Warlock Apprentice

“He did?” Angor gave Tana a puzzled look. “But how? Why are you together?”

“We are both studying at Butterfly Tavern.” Tana looked at Alan and seemed to be recalling old memories. “When we arrived at Floating Mech City, almost everyone was talking about you and your teacher, Sunders. That’s when Alan told us that you two came from the same land.

“Man, Alan was so surprised and happy. He said that his sister will be even happier if she knows that you’re fine.”

Until now, Angor had not fully trusted the woman, but since she also knew about Aleen’s name…

“Alan’s sister didn’t come here, right?”

“I don’t know.” Tana shook her head. “I guess she didn’t. Alan already checked the agency of the coral academy, and he didn’t find Aleen there. Well, the girl has only been in the wizarding world for less than two years. She totally shouldn’t come. Now that I think about it… Alan said you started training a lot later than them, but woah, you’re way better than him now.”

The others all looked their way.

“Tana… you mean this boy started training like, only one year ago?” Hermes asked in surprise. As far as he knew, Alan had reached the summit of his level as a level-1 apprentice, which was already impressive.

Shan giggled, and it caused her small braids to swing around. “Nah, Shiliew can’t kill someone as cute as me.”

Nausica chuckled at the silly conversation. She was glad that her teammates managed to find her within a day after the entrance.

To be precise, it was Shiliew who found Shan first. Then the two of them came to Nausica together.

Before entering the garden, Shiliew left some of her blood on Nausica and Shan’s body so that she could find them by “smelling” her own blood.

And it worked wonders.

Nausica had been acting confident in front of Angor, but she already realized that she didn’t have enough strength to back up her image.

Even though she didn’t show it, she felt reassured that someone could help her survive the challenge.

“Are we going to keep moving? I think we’re wasting time without a destination. We should find someone first. An apprentice from the city would be better. We can force him to tell us their plan,” Shan commented.

“I’ve been thinking,” Nausica said as she pondered. “It’s really strange that Mister Lawson didn’t tell us anything about how the garden works.

“We didn’t find any buildings or anything useful besides those fishes. They want us to go to the exit but didn’t tell us how? We can’t possibly look around aimlessly. Maybe the exit is actually easy to find?”

“But I don’t see it.”

“Or maybe it will show up in due time. We just have to wait. Or perhaps…”

“Perhaps what?”

“Maybe it has already shown itself… but at somewhere we overlooked.” Nausica looked at the sky and observed the occasional flying fishes.

“You mean it’s in the sky?” Shan asked.

“Blood sacrifice means dead people. What if the exit is up there? In this case, people all need to try their luck while taking the risk of getting eaten by the fishes. This way, they’ll die faster.”

Nausica reached a similar conclusion that was also assumed by Angor.

Of course, there were many more people who were smart enough to realize it.

“Yeah… but how are going to get up there?” Shan frowned.

“That aside… Focus! We got more fish incoming.” Nausica looked toward somewhere and saw several dozen hungry-looking fishes swimming toward them. “Get ready to engage!”