entrance to somewhere. Unfortunately, Dodoro couldn’t tell him why he and Keely were in the water in the first place.

Next, Angor took out some papers to draw what he imagined while Dodoro watched quietly. When something was wrong with the drawing, Dodoro would mumble something in a small voice to alert Angor.

Angor took the finished picture to Sunders.

He was still doubting something though. Is this really Dodoro’s “prophecy”? If so, are we going to change the future or something? Will it cause trouble? Butterfly effect? Paradox? End of the world?

Sunders snickered at Angor’s words. “You don’t have to mind the mysteries of time. What I can tell you now is that becoming a wizard means changing the future, both for you and for the world around you. There’s no need to worry about the outcomes at your current state. For example, taking you in means changing my future. Should I fear it and reject you instead?

“To put it simply, Dodoro and what he told you is only a small variation of a possible event. You may or may not encounter this event regardless of what you do about the hint. Don’t let it burden your mind.”

Sunders then checked Angor’s painting. First, he greatly admired the skillful art displayed by his student, which fitted well with his noble standards.

“What you guessed might be true, that this is something during the garden challenge. I’ve never been there personally, so I can’t tell you if there’s a sea. The point is, what this painting is showing to us is not important. We do not know why this is happening or where it takes us to. In other words, don’t waste time thinking about it.

“However, you can remember what you saw, and maybe when you do come across this situation, the painting may provide you with guidance. Of course, it still depends on you whether to follow it.”

Sunders returned Angor’s paper and joked, “So, while growing in strength, you also found TWO more talents for your little crew?”

Sunders was talking about Papaya and Dodoro.

“I think the recruitment quest fell to Wallace this year. I still remember him crying like a babe in front of Mister Rein. Say, if you can take five talents to him, that man will thank you wholeheartedly.”

Angor chuckled. Even if he somehow found that many talents, he wasn’t going to give them to Wallace. Who knew if something similar to the “chamber deathmatches” would happen again?

He heeded Sunders’ words and kept the painting in his bracelet. Perhaps Dodoro only saw a possible time point in many. He still had to forge his own path.

With this settled, Angor returned to his own room to prepare Nausica’s mechanical arm.

He had most of the required materials ready since he refilled his stock when he was in the Ice Cave in Dark Castle. However, the discussion with Mithra added several new things to the list, so he still had to pay visits to several shops.

While hunting for materials, he also found a potion shop and asked to buy a witch stew.

The shopkeeper rolled his eyes and pointed at a symbol on the wall. “This shop here is Van Der Waals. We don’t sell that cheap stuff. Yer looking for trouble?”

Before Angor could explain his terrible mistake, the shopkeeper kicked him out.

Angor sighed helplessly. Mithra reminded him of the bad relationship among different schools for more than once, and yet, he still underestimated it.

He wondered if every Apothecary could be tolerant like Master Mithra, which probably would end all these “wars”.

In the end, he successfully found what he needed from a small house built in shadows with a sign that showed a steaming cauldron.

Just as Mithra said, Cillian’s Witch Stew was a common merchandise designed for bloodline training. A vial only cost 10 magic crystals.

Most apprentices could afford it by doing several quests. Angor simply spent 1,000 crystals and stocked 100 vials of it.

He didn’t mean to waste money. It was just that he needed a lot of practice to get familiarized with the sequence of gravity. From a quick guess, he believed 100 vials of stew would barely be enough to support the intensive training which would take two weeks.

With everything prepared, Angor shut himself in his room and began creating Nausica’s mechanical arm. He wasn’t going to apply any magic arrays to it since he didn’t have enough time to study new ones, while the ones he already knew were pointless in this case.

Still, what he had in mind was no inferior to the effect of magic arrays.

In three days, he successfully finished every part of the arm and assembled them into a thin yet powerful tool that shone with the brilliance of fine metal.

The arm worked by receiving its user’s myoelectric signals. Nausica might need some time to get used to it, but with enough time, the arm would be handy as if it were grown naturally.

Angor also left each finger hollowed out like gun barrels and applied mana-enhancing runes to them, which meant Nausica could use the fingers to release ammunition that was pre-loaded in the chambers. If not, she could use the barrels to vent out her attacking magic.