Warlock Apprentice

Angor sighed in frustration. He couldn’t possibly get angry with Keely’s offensive attitude since she was mentally ill. Still, even though she had an excuse, he didn’t like her manners.

Other than feeling bad, he had nothing else to do about her.

Without thinking about Keely, he tightened his hood and headed to the giant gate after everyone.

Along his way, he heard many whispers and emotional words, most of which were about their uncertain fate or how people felt furious about the unfair treatment.

Angor was also unsure of what to expect in the garden. Lawson was being vague when he said “to withstand what’s coming”. People could either do so by killing everyone in sight or find a safe spot and hide.

Also, there was another guard who mentioned how they would find the exit when “it was time”.

It meant the exit would not show up when the time was not right, which probably referred to the successful level-up of the garden.

This required sufficient sacrifices to be made. So how exactly did this “sacrifice” work? To wait for people to kill each other until only 10% of the participants remained?

Angor frowned again. If this was the case, the entire purification garden would become a merciless fighting ring that determined the strong from the weak.

To make sure that there would be enough people who died, the garden had to be small so that no one could keep hiding.

But again… Dodoro mentioned seeing a “giant sea” in his vision, which didn’t add up with the situation.

Still, with all the questions in mind, Angor finally stepped into the gate.

He walked inside a dark vortex-like environment for a while until he saw light ahead. He then swiftly prepared the model of a defensive cantrip in his mind space before he jumped through it.

He landed on the solid ground soon. Before his eyes could adjust to the bright sunlight, a shadow emerged from one corner beside him. With another great leap, Angor moved away from his position while leaving an ice wall behind.

When he had time to look back, he noticed that it wasn’t someone who showed up, but a fish with a pair of wings growing on it.

This otherwise ordinary-looking fish had silver scales, a pair of green eyes, and a slim body about half a meter long. It also had really large fins that were releasing golden ripples into the air. With each move, the creature could cover dozens of meters instantly.

It was not alone either. Angor realized he attracted a small school of several dozen flying fish to him.

“What the heck is—”

Before he could finish his thought, one of the fish released an ice arrow from its mouth.

Angor was always prepared for potential attacks. Quickly, he built another ice wall in front of him. However, despite its insignificant look, the ice arrow directly went through the ice wall without slowing down one bit.

Angor jumped a little and tilted to one side, barely avoiding the deadly projectile.

The small arrow landed on the ground behind him and created a giant crater, while the freezing aura carried by the attack covered a large patch of grass in frost.

When the arrow grazed past him, Angor’s robe also caught some frost around the edge.

“That was… close.” Angor’s eyes widened in fear. There was no doubt that the ice arrow was more than enough to freeze up his own body.

He was far from being safe. About 30 flying fishes moved together and released a series of ice arrows from different directions.

Those are enough to turn a football field into a fridge!

Out of instinct and fear, Angor ejected his soul and used the sequence of gravity to pull his body away, just in time to escape from the arrow barrage.

Next, using the increased speed gained by gravity, he dragged his body to the other side of the grass field. Then he looked at the fish swarm, which was now a hundred meters away from him, and sighed in relief.

It seemed as if the school of strange fish didn’t mean to let him go yet. They quickly swam toward Angor’s position again while spitting more ice arrows at him.

“What are those things? That attack is like some of the most powerful level-2 cantrips, and they are just spitting them out?!” Angor tried to dodge and run away while not forgetting to complain aloud.

To conserve his soul energy, he gained some distance and fused his soul again instead of using gravity power to escape. He then deployed a mist illusion along the path where the fish swarm was going to travel through.

Their attacks were scary, but these creatures were obviously not intelligent enough to comprehend the illusion. Almost instantly, the fishes ran into it and were completely lost.

Their once organized formation soon broke up as the fishes stumbled inside the illusion like alcoholics. And no matter how they bumped, they could never get out.

Now I just need to “stir them up” a little…

Angor picked up a stone from the ground and aimed it at one of the wandering fish.

Boop!

The stone successfully hit its nose.

The blinded fish thought something just attacked it and immediately released another ice arrow toward where the stone came from.

Next, those who sensed the ice arrow all began to “retaliate”.

The whole situation soon got out of hand… or fins.

In the next second, the fish started shooting at each other while assuming that they were fending off enemies.

Two minutes later, Angor lifted his illusion and looked at the tattered ground and frozen fish bodies, either broken or intact.

Are these monsters or phantom beasts? They’re quite strong…

Angor assumed that if his illusion failed, he’d have to waste more strength or use Infinite Reticence to get away.

Curious, he put a finger on one of the frozen scales that fell off from one of the fish.

His finger instantly became red with frostbite.

Although he didn’t mind the mild pain. He quickly took out an ordinary dagger from his bracelet and tried to cut the scale.

It didn’t work. The scale didn’t have a scratch on it.

Hard enough to be used as alchemy materials… He pondered. Even if I can’t melt them, I can stuff them into clothing as armor plating.

He looked around and checked out the other parts of the fallen fish such as their fins and skin. As expected, everything more or less held supernatural properties that would work wonders in the right hands.

“Man… I should have learned Narda’s Vision so that I can learn their exact use.”

Narda’s Vision, also called the “Alchemist’s Eye”, was the level-3 cantrip that helped its user to ascertain the truth hidden within the items. However, Angor was not strong enough to study it.

Whether he could use these materials or not, he still decided to store most of the scales and fins. As for the others, he didn’t have enough space in his bracelet for them.

Next, he took some time to inspect the environment.

He was standing on the grass, and there were the faint silhouettes of mountains in the distance. However, they were too far.

He couldn’t see anyone around.

The sky was clear and bright as day. Only several occasional clouds were drifting by, which made the scenery look quite relaxing.

This meant the purification garden was pretty huge. Otherwise, he’d easily bump into someone since there were almost 100,000 people who just came inside.

He assumed that this Sorcerer’s Garden was larger than the others that he saw before. But as he recalled, at this moment, the purification garden was only a low-level Sorcerer’s Garden. This probably meant the size of a garden had little to do with its tier.

Also, such a huge area meant that people could easily avoid fighting.

Then what about the blood sacrifice?

He suddenly noticed a number of small dots in the sky. After some careful looks, he noticed he was looking at another group of flying fish that were enjoying their sky cruise in a relaxed manner.

There were at least a hundred of them this time. Also, a particularly shiny, golden one was flying among them.

Angor would not fight them now. Before getting to know what was going on, saving mana and stamina was the most important. He activated Infinite Reticence and carefully moved away from plain sight.

He didn’t know which direction to go, but he did know that he couldn’t stand still at this vast grassland where there was almost no cover.

Following his instinct, he headed toward the mountains while being as stealthy as possible.

He didn’t run into anything on the ground, but there were a lot of flying fishes above him. With different looks too. Some of them were dragging colorful ribbons behind their bodies; some had large, bulging eyeballs like goldfish; and some of them could even change their colors like shop signs. Also, not all fishes were in groups. There were the occasional “lone wolves” among them.

Their appearance more or less resembled common sea fish, but why they were all flying in the sky was beyond Angor’s knowledge.

Along his way, he saw two different groups of fish fighting among themselves. One side was a group of dolphin-like creatures who had ice-cold whirlwinds above their heads, while their opponents were a hundred ordinary-looking yellow carps.

The dolphins unleashed several blizzard storms at their enemies.

Angor shivered a little when he witnessed attacks that were as powerful as level-3 cantrips being used at the same time.

The “carps” didn’t seem to be scared at all. They somehow ignored the attack and rushed into the smaller dolphin group until the dolphins all had their bones picked clean.

Previously, Angor planned to get a better view in the sky by riding on his Gondola. He quickly decided otherwise.

There were almost no unoccupied parts in the sky. Angor believed it was quite easy for the other apprentices to run into these fish monsters.

What could they do without similar hiding skills or illusion abilities?

Or is Floating Mech City trying to slaughter 90% of us by sending all these fishes our way?