Warlock Apprentice

“Heeheehee. Look at that, such a big nightmare stone. It’s my lucky day!”

A voice suddenly reached everyone’s ears on The Redbud. It sounded like a child about the age of seven, only without the childishness. It was strangely charming.

Angor saw the deck outside getting restless. A sailor exclaimed, “Impossible! The Mirror Veil failed!”

Looked like Flora, the Blood Witch, who could put fear into the hearts of all apprentice wizards, had already descended to the ship.

Angor tried to peek out of the window. Before he could stand up, Aleen dragged him back firmly. She was shaking her head with tears in her eyes. She kept silent, but she definitely meant to say something like – Don’t. You’ll die.

Alan was holding onto Angor’s sleeve as well, completely terrified.

Angor curled his lips. Cowards.

Sunders obviously was not even paying attention to Sabot. He was watching an ongoing experiment on one side through his gold-rimmed monocle. Smoke was rising from his hand, which showed various illusions. Sabot only took a small peek, and his eyes instantly ached, so he never dared to raise his head again.

Sabot continued, “… Barbie’s Restaurant doesn’t have a fixed location. We have been traveling on the Devil’s Water for a couple of weeks, and we didn’t see Lord Greya’s presence on our ocean locator.”

Sunders crumbed the illusion in his palm like popping a bubble. Then he turned around to look at Sabot.

“It’s natural you can’t find Barbie’s Restaurant now. Greya loves hide-and-seek. Well, she’s a gourmet wizard, but she enjoys that iffy stuff loved by prophets. We need some hard luck to find her,” Sunders shook his head. He smiled and said, “Welp, Mr. Sabot, if you have time, I’ll leave it to you.”

Sabot froze, then he looked up at Sunders, only to see a half smile.

“What? You have a question?” Flora asked. She was sitting on a high bench nearby, without wearing shoes. Her bared feet were swaying in rhythms, in a carefree manner. When she spoke, however, the brief cold look in her eyes terrified Sabot deep to his heart.

“No! Of course, I’ll do it. Gladly. I’ll ask the captain of The Redbud to patrol the surrounding waters and look for Barbie’s Restaurant until we find it,” Sabot could only agree in the end since the situation was beyond him now. He might be from the Floating Mech City, but that would not help him right away, so he could only move along and see. Sending the talents back to the south was not an urgent task anyway. Why Sunders was looking for Barbie’s Restaurant was none of his business. At least The Redbud would be safe before they could actually find the restaurant.

When Sabot left, Flora muttered in a low voice, “He’s smart enough. Or else…”

Sunders only shook his head without speaking. He returned his attention back to his experiment.

Suddenly, he frowned and looked towards outside, “Huh?”

“What is it, teacher?” Flora asked.

Sunders did not answer, but a doubt already emerged in his mind.

“Strange. Why did I feel something from the nightmare realm?”

Sunders looked down and thought, “Could it be that an unknown passage to the nightmare realm is hidden in Devil’s Water?”

If this is true…

Joy briefly went past Sunders’ expression.

He closed his eyes to carefully get a feeling about the aura, which was almost from the same origin as him. After a while, he re-opened his eyes. More doubt had replaced his joyful expression.

The aura from the nightmare realm vanished quickly. He could not sense anything now.