Warlock Apprentice

The searing blaze, which should not exist in this world, went for the two women on the opposite side, completely unaffected by the presence of water.

Boom!

A giant explosion created a natural curtain made out of bubbles and vortexes.

When everything cleared out, people saw a long-handled scythe, which blocked the fire attack, right in front of Carveline and Sinehowze.

As the others wondered why such a thing showed up out of nowhere, a shadow slowly emerged from behind it.

First, it was a white, skeletonized hand that held the scythe. This was followed by a tattered black hood, under which lay a white skull with golden markings drawn on it.

Apparently, this reaper-like being just materialized and dispelled Keely’s attack with a swing of its scythe.

“A fine meal from the underworld that invites Death itself to dine with us…” Sinehowze spread her hands and chanted. Several trails of smoke unaffected by water came from her as she released different food materials into the environment, which were soon carried away by tides.

The smoke trails gradually entered the skeleton’s nostrils, which caused something to happen to it.

The once black eye sockets brightened up as a pair of green embers lit up inside them. Everyone heard someone talking in a deep yet clear voice as if someone just spoke to their souls directly.

“I shall answer your banquet invitation… Accept my humble gratitude.”

“Then you must pay a price for my meal,” Sinehowze said. She showed a cold look and pointed to the other group. “Kill them. That shall be my request.”

“As you wish.” The flames in the skeleton’s eyes brightened further as it lunged at Angor’s group, scythe raised.

Keely moved to intercept immediately.

A heated battle soon followed and fell into a stalemate, in which neither of them managed to win over the other.

“A common skeleton from the underworld, huh?” Keely scoffed. “A Death wannabe? Don’t make me laugh!”

Despite her tone, Keely was treating their battle with a serious attitude. She could no longer use her Blaze of Purgatory as it wasn’t so effective for battling with something from the underworld. Such a creature would deal with Inferno embers every day back at its home. It might not be the real Death, but that scythe looked pretty powerful.

A real Death was always a wizard-level creature. A skeleton that could use a Death’s Scythe was just a little weaker—a level-3 apprentice, probably. Usually, Keely wasn’t afraid of someone like this. However, this underworld native was a natural countermeasure against her Inferno flames.

“It’s a novice Death… but still, it is a real Death.” Sinehowze chuckled. She seemed to be talking to Keely, yet her attention was on Angor the whole time.

Angor and Shan did not join the fight yet. Carveline also stayed aside as Sinehowze’s guard. Like her partner, Carveline had been keeping her eye on Angor cautiously.

Both Carveline and Sinehowze would agree that Angor was the biggest threat here. When thinking about what Angor did in front of everyone at the lava zone, neither of them knew for sure whether they could survive from Angor’s speed and illusions.

The battle between Keely and the skeleton continued without yielding any result. The skeleton couldn’t use many long-range attacks, but it could shrug off Keely’s Inferno cantrips while remained mostly unharmed.

Seeing that the fight had been dragging on for too long, Shan and Gank also joined the fight.

Sinehowze frowned and released another trail of smoke that was then devoured by the skeleton. After devouring the smoke, the skeleton gained another magnitude in size.

Keely summoned more embers and unleashed them toward Sinehowze. She decided to kill the summoner of the skeleton first so that it would end all troubles.

The skeleton saw it and quickly moved to intercept.

Shan began to perform a strange dance move on Gank’s shoulder. Following her gestures, Gank also leaped around while slamming the water around him. Combining Gank’s talent of a brute and Shan’s technique, they brought up a giant vortex that surrounded Gank.

As commonly known, spells and cantrips all had more than one way of showing their effects. Shan altered Gank’s War Stomp skill by applying the power to his hands and created an underwater whirlpool.

The whirlpool grew so big that even Angor and Keely had to step down a bit so that they wouldn’t receive any damage.

As a native of the underworld, the skeleton simply turned into its ethereal form, which allowed it to ignore all physical attacks. It dived through the vortex and headed to Sinehowze to stop Keely’s embers.

Keely did not stay and watch. In the next second, her body grew larger as her once slim body gained size and muscles. Thick fur grew on her pair of white legs, and her red dance shoes turned into sharp claws of the same color, which looked more like blood in such a situation.

“A Red-Talon Hikhor…” Carveline put on a more careful stance upon seeing Keely’s beast form.

The bloodline of a Red-Talen Hikhor was usually used for strengthening one’s overall speed. Anyone who could use such a bloodline was known to have superior reflexes.

Keely did more than activating her bloodline—she also triggered the best extent of it by turning into a were-beast. She considered this necessary in order to compete with the skeleton.

Just as she planned, her enhanced physical properties helped her catch up with the skeleton in time.

The skeleton was now too slow to land any effective hit on Keely’s current form. It could only keep retreating from Keely’s energy-enhanced claws.

Without the skeleton to help them, Keely’s embers managed to surround Sinehowze and Carveline. It then slowly engulfed them.

“Is it over?” Shan asked.

Bang!

A shiny light beam created by a sharp attack emerged from the burning embers and came for Keely.

Keely had no problem evading the attack in her current form. When she did, the embers slowly died down, and they could finally see what was happening.

A giant scythe and broken, black hooded robe…

“Another skeleton?” Keely frowned. “Wait… That’s Carveline?”

Carveline was now standing in front of Sinehowze with a scythe in hand. A simple swing was all she needed to get rid of the looming embers.

“This is Death’s Garb,” said Carveline. “Stop struggling. None of your moves will work.”

Keely was surprised by Carveline’s new outfit. “You are the owner of Pastor’s Garb?”

Carveline didn’t reply, which was just the answer they needed.

Depending on the user’s level, as well as what they wished to do, Pastor’s Garb was able to appear as different types of equipment.

Carveline’s Death’s Garb had granted her similar powers that a real Death would have.

Meanwhile, the skeleton didn’t allow Keely to have enough time to get over her surprise. Its scythe moved and created several shadows around Keely, which suggested it was going to use a big move.

“Keely, watch out!!”

Keely heard Shan’s words and looked back, only to find nowhere to go under the overwhelming scythe attacks.

For the first time in the battle, she panicked. Getting distracted by Carveline’s display caused her to overlook the skeleton’s moves. And when it sneaked closer enough in its ethereal form, Keely’s speed would not help her get away from the well-prepared trap.

Before the shadows could hit her head-on, a violent tide came lashing out and carried with it a series of illusion nodes. It created a white mist that obstructed a large area from view.

“That’s Acoustic Illusion! Damn it, it’s Angor!” Sinehowze quickly moved farther from the battlefield and saw Carveline doing the same. She had been watching the fight without doing anything so that she could keep an eye on Angor’s movement. Unfortunately, she let her guard down when Keely was about to get killed by the skeleton, and this allowed Angor to intervene.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Carveline moved toward the illusion again as her outfit gained bright colors and a pair of butterfly wings.

The wings spread glittering scales into the environment that quickly broke Angor’s illusion nodes before the mist could fully build up.

But Carveline did not find Angor or Keely behind the mist. There was only the skeleton that was still looking around while being completely confused.

Carveline jerked her head in another direction and saw that Angor and Keely were standing at a safe distance while they looked at her with relaxed expressions. It seemed Keely was totally unharmed.

Angor was looking at Carveline’s new outfit with a curious expression. To Carveline, however, Angor’s inspecting gaze was humiliating. It was as if Angor were mocking her failure.

Carveline always believed in her speed. It only took her a second or two to break Angor’s illusion, so she was confident that she would get to Keely before Angor did.

But the truth proved otherwise. In two seconds, Angor managed to take Keely far away from danger, which meant Angor was a lot faster than her. Probably even faster than Keely’s enhanced speed.

“Why you—” Carveline felt her face burning in rage. She was about to taunt Angor when she heard something behind her that sounded like glass shattering on the ground. At the same time, Sinehowze screamed in pain and covered her mouth. There was blood leaking from between her fingers.

Sinehowze is hurt? When and how?! Carveline hurried back to Sinehowze’s side anxiously.

When she moved past the skeleton, the water flow she caused knocked into it and created several cracking noises. As both Carveline and Sinehowze watched in horror, the skeleton’s skull gained a large crack that slowly moved downward until it reached both its feet.

In a split second, the skeleton snapped into a pile of shards as the long-handled scythe slowly disappeared as it returned to the underworld again.

“It’s… dead??” Carveline glanced at Angor, who actually nodded to her as an answer.

Carveline immediately felt cold sweat running down her back.

He killed that thing?

But how?? Did he do it while rescuing Keely?

The only explanation was that Angor grabbed Keely away AND shattered the skeleton while at it. However, Carveline couldn’t believe her assumption.

“Man… I just gave it a little knock on the head and this happened? So fragile,” said Angor, who was still smiling casually.