Warlock Apprentice

Eureka was still trying to get over what she heard from Thewis just now, that Angor was an “upcoming Mystery Alchemist”.

She never took it seriously when Thewis mentioned such a thing before. Now that she saw Thewis himself being serious about it…

Angor? Creating Mystery treasures out of the blue? Say what?!

At most times, a Mystery treasure was something the whole wizarding world would get crazy about. Countless wizards would die fighting over one.

Well, perhaps Angor was still “upcoming”, but that was already inestimable profit!

“There’s more,” Thewis continued explaining using a private voice transmission, “he has more labels, such as the ‘Thorny Lion’ and ‘the Music Box Man’, due to the famous creations he showed us. That one music box he sold at Remnant Auction ended up at… Was it 200,000 crystals? It broke the price record for low-tier alchemy items ever sold. Even today, people are still talking about it, especially wizards who love music. They’re trying to find Angor and ask him the name of the music piece. I heard that Brute Cavern has been displeased because they received sh*tloads of letters intended for Angor.”

Eureka gulped. A freaking music box got him 200,000 crystals? I can hardly gather 10,000 even if I sell everything I have!

She now fully understood how Angor could find so many valuable potions and a personal storage space—of course he had enough money to buy them!

Brulee mentioned how “Whale Hunter” Beals from Ashen Traders showed exceptional respect when talking to Angor. It meant Beals knew Angor’s true identity from the beginning.

“There’s another matter that’s been upsetting the wizarding world these days. Somebody managed to capture the moment when Angor was making a high-tier item, using a filming technique.” Thewis sighed. “An apprentice who can produce high-tier assets, you know what that means? Professional alchemists all believe that he’ll definitely become a true Master Alchemist in the future. The only question is when.

“It’s a pity that the newest edition of Grove of Time is already out, or they’d surely put Angor’s name in it. We can wait 10 years when the next release comes out and read about Angor. Well, unless he dies for some reason before that happens.”

Eureka was shocked speechless.

Like most people, she used to read each printing of Grove of Time with utmost care because this magazine was commonly believed to be the most trustworthy reading material in the south. All the new knowledge and research discoveries provided by it deserved people’s attention.

And Angor’s going to leave his record in it?!

She glanced at Angor with a strange expression.

Angor had been staying in Padt Manor for a while. Eureka more or less kept an eye on his actions but without noticing anything strange. Of course, Angor never mentioned his alchemy skills.

“He intentionally kept it from me, didn’t he?” Eureka clenched her teeth.

“What do you mean?” Thewis frowned.

A little furiously, Eureka explained what happened during these months, including how she asked Angor to fetch potion materials from Lloyds.

“He’s so good at alchemy, yet he watched me suffer without the potions I need! He found it funny, huh?!”

“Well, perhaps he wanted to keep low. But let’s think clearly here, even if he says he can make potions, why would he help you?”

“He dare defy my order?”

Thewis chuckled. “Yeah, you can force him to. Suppose you get him to brew something for you against his will. Will you drink that stuff?”

Eureka grew silent again. Thewis spoke truly. Unlike other alchemy items, potions might contain unwanted tricks harder to discover. If Angor put a trap in the potion…

“Just don’t.” Thewis showed a serious look. “In a sense, Angor’s more important a figure than both of us in the wizarding world right now. Just think. With that kind of value he holds, both Sunders and Brute Cavern might have left safety measures on him.”

“But you should be the impulsive one here. You’re being nice to Angor and Leon just to win him on your side, right?”

Thewis nodded, then shook his head. “That’s not all. By earning his friendship, I want to help you as well.”

“Help me?”

“The Crimson Crown. Angor made another replica of the crown for us. Trust me, it looks just like the real crown.”

…

While Thewis and Eureka talked to each other, Angor was carefully reading through the alchemy handbook he received from Mithra.

As he remembered, the Master Apothecary mentioned how to brew an antidote to remove the spider poison. He knew he could do it because Mithra instructed him on how to make several types of basic potions back in Floating Mech City.

The study didn’t go very smoothly at first, but he did a lot of practice later. When traveling on The Limpet, he had fully grasped how to make simple antidotes.

The one for treating Spatebog Spider poison just required several more steps. He had most of the materials ready to be used in his bracelet.

He couldn’t start the work yet because he still needed one more major component, which was the fresh poison extracted from a Spatebog Spider.

Naturally, he had to find this spider to get its poison. Since he couldn’t sense it with his spirit power, he decided to release the scout puppets again to help him search.

It didn’t take too much time. The creature was found “walking” on the lake water downstream like a strider despite its ox-sized body. It was currently pulling its newly-found prey back to the nest using a strand of pale green spider silk.

Since Thewis seemed interested in the spider, Angor chose to use an illusion to trick it into letting out the poison on its own instead of killing it.

Without minding what Thewis and Eureka would do next, he found a random spot and started making the potion immediately.

Brewing low-tier potions was all about precisely controlling the volume of materials and temperature, which wasn’t much different from Tooling techniques. This was why many Tooling or Apothecary alchemists tended to study the other subject relatively well at the beginning.

The brewing technique Angor learned from Mithra belonged to the “Reformer” School. He was not experienced enough to get reformative yet, but strictly following the rules and steps wasn’t difficult for him.

Even though the process was rather boring to watch, Thewis, who was interested in Apothecary, still found it worthy to observe all the fine arts displayed by Angor, which originally came from Master Mithra.

The potion was a success. Yet Angor wasn’t sure this was enough to bring Leon back. As a mortal, Leon would have a very difficult time enduring the strong effect of the potion.

“Just do it,” Thewis saw through Angor’s mind and said, “Leon is tougher than you thought since he can reach the minimum spirit requirement by using physical training only. The antidote is still a low-tier potion. He has no reason to lose against it.”

Angor nodded. He just wanted to be as careful as possible when treating the only family he had in this world.

After using Narda’s Vision to make sure that the potion was fine, he used a special cantrip to directly inject the liquid into Leon’s body.

The first sign shown by Leon was violent convulsion, followed by bulging blood vessels and reddened skin.

“Ah… ah… Arrrrgh!”

The great pain had woken him up from the sweet dream caused by the hypnotic effect of the thorns.

Angor could help Leon ease the pain by pulling him into the dream wasteland. However, this wouldn’t work so well when Leon would be forcibly woken up by the pain sooner or later.

Unless Angor could extract another “rule” from the domain sphere that allowed him to forcefully keep a resident inside the dream wasteland…

For now, he could only watch Leon struggling in agony while praying for the best.