Warlock Apprentice

“An unordinary alchemy weapon?”

Prome’s comment left Dave shocked in the entire day. Somehow, Dave already had an answer for where the weapon came from. But this answer was too unbelievable to anyone, including himself.

Yet he could not get rid of the answer from his mind. It remained there like an unanswered math puzzle, waiting for someone to reveal the already existing solution.

Angor returned home and planned to craft several dozens of golden bolts. It would take him some time to do so.

After removing his robe, he lifted his inner sleeve and revealed the alchemy weapon affixed on his wrist.

It was a small crossbow bound to his wrist joint. But compared to a miniature hand crossbow, this weapon looked more complicated. It was made of over six major parts and countless smaller ones.

All the parts were assembled together to create such an automatic, long-range alchemy weapon—the Trigger Crossbow.

It appeared similar to something coming from science fiction. At least it was way different than the common alchemy items used today. There was a really long golden strap wrapped around Angor’s arm, which climbed all the way toward his shoulder. The small golden bolts were fixed on the strap. If Angor knew space-expansion runes, he could store the bolts easier. But since he did not find such runes in his hologram tablet, he had to find the time and look for them in Cloud Library in the future.

There were two energy sources for the Trigger Crossbow. One, micro-electricity generated when his body moved around, which was then turned into kinetic energy and boosted the golden bolts. The bolts themselves were only ordinary ammunitions without any special traits.

The other energy was his own mana, which was used to control the Trigger Crossbow to shoot the bolts, as well as activating the runes on the golden bolts to grant them special effects.

However, applying runes to each of the bolts was too tiring and time-consuming, so Angor only prepared ten bolts with runes on them. Most of them had Frost Runes, while the others had Flame Runes and armor-piercing ones.

Making these special bolts cost his too much effort, so he only planned to use them when absolutely necessary.

After replenishing his ammunition on the strap, he began his everyday meditation to expand his mana pool. Improving himself was always the foremost task.

When Angor came to the Sky Tower on the next day, people in the participant waiting room immediately began to discuss this mysterious fighter.

“Baron Milk is here?”

“I saw several people going after him yesterday. How come he’s not hurt at all?”

“Yeah, Red Butterfly, Canine Herder, and the Chloe Brothers went for him. I thought the guy’s dead for sure. But I was wrong.”

“By the way, Red Butterfly and Canine Herder are nowhere to be found.”

“Did Baron Milk kill them?”

“But the Chloe Brothers are fine. Did you ask them?”

“Those two only care for each other. They don’t answer our question at all. F*ck those fools.”

“No matter what happened, Vice’s gonna look into him since Red Butterfly’s dead. Let’s stay away from him for now so we don’t get dragged into the mess.”

Angor did not really care about their whispers. He simply walked to the lottery box to find his opponents for today.

All three matches in the morning were easy. The overall strength of fighters in the first level was quite weak, and Angor quickly earned three wins, plus nine match points and 39 merit points.

Most participants needed lots of mana in their matches, so two matches in a day were already tiring enough. Angor, on the other hand, obliterated his opponents using his alchemy weapon and did not spend much mana at all.

The Sky Tower had not witnessed such a fighter in decades. Despite their showy titles, the participants were mostly low-leveled apprentice wizards. Few of them possessed alchemy weapons. It was only natural that Angor could progress so fast.

However, the other participants were thinking about something else.

“Why would someone with such a strong weapon come here and take merit points from us? F*ck the asshole. Do any quest and he’ll earn way more points than that.”

Someone even thought Baron Milk was the same type of figure as Blackjack, who loved hurting others for fun, thus satisfying their twisted ego. The only difference was that Baron Milk never actually killed his opponents, while Blackjack’s victims usually ended up as corpses.

It was just one day, and everyone was looking at Baron Milk with a completely different view.

Angor was not interested in what these people were thinking about at all. He simply tried to gain victories as fast as he could. Reaching level 2 required 30 match points, which meant he could achieve it by getting four consecutive wins in the afternoon.

After what happened yesterday, no one stalked him again when Angor left Sky Tower at noon. He had lunch, meditated for a while, and returned to the tower.

The matches during the afternoon were still one-sided. The only thing that caught Angor’s attention was when he went against King of Beasts during one of the battles.

The weirdo who wore colorful feathers on his head had a bow he never used behind his back, and a white kitten named “King”.

Angor still remembered how this man fought his last match. Half a month had passed, and he was still hanging around the first level, which meant he was just another cannon fodder. The match was even easier than the others. Angor simply cast several spells to lock up that kitten without the need to even shoot a single bolt.

When his kitten was pinned down, the King of Beasts immediately knelt down and surrendered on the spot. Then he rushed to his pet quickly to check if the animal was wounded. It was as if Angor was some kind of mad cat-abusing scientist.

Angor was wondering though; if the man really cherished his cat, why would he bring it onto the arena in the first place?

Still, the man’s strange behavior left an impression in Angor’s memory.

…

“You want to proceed to Level 2?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Angor came to the registration office again but for a different purpose this time.

Instead of the male clerk yesterday, a decent-looking lady addressed Angor this time.

She checked Angor’s profile card and noticed the hooded figure gained 30 match points in just two days to get himself promoted. This was the first time she saw someone working so fast in her career, so she kept extra attention on Angor while handling the promotion papers.

But with Angor’s hood and fake voice, she never managed to figure anything out.

When the work was done, it was already seven in the evening. Angor did not intend to fight this late, so he took his updated profile card and quickly left the Sky Tower.

Rather than heading home, he took a turn and went to Prome’s Alchemy Shop first.

It had nothing to do with the incident yesterday. He only needed to buy some alchemy materials. Crafting the golden bolts had cost him most of his stock.

Besides, he was planning to buy some new materials for the other attributes. He had read about a lot of useful runes in Enchantment Cyclopaedia: For Starters , none of which were suitable for the materials he currently had.

Upon reaching the cave wall where the shop was located, Angor saw the door of the shop tightly shut. A lock was placed on the door. Usually, Dave lived in the shop even when the shop was closed for business. It seemed that Dave was not here.

Angor could only go back home.

To his surprise, he saw Dave in front of the gate of his villa.

From afar, Angor noticed that Dave was looking at something in his hand with the help of the lamplight around the gate.

“What’s up? I went to your shop and missed my mark,” said Angor as he removed his hood and greeted Dave with a smile.

Dave looked troubled. “I came to… say sorry.”

“Sorry?” Angor opened the gate and signaled Dave to come in. “For what? You said something funny behind my back?”

Angor prepared Dave a glass of water and joined him on the sofa.

“Yesterday, you would have dealt with Chloe Brothers if I didn’t call Toby like that.” Dave looked really ashamed now. “The Chloe Brothers might bring more troubles to you. I’m so sorry!”

Angor was a little surprised. He then he smiled again. “Killing and tricking each other… isn’t that how the wizarding world goes around?”

“But I’m still sorry!” Dave lowered his head to avoid Angor’s gaze.

Angor remained silent for a while. “Alright then, I accept your apology. Let’s forget it. I’ll deal with Chloe Brothers. I already saw them today, and they tried to run away again. If you want to amend your mistake, tell me something useful about those two.”

Dave nodded. “The Chloe Brothers aren’t a big deal. I don’t think they would attack you again, but you should stay careful nevertheless. The real problem is the Red Butterfly.”

“Red Butterfly?”

Dave briefly explained Red Butterfly’s connections with other people.

“… Master Prome said that Red Butterfly didn’t really have a deep relation with Vice, like how everyone else believed. But Vice isn’t the only one related to her. She had several more admirers. If they team up and come for you, it’ll be really bad.”

“I… see. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Fearing that Dave would only grow more worried, Angor did not comment much.

“Give me the information of those people through your transmitter next time. Oh right, I need to ask something too,” said Angor as he decided to change the topic. “I want to buy materials, and maybe sell an alchemy weapon at the same time. Can you give me an appraisal for it?”