Warlock Apprentice

“The Duons… I think I saw them somewhere before,” said Keely. She continued after receiving a puzzled glance from Angor, “When you took me away from the Dugon settlement, I saw something hanging on the neck of that octopus. It looks like a Duon to me. But it’s too dark to see clearly… I think he got a fishtail while the rest of him is all human.”

A Duon was with the monster? Angor pondered. He was too focused on escaping, so he didn’t have time to look back.

“Are you sure about it?”

If what Keely said was correct, they might need to go back and face the octopus again. It was like diving back into a deadly trap from which they just barely escaped. Neither of them was sure it was a good choice.

Keely nodded firmly. “Suppose there are no real mermaids living here, and there is no mermaid that came here among us as a participant, I’m almost sure what I saw is a Duon.”

Angor tried to remember, but he didn’t remember seeing anyone that looked like a Duon in the crowds when he was waiting outside the garden. This meant Keely was probably right about her idea.

“Alright.” Angor quickly decided and said, “I’ll go and check. I don’t think we’ll have another chance to find a Duon later.”

He might not be able to defeat the octopus, but it wouldn’t be so hard to grab an individual off its body. The octopus was as powerful as a high-level apprentice, and Shadow was around the same level when the man fought with Angor. Angor believed he had a pretty good chance at this.

Usually, monsters possessed deadlier abilities and instincts compared to humans, and it wasn’t a good choice to fight an octopus underwater. However, since he didn’t need to kill the monster, Angor decided to do it anyway.

As long as the Duon riding the octopus wasn’t a wizard-level being, he was confident in seizing the “Meraid’s Sword” from it.

“I’ll go with you. One of us will distract the monster while the other one looks for the sword,” Keely said without a second thought.

She knew Angor was right about how they had to seize the only possible opportunity of acquiring the key to their exit as it might be their only chance of survival.

Angor had no problem accepting her offer to help. After making a simple plan, they left the watchtower and headed into the depth of the sea trench again.

Soon, they reached the settlement barrier. However, the giant octopus was no longer here.

“It must have left,” Angor said as he observed the traces left by the monster. The houses were already broken and tattered earlier, but now they were about to fall flat to the ground. “Let’s keep going. Maybe its nest isn’t far.”

They swam for over an hour without finding anything.

“Did it leave the trench already?”

As they wondered about such a question, a pair of glowing green eyes opened up from above them.

It vanished before Angor and Keely were able to notice it.

The owner of the eyes carefully approached them. It planned to take down one of them and fight the other one afterward.

But before it could get close enough, another pair of green spots brightened up in Keely’s arm.

“Meoarrrrw!”

Angor and Keely immediately looked up and saw the ambusher.

“That’s the same thing I fought in the settlement!” Angor quickly recognized the reptile-like sea monster.

This one was a little bigger than the one he killed earlier. Its size didn’t seem to help it develop better intelligence. Instead of retreating and waiting for another chance, the monster charged at the already alerted prey with its maw wide open.

Angor was pretty happy about seeing another one of these strange creatures. He still had some doubts as to how the earthquake and raging sea torrent were created. If he managed to kill this one without causing more natural disasters, he could be sure that the giant octopus was the culprit.

With that in mind, he quickly placed a number of illusion nodes around.

Last time, he didn’t have enough time to react and allowed the monster to attack him directly. But now, the monster was still pretty far away from them.

Just as Angor was enjoying the different ideas about how to torture the monster with illusions, a freezing ember swept past his face and hit the incoming creature head-on.

In the next second, the monster caught blue fire all over its body before it turned into an ice sculpture and dropped toward the bottom of the sea.

Angor’s hand was still lifted because he was about to activate his illusion earlier, but now… He didn’t know what to say.

“Let’s go,” Keely said while she glanced at him. It was as if she were complaining about Angor’s unnecessary preparations while they could simply solve the problem with violence.

Angor sighed and discarded his magic.

Before they could keep moving, however, something else came upon them.

They looked up again as a familiar booming noise approached their position.

A giant shadow slowly entered their view and grew bigger as they watched. Just like last time, it created deadly currents and sand curtains that blocked their views.

They couldn’t see what was coming, but they knew one thing down here with such an overwhelming aura.

Back in the settlement, most of the octopus’ body was hidden behind the darkness, so Angor didn’t have a clear idea about its size. But this time, the monster had presented its full magnitude in their views.

It was as big as a common mountain. Angor and Keely felt helpless simply by looking at it.

Its black skin allowed it to blend in with the surroundings. Only a pair of giant, pale-white eyeballs displayed the horrific presence of the monster.

Soon, the movement of the water around them was dangerously disturbed. Without giving them any time to react, the octopus launched its attacks by flailing its tentacles.

Angor kicked the dirt beneath him to jump out of the way and nodded to Keely, who returned the gesture as they proceeded with their plan.

Keely would be the distraction, while Angor would eject his soul and use his speed to scout around the monster’s neck.

Before getting to it, Angor tossed a scroll to Keely. “This is Aster Barrier. Use it in a pinch.”

Keely’s job was a lot more dangerous, so Angor decided to lend her the defensive magic scroll that he received from Devildare.

The Aster Barrier could help someone deflect wizard-level attacks until the scroll exhausted its energy. Angor already used the scroll twice, but it still had enough power left to fend off something weaker than an actual wizard.

While they both moved, Luna ran off to somewhere safe. It then dug a small hole in the sand and hid inside.

Keely was unleashing embers of different colors from her hands—white ones, purple ones, and even black ones, but never the commonly seen yellow fire.

According to her teacher, Keely studied a special fire element called the Inferno. People would believe that a Fire Elementalist wouldn’t do well in water, but what Keely used wasn’t affected by the environment. Her fire was something that did not exist under or affected by common rules.

A great number of embers had surrounded the octopus, which made the whole sight look as if a mountain forest had caught fire.

Taking the chance, Angor activated Infinite Reticence, ejected his soul, and quickly headed to the monster’s neck.

The monster’s tentacles would either turn to ice or shatter to pieces upon touching Keely’s embers, and it seemed that the damage was irreversible. The creature was howling in pain as it lost many of its limbs.

After learning the lesson, the octopus began creating more water currents to send the embers away instead of confronting them.

When it felt safe enough, the monster suddenly released a strange frequency, and thereafter, many green, glowing dots appeared around the battlefield.

Over a hundred reptilian sea monsters just arrived.

Angor saw what was going on and realized that the octopus was controlling the sea monsters. This would explain why the octopus always managed to find them when a reptile was killed.

Some of the reptiles went to bother Keely, while the rest of them moved to Angor’s position.

Angor thought he was safe under the effect of Infinite Reticence. However, the octopus soon discovered the abnormal water currents created by Angor’s movement and ordered the reptiles to catch him.

Angor saw what was coming in time and bolted away from their enclosing circle. When he saw the trail of bubbles that he left behind, he quickly realized how he was discovered by them.

Of course, sea creatures were all sensitive to the flow of water. They could easily sense where he was even if he didn’t move too much.

And since his stealth tactic wasn’t working, Angor simply shot himself toward his target without bothering to hide. He believed that the reptiles wouldn’t be able to catch up with his gravity-enhanced speed.