Warlock Apprentice

While Greya imagined Toby’s future plans, Angor was still focused on the five emotions—”five spices”.

He could more or less understand how the five organs of a great beast possessed the powers of emotions. But however did Toby actually trigger them?

If he could learn something about this, he might be able to get prepared for when Toby experienced another emotion attack.

Angor tried to recall what happened on the day Toby fainted. It was the Krakok brothers who ripped his chest open by using their small door, which caused him to blackout. According to Shadow’s words, Toby began to attack him madly because the bird believed he killed Angor.

Was that the reason? Toby was furious about what had happened, and it caused “wrath” to show up?

Angor agreed with his own deduction. At the same time, he was happy—at least he wouldn’t worry about dying alone in this world. There was someone who still cared for him.

And if his assumption was correct… Toby could temporarily avoid emotion attacks by staying calm?

Angor smiled at his own thoughts which attracted Greya’s attention.

“Care to share your funny ideas?” Greya held her chin with one hand and looked at Angor curiously while her other hand was gently stroking Toby.

Angor felt a bit ashamed to expose his true feelings and quickly looked around to find an excuse.

“I’m looking at, er, him. He’s… funny.”

Greya followed Angor’s sight and saw Diablo still entangled in a fight against the blond lady. Or rather, the man was being bullied one-sidedly, judging from how his pants had turned to shreds under all the attacks he received.

Currently, Diablo was moving around the room with his pecker fully exposed. He was even intentionally showing that manhood of his to Naga while taunting her. He probably believed that nobody could see his private fight, which was completely incorrect since the two individuals in the room next to his were observing his moves clearly.

“Well, that’s a lot of fun to watch,” Greya commented while tossing random Soul Orbs into her mouth as if she were eating popcorn.

“This place is so dull. My body is lost, together with all the cooking materials I collected in the last century. I barely have anything to satisfy my stomach,” she said and winked at Angor charmingly. “Such a show is the only thing that helps me spend time.

“Or, I can ask the little girl to take over so I can sleep some more.”

While complaining, Greya kept swallowing the orbs.

Angor decided not to recklessly ask about Greya’s condition. It would be best if she were willing to share information first, but he should not ask about it.

But he still needed a topic to get rid of the awkward silence, so he simply talked about Toby.

“There was one time when I and Toby were trapped somewhere with nothing around. I didn’t have food stored in my bracelet. We stayed alive for enough time thanks to Toby’s dried fish. And because of the dire situation, I learned how to create Mana Bread so that we won’t die of hunger too soon.”

Angor used “somewhere” instead of “plane passageway” so that he could avoid unnecessary questioning.

“But my bread looks really weird. May I get some pointers since you’re here, Lady Greya?”

Greya knew Angor was trying to look for things to talk, and she didn’t find the question annoying at all. “Mana Bread, huh? A basic cantrip learned by Gourmet Wizards. Let me see how you do it.”

It had been pretty long since Greya last taught a student. She didn’t feel reluctant to help the boy a little.

With a bright smile, Angor presented Greya a black bulge as if showing a tributary gift to his king.

He did talk about Mana Bread out of random but getting Greya’s enlightenment would be a big plus.

He did it fast too—a lot faster than how the Gourmet Apprentices in Barbie’s Restaurant cooked their food. It could be seen that Angor had strengthened his foundation decently and gained proficiency in both mana control and building spell models.

Greya kept nodding in approval as she imagined what Angor would create.

… Until Angor actually showed her the result.

Personally, Greya wouldn’t be harsh on Angor, an apprentice illusionist who was far from being a professional cook. It would be fine as long his food was… actual food.

Yet she still went agape when she saw a black lump of unknown substance with the smell of worn socks.

In her life, this was the first time she saw such unqualified Mana Bread which had zero elements related to “edible food”.

To make it worse, the creator of the disaster was smiling innocently at her as if he was really asking for his teacher’s help.

Considering that Toby was still sleeping nearby, Greya suppressed the urge to slap Angor’s creation to the floor. But she still looked disgusted by it. “This is your Mana Bread? You’re not joking on me, right?”

“I followed the instructions! And this is always what I get in the end.” Angor looked sad now.

Greya went over Angor’s movement as well as his spell model. As he said, there was no problem there.

“You did everything right, but Gourmet also requires talent… and you’re just not fit for it. Don’t waste your mana from now on.”

Angor slumped. Since a famous Gourmet Wizard said so, he really could not hope to learn this art.

“Now take… Take it away! The stench!” Greya covered her nose and waved a hand at Angor. “So you survived in some empty place by eating THIS? Toby ate THIS?”

Angor thought about declining just because Greya looked so terrifying, but considering what he just said earlier, he could only chuckle in a silly way.

“… Whatever. You already did a fine job keeping Toby safe.” Greya swallowed her rage back.

Angor took a sniff at his bread again. As always, it smelled like socks. At least, it wasn’t so terrible anymore. Maybe this was why bad smell became better after someone spent a lot of time in it?

Defeated, he dissected and discarded the “bread”, along with his childish hope of becoming a chef.

…

Greya continued to consume her Soul Orbs while she watched Diablo’s “naked battle”. She would say something occasionally to explain what exactly was going on.

The blond-haired lady was the Shadow Puppet that Shadow had been going after—Naga.

Angor suddenly felt that maybe Shadow’s teacher was being pretty generous to his student. Even the appearance of Naga was designed according to Shadow’s taste.

It was clear to see that Shadow couldn’t defeat Naga, but the man never planned to do so. He was using the close calls in the fight to keep breaking his limits, and every time he did, he would do better against Naga.

As the fight continued, Naga would lose energy faster and faster. As long as Shadow was persistent, the puppet would get exhausted sooner or later.

The fight was fun to watch, but Shadow couldn’t keep it up forever. Each time he received too many bruises on his body, he would stay far away and rest before confronting Naga again.

And such intervals made Greya bored. With her soul incomplete, she could neither meditate or cook. More importantly, the “other soul” had consumed what was left of her materials.

“Should I go in there and play with him for a little while?…” Greya muttered.

Angor jumped a little at those words. He still needed Shadow to take him to Floating Mech City. He certainly couldn’t watch Shadow die right here. But again, he couldn’t simply force Greya to change ideas.

Since Greya was only bored…

“Lady Greya, shall we watch a drama to kill time?”

“Drama? Here? How?”

“Just a second. I’ll do it with my illusions.”

With that, Angor silently began to deploy illusion nodes.

Greya was a little surprised at the idea. She knew Angor learned some nice illusions after watching the Twilight Auction replay, but she didn’t expect the boy to be able to create actual drama.

“Ohh, this might be interesting.” Greya’s eyes brimmed with curiosity. She wondered what Angor could bring her.

Speaking of dramas watched by kids… Fairytale? War shows? Or palace harem fights?

None of them sounded fun, but they were at least better than looking at a man swaying his stick around.

Greya was surprised again when she saw Angor showing her his travels with Toby.

From the trip on the cloud whale when Toby would deny all of Angor’s questions like a spoiled kid, to the coastal area when Toby protected Angor from an attacker like a real friend, then to the bird’s small music concerts… Angor skillfully manipulated his illusions to display a drama based on Toby’s life.

It was more like a hologram movie than a stage drama.

Inside the “movie”, Angor would occasionally put himself in there as well as intentionally focus on certain details such as his fights in Sky Tower with the help of Toby. By this, he hoped Greya might teach him something else about combat.

He wasn’t disappointed. Maybe to show her approval toward the splendid illusion or to reward Angor for his innovation, Greya had no problem answering Angor’s questions; all of which helped him a lot.

Angor was showing the best extent of his illusion abilities by making the scenes real and touching. There were still small logic flaws, but Greya didn’t notice any thanks to his hard effort.

To better satisfy Greya, he even added nightmare illusions inside the “movie” so that Greya could interact with different presences.

Unlike the room created for Flowey, this illusion was “alive”. Each frame of the “movie” required real-time calculation, which forced Angor to work his mind like a restless machine.

This experience also helped him broaden his view of illusions.

At first, he was still doing this to entertain Greya. Later on, Angor gradually immersed his mind in the amusement of making illusions, and the details of his works were visibly improving.

Greya simply observed the show with a constant smile. She always believed illusions were used for tricking and harming enemies. She did hear a rumor that Pleasure House had someone who could use illusions to serve their customers, but she never witnessed it for real.

And man, this was good!

Being able to make a wizard who had seen much of this world felt “entertained” was worth boasting about.