Warlock Apprentice

Gravity Garden?

Angor only came here once before. It was when he was pulled inside by Sunders while unconscious and was immediately thrown out when he woke up.

He checked the place again. When the garden was created, it only occupied a small patch of land in Phantom Island. This time, however, Angor noticed that the garden was larger than before. He couldn’t see the edge of it.

The sky was clear but without a sun. Angor couldn’t find a light source, so he didn’t know how the place was so bright as day.

They were standing within the outdoor library. There were desks scattered around the bookshelves with half-written files and quills in ink bottles on them, which meant Sunders often came here.

Angor could tell that the Gravity Garden was a lot inferior compared to Soul Genesis Garden in terms of completeness. The rules of the garden had not been established, and everything felt off. Also, he didn’t find any gravity energy. The law of the garden was probably still in its initial state.

Still, Angor wished he could get his hands on such a miniature world too.

While Angor inspected his surroundings, Sunders was also looking at his student curiously.

The boy didn’t change much on the outside. His skin was still pale white, and his eyes were as clear as always, without any hint of being tainted by the cruelty and mercilessness of the wizarding world. Everything on Angor looked just like before, apart from his blond buzz cut that barely covered the top of his head.

Next, Sunders smiled when he checked Angor’s strength.

A level-2 apprentice at his bottleneck before breaking through to the next level.

Angor was still a level-1 when he went missing in Midnight Sovereign. It was only half a year and he gained so much experience… Besides, the boy spent less than two years in the wizarding world in total. Such growth speed had busted all common sense.

The gentleman pressed a hand on Angor’s shoulder. “Do not resist.”

Angor felt something tickling his ear, and before he could find out why, a stream of gentle energy entered his body and circled around his mind space before it quickly left.

Sunders sat in front of his desk, content with the test result. He didn’t find any trace of potion usage in Angor’s body, which meant the boy did not use such extra help to improve.

It was commonly agreed among wizards that anyone who became a wizard before the age of 30 was a top-class genius. Considering Angor’s speed, he was very likely to hit the milestone before 20. Only certain talents from Origin World showed such aptitude before.

However, it took more than fast training to become a wizard. Angor also needed the accumulation of knowledge and the proper use of such knowledge to build his own path toward the future. Sunders planned to ask Angor to study more after the garden challenge.

It was time for Angor to pick a main subject.

“Nicely done. A level-2 apprentice in half a year without consuming potions. The magazine said you once performed Mystery alchemy, no? I see you didn’t give up on the other ‘profession’.

“I see it now. You totally should travel around instead of staying inside Brute Cavern all day. It’s good for you that way.”

Sunders assumed that Angor ran into another great destiny. Nevertheless, the biggest cause for Angor’s growth should still lie within Singularity Dispersive Meditation. The one-of-a-kind channeling method had given Angor a miracle.

Sunders believed that Angor achieved so much by using a flawed singularity model. He wondered what other miracles would happen should Angor used the thirty-six-dimensional locator to create the ultimate form of axes of the universe.

Of course, Sunders never realized that Angor did so from the very start.

Angor felt proud after receiving Sunders’ praise. But then, he noticed he just heard something strange. “Um, magazine?”

Sunders chuckled at Angor’s silly reaction and tossed the newest edition of Precision Sky he picked up. “Read it. Is there anything untruthful?”

The first thing Angor saw on the paper was the highlighted news about Isabelle’s return.

It’s known by the public so soon?

Angor read on and saw that the article was actually more detailed than what he revealed that night. Either someone investigated, or Shadow told someone more information later.

He checked the title again: [The Sultan has Returned to the South! Will She Reshuffle All Forces in Wizarding World?!]

The title looks quite the bait. As for the author…

Your Stoney Granddaddy?

Angor quickly thought about Dual Sprite Talos.

“Oh? You’re more interested in this one?” Sunders noticed Angor wasn’t looking at the right page. “Huh… Isabelle’s back? As I remembered, she was half-step to legendary half a year before she left everyone’s view. If nothing held her back since then… she should be a legendary wizard now.”

Angor didn’t comment on Isabelle’s matter and kept reading the next title, which had the same style of an overstatement.

[A Mystery Alchemist is Processed into Someone’s Puppet?! It Turns Out to be—]

He managed to keep calm while reading the article. When he finished it, he finally failed to hold back a curse.

The first part of the page described how he was captured by Bogula in Silent Hill, while the latter half said how he was turned into Bogula’s puppet. There was another short story in the middle that claimed how he almost created a Mystery item.

The second part of the article was definitely forged.

However, the author used creative wording and fine assumptions that perfectly recreated how Bogula usually made his puppets. Maybe the writer did see it before.

Your Stoney Granddaddy.

Again.

Angor was almost sure that this writer was the strange sprite Talos who always talked to itself.

He never liked that shifty gatekeeper. He would have been fine if Talos opened the gate and let him out. This article that was full of assumptions only added to his negative impression of Talos.

“This is all nonsense.” He tossed the magazine back on the desk.

“But Bogula did take you away, right?” Sunders crossed his legs while fiddling his walking cane.

“Yeah… that part is right.”

“When I examined your body, I also found some new scars apart from your old ones. Bogula did it to you?”

“No…” Angor shook his head and wondered if he should tell the truth. “It’s Lady Isabella.”

“Isabella from Dark Castle? How did you mess with that woman?”

“Um, if you want to know, sir, I’ll have to start explaining from when I fell into Fairy World.”

“Fairy World? The tunnel in Midnight Sovereign sent you to Fairy World? Well, you can tell me about your journey if that’s no problem. Also, leave anything you don’t want to say. It’s fine.”

Angor nodded. He was going to tell his professor anyway.

“I ran into the rainbow dragonflies in the tunnel again. They gathered together like a huge cloud and saved me. By sitting on them, I left the plane passageway and entered Fairy World…”

Angor told Sunders everything about the abandoned underground village including how he met Akeso. He only kept the origin of Dodoro a secret.

He took Dodoro back in order to ask his professor to look into what helped Dodoro stay alive for a thousand years. Now that he did meet with Sunders, he thought otherwise.

In the end, Angor said that Akeso let him go peacefully. After that, he encountered a man named Dodoro who appeared to have lost his memory. Out of sympathy, he took Dodoro along.

After leaving Pocratee, it was the strange adventure in Water Grasse and in Dark Castle. Angor explained everything about them.

Sunders took a brief moment to collect important points in Angor’s story.

“There’s a dragonfly nest in the abandoned village? So it means there’s another exit that leads to Nightmare Realm inside the plane passageway you went through. There must be a reason for someone to open such a passage and leave it there for a thousand years.”

Sunders didn’t say it aloud for Angor to answer. He planned to check out the village once he finished Monkey’s request.

“Now, I didn’t think Isabelle has something to do with you. Judging from what you said about her… she didn’t come back for real. But it isn’t easy to segment someone’s soul and create an independent consciousness. Perhaps something happened to the real Isabelle that allowed her soul fragment to shake free from the host’s control.”