Warlock Apprentice

The Silver Moose was quietly floating at one corner of the Ship’s Grave. This ship belonged to the White Clam Seafare Association, and it was also the one formerly protected by Huskar.

Angor was currently using Huskar’s room on the 4th level to read a pile of thick books under the faint light provided by a Luminous Stone lamp, and he already finished a good number of them.

The whole area was quiet. Uncomfortably quiet. The sound of him turning pages was the only thing that could be heard right now.

He came back to search for more clues about the “Vile King”. Since this figure was a famous pirate known by sailors, there should be a lot of records that mentioned him.

However, he just finished reading the last book on the ship that was about pirates during the Age of Bronze, and he didn’t find the name of Vile King at all.

“Am I wrong?”

He looked at another book on the desk that he had yet to read, which was titled The Shining Age of Silver.

It was a biography of influential people from the Age of Silver, including infamous politicians and common citizens who had their names remembered by history, but there were no pirates among them. Angor prepared this book just because there were no other clues to look at.

Even though the Age of Silver only lasted for about 400 years, this book was pretty big in volume because there were a ton of great figures of different professions who won big fame.

Among the celebrities, there were even criminals who brought great damage to the people around them. Whoever wrote the book tried to be fair when recreating the history.

Most of the names mentioned were from Ferran, with a few “foreigners” occasionally.

As Angor approached the end of the book and thought he would be left disappointed again, he suddenly found “Torras the Vile King” between the lines. Below the name was an illustrated description that expressed the “career” as well as the glory of Torras.

“‘Vile King’ Torras, origin unknown. He made his first debut in the year 211, Age of Silver, at Eastern Seas. During the entire era, Torras spread both his greatness and horror to every corner of the world we can think of.

“Using his ship, The Feral, he united everyone under his command at the Eastern Seas, be them pirates or peaceful folks. After slaughtering several members of royalty, several nations around the continents put his name on the top of their bounty lists.

“While being tracked down by soldiers and hunters, Torras didn’t stop doing more horrible miracles to this world, including overthrowing the government of Valhalla Isle and further convincing people of his absolute might.

“Later, Torras made his way to the Devil’s Water and made multiple successful adventures inside the deadly place, during which he granted us a great treasure of his time—a detailed sea chart of Devil’s Water. Even today, some of us praised him for being a conqueror of the devil.

“But in the year 223, Age of Silver, Torras suddenly disappeared from people’s views and never showed up again. There are rumors saying that he has gone to the world of wizards. Even now, this legendary pirate would occasionally watch the lands and seas he once dominated…”

After Angor finished the last phrase but before he could put the book down, he suddenly felt a cold wind that carried strong killing intent assaulting his face.

He looked up and saw the door to the room’s balcony being pushed open, thus allowing the stinky air outside to slip in.

There was a black shadow standing at the door.

He couldn’t see the shadow’s face against the light of Luminous Stones outside, but that ox-horn helmet, a hooked peg leg and a pair of glowing red eyes were exactly what was described in the picture in the book he was holding.

“Torras?” He tried to ask while preparing his defensive cantrips and chanting Spirit Mantra at the same time.

He knew this man had lived through over two thousand years and was strong enough to murder a level-3 apprentice in an instant, which meant he had to use anything he could think of.

The shadow didn’t respond—he kept gazing at him using the pair of eyes full of hatred.

Without any forewarning, the shadow vanished, left a trail of red light, and reappeared right in front of Angor’s desk while slashing his sharp nails enchanted with deadly energy at his position.

The desk was instantly shattered to pieces, along with the Luminous Stone lamp, which scattered its broken content into the room and created a brief brilliance in the dim environment.

The shadow noticed that he only hit the lingering shade of his mark, while the real target had escaped.

He also saw strange gray energy left behind the area he hit. He couldn’t recognize the energy, but he felt threatened.

“Ah, so this is how you lived so long?” Angor’s voice came from right beside him.

The shadow jerked around and let out an ear-piercing scream that could unsettle the souls of living creatures.

Angor simply paced around the shadow completely unaffected. Even the soul attack of a Soul Manipulator apprentice like Saka couldn’t work on him. There was no way an undead soul who never went through any specific training could do better than that.

“I thought you were an old wizard who lived here, but it seems that I was wrong.”

Angor sensed the signature energy of undead when the shadow attacked him. Unfortunately, the fallen soul no longer had the intelligence to respond to his taunt—he only kept rushing at him.

“Toby, go outside. The room’s not good for a fight.”

Since he knew the nature of the offender, Angor decided not to use his soul form for now. He only asked Toby to help him dodge attacks by pulling his body around using gravity power.

Toby nodded and dragged him out of the narrow room. Instead of remaining on the deck of the ship, they kept moving away until they landed on the seashore area.

Undead Torras soon followed them to the beach while constantly releasing his mad aura at them.

To Angor’s surprise, the soul of Torras somehow stopped attacking him as if the soul had sensed something wrong. Instead, Torras was keeping his distance while observing the situation carefully.

Angor never encountered any undead souls who knew how to use tactics before. Well, except for the strange “jellyfish” he fought against at Specter Basin. Although he still wasn’t sure whether that thing was an undead.

As far as he could see, Torras was mostly an undead soul right now. Maybe certain strange occurrences helped Torras retain minimal sanity, but that wouldn’t help this man act much differently than undead creatures.

Gradually, Torras lost patience and lunged at Angor again.

Angor sidestepped the attack and took out his Prelude to Elimination. He then shot at Torras.

Torras immediately felt the deadly power unleashed by the weapon and tried to escape. Yet he didn’t have enough time. Angor waited for him to get close just so he wouldn’t miss the shot.

However, Torras wasn’t devoured by the attack as Angor expected. As he watched in great confusion, Torras’ form disappeared before the attack could reach its mark.

Almost at the same time, Angor turned around and saw Torras’ claw attack coming at his face.

Toby pulled him away just in the nick of time.

He felt his heart bumping madly after surviving the attack. He knew his body was too fragile to withstand such a direct attack. He could have died back there.

It seemed Torras could wield power as good as some of the best level-3 apprentices. Thankfully, the soul wasn’t wise enough to know how to properly put such power to use, or Angor wouldn’t be able to evade the attacks so easily.

Angor failed to tell how Torras got away from his gunshot earlier. His instinct told him that Torras used some strange ability to directly teleport behind his back just now.

But… could undead souls possess such abilities at all? If so, it would be pretty hard to use his revolver to kill Torras even though this soul didn’t seem as strong as that strange jellyfish.