Warlock Apprentice

“So will you take them? If so, I’ll give you an art design toolset for free,” said Dave as he took out a black tool pouch from somewhere. It contained several utility tools such as pens, rulers, brushes, knives, and some inks for painting.

Angor clenched his teeth. “I’ll buy them!”

The balance display on his bone card instantly lost several digits. Angor had to take out seven magic crystals from his pouch to complete his payment.

“Want a delivery?” Dave smiled.

Angor quickly shook his hands. “No thanks. I’ll find help on my own.”

He paid 50 silver coins to five strongmen to carry his packed tools back to his house.

Once the tools were placed in his basement, Angor asked his helpers to go to the marketplace in town and carry back several special laboratory tables along with some simple chairs.

Second, magic array. An improved version of Runecraft.

And third, activating the specialty of materials.

These were not the only approaches, but they were mainstream choices.

The first two approaches were also referred to as “enchantment”. As for the third one, it was also called “synthesis”.

In the field of alchemy, an enchantment was a minor trick, while synthesis was more commonly regarded as a legit way of improving items.

An appropriate synthesis brought way stronger effects compared to enchantment. When alchemists applied runes or magic arrays to an item to receive the special effect, they also had to consider the nature of materials instead of drawing any runes they wished. Beneficial effects created by enchantment were highly restricted.

Synthesis, on the other hand, triggered certain specialties hidden within a certain material by combining different materials together. For instance, when Winter Gold and Ice Raven Feathers were added with dozens of catalysts and brought under a special condition, a special freezing effect could be triggered by them.

An effect triggered in this way could be applied to any material without obeying the restrictions when doing enchantment. Also, the effect was a lot stronger.

If Angor wished to achieve something great on the path of alchemy, he certainly had to choose the third approach.

However, the time to challenge Sky Tower was imminent, so he chose to take a shortcut for now and decided to go for enchantment.

Angor took out Basic Alchemy and began studying how to enchant items.

The first thing he needed to learn was Runecraft.

The art had its own set of characters, or rather, patterns. Every pattern inside a rune represented various reasons in the world.

For example, a rune that quickened the growth of plants contained reasons for weather, dampness, dirt, season, and so on. Each of these lied within a pattern. Drawing the patterns according to a set of fixed diagrams meant creating a complete rune.

An apprentice learning Runecraft naturally had to start by studying the meaning of every pattern. There were 60 million basic patterns with different or identical meanings. Even a different time point could require a different pattern to express a certain reason. For instance, one had to use two completely differed patterns to represent a setting sun in winter and a setting sun in the summertime.

Angor did not have the time to memorize all those basic patterns.

Instead of trying to comprehend the meaning of each pattern, alchemists usually forced their minds to memorize complete spell patterns and copied them onto their alchemy items.

However, even copying was not an easy task.

The process of drawing a rune also required a stable mana output and prolonged patience. Any mistake would not be tolerated.

For example, when drawing a rune called Sea Wave, one had to add tens of thousands of strokes with different directions and curves inside a giant circle. The creator had to maintain his or her mana output while slowly applying the patterns onto an alchemy item, one by one.

A tiny, miswritten stroke, no matter at which incorrect interval, direction or size, would basically ruin the entire work.

For this reason, there were few alchemists who chose to study enchantment.

For Angor, however, studying enchantment was a very good choice.