Warlock Apprentice

Angor stepped out of The Fingernail with a small insect nest in the shape of a pyramid in his hand. He couldn’t see into the nest, but using spirit feelers, he felt a finger-size ant huddled inside.

The insect was completely white on the left and black on the right side, as if something divided it from the middle. The coloring looked a lot like the overcoat he received from Devildare. Angor had been keeping the broken coat in his bracelet so that he could try repairing it after learning how to make clothes.

While checking on the ant and leaving Moshi Street, he sensed something stalking him.

He carefully placed the ant nest in his bracelet and whispered something to his chest pocket.

At lightning speed, Toby scouted in the air and returned to Angor’s shoulder.

“Someone is behind us…” Angor frowned. According to Toby, a short-bodied man had been following them from a distance. The only thing worth noting was that the man had a pair of really large ears.

Angor quickly thought about someone with that feature.

Using a street mirror, he saw the alchemy apprentice named John Junior peeking warily at him.

Since John Junior was taking the effort to stalk him, Angor assumed that it wasn’t Lantis who exposed his information. Angor believed that John Junior somehow found out who was going to reveal the crafting method for an energy stabilizer and wanted to get his hands on the precious knowledge by force.

Angor turned back and saw John Junior looking away while quickly covering himself up as if no one could see him as long as he couldn’t see his own face.

Angor frowned again. He believed he overestimated John Junior’s hiding skills.

After moving to somewhere more crowded, Angor activated Infinite Reticence, and John Junior soon lost track of Angor’s position.

“Where did he go…” John Junior’s shoulders slumped down. “I hope he can tell me how to process Froststar Bones.”

Defeated, the man turned away and left.

While walking away, Angor more or less realized what John Junior wanted from him. Even so, he didn’t feel obliged to provide the answer. And secondly, John’s apothecary-related problem was beyond his skill range anyway.

…

The moon was high in the sky when Angor arrived at Sunders’ manor.

Floating Mech City had moved to somewhere cloudless, and the lone moon shrouded the tranquil garden mansion under a glowing, silver veil.

Angor entered his room and heard noises coming from the neighboring room. When he used spirit feelers to check, he saw the Krakoks dancing and singing around a campfire while led by Papaya.

Why aren’t they sleeping at midnight?

He listened more carefully and noticed that the Krakoks were performing their monthly festival. In other words, they would do this every month.

Wait… it’s a new month already?

Angor checked and found out that the Month of Repose (February) had arrived without him knowing. He hadn’t been paying much attention to the calendar since he was busy with the garden challenge.

Jon traveled through time and space and fell into Grue Town in the exact same month. Currently, he had been living in the wizarding world for 23 years.

Angor still remembered that at this time each year, Jon would take him to the initial “landing point”, and they would watch the sky while he carefully stroked the Alien Eye. Jon hoped that the amazing artifact could take him back to Earth again.

It was until Jon lost hope… He then discarded the Alien Eye in the forest.

Today, Jon no longer had the able body to move around. Instead of clinging onto hope in futility, Jon accepted his fate and never left Padt Manor again.

Angor put a hand on his pendant and went through his cherished memory. Everything seemed so clear as if the experience happened very recently.

The same, gentle moonlight shined upon the celebrating folks and the boy troubled by depressing sadness, while there was only a thin wall separating them.

…

Angor got over his low spirit soon. Or rather, he couldn’t afford to let his emotions get the better of him. Not before fulfilling his five-year promise and finally saving Jon.

After collecting his senses, Angor prepared to look at the scroll he received from the red-haired woman.

But something else in his bracelet caught his attention.

Previously, he placed the pyramid-shaped ant nest on top of a material box, but for some reason, the nest had fallen down.

He checked and saw the ant nest empty. The timid creature inside was gone.

Confused, Angor quickly searched around his bracelet, fearing that the ant might touch something precious or dangerous.

Soon, he saw something strange moving in his storage. It looked like a hornet nest but was shaped like a ball.

After removing Toby and Freud from the bracelet, there should be no other creatures apart from some plants in the storage, which meant the moving “hornet nest” was caused by the Dream Weaver ant.

Angor looked carefully and realized that the ball-shaped object was actually the gift he obtained from Kanter before the garden challenge—the Soft Larva nest, which should still have some Soft Larva eggs inside.

Angor reached his spirit feelers closer to the nest and saw the Dream Weaver diligently carrying the object that was several dozen times bigger than itself. Apparently, the Dream Weaver could move heavy stuff around just like any other ants.

Angor wondered why the ant was busily handling someone else’s home and continued to observe it. Since the Soft Larva eggs were not damaged, it wouldn’t hurt to find out what the ant wanted.

Soon, the ant reached its destination—a small glass barrel containing Akeso’s blood.

Akeso used its own blood to sustain Dodoro’s life for a thousand years. When Dodoro woke up, Angor retrieved all the blood in his coffin in case he might need it later.

Angor watched the Dream Weaver ant slowly pushing the Soft Larva nest to the barrel. The ant left the nest and crawled onto the barrel. Then it reached for the solidified blood, dug a small chunk out, and carried it back into the Soft Larva nest.

Next, the ant found somewhere flat and stopped moving. It then hugged the blood chunk close to its body.

Wait… did it just fall asleep?? But why would it sleep in someone else’s home? The other larva eggs are still alive!

Did it carry the nest here so that it can get Akeso’s blood faster? So, the blood is something beneficial to a Dream Weaver?

Angor didn’t have the answers. Since nothing seemed harmful for now, he decided to allow the ant to do whatever it wanted.

He still deployed a small illusion around the nest so that the ant wouldn’t wander off to somewhere else and damage the other alchemy materials… or get damaged by them.

Then he picked up the scroll he needed to work on.

While unfolding the scroll, he saw a picture on it, which was painted in bright red color.

Is it a… crown of some sort?

The crown had a commonly-designed base, but its main body resembled a tiara worn by queens.

A toddler-palm-sized pigeon-blood ruby was slotted at the center of the crown, supported by hollowed-out mythril frames. There were eight coronal beads along the upper edge of the crown, which were also pigeon-blood rubies but smaller.

Apart from these, the most noticeable feature was the embossed runes scattered around the item. From a quick examination, Angor discovered at least six runes that were affixed on the crown.

The crown was apparently enchanted with a magic array.

Once the scroll was fully spread open, nine pigeon-blood rubies dropped onto Angor’s table, one big and eight small—exactly the same ones used on the pictured crown.

The red-haired woman asked Angor to craft a crown according to the blueprint. The exact outcome didn’t need to be a hundred percent equivalent, but the closer the better.

Angor frowned as he considered the difficulty of the request.

Making the crown doesn’t seem hard. But that magic array…