Warlock Apprentice

I’ll just go check the sky myself.

Angor decided. The flying fish weren’t going to see his soul nor his body that was hidden by Infinite Reticence.

As for the pit in the lava lake, he decided to wait until later. He’d try his luck that way if there was nothing else above him.

After checking his remaining soul energy, Angor began to gain altitude.

When he left, another lady wearing a giant bow-knot and dance shoes, both of which were of bright red color, wandered inside the lava zone while following behind a black cat.

…

As he climbed higher, the hot air was soon replaced by chilly air.

Also, the number of roaming flying fishes quickly rose. Winged mobula, slim-bodied eels, glowing angler fish, towering whale… Almost every part of the dark sky was occupied by something.

Of course, the majority of them were common-looking, nameless fishes.

Angor thought he was looking at too many of them. From a quick guess, he believed there were more than 100,000 of them in sight.

“Are these all monsters?”

If so, this garden held a lot of resources. To alchemists, monsters were always valuable materials.

He was thinking about various questions while flying and accidentally grazed past a manta-like creature that was blocking his path.

He flinched in fear, but to his surprise, the creature didn’t pay him any attention and swam slowly as if nothing happened.

“This one’s not alarmed?”

Since he was fast enough to outrun the fishes, he decided to do a little test.

He took out a small fruit from his bracelet. A Cranbul Berry, which was a traditional foodstuff grown by the Krakoks.

He took aim and threw the fruit at a school of tiny, yellow fishes.

The stone-like object successfully stunned several of them, and they tumbled in the air for a while before recovering.

… And nothing else.

Are they just ordinary fish? But ordinary fish can’t fly.

Angor’s doubt grew bigger.

Again, he tossed another fruit at a small group of red-colored fish.

The result startled him much—like bombs, the red fishes exploded one by one in a chain reaction while their bloody remains scattered everywhere, which attracted countless hungry predators, including those with terrifying energy signatures.

Angor immediately triggered his gravity power and flew away from the spot.

The coming predators began to fight over their food while some of the red fishes were still going off. The whole sight looked not much different compared to a battle between supernaturals.

Angor gulped. He never thought his little test would cause such a disaster.

But he did learn something from it—there were both powerful and weak fishes flying in the sky, and people wouldn’t be able to easily tell them apart unless the powerful ones intentionally displayed their might.

This had to be another trap placed by the city—to let people grow unwary and send the deadliest fish at them.

Angor sighed in relief. It seemed the sky was a lot harsher than the ground. From now on, he would not touch anything without a good reason.

He kept flying for a while and soon realized something horrible. For some reason, his Infinite Reticence had lost its effect. There were now several shark-like creatures surrounding him.

He could almost sense the smell of blood from their open maws. Also, they were beginning to release hostile energy ripples from their fins.

A large-scale attack!

The attack didn’t work on Angor’s soul, but his body was quickly affected by it and began to bleed from the mouth.

It was like dropping fresh meat among hungry wolves—in the next second, he sensed more predatory attention directed at him.

It didn’t take very long for the source of the attention to show up.

The Infinite Reticence could weaken his presence, but as long as someone or something kept an eye on him, the effect would quickly fail. Apparently, the sharks used something to track him down while bringing more hunters to him.

Angor’s soul couldn’t use illusions. The only thing he could do was to unleash the sequence of gravity. He could try killing the sharks by hurling gravity energy at them, but the cost of the soul energy was something he couldn’t bear with. Even by consuming Soul Orbs, he probably wouldn’t have enough energy to get rid of all the enemies.

And he knew that there were only more powerful beings on their way here.

His only choice was to escape, which he didn’t hesitate one bit.

While going even higher, countless fish went after his trail in hot pursuit.

He could slowly gain more distance if he could maximize his speed, but while flying, he also had to make sure not to bump into more of them. Otherwise, the explosions would cause another ruckus. This was why he couldn’t really shake the enemies off.

Angor realized the air around him was getting thinner, while the fish swarm behind his back was visibly growing thicker.

He was regretting his decision now that he couldn’t find any “exit” or anything like that yet. He also couldn’t possibly go down again as that might cause him to get caught easily.

As he wondered whether he should choose another direction, he saw something flashing above him.

It wasn’t the moon or stars. Rather, it looked like something that was reflecting light on its smooth surface.

But why is something like that here? Is it the exit?

He rushed straight to it and noticed he was looking at a thin barrier. There was water behind the barrier.

Actually, there was a lot of water, like the sea.

Wait… the sea?

He thought about the painting of Dodoro’s prophecy.

He wanted to break the barrier and see what was inside, but the moment he put his hand on it, a strange message suddenly appeared in his mind. He saw a strange place. Everything was dark while a glowing hourglass floated in the center. The object had a bronze frame and strange symbols on it. There were fish, water, sun, moon, and an altar with something placed on top of it.

Inside the hourglass was fine sand which was slowly flowing to the bottom.

Angor examined what was left on the upper half and used his “mind overdrive” to work out the remaining time shown by it, which was 3 hours.

But what do all these mean?

The fish behind him weren’t going to give him much time to think about it. By spending a good portion of his soul energy, Angor unleashed a powerful gravity attack at the barrier.

It didn’t work.

From the looks of it, Angor believed that he wasn’t going to break the barrier even if he could amplify that attack ten times.

With nothing else to do, he kept running in another direction. The whole area above his head was blocked by the impenetrable barrier, so he moved along it while trying to see if there was an entrance.

Most of the fishes behind him were significantly large ones, which only suggested their deadly strength. Each time they saw a chance, they would hurl different attacks toward Angor. Blizzard, ice arrows, wind blades, visible howls, and shock waves…

Angor could feel their power as well. Those were definitely as powerful as level-3 cantrips, which meant that his body wasn’t going to be able to endure them.

It was only due to his sequence of gravity that he managed to keep his distance just fine.

He stopped after flying for about another three minutes because he saw a giant jellyfish floating not far. It stretched about several hundred meters in all directions and blocked all of his routes ahead. Also, there were blue embers floating around its transparent body.

A stray flying fish moved too close to the embers and instantly became burnt bones.

Angor sighed and chose to dive down. There was no way to go forward now.

But there were too many fishes beneath him! He didn’t think that he could just dash past them unharmed. Some of the attacks were enough to kill him even if they only hit somewhere close to him.

His only chance was to throw something into the fish swarm.

He made a quick decision and returned to his body.

He immediately felt awful because of all the wounds he gained earlier. Without sequence of gravity, he began to free-fall, which only made the terrible feeling worse.

He tried his best to concentrate. Soon, the model of a cantrip was made in his mind space.

A small lump of mist that reflected the moonlight and stars appeared in his hand, which grew larger until it covered the area around him.

The mist successfully hid his form from the predators. To find their food, the fishes all rushed into the mist without stopping.

Using the time when the fishes couldn’t see their target, Angor ejected his soul again and flew toward the ground.

Some of the smaller fishes, who were too slow to go inside the mist, saw him and attacked.

Using his speed, he evaded most of the attacks. However, several of them still managed to create several bleeding gashes on his skin.

His soul was still unharmed.

He had no time to treat those wounds right now. After making sure there was no fatal injury, he took out a healing potion, plugged it into the mouth of his unconscious body, and dived.