Warlock Apprentice

How to keep an otherworldly individual free from the consciousness of this world without getting them registered at Supreme Cult?

Angor had been searching for an answer for a while.

He thought Pierre could tell him since he just bought an otherworldly slave, but it didn’t go as he expected. When he asked the question, Pierre tried to dodge it by beating around the bush.

“Don’t worry about Nano. Fibbers can live 300 years on average. Nano is 47 this year, which means he can serve you for long enough.”

Each time, Pierre would talk about Nano’s life without listening to Angor’s real question.

Angor was really puzzled that someone refused to answer him again. First, the Cloud Library did not have any record regarding this matter, and when he asked the others, such as a seasoned scholar like Prome, no one could really answer him.

There were many otherworldly travelers, both legal and illegal, in the wizarding world. Angor didn’t believe that what he was looking for was a complex knowledge.

Perhaps this is a secret or something?

How did that simple mist illusion come out as a large-scale nightmare illusion? Is it because of my new hand?

Truth was, Angor did nothing more than unleashing an illusion to obscure the sight of his enemies. But for some reason, the affected cultists suddenly started fighting among themselves and spared Angor any further effort.

As Angor pondered over the situation, Pierre slowly approached him while smiling out of fear.

“Mi-Mister Padt, I—”

He almost jumped when he saw Angor gazing at him.

“I mean, how-how should I deal with these people?” Pierre pointed a trembling finger at the fainted cultists.

Despite their condition, the cultists were not seriously wounded because they never intended to go for Angor’s life in the first place—their job only asked them to deal with otherworldly intruders. And with such a mindset, they did not use lethal force when attacking their teammates.

“Do as you want. Kill them if you prefer. But whatever becomes of them next has nothing to do with me,” Angor replied in a cold tone and took Nano away. He wished to find out why his right hand enhanced his illusion since it seemed like an urgent matter.

“Wait, Mister Padt!” Pierre suddenly called. He just realized that Angor didn’t seem to be on good terms with the cult. He wondered if he could tell Angor about that secret, just for the sake of Nano’s wellbeing.

…

A moment later, Pierre took Angor back to the shop. They went straight into his private resting room while the other workers in the shop watched them go in shock.

“… What you wanted to know is Abyssal Inscription, Mister Padt,” Pierre said and asked Nano to remove his shirt.

Angor saw a picture either drawn or tattooed on Nano’s chest, which looked like a tailed demon wrapped inside a pair of black wings. The demon’s tail looked like a hook that caught a pile of beautiful-looking books on it.

“This, is an Abyssal Inscription,” Pierre told him through a private voice transmission. “It was one of the basic means of protection left by a Grand Demon called ‘Vulgar Sage’.”

Angor listened to Pierre’s words, and finally, he got the whole picture of the business that centered around otherworldly intruders.

Apparently, Abyssal Inscription was a kind of dark knowledge invented by Vulgar Sage. After receiving lots of expurgations and modifications, it was then brought to the wizarding world. Scholars from different generations researched on this particular subject and managed to remove all harmful elements of it, which finally turned it into the subject of Inscription known today.

Throughout history, Inscription gradually became a more advanced technique compared to the original Abyssal Inscription. According to Pierre, this subject, which was no easier than Alchemy and Runecraft, was relatively popular around Western Continent and Northern Province, while very few people in the southern wizarding region would study it because of Supreme Cult’s interference.

The so-called “registration” used by Supreme Cult was, in fact, applying inscriptions on the bodies of otherworldly travelers. Similarly, what they used was the modern, “localized” Inscription, but not the primary Abyssal Inscription.

“In order to protect someone from being expelled by the world’s consciousness, you must apply the protection bestowed by another equally powerful world, and the Abyss Plane was one such great plane. Thanks to the Abyssal Inscription that represented the might of Vulgar Sage, Nano did not need to worry about getting affected in this world.”

After Pierre finished explaining to Angor, he felt anxious. He was afraid that someone might have eavesdropped on them.

In the southern region, telling the knowledge of Abyssal Inscription to others equaled to challenging the authority of the Supreme Cult. Slavers all knew how to avoid provoking the cult, in which case the cult would mostly cast a blind eye to their shady business.