Warlock Apprentice

They could see the wounded young man still releasing mist from a corner of the castle’s hall. As the mist grew denser, the blood-covered body of the boy slowly vanished from sight.

“Ohh, this one’s pretty good, considering the little boy’s age. The castle looks real enough,” Lydia’s voice came from behind.

People turned around and saw Lydia sitting in front of a luxurious round desk. She had a flame-red robe, coiled-up pink hair as well as a very charming look. She blended in with the scenery of the castle hall quite well.

Lydia frowned when she saw people looking at her.

“Weird… I should still be inside my private room now. How did they see me?”

She looked aside and saw another white-haired old wizard admiring a painting hanging on the wall. She knew that wizard. A famed man who booked the room next to her.

The old wizard noticed Lydia’s gesture and returned his own gentle smile.

So the walls of the private chambers became transparent inside the illusion?

“Interesting,” Lydia grinned deviously.

She inspected the chair she was sitting on, then the round desk, none of which should belong to her room. The original sofa she used had gone.

She also saw some of the apprentices sitting on their butts on the floor, which meant… their seats disappeared under them?

“A special illusion then?” Lydia pondered. She fought with Truth Manipulators before. Those masters of illusions could create something real enough to bend the very reality. For example, they could change the wizard wand in a person’s hand into a deadly viper. And even if that person already knew it was an illusion, the viper could still hurt or kill him.

But could a young apprentice do that?

Lydia stood up and tried moving toward one of the other apprentices.

Normally, she would have to leave her room and climb down first to reach this apprentice who stayed on the first floor. But she found no need for all that walk. She reached her destination real quick.

“Is this really an illusion?” Lydia began to doubt.

And almost everyone was thinking about the same question. Were they teleported to someplace else?

…

Dave did not have time to question what just happened around him. When he appeared in the strange castle, he quickly rushed to Angor’s side.

“Angor!”

He knew well not to draw people’s attention. As the others were attracted by the scenes, he approached Angor carefully.

The mist had covered a big area around Angor, which helped Dave avoid getting noticed.

Dave crouched toward Angor and tried to inspect him, and he heard Angor panting heavily and fearfully.

“Don’t come… Stay away from me, Dave…”

“Are you okay Angor??” Dave panicked. “What should we do? Can you escape when your illusion is working?”

Angor was feeling very strange now. He saw “that place” again, as well as the bizarre creatures that brought him great fear. He got a feeling that he MUST NOT alert them now, or something disastrous would happen.

This was why he asked Dave to keep away.

“Don’t… don’t mind me. Bring Toby to Master Prome and ask him to save Toby,” Angor spoke between his breaths, “and tell him that if I make it out, I’ll help him make the anti-undead weapon. I can draw Prelude to Elimination… but please save Toby. Toby must live!”

Dave was still terrified of the situation, but he complied and picked up Toby carefully.

“What about you?”

“Leave me here. I’ll think of something.”

Dave decided to move away under Angor’s demanding gaze.

Angor sneered at himself after Dave left. Something? He had nothing. He could barely stay alive now.

Dave hid Toby inside his pocket and carefully sneaked out of the mist and went for Prome.

Most people did not notice his action due to the distraction of the illusion, but Twilight did. However, she did not do anything other than giving Dave a nonchalant glance before returning her attention to the mist again.

She still could not see through the illusion yet. Or was it an illusion at all?

Twilight was regretting her previous decision of waiting for the boy to finish the illusion without stopping him, all just because she wanted to mock at the Level-1 apprentice weakling. It was not like the illusion did anything to her yet. But… something was making her worried.

Someone yelled. Twilight looked around to see what happened.

She saw a barefoot woman floating toward her with a really dark expression.

Twilight knew her—Flora the Blood Witch, the Gold VIP in Chamber 35.

However… the woman looked strange.

Putting Flora’s unusual expression and clothes aside… Twilight believed she saw something behind Flora’s back. Was that a skeleton?

Twilight looked more carefully and became sure of her idea, but the skeleton kept blinking out of existence for some reason.

“Dear me, Flora, since when did you develop such a… fetish?” Lydia suddenly moved in Flora’s way. Her flame-red robe formed a great contrast with Flora’s dark-violet doll skirt.

“Fetish? Are you referring to drinking blood or toying with the corpses of my victims? Oh right, I LOVE to kill women who wear red,” said Flora as she smiled.

“I mean, when did you start bringing a skeleton on your back when going outside?”

Skeleton? Flora squinted her eyes. “What do you mean? You can see Little Red?”

“Little Red? That… skeleton who’s holding his head screaming? What a dumb name,” Lydia taunted again.

Instead of retorting, Flora grabbed an apprentice nearby and demanded, “Can you see Little Red behind me?”

“What-Little Red? I think I see the shadow of a skeleton.”

Flora frowned and tossed the apprentice away.

“What’s going on? What the heck did Angor do? People can see Little Red now?” She thought to herself. “Argh! This is such a pain!” She clenched her teeth in irritation.

She no longer cared about Lydia and stomped her way toward Angor in rage.

When Twilight thought about what Flora possibly wanted to do, something else happened.

Someone screamed in pain inside the mist, and Flora immediately realized it was Angor.

Following the scream, people began to hear the faint sound of musical instruments, which was becoming louder.

As they looked toward the source of the noise, they suddenly felt an unknown fear slowly grasping their hearts.

Twilight felt it too. She frowned and turned to the guards behind her. “Can you get in touch with the house?”

The guard captain shook his head as he replied, “Lady Twilight, we’ve lost contact with everyone outside. The illusion seems to be a real dimension. The walls around us are all real. The only way out is behind that mist.”

Twilight felt his heart twitching. She turned to the mist and lifted her hands.

Ten light beams pierced the air and went inside the mist.

She was aiming at where Angor collapsed. Despite what she expected, people heard the noise of something bouncing on metal.

And they were shocked to see all the light beams coming back out.

Most of them hit nothing, while two hit the guards of Twilight Auction House. One of them had his head pierced and fell dead on the spot. The second one had a ruined chest, which meant he probably did not have long to live.

Twilight grimaced. The small incident caused by an apprentice and a bird had turned worse. They had casualties now…

“It was my fault… I’ll confess my mistake to the clan later,” Twilight looked at the struggling guard and spoke sadly.

As she talked, a team of… teacups walked out from the mist-covered area.

People frowned at the strange sight. Those were white porcelain cups which all had the marks of hearts on them. Each teacup grew stick-like arms and legs while carrying a musical instrument. A teacup was even playing the piano while floating in the air.

What was worse, the music they played had materialized. Lines of stave slowly came moving in midair while tadpole-like notes bounced on them along with the lively melodies.

However, the “music band” which seemed like something in little girl’s stories was playing an extremely terrifying musical piece.

“What’s this?” Twilight unleashed her beams without much of a thought.

The beams were immediately bounced away by the instruments.

Now Twilight realized what had just happened to her attacks.

But what were them, really?

Several more attempts were soon proved to be useless. The other wizards and guards followed her example and tried their own attacks, but they were all in vain.

“That damned boy… Kill him and this is all over,” Twilight growled.

She dashed into the mist and quickly found Angor still lying on the floor. She grinned and lifted a hand with knife-like nails. She then went for Angor’s heart.

Laughter suddenly came from Angor’s body. Sharp, cold laughter, which was as horrid as hearing the sound of ringing knell in the middle of a graveyard.

“Heeheeheehe-”

As the laughter was heard, the teacup band stopped moving and announced together in a strange, child-like voice.

“Behold the Queen! It’s time for nightwatch!”

Before Twilight could understand what happened, someone grabbed her hand and stopped her attack from reaching Angor.

“Mister Sunders?!”