Warlock Apprentice

Like dropping a pebble into a pond, the attack disrupted the air in the area and caused everything to go blurry.

When the half-undead saw the fan-shaped ripple covering all possible escape routes, he stumbled back in fear as he felt the deadly energy. While trembling in a corner, he begged for his life.

From Angor’s previous experience, undead souls would dive into the attack without a second thought since they could neither think nor did they know what “fear” was.

It seemed his white bullet did more than arousing intelligence.

No one would believe him if he ever said that an undead actually tried to escape from danger. One reason why wizards would like to avoid anything related to undead creatures was that these things were fearless and extremely difficult to wipe out. For anything that knew to back off from danger, wizards simply had to exert their pressure to get rid of them.

However, knowing fear did not allow the half-undead to escape from his fate since Angor’s attack almost covered up the entire testing ground.

But despite Angor’s words, he didn’t mean to “kill” the half-undead. The rune “Prelude to Elimination” functioned by using a particular sound wave to disrupt negative energy, which was the main component of an undead being. The half-undead, however, had most of his form made up of stable energy, while the negative energy that was affected by Prelude to Elimination only took up a small part.

Angor wished to find out what would happen after the remaining negative energy was removed from the soul. Would the soul get killed like an ordinary undead, or would it become a “pure” soul?

The half-undead screamed madly as the sound wave reached his form.

Angor frowned when he noticed that the screaming soul survived longer than it should. As the attack eliminated all negative energy, the soul was damaged a little but was still relatively complete.

A puff of black smoke suddenly escaped from the soul’s mouth and vanished into the air.

“This is incredible!” Number 233 called out, “Mister Padt, his negative energy is dying!”

“What about the stable part?”

“It… is affected, just a little. But otherwise, it remained unchanged.” Number 233 checked his papers.

“Keep looking then.”

That black smoke was probably the remaining negative energy. Angor wondered if the soul would truly revert to being an ordinary soul.

However, this was always considered to be impossible by scholars.

As soon as the black smoke completely disappeared, the soul collapsed on the floor. Angor carefully waited to see if he had created a miracle.

Slowly, the soul began to struggle, and he climbed back up.

Angor knew that his theory almost went through as the soul’s eyes no longer displayed unconcealed rancor.

“What’s your name?”

“Eyki Turner,” the soul responded with a completely dumbfounded look.

Angor tried asking several more unimportant questions so that he could figure out whether the soul kept his memory.

“What was your job?

“Do you remember your friends? Your lover?”

As their conversation continued, Eyki’s eyes gained more clarity, and his speech sounded more and more coherent. He even interrupted Angor’s questions with one of his own—”Who are you?”

“I’m the one who pulled you out of your mess,” said Angor.

Eyki didn’t seem to understand those words.

“How do you feel?” Angor asked. He was almost certain that this “Eyki” was no longer an undead soul.

“Better than ever. Those annoying whispers beside my ears are gone. And I don’t feel all jittery. It’s like I’ve forgotten all my problems as an adult and returned to my childhood!”

Undead souls constantly hear strange noises around their ears? Angor wondered and decided to ask, “What exactly did those whispers tell you?”

“I… can’t remember. There were all kinds of people, old, young, men, and women, talking into my ears. They were so irritating. But it’s better now. I feel… free! And calm…”

Angor suddenly saw Eyki starting to glow and float upward. At the same time, the soul closed his eyes as if he was enjoying the ascension.

Angor widened his eyes and approached Eyki. “Stop. Get back! Quick! You’re going to disappear!”

Eyki’s form was now almost transparent and difficult to see. He opened his eyes and smiled at Angor. “Thank you, my friend. I’ll remember the hero who dragged me away from the darkness…”

There was no way that an undead would speak in this way, which meant Eyki did “recover”.

“I can feel that I’m leaving this world. But… I’m glad. At least I’m no longer trapped in that prison. Thanks—”

He completely vanished from Angor’s view.

Meanwhile, Angor showed a grim look and clenched his fists as he felt extremely dissatisfied with the final result.

It was basically a giant failure. Did he spend so many white bullets just to look at a soul showing his last glory?

Number 233 entered the testing area with a hesitant look. “Mister Padt, all the energy that is shown by the test subject has gone.”

“Yeah, I can see that!” Angor felt his mood swing and quickly tried to calm himself. “Ahem. Show me your report, if you would.”

Number 233 didn’t notice Angor’s displeasure and showed his papers without a second thought.

Angor moaned as he felt a big headache. He couldn’t help feeling so upset since he just wasted three white bullets and two weeks just to find a result that was almost useless to him.

To generate each white bullet, he had to kill 2,000 undead souls! Where to find so many souls to kill outside of Dark Castle?

He kept reading the report while trying to hide his disturbed mood.

“So when he was glowing, the ‘stable’ energy began to break down really fast until he disappeared. But why?”

Are the white bullets intended to create a killing machine with intelligence? But what’s the point of that?

It was still acceptable if Prelude to Rebirth meant to revert undead souls. Also, it was not that surprising for a Mystery item to break a commonly-acknowledged rule. In this case, the revolver caused an undead soul to turn back to its original state, which was believed to be impossible.

However, Eyki only stayed in his “pure form” for less than five minutes.

Something told Angor that his experiment lacked something critical, which he had overlooked.

He stopped thinking about it since he could not find any answer right now. He might need to study more or find someone wise enough to tell him an answer.

He then decided to speak to Sunders. Surely his teacher could provide good advice about this.

Besides, he could use the chance to deliver his new crystal balls.

With that in mind, he collected all data and recorded materials he obtained from the experiment and headed to Sunders’ study.

…

Sunders slightly widened his eyes after listening to Angor’s explanation.

Even if a “purified soul” only remained in this world for five minutes, this subject was still worth further research because it denied an important theory formerly accepted by all wizards.

Wizards didn’t usually talk about Mystery items and their effects because these were not easily comprehensible. However, Prelude to Rebirth was not a Mystery item, which meant it was still worthwhile to investigate.

“Let me see what you’ve gotten so far.”

With great curiosity, Sunders began reading Angor’s research papers as well as the films recorded in the new transmitter.