Warlock Apprentice

Chapter 3178: Chapter 3179: Catalog

When Angel stepped into the small cubicle, he realized that Luigi hadn’t followed him in.

He looked back and saw Luigi staring at the little hamster that Pirush had been tormenting, a scrutinizing look in his eyes.

It wasn’t until Angel called him that Luigi gave up observing the hamster and followed him in.

”You interested in that hamster?” Angel asked casually.

Luigi rubbed his chin. ”Not really. It’s just, I keep feeling that Pirush with a hamster—that combo is a bit strange.”

”Strange?” Angel asked in confusion. ”A hamster showing up anywhere doesn’t seem strange, right?”

Luigi shook his head. ”That’s not what I mean. I feel like this combination looks familiar, like I heard someone talk about it somewhere before...”

Luigi pondered for a moment, confirmed he couldn’t recall it, and simply gave up.

”Forget it, can’t remember.” Luigi said, ”Probably just something I overheard when others were chatting. That kind of memory is way too messy; I’m too lazy to dig it up.”

”Let’s just look at his stuff.” Luigi turned his head to look at the treasures the black‑robed man had indicated...

The cubicle was very cramped, the walls on both sides feeling like they were about to close in, and with the clanking gears rolling outside, it felt even more confined.

However, though the space was small, it wasn’t too crowded even with the four of them standing inside. The reason was simple: there was nothing else in the cubicle, just a single wooden rack.

And on the rack sat five pitch‑black wooden boxes.

”These are the ’treasures’ you mentioned?” Luigi frowned. ”That few?”

The black‑robed man chuckled softly. ”The boxes may only be five, but there’s no lack of things inside.”

”If there’s anything you want, you can ask me first; I’ll get it for you.” The black‑robed man looked at Angel—clearly, this line was directed specifically at him.

After a brief pause, the black‑robed man looked at Luigi. ”You said just now you wanted scores with a religious bent, right? I do actually have a few. I can take them out for you to see.”

The black‑robed man took the first box, opened the lid, and inside was a dense layer of blood‑red mist.

He extended his hand into the mist, muttering ”score” under his breath while stirring around inside the box. After a short while, he took out two curled Parchments from within.

After taking out the Parchments, he lightly brushed over them, and three‑quarters of the Parchment was shrouded by the blood‑red mist, leaving only a small clear section in the middle visible.

This was clearly a precautionary measure. After all, something like a score can be memorized; without some cover, handing it to Luigi would basically be giving it away for free.

Luigi took the score, gave Angel a look, then walked off to the side alone and started reading the score.

The black‑robed man turned his head toward Angel. ”And you, dear guest? What kind of things are you looking for? You can tell me.”

Angel said, ”You don’t have a product catalog?”

The black‑robed man replied, ”I do, but the catalog doesn’t record everything. There are many items I haven’t listed in it.”

As he spoke, his voice clearly dropped at the end, his tone tinged with ambiguity and temptation.

It was as if he were hinting to Angel that he had quite a few good things here, perhaps even... contraband.

Angel could naturally hear the subtext in the black‑robed man’s words. He wasn’t particularly interested in those ”good things,” but he was curious why the black‑robed man would pick him as a target to push them on.

The black‑robed man seemed eager to hawk his wares to him. No reason, no cause—there had to be something he wanted. And what exactly did he want?

Angel didn’t ask immediately; instead, he simply smiled. ”I don’t really have anything I particularly want. But since we’re here, let’s take a look at the catalog first.”

The black‑robed man said nothing, just nodded and pointed to the five boxes on the rack. ”These five boxes contain, respectively, knowledge, materials, tools, sundries, and curiosities...”

Knowledge went without saying. The score he had taken out earlier came from the box representing ”knowledge.” These were intangible goods, but their value was likely the highest among the five boxes.

The boxes for materials and tools contained things just as their names suggested.

Sundries were things that didn’t fit neatly into any category.

As for curiosities, the black‑robed man didn’t explain much. He merely said mysteriously to Angel, ”Everything in here is something you won’t see outside—real good stuff.”

”Which box’s catalog would you like to see, dear guest?”

Angel didn’t make a choice right away. Instead, he first glanced at Laplace beside him to see whether she was interested in any of these things. If she was, he would naturally let her choose first.

Laplace thought for a moment and pointed at the ”tools” box. ”I’d like to see that one.”

Tools? Angel was a bit surprised. He’d guessed which box Laplace might pick, and the ”tools” box had ranked last in his mind. After all, if Laplace wanted to buy any tools or weapons, she could just ask him to refine them.

Angel could guarantee a fully customized job... and might even do it for free.

Could it be that Laplace didn’t trust his refining skills?

But that didn’t make sense. After seeing the Indestructible Heart Mirror and the Log‑in Device, Laplace shouldn’t doubt his level, right?

Or was Laplace’s choice of ”tools” some kind of hint? Hoping he would take the initiative to ask about her needs?

As Angel silently tried to interpret this, Laplace seemed to sense his thoughts and said calmly, ”I don’t actually need anything. But since we’re already here, we might as well take a look. As for why I chose ’tools,’ it’s simply because, compared to the other boxes, this is probably the one you’d be least interested in.”

After all, Angel was an Alchemist; if he needed something, he could refine it himself.

In Laplace’s eyes, the box Angel was least likely to pick was the tools box. Since Angel wouldn’t choose it, she’d take it to pass the time.

Was that really the case? Angel muttered inwardly, but he didn’t ask Laplace. Instead, he turned to look at the black‑robed man.

”Then give her the catalog for the tools box. As for me... I’ll look at the catalogs for the other boxes.”

The black‑robed man didn’t say anything. He turned and lightly tapped each box, and a long catalog list quickly surfaced on each lid.

He handed the list representing tools to Laplace, and passed the others to Angel.

After taking them, Angel first looked at the catalog for ”knowledge.”

One glance, and he’d gone through it all.

Half a minute later, Angel returned the knowledge catalog to the black‑robed man.

”Not satisfied, dear guest?” The black‑robed man said, ”I also have other knowledge‑related content, including no small amount of forbidden...”

Angel cut him off, shaking his head. ”No need.”

The black‑robed man opened his mouth, but in the end said nothing more.

It wasn’t that the contents of the knowledge catalog weren’t attractive, but rather that too many of them were niche and downright absurd. For example, ”On the Bloodline of the Maid in the Mirror and Its Transmutation of Aggregation Energy”—the main title alone left Angel baffled, and the subtitle was even more baffling: ”—A Speculative Take.”

What was that supposed to be? Since when could speculative ”knowledge” be sold as a formal topic?

Aside from that, there were also some methods of using Aggregation Energy... which weren’t of much use to Angel either.

Of course, not all the knowledge was useless. Things like ”Techniques for Running Bloodline Power,” ”Fragmented Magitree Text,” ”Magic Pattern and Bloodline”... these were all of some use to Angel.

Among them, the one that attracted him most was naturally the ”Fragmented Magitree Text.” The so‑called ”Magitology” was a special discipline similar to Runeology. It had many branches, including Magitree, Super‑Magitology, Magi‑Tech, model Magitexts... and so on.

Magitology was a rather vast discipline. In the Southern Domain it counted as an esoteric study that few ever touched upon, but in the Northern Territory Wizard World it was extremely popular.

Angel did not know much about magitology, so when he saw the Fragmented Magitree Text, he was quite interested. But in the end he still chose to give it up, mainly because he understood very well the principle that ”greedily chewing too much leaves nothing digested.” He still had a large backlog of knowledge that needed to settle. If he went to dabble in a new discipline now, it might not yield any results, and could instead just waste time.

Most importantly, Angel knew a bit about the Magitree; this pertained to knowledge related to ”internal-cycle Demon Plant cultivation.”

What was meant by ”internal cycle”? Simply put, it was to cultivate Demon Plants inside one’s body. Not only could this rapidly bring the Demon Plants to maturity, it also allowed one to gain certain innate bonuses through them. Angel was naturally curious about this technique, even a little covetous, but as a ”fragmented” body of knowledge, if he could not learn it completely, it would be hard to make it work and might even end up ruining his own internal cycle.

Therefore, Angel still chose to give it up.

After returning the knowledge list to the black-robed man, Angel went on to look at the materials list... There were quite a lot of materials, but none of them were special.

There were also some materials he did not recognize, but judging from the description of their traits, there were plenty of lower-tier substitutes and even many higher-tier options. There was absolutely no need to buy them.

So Angel only glanced through the materials list for about five minutes before handing it back to the black-robed man.

Although there was nothing on either the materials list or the knowledge list that Angel particularly wanted, he did discover an interesting point. On these two lists, even though there were many different categories of knowledge and materials, the word that appeared most frequently on both lists was the same.

—Bloodline.

The black-robed man seemed to have done a lot of research on bloodlines. Could the other party be a bloodline Wizard?

If he was a bloodline Wizard, then that would make him a human, right?

Precisely because he was a Human Wizard, that was why he had said: even paying with Magic Crystals would be acceptable?

Angel did not know whether his guess was correct, but if it was, then this was far too much of a coincidence... Ever since he came to Crystal City, the two humans he had encountered were both bloodline Wizards.

Yes, that ponytailed man who had previously called himself Dao Shen was also a bloodline Wizard.

Although at the beginning Dao Shen had concealed his bloodline aura, when he handed the badge to Angel in the end, the bloodline fluctuations were too obvious—pure and powerful. He had to be either a Blood Origin Wizard or a Pureblood Wizard.

As for this black-robed man, however, no Energy fluctuations had leaked out so far, so there was no way to judge.

Putting aside the cluttered thoughts, Angel picked up the remaining two catalogues—the ones for miscellany and curiosities.

He glanced over the miscellany list and found that it was indeed made up of items that were hard to classify. The bulk of them fell into two main categories: ”semi-finished products” and ”unidentifiable unknown items.”

Semi-finished products were things akin to half-completed Alchemy Tools, which had no real value to Angel.

It was those ”unidentifiable unknown items” that Angel was rather interested in.

Unknown items were like blind boxes; no one knew whether they were good or bad.

Angel’s interest naturally was not because he wanted to ”gamble on his luck,” but because... he had external support.

Whether it was Laplace or those various big shots in the Wilderness of Dreams, there was no telling if some of them might recognize a few good things, allowing him to pick up a bargain?

However, the list only provided general information about these unknown items. To confirm anything further, they would still have to look at the actual objects.

So Angel decided to set the miscellany list aside for now.

When the black-robed man saw that Angel did not hand the miscellany list back, a hint of delight flashed in his eyes. All the previous lists had been returned by Angel, which expressed his lack of interest. That had made him wonder whether his goods were too cheap and shoddy.

Now that he saw Angel keep the miscellany list, he finally let out a long sigh of relief. As long as there was something he wanted... then there was room to negotiate terms.

On the other side, Angel picked up the final curiosities list.

When the black-robed man had mentioned the curiosities list earlier, his words had been somewhat vague, but his tone carried a certain ”confidence,” as though he was very sure about the items recorded on that list.

This made Angel all the more curious. Just what sort of ”curiosities” could give the black-robed man such confidence?

With this question in mind, Angel looked at the curiosities list, which was also the shortest of all the lists.

The entire list was no bigger than an ordinary sheet of Book Pages.

There were only four entries written upon it.

When Angel saw the first entry, he froze.

”An unknown smooth arm... mysterious... a Mysterious Object?!”

The curiosities list recorded Mysterious Objects? The black-robed man had Mysterious Objects for sale?!

Angel was taken aback and could not help but look up at the black-robed man. This was not the first time he had seen Mysterious Objects being sold, but in his mind, Mysterious Objects were basically items that appeared in large-scale auctions, or that occasionally surfaced at high-end gatherings, not things you found in a small shop that already looked somewhat shady.

Angel’s look of shocked doubt also drew Laplace’s attention.

She looked over in puzzlement. ”What is it?”

Angel did not say anything, merely pointed at the first entry on the Parchment.

After Laplace glanced at it, she too furrowed her brows. ”They’re selling Mysterious Objects here?”

Angel: ”I’m just as curious.”

Their gazes shifted to the black-robed man opposite them. After the man remained silent for a moment, he said, ”You may have misunderstood. I do not have Mysterious Objects for sale. What I am selling is information on Mysterious Objects, including the locations where they are suspected to appear.”

”I know of two Mysterious Objects’ information. Aside from this ’unknown smooth arm,’ there is another one...”

Angel picked up the list and continued reading, finding that the next one was indeed also a Mysterious Object, and... he was not unfamiliar with it.

—The Growth Ray.

The Growth Ray might be unknown to Southern Domain Wizards, but in the Origin World, this Mysterious Object... no, rather than calling it a Mysterious Object, it was more like a mysterious phenomenon.

Those who were irradiated by the Mysterious phenomenon known as the Growth Ray would have random organs grow inside their bodies.

And rumor had it that Gluz Deward had risen to power rapidly because of the Growth Ray; it was said that he had grown an extraordinary organ of remarkable power.

Because of this, many people were drawn to the Growth Ray as if it were a magnet.

But not everyone was as lucky as Gluz Deward. Many more people had died under the Growth Ray, and among them were not a few renowned Legendary Wizards.

Therefore, the Growth Ray was definitely not some kind of ”wheel of fortune.”

Angel knew about the Growth Ray because Culori had recorded it in his notes.

In fact, Culori had even clearly pointed out the location of the Growth Ray—it would appear at irregular intervals above Liunye Long Island.

Angel was quite certain that no one had obtained the Growth Ray, so when the black-robed man wrote the Growth Ray on the list and clearly stated that what he was selling was information on Mysterious Objects...

Angel found it believable.

Still, while information about Mysterious Objects sounded enticing, it was actually nothing special. No one knew whether these Mysterious Objects were out of control, or whether they would lead to irreparable consequences.

What was more, information like that on the Growth Ray was not much of a secret in the Origin World.

Angel let out a sigh, a bit of disappointment showing in his eyes. If it was just information, then there was nothing interesting about it.

He shook his head and continued reading.