Warlock Apprentice

At first, Angor feared that whatever occupied him would take him too long and ruin their escape plan. But soon, Erdus’ memory intrigued him so much that he completely forgot about his urgent matter.

The memory wasn’t long. It seemed the strange bead only contained random fragments of Erdus’ past life. It wasn’t designed for keeping memories.

When the story reached its end, Angor realized where the bead came from.

This item was called “Erdus’ Natural Mirage Bead”, a special artifact brewed using Erdus’ blood and over the creature’s prolonged lifespan, just like how seashells gave birth to pearls.

Erdus’ supernatural experience and power had bestowed a portion of its own intelligence to the bead. The bead was the very source of Erdus’ illusion abilities.

And Angor already understood why the illusions felt familiar—they were Mirages, a certain type of special illusions.

Mirage was a type of illusion woven by using natural elements in the environment and was considered an advanced skill among all illusionists. Even the most basic Mirage illusions required someone to be a level-3 apprentice to master, which was why Angor never attempted this particular subject before.

But a Mirage wasn’t something new to him. For example, when Sinehowze was cooking the egg of the Lord of Tentacles, she created a small-scale Gourmet Mirage.

Compared to this, what Greya caused around The Redbud last time was a lot more powerful, which covered an area of dozens of kilometers on the sea.

Gourmet Mirages were not exactly real Mirages as they basically did not hurt people. Yet they all functioned in the same way by altering environmental elements to create visions.

Angor always felt something familiar from the illusions without being able to identify them; it was because he never studied Mirage before.

Since the record of Erdus’ memory had ended, he thought he could hurry up and head to the Altar of Demise. But to his surprise, there was more intelligence madly rushing into his brain following Erdus’ own story.

This time, the intelligence was about the “Natural Mirage Bead” itself.

It seemed the artifact saw its end as well as the terminal of this very world. If everything ended like this, all the power and knowledge it gained would be lost forever. Combining coincidence and fate, it decided to draw Angor here.

The artifact was intelligent enough to learn that Angor was the one who killed its “host”. But it didn’t matter—Erdus would soon perish even without Angor’s interference. Since a very long time ago, Erdus had sought to end its own life, but the “gods” prevented it from doing so.

The Mirage Bead proceeded to inject everything about Erdus’ talent abilities into Angor’s mind.

It was extremely difficult for an outsider to recreate such talent without having Erdus’ bloodline. Yet the knowledge contained enlightenment regarding natural elements, which would greatly assist Angor in the future should he study Mirage illusions.

Also, this was not limited to Mirage illusions. Such knowledge could help Angor with anything related to environmental elements, such as certain Elementalist spells that manipulated different types of weather.

No matter how people looked at it, the knowledge of a wizard-level monster that had lived for 3,000 years was a priceless asset.

Despite it being a priceless asset, Angor did not want this to happen.

Because time was running out!

He’d gladly accept the great legacy should an execution knife called the “countdown” wasn’t hanging right on his neck. The knowledge would be of no use to him if he missed the final countdown and had to forfeit his life in this garden.

His unwillingness slowly turned into resistance, yet the Mirage Bead didn’t intend to let him go any time soon.

Still, the artifact sensed Angor’s urge to leave and sped up its knowledge transfer.

And this was bad news to Angor—he felt his head ready to explode as overwhelming wisdom that did not belong to him took over his mind.

The light beam persisted for a while. Even the owners of the purification garden had not realized that the priceless legacy was being forcefully injected into Angor’s brain, while the “beneficiary” himself was trying his best to run away from it.

When the last bit of the light beam finally disappeared into Angor, the Mirage Bead gradually stopped glowing.

Next, the bead slowly broke apart into crystal-clear sand fragments that escaped from between Angor’s fingers.

Meanwhile, all remaining illusion nodes inside Erdus’ corpse went away.

Angor was trying to stay awake while his head felt heavier than ever. When thinking about the countdown timer that was still a threat to his life, as well as his teammates, he forced his body to keep walking.

He didn’t know how much time he wasted. However, since the Sea of Purification wasn’t breaking apart, he believed the end was not here yet.

He rushed outside the room and canceled his Nightmare Domain. When the protection was lifted, he saw his teammates in various situations.

Nausica was fiddling her Solefly blade while sitting on the ground with a sad look. Keely was mumbling the name of her parents, while Luna huddled quietly in her arms. Shan had collapsed on Gank’s head while leaving her last words using a small voice others couldn’t hear.

Their terrible mental conditions caused Angor’s heart to sink.

“How much time do we have?!” Angor asked in a trembling voice.

Keely and Shan didn’t answer. It was Nausica who decided to speak up. She replied, “You… did your best. But I don’t think we’ll make it.”

“Just tell me the time!”

“We have five minutes. At best.”

Angor felt his ears went deaf for a brief moment as he lost his balance.

There were another 250 kilometers until they could reach the Land of Demise.

In five minutes?

His sequence of gravity MIGHT take them there in time in normal circumstances. Unfortunately, Angor almost exhausted his soul energy. Combined with the fact that he was under the effect of Potion of Impedance, to separate his soul from his body now would be suicidal.

“Go! Let’s go!! We can do something… we must do something!” Angor moved ahead first while mumbling random words just for the sake of comforting himself.

Despite their desperation, the others still remained calm and in control of their actions, which convinced them to follow Angor’s lead.

…

Half an hour ago, over a thousand wizards had arrived at the valley where the purification garden was located. Some of them had old grudges against one another, and they all pretended that the others didn’t exist. All wizards simply picked somewhere vacant and waited, while only good friends would stay together.

All wizards from Floating Mech City joined together on top of a stone wall in various positions. Some of them seemed relaxed while others looked quite stressed. But regardless of their moods, every single individual was looking at the giant screen that was showing them the Altar of Demise.

They were all openly craving the glowing embodiment of the purification law in the center of the altar. And at the same time, most wizards were trying to see if their students had reached the final goal.

The countdown was reaching its end, and a number of apprentices who owned Meraid’s Swords had already arrived.

“That’s Dira? Nice. He’ll make a fine example for the new generation,” several guards from the city whispered to each other.

“Oh, I see my Huitoni. Good job, girl.”

“Now where did that little brat of mine go?”

Sabot and Mithra were also sitting at a corner.

“You know, Diablo can always participate in this,” Sabot said. He sighed. “I saw many level-3 apprentices went in.”

“Those are the ones who failed to break through their limits for many years. Therefore, they can only gamble for that tiny chance that the law might bring. Diablo has great talent, he does not need such radical means.” Mithra chuckled.

“Angor once comprehended a natural law, right? I wonder if he’d do it again.”

“Nah. That will make these natural laws look like jokes.”

“Yeah…” Sabot lowered his head and considered. He then murmured, “I didn’t see Angor at the altar. He’s still on his way? Or…”

Mithra didn’t reply. He trusted Angor’s potential. “He’s coming, I know it. It isn’t hard for him to stay alive in the garden.”

Meanwhile, Muse was floating beside Lawson while thinking about the same question.

“Where’s Angor? Come on, I have my filming stone ready here. I thought I can record something awkward last time, but he actually beat the Lord of Tentacles and all the monster fish and still looked cool. So boring!”

Muse planned to wait for the moment when Angor’s bodily filth was purified by the garden so that he could keep Angor’s embarrassing look and later use it against the boy.

Lawson glanced at Muse’s cunning smile and sighed.

I wonder which one of them will get embarrassed today?

Lawson suddenly shivered a little and quickly took out a strange machine from his storage dimension. The item resembled a spirit indicator meter that had a number indicating 0 to 100%.

The meter was shining. The original indication of 55% quickly increased to 62% under one second.

Muse also noticed that change and understood what was happening faster than anyone else. After all, he was the one who invented this meter that was used to calculate the progress of the garden sacrifice.

When it reached 100%, it meant the purification garden had successfully gained a new level.

Sacrificing the entire flying fish world only increased the meter to 50%, while letting the apprentices kill each other in the Sea of Purification boosted it to 55%. What they were seeing now suggested that something just happened and gave the progress another push of around 7%, which was bigger than the sum of all dead apprentices.

“One of the main sacrificial materials just died?” Muse asked in a small voice.

Lawson frowned. “Perhaps. Telling from the numbers… it should be one of the strongest components, which means the forefather of the Duons or Erdus.”

“They are both wizard-level presence. You’re telling me an apprentice killed one of them?”

“I… don’t think it’s possible.” Lawson shook his head and said, “Let’s just take a look.”

When he waved a hand, the giant screen suddenly changed its display.