Warlock Apprentice

When Angor saw Freud so focused on paperwork, instead of interrupting Freud, he took some time to look around the room, which had been neatly taken care of. The room didn’t have any randomly placed objects around. It seemed even when Freud was “dead”, he still strictly followed his previous disciplines.

There was a pile of books beside Freud’s pillow, most of which were common novels Angor copied from his tablet, such as Adventure of a Swordswoman, Sins of Lilies, and Beast’s Mask. These stories all had a similar layout where the protagonist was resurrected into the body of another man, woman, or even an animal. When Angor noticed that Freud preferred this genre, he placed more of such books in Freud’s “illusion room”.

Telling from the placement of those books, Freud still loved to read them.

Angor picked up a random one named Ambitious Goddess and saw many reader’s comments left by Freud between the pages. Most of the comments showed Freud’s disapproval of the story, such as how he would live his new life in another way if he were to become the protagonist in the book.

While Angor was fully attracted by some of the interesting comments, Freud heard the sound of book pages being turned and looked back.

“Mister Padt?” He knew what was going on when he saw one of the books floating above his bed.

Again, Angor didn’t mind being discovered by Freud so easily, which had happened many times. By now, he was certain that Freud was truly an elite apprentice from the Tower of Hurricane because this man had really sharp senses. The only problem was that Freud over-trusted his teammate during the purification garden challenge, which ultimately cost his life.

“I have something to ask. But since you’re busy…” Angor lowered the book to its original position.

Freud dropped his pen. “It’s fine, Mister Padt. What do you need?”

Angor explained his intention, which was mostly about asking for directions around the Land of Revelation.

“I’m… afraid that I know little other than the Central Empire.” Freud showed an apologetic smile. “I didn’t go to the other nineteen principalities that often.”

“I see. Too bad.”

Freud quickly spoke again before Angor could retract his spirit. “One moment, Mister Padt. I just drafted a new research project, would you mind taking a look if you have the time for it?”

Freud stood aside to show Angor the papers behind him.

Angor checked the title of the draft and raised an eyebrow.

Possible Ways for Combining Illusions With Dream Whelk (3rd revision)

He already knew that Freud had been working on such a project. He would admit that he was curious to find out what Freud meant to do. However, he never actually asked about it because he knew Freud was waiting for him to take the initiative and gain an upper hand.

He wouldn’t mind if Freud had some secret plans in the making, but it was a different matter if Freud involved HIM in these plans.

Each time he checked Freud’s room, the man would intentionally put the project paper at the most perceptible spot. And each time, Angor would purposely ignore it.

Apparently, Freud finally lost his patience and decided to take a step down.

Angor gladly accepted the offer and used a spirit feeler to pick up the papers.

Without minding the manifold details, which occupied most of the volume, he went straight to the conclusion section.

And… he was confused by it.

A research project usually had a specific target to be researched into, along with sound theories and proofs to support the author’s opinions. However, Possible Ways for Combining Illusions With Dream Whelk had none of these. It appeared more like a collection of Freud’s imaginations rather than a research outline.

Basically, Freud “assumed” that he could create wonderful outcomes if he combined the use of illusions with the Dream Whelk.

Currently, the true effect of Whelk of the Dreaming Coast was “pulling non-lifeform objects into a dream”, which was considered to be the most useless effect possible for a Mystery item. On the contrary, Freud almost described the item as something even superior to a tactical weapon in his paper.

For example, Freud believed that he could use the whelk to pull Angor’s alchemy material into a dream weaved by nightmare illusions, in which case Angor could use this dream to practice alchemy using valuable components without consuming them for real.

This sounded pretty helpful because practical experience was always critical in an alchemist’s career, and being too poor to afford good materials would greatly hinder their improvement. Making such “alchemy dreams” come true equaled to providing education and training to alchemists with minimal expense. Without the fear of botching their work and losing precious materials, alchemists who studied Synthesis might even control the exact outcome of their creations with enough practice.

Freud made up many conjectures that were meant to use dreams to achieve wonderful things that weren’t usually doable in reality. He believed he could even live inside such an “illusion dream”.

But as he also pointed out in the end, he had no idea of how to combine dreams with illusions as of now. He meant to provide his ideas for Angor to read, and if Angor considered it to be worthwhile to look further into this project, Angor could take it from here.

After reading the papers, Angor did feel interested because what Freud said reminded him of the “virtual reality implements” that he saw in his hologram tablet. It was just that Freud’s imaginations were wilder because he didn’t consider technical obstacles that were unlikely to be solved.

More importantly, dream and illusion were completely different concepts. How to fuse them together in the first place?

Personally, Angor admired Freud’s inventiveness but wouldn’t hold much hope about it.

Still, he wouldn’t directly deny Freud’s ambition yet because he had yet to get his hands on the Dream Whelk and see its effect for real. Perhaps Freud based his project on a certain special trait of the item.

“Nice idea, but we have many problems here—”

Before Angor could offer his own debate, Tulu suddenly called out to him aloud, “I found people, Mister Padt!”

Angor quickly shortened the speech he prepared into a brief phrase. “It’s good to be creative, but I do not believe you can mix dreams with illusions. Here, read this and see if it helps you.”

He placed another “illusion book” on Freud’s desk and quickly left.

A little confused, Freud checked the cover of the book called Lucid Dream.

The Land of Revelation had always been an outstanding place among all mortal lands around Devil’s Water. Since a very long time ago, it had been enjoying peaceful development without getting troubled by a single war, unlike the Old Earth and many other places where different nations were always fighting each other.

Even Ferran, where Anrum Monarchy seemed to be in dominance, had many potential enemies carefully waiting to take it down and seize power the moment they saw a chance.

Being peaceful meant being rich, while prosperous trading would in turn give birth to plentiful cultural creations and relics.

Just now, Angor had reached a small settlement called “Freighting Town”, which was located pretty close to the capital city of the Central Empire.

Also, this was where Freud was born.

The place looked tiny from above. But after reaching it by land, Angor noticed that the small place had everything a town might need, such as more than 20 trading companies that included representatives established by the other principalities. A branch built by Versailles Principality was also among them.

Each building had a unique design that did not ruin the general consistency of the town’s style. There were also a good number of fountain plazas for social gatherings, where Angor saw many street performers happily showing their talent.

The whole place felt so lively. In fact, Angor found this small town to be more enjoyable than some of the biggest cities in other places he visited before.

“I might as well take Mister Jon on a trip to this place after curing his illness…” he thought.

Due to his condition, Jon had not stepped out of Padt Manor for many years. Angor knew that, apart from gardening, his old teacher absolutely loved history and culture.

“We’re at Dison Alley, good sir,” the young boy leading their way turned around and spoke.