Warlock Apprentice

“That must be why he managed to dodge our attacks. He was born with an ability that works like Void Shift,” said Prome as he felt a little jealous. “Such a gift… If he can become a wizard, the ability means an extra formal spell. A Quickened Spell, at that, which didn’t cost him anything to learn.”

Angor quickly thought about someone else who possessed a “natural ability”, Dripping River.

The woman knew how to change the property of water by nature. The ability was as powerful as what the thief just showed them. Maybe even more useful. Besides, Dripping River was already a talent among wizards. What she could achieve in the future was unpredictable.

“Let’s go. Thank goodness we have our money back, or I’m so shredding him to pieces. I don’t care if he’s a kid or old man or pregnant,” Dave scoffed. He felt like giving the kid several hard slaps when thinking about how he almost lost all his precious possessions.

Prome considered for a while and picked the frozen body of the kid up.

“Are you taking him away, Master?” Dave wondered.

Prome nodded. “A Phantom Servant is a born slave for wizards. If he’s going to stay as a thief, he might as well come with me. I might gift him to another wizard or keep him with me. Either way, he’d have a better life.”

In truth, Prome was thinking about doing experiments on the kid to learn something about that natural ability. At the very least, he could extract the kid’s bloodline and earn a good fortune out of it.

He would never tell that to anyone though. Prome still wanted to give Angor a good impression.

And Angor trusted Prome’s words just fine. Angor did felt it weird, but he then convinced himself that being someone’s slave was still better than thievery. The thief was still young, and he had plenty of time to mend his ways.

Prome took the Phantom Servant child in his arms. Then they continued walking toward Twilight Well.

Not long after they had left, another Phantom Servant wearing elegant attire appeared with a group of hired hands.

The leader of them sniffed the air. “That brat was here just a moment ago… He couldn’t have gone far-acho!” He sneezed all of a sudden. “Why is it so cold here?”

One of the thugs spoke up, “Please check under you, Master.”

The Phantom Servant had his head high in the air in an arrogant manner, so he never looked at what was on the ground.

“Oh shit, why is this place frozen? Wait… so a wizard was here! Dang it, did the wizard take that brat away?”

He quickly ordered his men to look around. There was only one person left with him, the one that reminded him to look at the ground.

Slap!

The Phantom Servant nobleman hit the face of his follower.

“Did you mean I was blind just now?”

“I-I didn’t, Master,” said the thug in a low voice as he put a hand on his face.

“Humph!” The noble walked away. “I’ll let it pass this time. Mock me again and you’ll be dead!”

“But where are you going, Master?”

“To report to my father. It’s about the deal with Lady Lotus. I want nothing to go wrong.” The voice of the phantom noble already went far.

“But, Master!” The lackey called again.

“What is it this time?? You still not done?”

The lackey gulped and could not express his mind for some reason.

The noble humped again and turned to leave. However, he only got several steps before he tripped and fell down face-first.

“I want to remind you to check the floor again… you’re walking toward the ice, sir.”

…

“We’re here,” Prome spoke and pointed to a white wall in front of them.

They were now standing at the dead end of a narrow street. There were junks piled high up nearby, which almost reached the skywalk. A white wall blocked their path, behind which stood a giant, square-shaped steel building.

“Is that Twilight Well?” Angor looked toward the other side of the wall.

Dave shook his head. “The wall is our entrance. Most wizard markets do not stay in broad daylight. They are usually inside special dimensions. I think it’s only a theater over that wall.”

“The Enchanting Theater. A… beautiful place,” Prome added with a mysterious smile.

Enchanting Theater? Angor looked at the giant building again.

“Let’s just say that they put on pretty, how do I put it… yeah, ‘pretty’ shows. I think you two are at the right age now, so you can check the place out when you have time. For now, let’s go to Twilight Well. I really need to find that anti-undead weapon,” said Prome as he walked to the wall and explained to Angor. “Use your spirit feelers to touch the wall and you’ll see the entrance.”

Prome moved ahead and disappeared into the wall.

“I think there’s an illusion on it…” Angor pondered and followed behind Dave.

Angor walked through the wall and found himself coming into a bustling street.

People here all dressed in different styles although there was something common; they all displayed faint mana ripples around them as a warning for potential offenders. The shops along the street were all wizardry shops. Angor saw a stand selling magical plants to his left, which had a sign he could not read. On the right was another shop whose door was covered by a black curtain. The name of the shop read “Curious Grocery”. To their front was a three-way junction, where another building called “Lady’s Juice” stood. A small sign indicated that the shop was run by the branch of an organization called “The Pleasure House”.

Every single shop had magic array shining around it to avoid being peeked upon from outside as well as attract interested customers.

As they moved further, Angor noticed that the whole place shared a similar style with Midnight Sovereign—the streets were narrow and congested, so they could not see very far. Only the occasional cooking smokes suggested there might be dining spots nearby.

Every now and then, they would run into a well which released a faint red light of the color of dusk. Prome told Angor that the wells were branching nodes of a large-scale magic array in Twilight Well, which were used to monitor the market. There were several wizard clans behind the management of Twilight Well who were responsible to maintain order in the place.

Prome took them into a structure whose door had the emblem of a giant tree on it.

“This is an operational base of Brute Cavern. We can find rooms in here for free with our bone cards. Ordinary rooms, of course. If you pay money, you can rent a small compound protected by magic arrays,” Prome explained to Angor while smiling. “I’ve rented such one over here since I often need to come here to pick up goods. We’re only staying for a couple of days. You can come with me so you don’t have to get another room.”

Angor pondered and agreed. He had no reason to refuse Prome’s hospitality.

Prome smiled bigger. “Just about right. I’ve taken some alchemy notes these days. We can exchange something useful about what we learned.”

Angor was glad to comply. Prome did not seem interested in enchantment at all, while Angor intended to study synthesis in the future. Here, “exchange ideas” basically meant to learn something from Prome, and Angor would not give up such a great opportunity.

Angor already knew why Prome acted so friendly around him. He did not mind it though. He found an exchange of pure benefit to be better than emotional communication. Besides, Prome once saved his life, and he meant to remember it even if Prome had his personal reasons.

Prome’s compound was not big. It was a private area of a similar size to Angor’s villa. There was also a large basement which was used as a stockpile area by Prome. However, there were only less-important materials here. Prome already sent the valuable ones back to Brute Cavern.

“Sigh… I hope I have space storage so I can get these things back quickly instead of running back and forth,” said Prome. “If you find anything you need, just take it, so I have less stuff to worry about.”

“I’ll be glad to,” said Angor with a smile.

“Good. Take as much as you can carry. All of them, if you really can.” Prome waved an arm and acted all rich.

“I don’t really need expensive items. Some Echo Flowers will do.”

An Echo Flower was pretty cheap material, and Angor would not feel shameful if he took something like that for free.

“Echo Flower? I… am afraid I don’t have those here.” Prome was a bit embarrassed. “There aren’t many things you can do with them, and they can only record a certain frequency range. You can’t create sound weapons with those. The most common thing that requires the use of an Echo Flower is a transmitter.”

“I see. I think I’ll check at the other shops later,” Angor replied.

With their accommodation settled, Prome hurried away to search for his weapon. Angor planned to look around as well. But then, he realized that it was too late for the day, and he only slept briefly on the airship, so he decided to lay his head down for now.

Angor and Dave shared two rooms on the second floor. When going back to his room, Angor saw Dave caring for the Phantom Servant child.

“Ohh, I see you’re pretty soft on the inside,” Angor leaned on Dave’s door and joked.

Dave revealed a sad face. “I didn’t want this! Master asked me to, so the kid doesn’t die of cold.”

“Give him something to stay warm and leave him there. Do you really need to stay at his side at all times?”

“Because of that weird ability of his. I’m worried that he might escape the moment he finds a chance.” Dave was really frustrated. It would be a real joke if an apprentice wizard let a mortal kid slip under his nose.

“I see. Here, I’ll help you,” Angor walked inside the room and skillfully deployed a simple illusion.

The scenery in the room began to flip upside-down.

Dave was looking at Angor in the meantime, and he was still quite shocked when the illusion was made. It felt as if he was doing a handstand in the room.

“Is that even a basic illusion? I don’t feel pressure in my head, or I’d easily fall for that,” Dave exclaimed.

“It is. I simply did something to trick your sense of direction. If that kid wakes up now, he’d never leave this room when he can’t tell up from down.”

“Trick my sense of direction? A basic illusion?? That’s not what I read from the books.”

Angor knuckled at his head and chuckled. “I gained many new ideas recently so I know how to make interesting things work.”

Next, Angor moved to Dave to help him escape from the illusion. However, Dave refused.

“Wait, I’ll try to get out on my own. I mean, Melodious Illusion’s just a level-0 cantrip!” Dave seemed unconvinced.

“Suit yourself then,” Angor yawned. “I’ll hit the bed now. That was a lot of traveling today.”