Warlock Apprentice

While it was brief, the love between Moyah and Lucas was fruitful—they had a child.

If Lucas grew so sad in the end to the extent of killing himself, would he pay a last visit to Moyah, which meant the “suicide well” he used was right here?

Curious, Angor walked to the unused well while Neet and Sonata followed him.

“Was this one here three thousand years ago?” Angor spoke to Neet.

“I’m… not sure, sir.”

“What are the haystacks used for?”

It was Sonata who answered, “The well is completely dry. We built a small storage down there to keep vegetables. And we covered it up so that the space would stay clean.”

“I remember going down there to play when I was a kid,” said Neet. “I was too little to climb back up on my own then, so I cried really loud until Miss Nevey found me and picked me up.”

“Ohh, you owe my mother a big favor then.” Sonata chuckled.

While they talked, Angor already used his spirit to scan the well. As Sonata said, he sensed a man-made path at the bottom of it, which probably led to the “vegetable storage”.

He decided not to look into Lucas’ secret in order not to offend Song of the Deep or Summerdew Ridge. But he didn’t see anyone watching them around here, so he believed taking a brief look should be fine.

“I’m going to check it. You two stay here.”

He moved the haystack away and jumped down.

“Um, why would Sir Wizard do that?” Sonata asked her partner.

Neet quickly made a “shh” gesture. “Remember, we didn’t see or care what Sir Wizard is planning to do, and we definitely do NOT tell anyone else about his actions. Otherwise, the consequence will be really bad.”

Neet already heard about how some of his servants told outsiders about Angor’s moves. He made sure Sonata wouldn’t do such a thing just in case.

Angor left a small trace of his spirit power at the entrance of the well, so he heard their conversation.

He grinned for Neet’s smartness and walked ahead.

The narrow and zigzagging path ahead of him wasn’t long—about five or six meters at best. It was fully lit by using many Luminous Stones affixed on the wall.

The well-kept path meant it was only constructed recently, since 3,000 years was more than enough to damage it by factors beyond human control, such as geological changes.

He still proceeded to the storage even though he was almost sure the search would not yield any result.

The storage wasn’t large. While standing at the door, he could look at every corner of the room, which was full of greens and various reserved food.

Even if Lucas left something here, it was probably carried away after such a long time.

But something in Angor told him not to give up the chance so easily, which was probably the last chance to find clues about Lucas in this city.

He used gravity power to levitate all the baskets and containers off the ground and looked at the floor.

This was when his spirit power sensed some small doodle marks at the bottom of the wall directly in front of his position.

He walked toward it and saw the location being covered in some kind of oil stains. Using Cleanse, he spent several minutes removing the smudge left here for god-knew-how-long, and he was shocked to see a line of characters hidden behind it.

More importantly, he recognized the writing. Whoever wrote it didn’t seem to be in good condition, but the general style looked exactly like the lines used in Lucas’ logbook.

He suddenly felt his extinguished inquisitiveness coming back. He got a feeling that this spot was what all the people from other organizations were looking for.

He calmed his mind and began reading the characters.

“By seeking with my soul…”

That was everything. Angor searched his memory to look for similar phrases in Lucas’ book or other books he might use, but without finding anything.

“Soul… Did Lucas literally mean finding something using his soul?”

He considered and chanted Spirit Mantra to eject his soul from his body.

And he immediately felt something different. The empty wall was full of drawings that were slightly glowing in his “soul vision”.

And he knew what these were. They were runes.

Unlike the runes he studied, which were used for enchantment, these runes mostly belong to the arts wielded by Rune Warlocks.

He couldn’t ascertain the nature of the runes yet. But he could always find time later and slowly work out the implications hidden behind every stroke and curve, before figuring out the whole picture.

After spending another moment to fully memorize the runes, he returned to his normal state and left the storage.

Before leaving, he also erased the letters left by Lucas. No matter what this clue was intended for, he wasn’t going to let anyone else see it.

Upon coming out, he easily noticed that Neet was giving him suspicious looks, probably because he spent too much time down in the well.

“Something is better left unknown, or you’ll end up in deep trouble,” he whispered to Neet and headed back to the mansion. “Now follow me. I have something to tell you two.”

Neet glanced at Sonata and gulped. Is-is Mister Padt going to eradicate me because I saw too much?

He was only half-true. Angor did need to make sure his actions remained a secret. Before today, whatever Neet told others didn’t matter since the wells they had been to had nothing to do with Lucas and were all pointless. But since they finally saw the well that hid Lucas’ traces… then it was high time for some hush-hush.

However, Angor wasn’t planning on “eradicating” Neet. Neet had been pretty helpful to him till now, and Angor wouldn’t be so cruel as to slaughter the helpless sailor without a good reason.

“Are you scared?” Once inside the mansion, Angor spoke while looking at Neet trembling badly.

Neet shook his head nervously.

Angor looked down a little and saw Neet holding Sonata’s hand due to great stress, and Sonata was blushing because of Neet’s action.

“It’s not very noble to take advantage of a lady like that,” Angor joked.

Sonata blushed harder and shook off Neet’s hand in embarrassment, while Neet suddenly looked too sad to be scared.

“Calm down. It’s just some minor matters. There’s no danger involved.”

Neet and Sonata looked at Angor and suddenly lost focus when several traces of nightmare energy entered their foreheads.

Angor never slacked off on his study while sailing on The Limpet. During his journey, he more or less grasped the basic knowledge of various illusionist arts. It was quite easy for him to use a simple Mind Manipulator cantrip to “adjust” the memories of Neet and Sonata.

While he only needed to fix several minutes of Sonata’s memory, he needed to do a little bit more work on Neet because Neet had been accompanying him when checking all the other wells.

A moment later, he snapped his fingers and woke the couple up.

Neet recovered from his trance and saw the bottle in his hand. He just remembered that Angor came to deliver the Indigo Elixir.

“Thank you for such a great gift, sir!”

Angor smiled at him and looked at Sonata. “I’m leaving the city soon. Since you two looked pretty happy together, do you need me to… you know, speak to Count Ross about this matter?”

Sonata blushed again, while Neet just realized that Angor offered to be a matchmaker. There was no doubt that a mighty wizard could help Sonata join the family!

“If-if you’ll be so kind, sir!” Neet nodded rapidly.

“Okay, I’ll talk to your father before departure. Now off you go. I need some rest.”

After sending the joyful couple off, Angor took out his paper and pen to work out the implication of the mysterious runes.