Warlock Apprentice

“He’s back and asks to see me?” Angor stowed the letter with a strange look.

He did tell Aaron’s soldiers to punish the kid however they liked should they find him again. But it seemed that Aaron treated the kid more kindly since the man actually sent this letter.

The date on the letter suggested that it was sent two weeks ago. Angor wondered whether he should check this matter out.

Meanwhile, Thewis was patiently waiting for Angor to finish.

“So what are you going to do with Jon? He doesn’t have much longer, if what I’m guessing is right.”

Angor thought about his conversation with Jon the other day.

“… I think I must find more help from the others.”

“Sure.” Thewis didn’t question the details. “Again, feel free to tell me if you need a hand. If you do drag another wizard here, I’ll appreciate it if you tell me in advance.”

Angor saw Thewis leaving for the Demeter’s floating island and decided to ask something.

“May I have a moment of your time, Mister Thewis?”

Thewis turned back and waited.

“Don’t you want to, you know, do your own experiments on Jon?”

“Naturally, a test subject who’s alive is better than one who’s dead. But it can’t be helped if I have nothing to keep him alive. If you do find someone who can, I hope you will share whatever you discovered from Jon with me. I won’t blame you if you don’t.”

Thewis turned away and floated higher. “Besides, that mortal is not as interesting as you.”

Angor silently watched Thewis disappear before letting out a deep sigh of relief.

He had been worried that Thewis would do terrible things to Jon upon returning to Padt Manor. But for now, this wasn’t going to happen.

Thewis was Leon’s teacher. Going hostile with him was definitely a bad idea.

…

Angor returned to his bedroom and took out the Geometric Lock eagerly.

The overall appearance of the item resembled a symmetric crystal carved into a snowflake. Everything shown by Narda’s Vision was as expected—the item had no surprises this time.

That strange figure named Cassini didn’t show up in the alchemy omen like the last time when he was making Crimson Aegis. And the omen challenge didn’t involve any strange choices.

The truth was, he preferred that his creations turned out to be what he had in his mind instead of gaining a super-strong trait, like how Crimson Aegis did. Equivalent exchange was rule number one in the wizarding world. Everything had a cost, even if he didn’t ask for it.

The Geometric Lock perfectly reflected his design, being a mid-tier item with defense and energy-camouflage effects. Upon activating it, he could determine how much area to cover, with an upper limit of a 10-meter radius around him.

After receiving a magic crystal as the energy source, the lock shone brightly and released strands of fanciful-looking threads that completely wrapped Angor’s room within.

Now, the room was safe from common detection means and attacking cantrips.

The effect in his room soon alarmed the two wizards on the small floating island.

Eureka tried several different inspection spells, which were all blocked by the strange strings around Angor’s position. She could forcefully see through using more powerful spells, but that would alert Angor as well.

“That’s the result of the alchemy omen?”

“Should be.” Thewis also glanced that way. “He said something about hiding his possessions.”

“It’s meant to annoy us, is it not?” Eureka frowned. “And wait… I can’t sense his location either. It hides people as well? He intentionally made his aura so obvious earlier just so we can test the new effect for him. Who does he think he is, huh?!”

Wasn’t it you who kept monitoring him without his permission? Thewis complained in his mind.

Angor could not hear Eureka’s outburst from his room. He was currently doing several more necessary tests on the item, to figure out the limit of the protective effects.

Soon, he reached the last step, which was to use the Dream Whelk to pull it into the dream wasteland. Apart from using the item over there, he also wanted to see whether the lock could hide the whelk’s energy as well.

The instruction in the book suggested that Silent Detainment could limit the detectable range down to a hundred meters. But he would like to learn the exact number. It was likely that the outcome could be slightly different.

He sent his spirit power farther to look at the whelk from afar.

The signal drastically grew weaker beyond 80 meters, and when he reached 200 meters, the Mystery energy was almost unnoticeable.

During his test, Eureka failed to sense the Mystery energy. It was Thewis who cast another glimpse toward his room, but the man did not do anything.

Angor entered the dream wasteland and planned to hide the domain sphere under the lock’s effect as soon as possible.

He always hoped that he could choose which “rule” to extract from the sphere so that he could get his hands on the more important ones earlier, though he didn’t know how. Each time he attempted to absorb a new rule, he would get a random one.

Upon reaching the sphere, he suddenly recalled Thewis’ “joke” earlier, that he received a powerful spell from a Prophet called Bless.

Could he use such a spell to find the exact domain power he needed, or at least narrow down the search range?

He read about it before. Bless was a rather rare spell exclusive to Prophets. He was more or less hopeless to study it.

But he had money! Why not buy a scroll for casting Bless? Even a single-use one was fine.

A scroll with such a powerful spell on it would probably cost over a million. However, he would not spend it for real if he took it to the dream wasteland and used it there. As long as he had the Dream Whelk, he could activate the scroll however he liked, repeatedly.

A million crystals for an infinite Bless scroll in the dream wasteland. That didn’t sound too bad.

He quickly locked up the domain sphere and returned to reality, then he left his new idea in his personal notebook, together with the other discoveries related to the dream wasteland.

He couldn’t help but smile at the brilliant plan he just came up with.

This wouldn’t be easy though. He had not heard about anyone who could enchant Bless onto scrolls. There were several such scrolls left behind by ancient wizards, which were all treasured and heavily guarded by their owners. He would have a hard time finding one.

With all work done, he planned to go to the Foundation City again and tell Freud his new theory.