Warlock Apprentice

It seemed Freud still had more to say, but he didn’t. Either because he didn’t wish to reveal too many secrets in front of Neya, or that he wasn’t confident enough in his expertise yet.

“So um, I sent the table into a dream but with no way to tell what this means to us?” Angor frowned.

“Correct.” Freud nodded.

Both Angor and Neya went agape.

When Neya read about the Dream Whelk from magazines, she thought the item possessed some kind of true value but was relatively weaker compared to “real” Mystery items.

But no! This was ACTUALLY useless!

Even though she didn’t show it before, she was still reluctant to hand over the item to Angor. But now, she felt a lot better.

The three of them spent a brief moment in the room in awkward silence.

Angor shook his head and looked at Freud again. “People sleep and wake up as needed. So when is this table going to… you know, wake up?”

“Unlike organisms, a table does not have reasons to wake up by itself. And it does not ‘know’ it’s sleeping.”

“Are you saying it will never wake up?”

“You can forcefully wake it by destroying it, either in its dream or here in reality. Otherwise, yes, the table will spend the rest of its ‘life’ in the dream.”

“Destroying it in its dream? How’s that possible?” Angor threw his hands in the air. “And how do you know about this, Freud? Have you ever entered the dream of an object?”

“It’s only a theory I came up with some time ago. But it’s highly likely because… well, I had data to back it up.” Again, Freud didn’t explain fully because someone else was around.

Angor nodded and decided to discuss this matter with Freud later when they were in private.

“I see, nothing we can do for now.” Angor looked at Neya. “Sorry, ma’am, for putting your table into sleep.”

Are you serious about that apology?! Neya deadpanned. Then her lips twitched as she replied, “Uh, it’s fine.”

“Sorry for the intrusion today. We’ll be leaving.” Angor stood up.

A knight in golden armor suddenly barged into the room.

“Lady Neya, there’s a giant whale flying right above us!!”

According to Neya, this man was the knight commander of the Silverheron Royal Knights. He was a special humanoid creature who had the blood of a Bitterberry plant in his body. He had been Neya’s loyal follower back at Fey Continent.

Also, they used the Bitterberry blood to imprison Sunny in the orphanage.

“Flying whale?” Neya stood up, eyes widened. “Is it someone’s cloud whale?”

“The city is in an uproar, and all the royalties in the palace had gone hidden in the underground passages.” The knight went down on one knee. “What should we do?”

“I didn’t bring any potential enemies here…” Neya mumbled. “I have some old grudges, but those people aren’t going to go all the way here just to kill me. Ugh, let’s just go out and see who it is.”

Without minding Angor, Neya rushed out of the room together with her knight.

Angor was just as surprised to hear about the appearance of a cloud whale. He did hear a ruckus coming from the outside, but he never thought it was something caused by a supernatural monster. As far as he knew, cloud whales were intelligent and peaceful creatures that wouldn’t harm humans without a good reason.

Still, he chose to go after them and check the situation.

After climbing a staircase, he arrived at a rooftop platform at the 4th floor of the palace, where Neya was watching the sky with an astonished look.

Angor also looked up and frowned.

He recognized that horned whale, as well as the young man in a blue robe standing on top of the animal.

“‘Child of Ocean’ Jebra??” Neya said in great surprise. Since she never offended Jebra in any way before, the showy arrival told her that Jebra probably came looking for trouble.

“Get me up there.”

A thick, black vine suddenly shot up from the back of her knight and reached all the way into the sky. The strange sight reminded Angor of another story he heard from Jon before, which was “Jack and the Beanstalk”.

Neya swiftly climbed up the plant by hopping between the giant leaves, until she reached high enough to talk to Jebra.

“Mister Jebra, do you have business with the Silverheron Clan?” she asked with a plain expression. “I don’t think it’s necessary to openly display your whale to an entire mortal city, or is there a reason behind this matter that I should know?”

Jebra’s action was already offensive, but Neya had to suppress her rage because she knew she couldn’t oppose Jebra.

Yet she felt it rather hard to stay calm when Jebra only gave her a side-glance.

“You’re the student of White Witch?” asked Jebra.

“You’re correct. My name is Neya.”

“Neya, huh? Doesn’t matter. I didn’t come for you.”

Jebra slowly looked down and saw Angor coming to him using a pair of strange boots with several glowing runes.

“Hello, Jebra.” Angor noticed Jebra’s grim expression and also put on a more serious attitude. “You looking for me?”

Jebra grinned. “I thought you were recruiting talents at Ferran. But… It seems I was wrong. You have other interesting plans, huh?”

“What do you mean by that?” Angor frowned.

“You know well what I meant.” Jebra’s smile vanished. “It was always your plan to go to Ferran Land at that moment. You already knew about Lucas, right? There’s a secret passage in Lost Paradise City that took you to the secret dimension. You went there before the main entrance was activated, am I right?”

Angor remained silent. Each of Jebra’s assumptions was true.

I underestimated the capability of a major organization… They found my tracks. But how? What did I overlook?

He would like to figure out how much Jebra had found out about him so that he could deal with subsequent questions accordingly.

Ferran… Secret dimension… He quickly searched through his memories to see if he left any loose ends behind.

Could it be Doctor Gurman? Did someone find my nightmare energy on him? Or did I drop something on those abandoned ships? But no… the island was utterly ruined by the time I left, along with the ships. They couldn’t possibly find traces like that.

Did they find the dried well at Sherry Patio? But I made sure I erased everything!

He failed to find anything that might contribute to his exposure. Well, maybe Gurman was a potential risk. Yet he didn’t believe that Song of the Deep or Summerdew Ridge would go talk to Gurman after they got what they needed from the mortal historian.

He maintained his poker face and tried. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you. I was recruiting at Ferran Land, and that was everything I did. Maybe I also did some alchemy work, but you were there to see it.”

“Not confessing yet, huh?” Jebra humphed. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve covered up the entire place with my water. You aren’t getting anywhere with your gravity moves!”

Angor looked around and saw a giant water dome around the royal palace. He already felt stagnant water elements around his body hindering his movement.

But it seemed Jebra had not figured out that it was more important to restrict Angor’s soul energy, especially when Angor could use Soul Link to unleash all of his abilities after ejecting his soul.

“I’ll not accept your false accusation. I do not think I did anything to upset Song of the Deep before, and the lot of you still want to press this nonsense on me. I see, are you trying to disturb my teacher by doing so, just like the Centipede Guild?”

Angor said this out loud not to Jebra, but to Neya and any other witnesses who might be watching them, if there was any.

He then silently chanted the Spirit Mantra in his mind.

Jebra had stopped talking to weigh the situation. He didn’t know why Angor suddenly mentioned Sunders like that, but he did know he had to consider Sunders’ possible reactions if he was to attack Angor.

Jebra then lowered his voice and said, “Hand over the Mystery item you stole, Mister Padt, and I’ll tell my teacher to let you go. Then we’ll consider this as something that has never happened.”