Warlock Apprentice

Chapter 313: Not Human?

With his presence reduced, Angor successfully traveled through Tree Spirit Garden and Apprentice Town 8 without arousing any attention.

He saw the crowd around his house getting bigger. Still, none of the people saw him coming.

He might increase his mana usage and make himself completely invisible. But the observers could still see him opening the gate, which could possibly give out his special item. There weren’t many cantrips that hid human bodies. Infinite Reticence was something powerful enough to trick both the eyes and spiritual detections.

Considering Angor’s level of strength, people could easily determine that he possessed a special alchemy item.

After some consideration, he decided to enter his house openly.

Before he did though, he first headed to another yard several hundred meters away from his villa.

The yard was an outdoor training ground full of tools used by Bloodline Wizards. Under the sunlight, Nausica was performing different maneuvers while carrying her knight sword in her left hand. Mana ripples were flowing about her body as they followed her movements.

Angor stood outside the door and watched for a while. Due to the concealing effect of his item, even though Nausica’s eyes scanned past his location several times, she never actually noticed him.

He waited until Nausica took a rest before he knocked on the yard door.

The effect that was protecting Angor wavered as he created the knocking noise. Nausica looked at the source of the sound. Probably because of the great contrast, Angor’s presence was now more obvious in her eyes.

She walked to the door. “When did you start watching? I didn’t notice you were here.”

Angor only smiled. “I got too many stalkers recently, so I used a small trick to cut my… sense of existence.”

There were tons of different wizardry tricks, so Nausica thought that Angor used a cantrip that she didn’t know. “There have been fewer apprentices after your visit last time. But they sent more mortals now.”

They entered Nausica’s house while chatting.

Angor came into Nausica house for the first time. And as he expected, there was nothing else apart from the default furniture that came with the house. Nausica’s ultimate goal was immortality, and she paid no effort to improve her comfort.

After asking Toby to take it easy somewhere nearby, Angor put up a serious look. “I’m done with my jobs, and it’s time for us to talk about your mechanical arm.”

Starting from Nausica’s current body condition, Angor noted down a series of details about her, including her injuries, electromyography, magic sensitivity, and vein capacity. Even her spiritual power, brainwave, and voice frequency were taken into consideration.

Many of these were private information. There were many curses used by certain wizards which harmed or even killed people by using their blood, hair, fingernail, or scraps of skin. Angor recorded so many details that anyone with the wrong intentions might use such information to annihilate Nausica.

Nausica trusted Angor enough to answer everything she could. She didn’t question Angor’s purpose at all. She had no idea what did her brainwave or voice have to do with the man-made arm, but she still told them to Angor.

Angor was quite relieved when Nausica’s cooperated with him. It was very difficult to explain some of his theories to someone who didn’t have the right knowledge, and Nausica just saved him much effort.

After he learned all he needed, Angor carefully read through his note and tore the paper to pieces.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got them in my brain. No one will learn about them unless they crack up my head.”

Nausica chuckled. “I believe you.”

Getting the information was Angor’s main task for coming here today. There was another trivial matter that he had to do.

Or not really trivial, since it might prove to be important to women.

They needed to determine the look of the arm.

He reserved enough space on his draft paper and handed it to Nausica. As long as it didn’t break the limit of his design, she could decide on the appearance of the arm.

“You… want me to create the picture? I mean, do you really think I can give you anything serviceable at all?”

Angor drew a boundary line around his design. “Leave everything I marked out in place and do whatever you wish with the rest. It’s your own arm, and it must suit your taste.”

“But it’s pointless if I can’t use it.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll help you modify it in the end.”

Nausica blew out a smoke ring as she considered about it. “Alright. I used to be a pretty famous painter on Blackberry Waters… I provided our pirate flag. I guess I’ll let our master alchemist evaluate my skills.”

She put down her pipe and took out a black hairband to constrain her long hair into a ponytail so that it wouldn’t affect her painting. Next, she started drawing the “right arm” in her mind.

While she did her work, Angor stayed aside to arrange the data he collected so that he could apply the data to Nausica’s sketch.

“It’s done,” Nausica said as she put down her pen a moment later.

Angor took the paper with a smile. But that smile quickly turned stiff when he saw the random black lines snaking around on the surface of the paper.

There was a slim main body, and small… hooks, at the end of it. The first thing that came to Angor’s mind was that Nausica just painted a “paramecium”.

“This is the mark of Blackberry. I want this one to keep reminding me not to forget about my past,” Nausica explained while Angor “admired” her picture.

Blackberry? This is not some electric coil?

Angor thought in his mind.

“This, is the mark of Brute Cavern, which means the present.”

The sigil of Brute Cavern was a lump of burning flame, while Nausica presented it by using a straight line smooth enough to be used as a ruler.

“This hook, is both a close-range weapon and a concealed throwing weapon. It means the future.”

“The past, the present, and future…” Angor mumbled. “Neat idea. But… you sure you are a ‘famous painter’ back at your place?”

“Yeah, my men all said ‘ayyy ya genius!’ when they saw my work. It’s not my cup of tea, but I guess I’m pretty good at it?”

“Um, yeah… just, you might need to get some proper ideas about what is ‘beautiful’.”

“Are you saying I’m actually bad?” Nausica frowned.

“Aren’t you a big pirate who dominated the sea? Then you must have many valuable paintings lying in your treasure vault. You did a pretty good job when admiring the painting hanging in my room.”

“Well, that was an ordinary painting in your room, while what I just did is impressionism.”

Angor groaned and took back the drawing pen from the “genius painter”. “Okay, I get your idea. Past, present, and future, right? I’ll work based on it. And sorry, but I really can’t comprehend your ‘impressionism’ masterpiece.”

Nausica picked up her pipe again and lit it. “‘Kay, I’ll leave it to you.”

Since they had time, they invited Sailum and went to the Bartterfly Pub to enjoy a good meal together.

At night, Angor squeezed across dense crowds and managed to get back to his house. Nausica’s arm wasn’t an urgent matter. He planned to spend some time to arrange his things. Anything that was relatively valuable or commonly used would go into his bracelet.

His yard was protected by runes, but they wouldn’t prevent determined intruders from stealing from his house.

It was just to be safe.

When he was almost done collecting everything, including the secret stash inside his soundproof room, he took Toby and left his house again. He was soon surrounded by people. Most of them were mortals, and he couldn’t really do anything to them.

“I won’t take any orders for now. Go back.”

He cast a small-scale Acoustic Illusion, which convinced the mortals that he suddenly disappeared. However, the apprentices could easily see through the illusion.

By the time they broke the illusion nodes, Angor already activated his “isolation” effect and walked away from the crowd.

…

“He’s in Apprentice Town 1?” Angor followed Toby’s instructions and found himself walking toward the other end of the Cave Field. “You sure your little partner is here?”

As he recalled, there were only senior apprentices who were many years ahead of him living there.

Toby shook his head and pointed to the woods outside the town.

The woods were connected to a series of mountains that stretched hundreds of kilometers far. No humans would come here—there were only birds and beasts.

“Someone lives inside the mountains?” Angor asked, puzzled.

Toby nodded, then shook his head again. “Tweet, tweet!”

Angor comprehended Toby’s bird language and widened his eyes. “You mean your partner is not human? An animal? Another bird? Wait, no… It can weave clothes out of flowers and leaves, so it must be intelligent. Is it a monster?”

Toby shook head again and kept posing in different ways. Angor never managed to read anything clear again. Toby was hinting flowers, sweet smell, and flying… could it be a flower monster?

Angor gave up thinking in the end. He just needed to find out.

It wasn’t long after he walked into the vicinity of the mountains when the “isolation” effect on him started to falter.

“Someone noticed me?” Angor frowned. Did he do something that exposed his position? Or… someone just used a spell to detect him?