Warlock Apprentice

Nausica’s instinct was correct.

Angor remembered that he agreed to be Sailum’s neighbor not long ago. It was barely a day yet, and he already changed his mind. Now Angor felt a little ashamed.

And Nausica easily realized Angor’s expression.

“So I was right. You’re going to move away? Wait… since you haven’t started living here, you aren’t literally ‘moving’ away.”

Since Nausica revealed his intention, Angor did not try to hide his embarrassment. He could not hide it anyway.

He told them how he rented a house in the apprentice town. His magic crystal income was pretty difficult to explain, so he simply used Sunders as an excuse. Besides, Sunders did give him those merit points. At a price though.

“Miss Abelle said even Level-2 Apprentices usually can’t afford rooms there!” said Sailum. He looked jealous as he said, “Your professor is so nice.”

As for an even higher state called “calming the soul”… it required some harsher conditions.

…

Angor spent a whole week without successfully going into a meditation state. He had a quiet place now, but he always thought about various stuff. Each time he closed his eyes in a meditation attempt, all sorts of distracting thoughts and evildoers rose up inside his mind as if they were holding a party. Pressing something down meant allowing something else to come up.

Angor already had enough difficulty trying to suppress his own thoughts, let alone imagining the spiritual model.

And he just realized how chaotic his mind was.

Angor was not the only talent who was stuck at the first step. All talents had received channeling method books from their respective professors. The difference was that their methods were only common ones, something like Triangle Channeling. Yet, they too were stopped by the first challenge… Especially the adults who had witnessed too many things in their lives to completely calm their minds.

Sailum, however, was a lot purer than Angor despite being only one year younger. The book asked him to close his eyes to meditate, and Sailum simply did so. The boy had way fewer random ideas, and he managed to separate his imagination and focus in a short time.

Sailum’s success stimulated Angor much. In the next two weeks, Angor decided to stay indoors to meditate. He believed the hard effort would pay off in the end.

Sunders did not contact Angor during his training. Maybe the man also knew what kind of trouble first-timers had to face.

Several days later, Angor gained a deeper insight into his meditation method. It asked for regular progress, instead of something that could be achieved in one go. So his only task now was to get rid of distracting ideas.

One week later, Angor succeeded.

The second step was to imagine his spiritual model and track down spirit power.

Another three days passed. Angor more or less knew how to separate his imagination from his focus. He had to slowly project the spiritual model instructed by Singularity Dispersive Meditation into his mind and turn it into his natural instinct. Such an instinct would prevent him from losing focus, and it would also make it easier for him to sense spirit power.

Yet, to develop something into instinct was not easy.

Another week went by, Angor was still stuttering during his meditation. He could not completely separate his imagination from his focus yet, but he managed to direct his focus away occasionally to look for his spirit power.

He could only do this every now and then, but it gave him a lot of confidence.

Occasional would slowly become constant, and it would then turn into forever. He did not know how long it would take him, but Angor knew how to persist.

Angor slowly caught up with Sailum after half a month and came out in front of all the other talents. For one, he already had a decent talent. Besides, the concentration magic array helped him a lot.

Just like Angor, Sailum was also on the step of finding his spirit power but he could not do it. He felt as if something like that did not exist at all.

They had also discussed their training in private but they could not find anything helpful.

As for Nausica…

She had shut herself in her room for a long time now. According to Sailum, Nausica was still fighting with her own mind. She even smoked less.

Angor muttered to himself upon hearing Nausica’s condition, “Maybe she can do better while smoking?”

This was because Angor already noticed that Nausica appeared to be more serene and calm when she smoked her pipe. Telling from his training during the half month, this meant it was easier for Nausica to remove her distractions when smoking.

…

After making some progress by directing his focus away from his imagination, Angor felt a little bit irritated when he got stuck trying to find spirit power.

An entire month went by.

The Month of Looming Frost had come. This meant that after another month, Angor would reach his first year of being away from home.

That would be one out of the five-year period from his promise of saving Jon. A year had passed and he was not even an apprentice yet. Of course, he would feel irritated.

One day, after he still found no trace of his spirit power, Angor decided to go to Phantom Island and ask Sunders for help.

The way to the island was smooth and peaceful, and Sunders happened to be inside his study room.

However, Sunders’ answer was a little unsatisfactory to Angor. The man positively praised Angor’s progression. As for how to find spirit power, Sunders only told him to “take it slow”.

“Haste makes waste.”

Angor knew this, but he could not take it slow now!

Before leaving the Phantom Island, Angor ran into Flora and got an idea. Maybe Flora could tell him something helpful.

However, Flora said exactly the same thing – that he should be patient.

Though looking at how Angor was on his edge, Flora added something in the end:

“I dunno why you’re being all edgy, and I don’t have anything to help you. But someone might. It’s no easy task to pry useful information from that guy though.”