Warlock Apprentice

The crystal suddenly melted into a beam of light, which sunk into Angor’s forehead.

At the same time, Angor closed his eyes as he felt boundless intelligence and soul energy entering his mind. The wisdom appeared as fascinating images that fully grasped Angor’s attention.

In Sunders’ view, Angor had entered a coma-like condition during which Angor’s body was submerged inside the energy of an unknown law. He went to make sure that Angor was “reading” the energy, which would probably take some time, and sat back down.

Next, he placed the five demon falcon statues made by Angor onto his desk.

For now, Sunders did not see any risk from Angor’s attempt, so he decided to use the extra time to examine these statues.

Checking Angor’s statues already fell behind his original schedule since he needed time to mend his wounds. He knew these new statues had more “manifestations of Mystery” inside, and he couldn’t wait to see them as soon as possible. In fact, Sunders just realized that he had not suffered from such intolerable eagerness for some time, which only grew worse after he witnessed how Greya challenged a new spell with the help of Angor’s manifestation.

I wonder… Can I find yet another spell or cantrip like “Wither”? There should be rules or principles that govern such a process. What are they?

With his mind almost bloating with curiosity, Sunders began his test.

While Angor was enjoying an unknown soul sequence on his end, the area around Sunders was slowly covered by mist.

In absolute silence, time went by.

Each time Sunders finished checking a statue, he would take some time to take notes before proceeding to the next one.

After he left the last illusion, Sunders rested his head on a hand and fell into his own thoughts.

This was what Angor saw when he opened his eyes—Sunders acting like “The Thinker”.

Without bothering his teacher, Angor closed his eyes again to go over the great legacy he just accepted with a bright smile.

The crystal presented no drawbacks to him. Instead, he gained the best possible result—the crystal contained all he needed to fully use Soul Link.

This was not all. The crystal even created the spell model of Soul Link for him and then made it permanent. This meant Angor did not need time to study the spell starting from zero, which usually took other wizards decades.

The permanent spell model brought by the crystal did not take up any spell slot, and it could constantly provide its full effect to Angor as long as the model did not break for some reason.

As long as it existed in Angor’s mindspace, the connection between his soul space and mindspace would persist. In other words, he could freely cast illusions and cantrips in his soul form.

But he just found a problem.

The model was not built using mana at all.

As common sense, models for both cantrips and spells were constructed using one’s mana, which was taken from their mana pool. However, Angor was sure that the new model in his mindspace was made by something he didn’t recognize.

He tried de-constructing the model, but it turned into faint particles that he could not sense. However, he could still order the particles to gather up and become the spell model again if he wished to.

Is this a different type of energy? Or is it energy at all?

“I take it you found something nice?”

Sunders saw Angor’s big smile and came. It seemed the gentleman finished whatever he was thinking about.

“So the crystal is Soul Link alter all?” Sunders knew about this spell, so he easily noticed the energy signature coming from Angor. “You accepted the spell directly without the need to study it slowly?”

“Yes, professor. The crystal even left a permanent spell model for it in my mind. But… I think something’s wrong with it.”

Angor explained what he found about the strange model.

“The model is not made of mana? It should definitely happen since you don’t have nearly enough mana to support the model of a real spell, even if it’s only a level-1 spell.” Sunders chuckled. “Don’t worry. If my assumption is right, this was made possible by a certain law sequence.”

“Sequences can show up as small particles?”

“Just think. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you find a new power that popped up inside you without costing you anything? A law sequence, just like your sequence of gravity. While your gravity sequence stayed inside you as gray fog, this new one turned out as the grains you sensed.”

Angor still looked puzzled as if he wasn’t sure whether the outcome was favorable.

“Cut that out. You now have TWO powerful sequences, and you’re not even a wizard yet. You should be grateful for that. Such a gift is extremely valuable to wizards or truth-finders alike. Don’t tell this to anyone, or they will probably burn you alive using pure jealousy.”

Angor chortled in a silly way.

He quickly tried to test Soul Link by ejecting his soul. As expected, he could feel his body just fine after separating his soul from his body and moving far apart.

His mindspace, his mana pool, and the “vortex”, which was still absorbing primal mana from the air… He could sense everything.

He tried to channel mana from afar and succeeded without any trouble. The only problem was that he could not “remote meditate”. This meant he could not recover mana without going back to his body.

While still in soul form, he built the model for “Create Water”, and a water sphere materialized above his hand.

He did more tests and was glad to know that all of his cantrips as well as Nightmare Domain all worked out well. He was confident that his strength just reached a whole other level since he could wield nightmare illusions, superior speed, and various cantrips at the same time.

Something in his mind clicked in the wrong way, which caused him to say a phrase he soon regretted.

“Professor, let’s test this out in a fight!”

Sunders was surprised by the suggestion, but just a little.

“Of course.” The gentlemen tightened a button on his shirt and smiled.

…

One minute later, Sunders tossed Angor’s tattered soul back into his body. Everything Angor had—his soul energy, gravity energy, and mana reserve—was almost depleted.

“Not bad.” Sunders put on his white gloves again and smoothed his sleeves. “I’m glad you offered yourself as a punching bag after irritating me so many times today. Now I feel a lot better.”

In contrast to Sunders’ cheerful look, Angor sat up slowly and felt like crying.

That was the worst decision he had ever made. His blind confidence backfired as Sunders played him around the fingers like a toy.

“I meant it—you’re pretty good at combat now. You know, even some wizards cannot stay well under my attacks for a full minute.”

The comment sounded genuine enough, yet Angor didn’t feel any better since he knew that Sunders never fought him for real. Sunders never used any magical attacks. All he did was punching and kicking physically. And it hurt like hell, physically.

Angor got a feeling that his professor intentionally relied on fists and boots only so that he, the “punching bag”, worked as intended for a minute. Otherwise, any of the gentleman’s spells would destroy him in an instant.

“You don’t believe me?” Sunders saw Angor still sulking and raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I was going easy on you, but I didn’t overestimate your strength. As long as you maximize the potential of your gravity power and nightmare illusions, you CAN damage wizards, if luck favors you.”

Sunders meant to say that, if everything went well, Angor might hurt a wizard enough so that he could find a chance to escape. As for killing wizards… that was pretty much impossible. As history had proved so far, the decisive strength gap between wizards and apprentices could not be crossed.