Warlock Apprentice

Butler Goode was responsible for keeping order for the outer area of the island, so he came to the outside together with Angor.

“Mister Padt, as Lady Flora said, the master didn’t teach you spells for your own good,” Goode spoke in a small voice.

Angor looked at him and waited for his explanation.

“Do you know about ‘the path of truth’?”

Angor nodded. The path of truth meant that a wizard should walk his or her own path when doing wizardry. Sunders told him before, that “Walking on your own path without being restricted by the ancestors and keep it up for years on end. Even if you can’t see where you’re going, you are creating your unique sight. Such a wizard is a real wizard”.

Angor did not understand though.

Didn’t every wizard already create their own path? If they could succeed by copying the ways of ancestors, formal wizards should not be so scarce.

“The master didn’t teach you spells now because he wished that you can enter the path of truth sooner,” said Goode. He considered for a while and added, “You have to figure out what you want to learn and why do you learn it. By that time, the master will give you some appropriate advice instead of leading you to a path that already existed. Master has always been planning to do so.”

Goode’s words made Angor felt a little better. Wizardry, spells, or else… Good choices for someone would usually not work for other people. He needed to know what to pursue. Sunders refused to teach him now so that the boy could find his own path.

But… Angor wished Sunders could teach him spells so that he could save up merit points! Learning spells from Cloud Library cost money, and he was broke!

“If you want me to find some kind of path, just let me in your library! At least that will save me a lot of money,” Angor complained in his mind even though he clearly knew that Sunders’ personal library was tiny compared to the giant Cloud Library.

Before sending Angor away from the island, Goode glanced at the covetous apprentices around and whispered to Angor, “Mister Padt, the Sorcerer’s Garden will be finished after about a week. Return here as soon as possible. By then, maybe you’ll find destiny for yourself.”

With that, Goode hurried away and joined the other Phantom Servants.

On his way back, Angor saw the trio again on the sky bridge, but they did not do anything this time.

He reached the Falling Cloud Stop peacefully.

After boarding the sky bus toward apprentice town, Angor was still pondering over “path of truth”.

He never knew what that was before because Sunders only used vague words when explaining it. But after hearing Goode’s advice, Angor realized something about it. The path of truth might be a path full of a wizard’s own marks. While walking down such a path, the wizard used his or her own ideas, experiences and, knowledge. They would not change for any external factors. A wizard should keep walking by him or herself, alone.

Angor recalled a certain incident in Padt Manor when he was younger.

There was someone called Auntie Rarelay in the manor, who loved stealing small benefits for herself. Everyone hated her. She always stole bits of food from the kitchen. She even used to take away portions of Angor’s milk. That was why Angor disliked the woman as well. Later, when Angor mentioned her to Jon, his mentor commented with a smile, “In your view, she is wicked and filthy. But to her adopted kids, she is a gentle and reliable mother.”

There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. Whether someone was favorable was only one’s personal ideas. If there was a “beautiful woman” among people, people around her might like her for different reasons, such as her face, her body, or her inner virtue.

These views were equal. No matter which part of the woman people liked, they all reached the same conclusion – that she was “beautiful”.

The path of truth was something similar. Other people’s experience could be used to achieve certain goals. Yet following it blindly would cause someone to lose his own judgment.

Believing in oneself and figuring out his or her own future was the true significance of the path of truth.

Angor was wondering about something though. If the path of truth was such an easy concept, why were there few wizards who actually stepped onto the path? Were there some other important factors?

Angor left the sky bus and headed toward the central area of Tree Spirit Garden instead of returning to apprentice town. A new apprentice had to get registered before he could start accepting quests from the questing hall.

When this was done, Angor went to the resource distribution hall and accepted a small bag. The bag contained two objects for him. One was a robe with a simple rune on it. It looked exactly the same as Sailum and Teuton’s “bed sheet” except that this one was black.

The other object was a crystal ball communicator.

…

On his way back, Angor wanted to go to Cloud Library and look for some spell books. But he gave up the idea.

Back on the cloud whale, he already recorded a good number of books in Sunders’ book room. He would check these first and see if there was something worth studying.

Upon arriving at his villa, Angor asked Toby to enjoy the day by itself. He then went to the balcony.

It seemed the tree spirit was really considerate to Apprentice Town Eight these days. The sunlight remained strong all day. Before leaving, Angor placed his tablet on the balcony to recharge. Now the battery was all full.

He took his tablet back to the soundproof room and began going over the books he recorded before.

There were all kinds of books. Angor spent half a day classifying them before he started to read them.

To learn spells, he first needed to know what they really meant.

A spell was a way to express magic while using the mana pool as the core, mana as energy, and knowledge as structure. It worked by levering and interfering with reality.

Simply put, a spell consisted of three elements: mana pool, mana, and knowledge.

For example, a level-0 cantrip called “Cleanse” was a spell that removed filth by combining the use of water and wind.

The fundamental of the spell was to disrupt the natural combination of water and wind elements. It would then simulate the elements by using a formula before expressing the formula with mana, thus making the low-level cantrip possible.

In general, a wizard created a model of the cantrip by using mana to build a “formula” as its base, then used the formula to affect the physical world. As a level-0 cantrip, Cleanse did not need many steps to cast. For certain high-leveled spells, wizards needed external help to cast them, such as changing his or her body or certain glands or by spending materials as mediums for the spell.

People already summarized how to build the model for Cleanse, so anyone who wished to learn it did not need to understand the “combination of water and wind elements” at all. They simply had to apply the existing cantrip model to cast the spell.

Angor looked at the display of the hologram tablet, where a “magatama” stood upon a surface, and triggered something in his mind.

He controlled his mana pool to release mana to the outside. He then built the model of Cleanse spell in his mind. Under his careful manipulation, his mana slowly formed up the shape of the cantrip.

Next, Angor felt a strange urge in his mind. Following the urge, he released a strange feeling from his fingers.

A small current of damp air blew over the soundproof room, removing dust and dirt scraps from the room’s walls and floor.

“That’s how Cleanse work? It’s so weak,” Angor complained at how insignificant the spell looked. Little did he know that being able to cast a spell on the first attempt was an amazing achievement for anyone. That was how the mana purified by a singular point helped him. The mana was extremely pure and flexible, which allowed him to build an accurate model without previous practice.

Angor kept reading the book.

Similar cantrips all had completely determined models. Apprentices only had to memorize the models. Thanks to the experience of ancestors, they did not need to reach into anything deep down in order to cast the cantrips.

Thinking about this, Angor got a new idea.

He did not wish to follow ancestors and copy the models. He wanted to start from zero and worked out how Cleanse spell came into being on his own.

Angor found the page that explained the fundamentals of the cantrip and read on carefully.

A day later, Angor began to calculate the combination patterns of wind and water elements on his own. He spent half a day on filling twenty pages with his formulas. There were too many calculations involved and he failed to figure out any viable combination.

“No wonder people only copied the books. It would take forever making out a combination on my own, and it probably won’t be correct,” Angor muttered. He did not give up though. The boy really wanted to see how spells worked from their root.

After another day, he finally discovered a combination.

Using the appropriate formula, Angor built the combination into a new cantrip model.

The model now looked like “a magatama sliced up by several surfaces”, which was completely different from the one on the book where the magatama stood on top of one single surface.

Following his own cantrip model, Angor slowly channeled his mana.

A moment later, he felt a small breeze. His collar moved a little.

Angor took out his notes and wrote down: [The Cleanse spell following this combination did not achieve a balance between wind and water elements. Water element almost did not exist, and the wind element was too weak. It doesn’t work as a Cleanse spell. Not even a Breeze spell.]

He put down the note and prepared to find another combination.

But this time, he was planning to use the tablet to help him calculate the results faster.

For the first combination, Angor used paper and pen in order to see the essentials of the spell and know its “nature”. Once this was done, he no longer had to work out further combinations on his own. Using the tablet would save him a lot of time.

He set two different elements as “A” and “B”, and put his formula, variables, and data into the hologram tablet.

The system began working on its own.

It only took ten minutes for the system to return more than 30 different combinations for Angor.