Warlock Apprentice

Angor frowned at his result.

Of course… Dark Castle would never do anything too kind.

The magic array was nothing deadly. Otherwise, the Krakoks wouldn’t have enjoyed peace for a thousand years.

But sometimes, “deadly” wasn’t the darkest abyss.

The sleepless night only existed around the altar at the mountain foot, while Hippocrotee had fallen into complete silence due to the lack of residents. There were only lone street lamps that provided some luminescence.

Angor looked at the quiet city again. No one would ever imagine what kind of darkness was hidden behind the peaceful illusion.

An entire abyss sat down there, gazing at anyone who dared to return the gaze.

Angor suddenly saw someone who was still inside Hippocrotee. It was a white-haired old Krakok woman, who just left her house with a bouquet of flowers in her hands.

There was not another soul in the streets. The woman proceeded alone.

She slowly moved in front of a statue at the end of the street—one of the “nodes” in the city.

A small street lamp sat near the statue, while some flying insects were drawn to the light.

Using the dim light, Angor carefully inspected the Krakok citizen. The corner of her eyes hung a little due to her old age, but her wrinkles suggested that she loved smiling. All the curving wrinkles on her skin only added to her gentleness.

Also, Angor noticed that the old woman didn’t seem so well. Her face was pale, and her eyes were dispirited with illness.

She placed the bouquet at the base of the statue and smiled gently.

Angor saw the old woman’s lips moving while changing expressions. It seemed she was talking.

Angor knew how to read lips. However, the old woman was barely moving her tiny lips, so he couldn’t really understand her.

He took a guess that the woman was recollecting her past life. She would sigh in distress or smile brightly now and then, which all looked like an old soul who was approaching the end of her time.

While muttering, she would occasionally bow toward the statue to show respect.

Her bowing caused Angor to look at the statue again. Now that he had time to observe the statue itself instead of the rune node in the center of it, he suddenly noticed something was wrong.

The statues in Hippocrotee all had different looks, but they also had one thing in common; they all appeared as women.

They might have come from the hands of different artisans. Still, Angor got the feeling that they were designed to present the same figure.

The statue in front of the old woman was a kind-looking lady in a silk robe, who was praying with her eyes closed. It could be seen that whoever created the statue highly respected the lady while trying his or her best to show the “powerful and distant” nature of a goddess.

“Hey, Diablo, do you know who’s that woman shown by the statues?” Angor initiated a topic with Shadow, which was rare for him.

It took some time for Shadow to respond. “Ahh… I so very want to go to that temple right now and see what’s inside… Oh wait, the statues, you say?”

“Yeah. Are they all the same woman?”

“My my, you just noticed? And yes they are. If my guess is right, it’s that wizard from Dark Castle who took the Krakoks here a thousand years ago, ‘Sundown Sultan’ Isabelle. She’s also the teacher of that old witch I talked about. Speaking of that ugly hag… She copied everything from Isabelle, including her name. Guess she will never find the path of truth on her own now.”

“Sundown Sultan…” Angor looked at the statue again and didn’t want to believe that title. The lady statue looked holy and bright, which had nothing to do with “sundown” at all.

While Angor talked to Shadow, the old Krakok woman had finished her prayer and knelt down. She now had her head against the ground in a groveling position and remained still.

Angor waited for a long time, but the old woman never moved again.

He approached the statue area and spread his spirit feelers to check. As he expected, the last bit of warmth had completely left the old woman’s body.

Perhaps she knew she would perish soon. Instead of attending the ritual, she spent her last moment here alone with the statue before she finally departed from this world with the heart of a faithful believer.

Angor still felt the woman’s soul lingering behind as if bidding farewell to her vessel.

However, the instant her soul began to ascend for real, a light beam invisible to mortal eyes emerged from the statue and dragged the helpless soul into an unknown dimension.

Angor saw it all, but he wasn’t going to change the sorrowful outcome. He couldn’t.

He only felt it extremely ironic.

The poor woman believed in the statue until her last breath. And by the time she realized that the statue would take her to hell, it was way too late.

Ironic, but truthful enough.

“Isabelle” granted the Krakoks a peaceful and protected place to live in at a terrible cost—their very souls.

A soul could always find another chance to survive in other forms, even if its body no longer existed. But if one’s soul was exterminated… then he or she would stop existing for real and forever.

Angor shook his head and turned away.

At the lonely street corner, a cold body was still in a kneeling position in front of the statue of Isabelle. As the old woman prayed for something with her fingers crossed, the wind blew over and carried the old woman’s bouquet over to her.

Her white hair and the soft, white petals joined together as if they were accepting each other’s final words.

…

When Angor crossed the silent city and approached the vicinity of the holy mountain again, he heard the holy songs which persisted throughout the entire day.

From quietness to vigorous crowds. It was like entering a completely different world.

The temple on top of the mountain was still displaying its mighty ripples as if announcing its dominance over everything.

“You’re here already?” Shadow’s voice came. “Finally giving up on your ‘reverse engineering’?”

Shadow never thought about the possibility that Angor could work out the magic array in less than 10 hours.

“I already got it,” Angor replied. “And everything was as expected.”

“I know, right? There’s no way you can—WHAT?! You did? God damn it. You’re not pulling my leg, eh?” Shadow almost yelled that out. His hat already fell on the ground because of his overreaction… but Angor couldn’t see that now.

“I checked some of the critical runes. They more or less showed me the result. And I just needed a little bit extra confirmation.”

Shadow asked again and again. He finally believed Angor’s words when Angor was getting impatient. “Ugh, I see. So, whatever does that thing do?”

“Trapping and absorbing souls. There are several Bloodline-related runes in it. I think the magic array isn’t only restricted to Hippocrotee. It connects everything that has Krakok blood. A Krakok far away from here, across many dimensions, will always come back here, eventually.”

“You’re saying—” Shadow scowled.

“This place is Dark Castle’s soul farm, and the Krakoks are their livestock.”

To Angor, these creatures only enjoyed happiness when they were alive, which was presented to them by Dark Castle. After death, however, wicked fangs and claws would suddenly come out of their hiding place and eagerly devour their souls.

“I knew something like this is here, but I never noticed how they do it,” Shadow said as he snickered. “Maybe Isabelle did sympathize with the Krakoks by saving them from extinction. But to her, such kind deed deserved payback. An expensive one.”

“Expensive or not, we’re not the ones to judge. To mortals, death meant death. Who knows, maybe the Krakoks already knew about the magic array. They just don’t care.”

“Yeah… they’re short-sighted alright. Glad I learned about that. Do you know where those souls go to in the end?”

Angor pointed to the mountain temple. “There, probably.”

“I guessed as much. The core of the law is inside the temple too. I also saw the law ripples around the mountain to be pretty stable, so the power of law isn’t exhausted. But… why isn’t the power reaching out to the other islands if it’s sufficient?”

“Now that you mentioned it… I may have an idea. The Sorcerer’s Garden uses the souls as its energy source which sustains its law. But we have a problem here—mortal souls aren’t powerful enough to feed a law.”

“They have something to purify and refine souls?” They both reached a possible conclusion.

Angor nodded hard. This trip would be worthwhile if he could learn how to purify souls.