Warlock Apprentice

Angor began climbing the endless stone stairs again in the darkness.

On the opposite side, someone appeared in the central area of the underground maze…

Sunders had been moving around in the maze for two days. He ran into countless monsters, most of which were strong enough that Sunders had to avoid at all cost. Two days and he finally made it to the center of the maze.

After running around during the days, his gentleman attire was full of wrinkles. There were holes and bloodstains around some of the joints on the clothes, which indicated what kind of trouble he went through.

Sunders went over his experience in his mind and sighed. If his little pupil was teleported here, how long could he survive? One minute? Two? Sunders would stumble upon monsters almost every minute. He could manage thanks to his strength, but Angor would have absolutely no hope.

“Minutes” or “seconds” was what Sunders would use to calculate Angor’s remaining life.

Sunders sighed again, thinking that his newly adopted pupil would die in the Nightmare Realm just like this. The boy had an important talent, but luck was also something important. Looked like Angor was just an unlucky little guy with exceptional talent.

Sunders did not consider the possibility that Angor could still be alive. Sunders survived several close calls himself, such as fighting with the flying heads, when he escaped into a dark tunnel carelessly. The tunnel was home to Glutton Flowers, which scared the hell out of him, and he instantly ran back out.

Still, some of their thorny vines managed to scratch him. That was where the holes and blood on his clothes came from.

If a mortal like Angor was in his situation… oh well.

Reaching the center did not mean being safe. There was one last obstacle. Sunders looked at the dense swarm of Witch’s Eyes and sighed. There were at least a thousand of them in sight.

Witch’s Eyes were low-level monsters, but such a big number was still quite a sight to behold.

Sunders pondered the situation. Maybe some other high-level monsters invaded here, so the Witch’s Eyes had less territory? Why else would they gather in such a tight place?

These weaklings were easy to deal with. Sunders swayed his cane, and a surge of mana cleansed everything ahead of him.

One minute later, Sunders crushed the last Witch’s Eye into a broken corpse, tossed it among more piles of corpses, and moved on toward the center. When he reached the peeing statue, there was not a single monster in the area.

Sunders looked at the smiling face of the statue and felt as if being taunted. He planned to acquire the channeling method book using Angor’s talent. Looked like he would not make it this time. This was the sixth time for him to come here in several centuries.

“Are you mocking my inability?” Sunders growled at the smiling child statue.

Sunders let out another sigh for repeating his failure and leaped to the back of the fountain. He was prepared to go to the place where he saw the book. Even if he would return empty-handed, he would like to see the book again. Who knew whether some kind of miracle would come and allow him to remember the book?

But he stopped his action.

The wooden door at the base of the statue was opened! Sunders could not believe his eyes.

All structures in the Nightmare Realm were mystical that no matter how you broke them apart, they would always recover. Sunders wanted to simply punch the peeing statue to pieces, but he did not, because he knew the statue would mend itself soon. There was no point wasting stamina like that.

Just like the door on the pedestal. If someone opened it, it would close on its own quickly.

Well except—

There were still creatures on the Stairs of Hanging Prison behind the door! This was the only possibility that the wooden door did not close itself.

“Something was on the Stairs of Hanging Prison? A careless monster? Or… a person?” A young man with blond hair and blue eyes suddenly flashed in his mind.

It was unlikely that any monster would go in there. So… was it him?

“Angor. I hope you did,” A mild smile appeared on Sunders’ disappointed expression. He quickly leaped into the door.

…

Angor was still climbing, unaware of his teacher’s arrival.

Angor had been moving upward for a long time now. The hologram tablet indicated that he climbed for about three hours. He saw many rooms along the stairs, all of which had similar objects in them, only with different contents in their bedstand drawers.

Apart from the green booklet in the first room, all the other rooms had daily life supplies, and most of them already rotted to ash.

He did not find anything else that was valuable.

Another door with light coming from it came into his view. Angor got used to them. He would see one of these every ten to fifteen minutes.

As always, Angor walked inside the room to check. In the beginning, Angor was excited about searching the rooms like a treasure hunter. However, after going through dozens of rooms, he no longer felt so. They all looked the same, and boringly unrewarding.

This time though, the room brought him some surprise.

The room was actually decorated in a different way. It was not a single small room, but it had an extra bedroom in it. The furniture was still similar, but there was more space.

The outer area did not yield anything worth noticing. Angor entered the bedroom and found another bedstand with two drawers on it, which meant it could hold more stuff.

Angor first pried the lock off the top drawer. There were several clothes inside which would absolutely become ash if he touched them. The lower drawer, on the other hand, contained something interesting—a parchment scroll, tied by a rope.

Angor carefully removed the scroll from the drawer. The parchment was smooth and solid to the touch. It did not decay with time.

He untied the scroll and spread it open on the bed. It showed a strange picture, like a map. However, the map was drawn inside the body of a monster. The monster looked like something humanoid, it had arms and legs, and was making a strange pose.

He did not know what he was looking at. Intending to take everything he found with him, he recorded the scroll into his tablet… before he stuffed the scroll into a pocket. Angor decided to take it away.