Warlock Apprentice

Three days later, Angor returned to the sky and saw Toby coming, who muttered something in disappointment.

“You never saw Torras? I see…”

His scout puppets had almost covered the entire island during their search. This meant Torras was indeed hiding in a secret spot they couldn’t see.

Angor looked at the moderate-sized mountains below and suddenly got an urge to dig them up completely. But he decided not to on second thought. If he did something so radically, he would definitely leave a lot of traces behind that would help others track him down later.

The search was not completely in vain, however, as one of the puppets suddenly sent him a signal.

By following the small river with lots of skeletons underwater, the puppet arrived at another mountain chain where it discovered a small lake area.

There was a ship parked at the edge of the lake.

It wasn’t a strange thing to find more ships since the “Ship’s Grave” wasn’t far, but this clue might be worth investigating because the puppet saw a pirate ship.

More importantly, the ship had the statue of a fierce-looking ox as its figurehead, and it had a pair of sharp, curved horns. According to The Shining Age of Silver, Torras’ ship was called “The Feral”, while the signature of the ship was exactly the same ox figure.

“It’s Torras’ ship?”

Angor ordered the remaining puppets to keep searching the area around them and headed to the pirate ship’s location together with Toby.

…

In an area veiled by complete darkness, Torras had toppled over on the ground and was mumbling nonsense as he felt chaotic memories and images haunting his mind.

He suddenly opened his eyes and felt better as he sensed his enemies leaving.

But his “normal” side showed a worried look when he noticed where Angor and the strange beast were heading to.

“Go, go, go—”

Torras slowly stood up on trembling legs while muttering a single word repeatedly.

An object abruptly began to shine with a golden light behind him, causing Torras to look that way.

It was a human skull.

For a brief moment, Torras’ eyes showed human sanity. But soon, the negative energy inside him took over again and suppressed his mind.

Without minding the glowing skull, he followed his primal instinct and walked away.

…

Angor had reached the pirate ship. The lake he was looking at was smaller than the inland lake that trapped The Black Lotus. However, this one had a canal that connected to the outer sea.

He took a moment to admire the great details shown by the ox figure. Those horns looked exactly the same as the ones on Torras’ helmet.

The scout avatar already searched the interior of the ship and did not detect Torras’ presence. Angor activated his flying boots and headed straight to the rear of the ship. He just saw something interesting from the vision sent by the puppet.

Below the towering rear mast was the ship’s wheel protected by a thin layer of fine oil. The helm didn’t look so different from ordinary wheels, but it had an object stuck in the middle of it.

A long, knightly sword.

It reminded him of the stories Jon used to tell him, which mentioned something like “a sword in the stone”. Although this one seemed to be locked with the ship’s steering wheel instead.

[Day 16, Month of Resuscitation, Gold Age 1348. Weather: fair

[Here be pirates! With my faithful knight sword in hand, I collected their heads as my bounty! One single swing was all I needed to end the life of their leader, who was cursing my name some kilometers away. That coward! And their treasures are all mine! To memorize my glory, I left my sword on the helm of their ship so everybody will see it and my name on it. As for the treasures… fine. I’ll take them all to my secret vault!]

Angor read this part of Lucas’ log and showed a strange look.

A sword in the wheel, treasures, pirates… All these keywords confused him greatly.

He was standing right in front of the “helm with a sword”, and he was indeed trying to find Lucas’ treasures. Did Lucas tell a prophecy again just like how he “predicted” the presence of the flowerbed, the Tree of Blessing, and island spirits?

Lucas lived during the Age of Gold, while Torras was from the Age of Silver, which meant several centuries apart. “Prophecy” was the only explanation that put these two men together.

And if Lucas “predicted” having treasures, were the treasures supposed to be someone else’s, like Torras?

This way of thinking made a lot of sense, as already proved by Lucas’ other stories. But why did Torras need treasures? This legendary pirate was beyond that at the end of his “career”.

There must be a reason why truth-finder wizards like “God of Seas” and “Basket Witch” were trying to get here. So were they after something else hidden on the island?

Toby suddenly called in the sky and drew his attention. He looked up and saw Toby flying around a red glowing spot above the ship.

“Finally… not going to hide anymore?” Angor floated to the same level and gazed at the divided face of Torras. Only one of Torras’ eyes was glowing now.

Instead of attacking Angor right away, Torras screamed madly like an angered animal as if he was trying to scare off his target without a fight.

Angor didn’t move an inch.

“Lea… ve… Leave…” Torras finally said something comprehensible.

Angor frowned. It seemed that Torras regained the ability to speak in these three days, but the negative energy of an undead soul was still in dominance.

Torras’ form was still stable at his current state. If for some reason, the amount of pure energy surpassed negative energy, Torras’ soul would quickly lose balance and scatter into energy particles that returned to earth. This could be prevented if something suddenly boosted Torras’ pure energy above 98% in a short amount of time. But that wouldn’t be easy.

“You want me to leave? Is this ship important to you?” Angor asked a question.

“Leave… I must… leave…”

Angor raised an eyebrow. It seemed he miscomprehended Torras’ intention. “Leaving” was probably Torras’ obsession before this man died.

Most undead souls had such obsessions. For example, when testing the white bullets at Phantom Island, the test subject kept mentioning “give my banyan flower back”. And after helping the soul recover some sanity, the soul also claimed that possessing banyan flower was his strongest wish before he died.

This meant Torras wanted to leave this place really bad.

It made sense though. The famous pirate who conquered the sea should definitely value his freedom. Being imprisoned in this filthy and lifeless place was the worst punishment.

As a pirate, Torras came here on a ship and would also leave on a ship. This was likely why he showed up in front of Angor, because he feared Angor was going to destroy his ship, his only way out.

Unfortunately, the abundant negative energy inside Torras easily seized command and forced Torras to become violent again, leaving Angor with no chance of scrutinizing for more information.

Angor evaded the attack and took out his gun.

Upon seeing this, Torras immediately turned tail and dived into the distance.

“Darn it, not this again…” Angor shook his head and moaned.

…

Somewhere thousands of kilometers away from Silver Palm Isle, a small, silver canoe was gliding across the water under the sun at an unbelievable speed.

There were two passengers on the boat. At the front stood a small boy with a pair of pointy canine teeth and black bat wings behind his back. He looked rather adorable if one didn’t mind the large locks and shackles hanging on his limbs that connected him to a wooden pole at the back of the boat by several really thick chains.

Beside the pole, a dark-skinned man wearing a tuxedo was lying on an armchair enjoying the sun. He had unbuttoned his suit just to get more sunlight on his muscled chest.

The boy steering the ship carefully glanced at the man and muttered all the curses he could think of under his breath.

“What are you doing, Darky?” the sunbathing man asked.

Darky jumped a little and wondered if he just spoke those dirty words out loud when he was supposed to express them in his mind.

“Nothing, Master.” Darky feigned a flattering smile. “I’m just wondering why this part is so empty. No reefs, no beasts, not anything.”

“Empty? Not really. You have no idea how much danger lurked below us behind the peaceful facade.”

Darky licked his fangs. “I’m just a lowly imp with a bad brain, Master. Sorry, but I don’t know what that means.”

“Really? Now that you mentioned it, we SHOULD be careful about the threats out there,” the suited man said while slowly looking down.

He saw Darky’s pointy imp tail had sunk into the bottom of the boat and was submerged in water. Strangely, the tail went through the boat without causing any damage as if it was designed to pass through obstacles.

“Now speak, what did you find?” The man glared at Darky, who looked pretty disappointed for exposing his small moves.

Darky remained quiet for a while until he felt the lock around his neck tightening dangerously before he finally spoke, “I saw a giant ray fish, Master. I think there’s a palace building on its back.”

“Oh, that must be Brigitte. Huh… so Sliv is here.”

As soon as he spoke those words, the mentioned ray fish slowly emerged from the surface of the water and quietly stayed afloat in their view.

“What are you doing here, Mariyasah?”