Warlock Apprentice

Angor came back and saw Keely diligently guarding his body.

“You done?”

“Yeah,” Angor mumbled as he tossed Yethew’s body on the ground before returning to his own body. “Thanks.”

Keely quietly walked away and returned to Luna. It seemed that the kitten wasn’t afraid of poison since it was still happily playing with Yethew’s bug.

Freud’s soul saw Yethew’s broken corpse, and suddenly, he began to laugh madly. He was still crying at the same time, but he was no longer crying tears of blood.

His bloodshot eyes slowly returned to normal while the black aura around him gradually disappeared as he enjoyed his sweet revenge.

It took him some time to calm down. After that, Freud bowed and thanked Angor, somewhat bashfully.

“I mean, thanks. I’ll stick to my word; as long as you take me away from this hellhole, I’ll take you to that item I mentioned.”

“Of course.” Angor nodded.

Keely grew curious and sent Angor a voice transmission, “Does he really have something like that?”

Keely didn’t join the fight earlier, but Angor did feel grateful since her kitten helped him avoid Yethew’s deadly trap. He had no problem explaining this one to Keely.

“I’m not sure about his words, but what he said sounded solid enough.”

“So what exactly did he say?”

“You ever heard of ‘Whelk of The Dreaming Coast’?”

Keely pondered. “Yeah, something deemed as the ‘most useless Mystery item’ according to magazines. It pulls objects into dreams regardless of their levels, if I remember right.”

“Yup, that’s the thing. It sold for ten thousand crystals during an auction held in the floating city thirty years ago. It has something to do with Freud’s title, ‘Dream Reader’, so I think Freud wasn’t lying about it.”

“I see…” Keely quickly lost interest.

This item only worked on none-lifeform objects. People might use this thing to sleep better, and that was about it. Nothing else.

Angor didn’t have any use for the item either, but he believed he could investigate it to learn about Mystery energy. And according to Greya, every Mystery item existed for a reason, which might not have been discovered by its user yet. He hoped he could figure out the true effect of the whelk. However, this was very unlikely.

As they talked, something changed on Yethew’s corpse. Slowly, Yethew’s soul crawled into their view.

Yethew’s first reaction was to curse Angor using the worst words he could find. But when he saw Angor looking his way, he realized he was just killed by Angor and trembled in fear. In the next second, he switched his attitude and begged for mercy. He even promised that he would give everything he had to Angor as long as Angor could take his soul away from here as well.

Angor paid no attention to Yethew’s words. It was Keely who responded by sending a violet ember toward Yethew’s direction because she grew so impatient at the man’s rambling.

The small ember floated to Yethew slowly. It didn’t seem so dangerous, but to Yethew, he felt as if something that was as heavy as a mountain was trapping his soul, causing him to be unable to even lift a finger.

Angor saw Yethew’s soul remaining still before the ember ignited him like a lit match that fell into a pot of oil.

The now greater fire burned brightly for a brief moment before it died down, along with Yethew’s painful scream. What remained of his essence would soon get burned away.

Freud also shivered a little while watching everything that was happening. As a soul, he knew what the purple ember meant. He was glad he did not try to annoy Keely with his vengeful words earlier.

Again, Angor didn’t care about what happened to Yethew. He already planned to vanquish Yethew’s soul once and for all, and Keely just saved him a lot of time.

Before Yethew’s soul could fully disappear, a guidance beam invisible to human eyes covered up both Freud and Yethew.

Yethew didn’t have any strength left to resist, so his soul was taken away by the strange beam instantly.

Just as Angor saw it and wondered what was happening, Freud caught his attention.

“Something is pulling me into the void!” Freud was flailing his arms helplessly while his soul slowly floated upward.

“Huh? There’s something that’s drawing people’s souls…” Angor and Keely couldn’t see the strange force, but they quickly realized what was going on.

Angor caught up with Freud and took out a tiny, violet flower from his bracelet.

“Don’t resist. I’ll put your soul inside the Soul Floret.”

Left with no choice, Freud nodded and relaxed.

Now, both the force of guidance and Angor’s flower were trying to pull Freud. The former was slowly winning out as it dragged Freud’s soul out of Angor’s reach.

Angor chanted Spirit Mantra and ejected his soul without a second thought.

He didn’t find the strange light beam, nor did he care where it was. He did so because the sequence of gravity could also affect other souls.

He applied gravity force and pushed Freud toward his Soul Floret, which finally helped him win the tug-of-war.

While yanked by Angor’s gravity momentum, Freud sank inside the violet flower.

When Freud disappeared into the Soul Floret, the strange guidance light retreated to somewhere unknown.

Angor made sure Freud was safe in his item before returning to his body.

“Did you see what was taking him away?” Keely joined him while asking.

Angor shook his head.

“So it only attracts souls of dead ones, but not those whose bodies are still breathing,” Keely said with a sigh. “I think the business they’re pulling is more troublesome than what we expected.”

…

Meanwhile, inside an underground chamber near the location of the purification garden.

Two individuals—one man and a woman—were sitting in front of a water pool fully covered behind white vapor. The woman sitting on the right suddenly retracted her hand from the pool and let out a “huh”.

“What’s the problem, Signey?” the man to the left asked in a throaty tone.

“Mister Conor, someone just took a soul away when it should be following our Guidance Light.”

Conor nodded and looked back at the water pool.

“It’s fine, just a common soul. Keep watching the Fountain of Souls and forget what just happened.”

“Understood, sir.”

…

Angor knew what Keely meant. There was no doubt that the Floating Mech City was collecting people’s souls.

He didn’t know what they planned by doing so, nor did he want to know. It probably wasn’t something he should meddle with.

After putting his curiosity behind, Angor picked up his Soul Floret.

Freud had turned into a miniature figure who was now sitting in the center of the blossom while enjoying the gentle aura released by the plant, which helped him heal his wounds caused by the forceful dragging earlier.

The Soul Floret was a leftover material that Angor used to craft his Prelude to Rebirth. It was used for stabilizing soul energy and had a secondary effect of keeping souls safe for a short period of time.

He didn’t have any other methods to keep Freud’s soul, so he needed to rely on the flower. This way, he could maintain Freud’s soul in an intact form for about half a month.

“You stay there for the moment. I’ll let you go once I get out of the garden.”

Freud sensed the remains of his concerns already gone. “Thank you, Mister Padt.”

“Don’t mention it. Equivalent exchange, remember?”

Angor said and walked to Yethew’s body next. He searched and managed to scavenge something from it—a one-use space capsule, a fine-looking bag, and a single Duon scale.

The capsule contained some basic healing items and necessities that didn’t draw much of his attention.

The bag was giving out energy ripples, which meant there should be an alchemy item inside.

Angor could see that whatever was in there was a product of synthesis. But without Narda’s Vision spell, he couldn’t tell the exact nature of it.

And he wasn’t going to open the bag recklessly. Yethew was obviously a bug-lover. Only the gods knew whether there were some sort of vicious biting imps in there.

“Do you know what this is?” Angor showed the bag to Freud. Since Freud was all covered up by the flower’s petals, Angor had to move the bag really close for Freud to see.

“It’s… a Magic Digger Sac, made from the nest of a certain insect called the Magic Digger Queen. But it can only help people to carry bugs. Yethew has a lot of bugs on him, either kept inside his body or on his skin. I don’t think there are many bugs in this sac, though.”

Freud also told him that one could use spirit feelers to check what was inside the sac. Angor tried and didn’t find a single bug. There were only the eggs of something he didn’t know.

After making sure the item wasn’t harmful, he asked Keely if she wanted to have it. Since Keely more or less helped with the battle, Angor guessed he should at least give her something.

But Keely wasn’t interested in bug stuff. She chose to pick some of Yethew’s healing potions instead. “I’ll take these. You can keep the… whatever that is.”

Angor nodded. Since he had prepared a lot of potions before coming here, he didn’t need extra potions.

After putting away his loot, he looked at the scale left by Yethew.