Warlock Apprentice

Chapter 2167: Chapter 2168: Darkflame Werewolf

Sizzle sizzle sizzle——

A giant fireball appeared in front of Angel. The fireball looked somewhat unstable, expanding and contracting at times, producing a continuous sizzling sound in the process.

This fireball was not an elemental creature, just the manifestation of a 0-level cantrip, the Candlefire Technique.

In the outside world, the Candlefire Technique is merely a small flame at the fingertips, generally only used to ignite waste paper or light oil lamps. But the Candlefire Technique summoned by Angel here had directly turned into an unstable giant fireball.

Angel observed the internal structure of the fireball. It was indeed the essence of the Candlefire Technique, but due to the extreme concentration of external fire energy augmentation, it had transformed into its current form.

The structure of the Candlefire Technique was originally only able to accommodate the volume of a small flame, but now, having expanded many times over, it naturally became unstable.

But precisely because of its instability, once this fireball exploded, its attack energy level would definitely surpass the standard of a 2-level cantrip.

Angel waved his hand, and the fireball before him turned into pure fire energy, merging with the surrounding environment.

Watching the sparks slowly disperse further away, Angel fell into contemplation: he had summoned the Candlefire Technique solely to verify the concentration of fire elemental power around him.

All along the way, he had used the Candlefire Technique no less than four times. The previous times, it had only elevated the 0-level cantrip to the extent of a 1-level cantrip, but this time, it had propelled the 0-level cantrip to the heights of a 2-level cantrip. The fire elemental power here was clearly much denser than before.

This also indicated one thing: he was gradually getting closer to the center of this Region of Fire.

”It seems the area where the Flame Sparrows lingered is the region with the highest fire energy level?” Angel speculated silently in his heart as he continued forward.

About ten minutes later, Angel encountered a group of fish constructed from dark flames in the black-gray smoke. These Darkflame Fish entirely treated the steaming smoke as their ”pond,” wandering in mid-air.

Angel glanced at them and could tell that these Darkflame Fish were elemental sprites.

However, Angel had no particular interest in these Darkflame Fish. They burned with black flames and lived off smoke, which certainly made them special fire elementals. This type of fire elemental might be more suitable for fire wizards with corresponding abilities.

The fire companions Angel himself desired leaned more towards mainstream fire or flames that could assist in alchemy.

Even the Fire Butterfly earlier was more suitable for him than the Darkflame Fish.

For this reason, Angel only cast a glance at the Darkflame Fish and did not disturb them, even taking a detour from afar. Although these were only weak fire elementals, there were simply too many of them. If they, like the earlier Fire Butterfly, acted mischievously, even if each only blew a fireball bubble at him, they could make this pure fire domain boil over.

Until useful information had been scouted, it was best to keep a low profile.

Circumventing the dense smoke where the Darkflame Fish lived, Angel continued towards the area where the Flame Sparrows circled. He calculated his pace and reckoned he was very close to the destination; at most, half an hour should suffice to reach it.

After another fifteen minutes, Angel noticed the terrain starting to slope upwards, seemingly entering a highland.

However, this upward slope was only about a few dozen meters long, and soon, Angel arrived at a cliffside.

A few dozen meters across was a vast expanse of thick smoke, with seemingly no path ahead. Instead, beneath the cliff, Angel saw a path he had traveled through scorched earth and fissures.

Angel estimated that he had happened to walk to a small hill. If he had taken a detour when he was on the earlier slope, he might have reached the area below.

Standing before the cliff, Angel did not immediately jump down.

Being so close to his target, if they were outside, he would already see the general situation of the destination; however, here, there was too much thick smoke, blocking his sight.

Just to be safe, he planned to release a scouting puppet first to probe the target area.

Angel retrieved twenty scouting puppets from his bracelet. They still had a metal eye shape with wings. However, these scouting puppets were not the ones from the Cloud Conch but bought when he was in the Sky Mechanical City; they had a longer scouting range, stronger stealth capabilities, and harder self-defense. At that time, he bought a set of over four hundred, and these red-coated scouting puppets were suited for exploration in high-temperature environments.

Angel left spiritual power marks on all twenty scouting puppets and then placed several Nightmare Illusion Nodes on the metallic skins of half of them.

Though the scouting puppets themselves had disguise modes, Angel also wanted to leverage the scouting puppets to probe whether the elemental creatures here could really see through the Nightmare Illusion effect.

Having done all this, Angel commanded the scouting puppets to activate disguise mode and explore the target point from multiple directions.

Once all the scouting puppets disappeared from sight, Angel retrieved Toby from his bracelet.

While taking out the scouting puppets earlier, he noticed that Toby had already awakened and immediately expressed a desire to come out upon sensing Angel’s spiritual power.

Angel did not refuse; Toby’s strength was sufficient, and in terms of escape ability, it was even stronger than Angel. If they really encountered a dangerous situation, Angel could hitch a ride.

Once Toby emerged, it immediately nestled into the pocket on Angel’s chest, only leaving a small head peeking out.

It wasn’t afraid of the fire, purely because it was wearing a small snow-velvet dress and a snow-velvet hat with dangling yarn balls, purchased in Sea Moon City. This material was highly susceptible to high temperatures, so if it got caught by the external fire, it would be a huge loss.

Nesting into the pocket, Toby curiously surveyed the surroundings: weren’t we in a big city earlier? How did we suddenly get here? Where is this?

Toby really wanted to ask Angel, but seeing Angel with his eyes tightly closed, Toby knew he was observing through the scouting puppets, not wanting to disturb him at such a time, so it had to suppress its curiosity.

Angel’s vision was indeed in the scouting puppets.

As an extension of the wizard’s eyes, the scouting puppet could clearly relay the images it saw, sharing them in real-time with Angel.

Initially, in the first few hundred meters of the scouting puppet’s journey, Angel found no issues, encountering only scorched earth and ground flames without seeing any elemental creatures.

However, after the scouting puppet advanced a mile and pushed through the dense smoke, Angel saw a lava lake glowing with bright orange light.

This lava lake was many times larger than any Angel had encountered before.

It resembled a vast sea of burning magma; even though the scouting puppets traveled in different directions, they could not see its edge.

The destination Angel sought was deep within this lava lake.

From the perspective of the scouting puppets, Angel could see that this lava lake was remarkably tranquil. Although it continuously surged with thick magma and exuded gaseous flames, compared to previous lava lakes where ground flames clashed and fire serpents spewed, this place was truly serene.

However, tranquility does not mean safety.

Angel had a feeling that this tranquil lava lake was anything but simple.

Nonetheless, exploration was necessary, and Angel directed eighteen of the scouting puppets to head toward the lava lake; half flew at low altitudes, while the other half soared high. Angel did this to avoid any potential dangers.

Meanwhile, two scouting puppets were left on the shore.

The reason Angel left them was to test an elemental creature.

Earlier, when scouting the edge of the Lava Lake, Angel noticed a creature walking upright at one of the shores of the Lava Lake.

This was a werewolf-shaped Fire Element creature with bony spines along its back, its entire body burning with black and purple dark flames like well-groomed hair. Its hands were extremely long, reaching down to its knees, and its back was hunched as it walked slowly.

However, Angel knew very well that this slow walking was just a façade.

The evolved form of an Elemental Sprite couldn’t afford such a large flaw. The Darkflame Werewolf seemed sluggish, but Angel believed that once it was on all fours, it would definitely be fast.

The Fire Element creature Angel wanted to test was this Darkflame Werewolf.

Angel maneuvered the Scouting Puppets to approach it slowly from two completely different directions.

One of these Scouting Puppets was solely operating in stealth mode, while the other was concealed by Angel using a Nightmare Illusion Shield.

The one flying slightly faster was the Scouting Puppet simply in stealth mode.

In stealth mode, its energy fluctuations were minimized and blended with the environment, making it hard to detect without very keen observation.

This Scouting Puppet soon arrived near the Darkflame Werewolf.

When it was within a hundred meters, Angel noticed the Darkflame Werewolf glance in the direction of the Scouting Puppet.

At that moment, Angel’s perspective was aligned with the Scouting Puppet, so in Angel’s view, he and the Darkflame Werewolf engaged in direct eye contact.

The Darkflame Werewolf’s eyes were dark green; however, it was just an Elemental Life form with no actual organ structure—the so-called green eyes were actually burning ghostly green flames.

It was hard for Angel to read emotions from the ghostly green flames, but the Darkflame Werewolf, which had been keeping its head down, looked up for the first time and gazed in the direction of the Scouting Puppet. This was indeed a signal indicating it might have sensed the Scouting Puppet.

Angel thought for a moment and decided to let the Scouting Puppet continue approaching.

The Darkflame Werewolf didn’t pay further attention to the Scouting Puppet until it came within fifty meters, at which point its eyes locked onto it.

At this point, whether Angel moved the Scouting Puppet forward or backward, the Darkflame Werewolf’s gaze remained fixed on it.

Without a doubt, this was not just about ”possibly being detected,” but really being locked onto.

Angel thought that since it had been detected, he might as well continue approaching. But just as this thought crossed his mind, a dark shadow suddenly appeared in front of the Scouting Puppet.

The next scene, also the final one transmitted by the Scouting Puppet, was a pair of claws enveloped in black and purple dark flames reaching towards it.

Then came a cracking sound.

The Scouting Puppet was crushed.

Angel had prepared for the possibility that the Scouting Puppet might be damaged, so he wasn’t upset about its demise. All his thoughts were now focused on the speed of the Darkflame Werewolf.

Clearly, it had been fifty meters away just a second ago, but in the blink of an eye—not even a second later—the Darkflame Werewolf appeared beside the Scouting Puppet. Such terrifying speed was truly frightening.

”As expected, the slow walking was just an appearance.”

After expressing his awe, Angel began maneuvering the second Scouting Puppet to approach the Darkflame Werewolf.

Angel had higher expectations for this Scouting Puppet, as it employed the Nightmare Illusion for concealment. This was a chance to test whether the Fire Element creature could detect the power of the Nightmare Illusion.

As Angel was contemplating this, an unexpected event occurred.

A dark purple ghostly flame suddenly rose from the ground, striking directly at the Scouting Puppet.

Thanks to Angel’s quick reflexes in control, he managed to slightly shift its position at the moment the ghostly flame struck, dodging the attack.

However, it was just barely dodged, and the dark purple ghostly flame still slightly touched the wing of the Scouting Puppet.

Just with that touch, signs of melting appeared whether it was the heat-resistant skin or the most heat-resistant metal wing structure, and it was unstoppable.

Then, a second ghostly flame rose from the ground, again targeting the Scouting Puppet.

With one wing already damaged, even with Angel’s rapid reactions, the hardware limitations meant sacrificing itself was inevitable.

Fortunately, before the Scouting Puppet valiantly sacrificed, Angel spotted the culprit behind the ghostly flames—

Two hundred meters away, the Darkflame Werewolf’s long arms had merged into the Scorched Earth, and its head was raised, eyes straight on the distant Scouting Puppet.

The screen went black as the Scouting Puppet was scrapped under the impact of the ghostly flames.

Angel stood on the edge of the cliff, frowning tightly.

The outcome was now clear; the Darkflame Werewolf undoubtedly detected the Scouting Puppet shielded by Nightmare Illusion.

Both the Fire Butterfly before and this Darkflame Werewolf were able to see through the concealment of the Nightmare Illusion. Angel didn’t believe it was such a coincidence that these two creatures had insight abilities.

There seemed to be only one possibility: elemental creatures here were not affected by illusion concealment.

This means that the elemental creatures he encountered before, like the Six-Tailed Fox and the Fire Salamander, had indeed detected him.

Angel now felt a headache; his best concealment method was the illusion technique, and now that it was ineffective, even the optical stealth was proven detectable by the Darkflame Werewolf.

It seemed that trying to stealthily gather intelligence was unlikely to work.

Angel sighed in resignation and refocused his attention on the Scouting Puppets’ perspective. As for the Darkflame Werewolf, Angel decided to temporarily leave it aside.

Reconnecting to the Scouting Puppets’ perspective, Angel immediately noticed two of the Scouting Puppets’ screens filled with a crimson hue.

These two Scouting Puppets were set to fly at low altitudes.

Just as Angel was pondering what had happened, the crimson in the perspective disappeared, and with a gurgling sound, the screen turned pitch black.