Warlock Apprentice

Angor had returned to The Tributary.

Even though he was allowed to remain at Phantom Island, in order to finish Greya’s requested illusion item before her arrival at Brute Cavern, Angor had to use his rented lab as it had better equipment compared to what Phantom Island could offer.

He had spent two days in his lab watching movies, but not doing alchemy.

Fusing illusions into items was a very complicated task to other alchemists, but not to Angor, who was both an alchemist and an illusionist.

He was simply trying to find out which illusion to present to Greya.

While in Dark Castle, Greya asked him to create an “illusionary Toby” that she could interact with. To do this, Angor recreated the experience from when he and Toby traveled to Twilight Town. He then put Greya into the first-person point of view as well as adding some elements of the Nightmare Realm into the illusion.

This time, however, Greya did not give him a “subject” to work on. Before leaving Floating Mech City, Greya told him to make a “creative” illusion and “put something that is Nightmare Realm-ish” in it.

The second requirement wasn’t hard since Angor was probably the only alchemist in the south who knew how to apply the ambiance of the Nightmare Realm on something.

But creativity? That was too vague.

Creating illusions, even if with some fixed preconditions, already required a lot of creativity and imagination.

Angor was stumped.

Greya’s request was a lot harder than Lady Mirror’s “filthy but practical” one. And when thinking about how he still needed to work on another illusion item for Lady Mirror, Angor felt a huge headache.

Thankfully, Lady Mirror gave him a lot of time for this. He only needed to worry about Greya’s one for now.

Whenever he needed new ideas, he would immediately refer to his hologram tablet that contained endless knowledge about an entire foreign civilization.

People from Earth had ceaselessly created literature related to supernatural powers even though they did not have such powers in their real lives. Of course, Jon saved a lot of relevant movies and stories on his tablet.

Angor took out his tablet and wanted to find out how people from Earth fantasied about such things.

As he watched more movies, his view of a scholar gradually became that of a dedicated movie lover.

Each of the movies presented him with a brand new world that provided new concepts and ideals. Even though they couldn’t wield magic, people from Earth had broader minds when creating fancy content.

Angor, as a supernatural himself, felt greatly inspired after seeing the contribution made by different people from differently-developed regions as well as their various ideas of the imaginary world.

After watching about twenty movies, he noticed that all of them contained elements of religion. He certainly did not wish to mention anything like that in his illusions since Greya would probably mock the silly idea.

Religions were born when uncivilized people either feared or respected the unknown, and wizards only sought absolute truth in everything. They knew that religions had the tendency to end up as tools for manipulating people’s minds.

There was no way Angor would provide such an unproductive “ingredient” to a truth-finder witch.

Still, the movies provided him with a lot of perceptions and insights. When he had watched enough movies, he turned off the tablet and wondered whether he should copy one of the fantasy worlds he saw in the movies.

But he quickly gave up this idea—doing so would be too laborious, and no matter how well he constructed the world, most of his efforts would be pointless as it would remain as illusions.

This time, he decided to base his creation on his experience again by creating a place he was familiar with, such as Witch’s Town or Nether City.

As for the details in the area… copying elements from the movies would work well.

He did not wish to add a “main story” this time since not everyone enjoyed being led by the nose. The “ear stud” he gave Greya used such a story because Greya loved spending time with Toby. But she did not ask for something like that again.

Angor decided to create a “sandbox” illusion that would allow people to explore freely.

He was still worried that the elements from the movies might not satisfy Greya’s requirement for “creativity”. The witch was probably asking for something that could mentally satisfy her instead of mere beautiful sights.

While they were talking in Sunders’ manor in Floating Mech City, Greya mentioned that the last illusion helped her “learn something”.

But at my current level, what can I possibly teach a truth-finder?

Angor had no idea. His only option was to proceed with what he had at this moment.

…

As usual, he first needed to determine the material to be used and the general design of the item. This wasn’t so hard—he somehow knew Greya’s taste, telling from how she always used heavy face powders and particularly bright lip colors.

The item needed to look like something used by a moneyed lady who had a terrible sense of beauty.

Angor would admit that the design in his mind was pretty awful. Yet he’d still do it because it might just suit Greya’s style.

One couldn’t just put an accessory that looked too moderate on someone with a large violet skirt and dark-red lips anyway.

With pen and paper in hand, he quickly got to his first task.

It wasn’t long before he heard Toby calling from outside his door. The hasty chirping suggested that Toby needed something.

He opened the door and was immediately welcomed by a small figure flying joyfully around his head.

“Need something?” Angor returned to his desk and drew an unfinished line on his draft.

Toby waved his wings around and took out a piece of paper from his Snowy Feather.

“Tweet ta tweet!”

“Professor sent a message?”

While Angor spent his days in his lab, Toby would wander freely outside. The bird somehow befriended Iron Granny and would often visit the old woman. After a while, Iron Granny even gave Toby a “passport” for The Tributary.

It wasn’t a passport that allowed Toby to use any of the labs. It was one that gave him free access to and fro The Tributary.

Since Toby now possessed passports for both The Tributary and Phantom Island, Angor wasn’t surprised to see his partner becoming Sunders’ carrier pigeon.

“Did Lady Greya arrive already?”

Toby shook his tiny head. Toby did wish to see Greya, but he was also anxious about Greya’s arrival because of the “training” he received from her not long ago.

Angor wondered what else could possibly happen and unfolded the paper.

The characters that were written on the paper suddenly became alive like tadpoles. They slowly left the surface of the paper and gathered in the air. The image of Sunders was soon projected in Angor’s lab room.

Telling from the background, Sunders created the message in his study.

“Angor. Do you remember a monster fox with a harp? It showed up again.”

…

Angor put away the message and hurried to leave The Tributary with Toby so that he could head to Phantom Island on his Gondola as fast as possible.

It seemed that “Fox the Harper” and “Froggy the Aria Singer” had returned after escaping from Midnight Sovereign a year ago. They had shown up at Sleepless City, which was part of the Evernight Kingdom, a place that Angor and Sunders visited not long ago.

And like always, they brought quite a disaster with them by coating the outer section of Sleepless City under impenetrable darkness. Apart from a group of wizards who managed to escape by forcing a plane passageway into existence, the other residents in the city were all trapped.

Last time, they turned Midnight Sovereign into a mist-covered, parasite-infested hell. Because Midnight Sovereign was mainly a city of mortals, and Twilight Well was an ordinary wizard market with only a few powerful wizards there at that time, the incident was never considered something too serious.

However, Sleepless City was a genuine wizard organization who owned a good number of influential wizards.

The monsters assaulted an organization under board daylight!

Angor didn’t really care about this matter—Fox and Froggy could do whatever they liked as long as they did not come and bother him.

Even right at this moment, he knew there was a “dragonfly nest” in Pocratee that might release all kinds of horror into Fairy World. And they were free to do so, for all he cared.

Unfortunately, things were a lot more complicated now. Sunders’ message just told him that Greya was among the trapped victims.