Warlock Apprentice

An alchemist only had to pay attention to two factors when doing enchantment; maintaining a stable mana output, and ensuring that the patterns were flawless.

Maintaining mana was already possible for Angor. He just had to build a stable mana tunnel using the Axes of the Universe, like what he did when casting Thaw.

Drawing absolute correct patterns onto an alchemy item was very difficult for apprentices. However, Angor could achieve it by using something else…

Enchantment Cyclopaedia: For Starters was a book Angor recorded in the Nightmare Realm. It had more than 700 pages and was of a similar size to dictionaries if it was printed in papers.

Every page described a complete rune.

The rune on the first page was called Rune of Shapen, which doubled the sharpness of an item.

The rune looked simple. It only required about 50 strokes to draw.

Angor took out his pen and paper and tried to sketch it.

Of course, he failed.

He continued it for seven more attempts, which were all failures. Most of the times, he had to stop midway to think about how to draw the next line, and such pauses always disrupted his mana output.

Even if he managed to complete a rune, there were always incorrect intervals or angles between the strokes.

However, Angor already expected as much. “Time to cheat again,” Angor muttered.

He saved the rune as a picture in his tablet and projected a hologram of the picture onto a paper.

Following the hologram, he used his pen to outline the picture.

It went well!

He inspected the perfect rune he just printed on the paper and silently thanked his godsend tablet.

He knew he could use the hologram to draw runes, and this was why he chose enchantment in the first place.

However, this was not Angor’s own idea. There had been alchemists throughout the history who carved hollowed-out runes on wooden planks. They would then hang the planks in front of light sources to project the shadow of a rune onto an alchemy item and drew the rune along the shadow. Such an approach shared a similar principle to Angor’s idea. However, these shadows always had problems with sizes and angles due to environmental reasons. Human eyes often perceived light and shadow in varied ways, so this approach was later proved to be useless.

Angor’s hologram, on the other hand, had no such problems. A true hologram projection always showed the exact copy of something, down to every last detail.

…

Since his “cheat” was successful, Angor decided to try enchantment for real. This time, he would use his mana to draw Rune of Sharpen.

Ordinary papers could not hold supernatural energy, so Angor first went to the underground market and bought several parchments. Next, he cast the hologram projection of Rune of Sharpen onto one of the parchments and controlled his mana output to finalize the rune onto the parchment following a 1:2 ratio.

When the last stroke was finished, the parchment shined and quickly released a cold, knife-like aura.

“It’s done? I made a Rune of Sharpen magic scroll?”

Angor suddenly got a feeling that he did not need alchemy weapons at all. He could simply draw some magic scrolls to use them in challenging Sky Tower.

As he was feeling really proud of his achievement, the Rune of Sharpen scroll abruptly exploded into pieces and scattered on the floor.

“Wh- What happened?” Angor was shocked. He found his Enchantment Cyclopaedia: For Starters and tried to find an explanation.

He got his answer in the middle of the author’s comment.

It seemed runes drawn by alchemists were different from those created by Runecraft. Alchemists could not craft magic scrolls because the runes they drew were used directly on alchemy items. Furthermore, most of them were passive ones.

For example, Sharpen and Armor Break would passively improve the sharpness or armor-piercing ability of a weapon.

Passive rune was considered an advanced technique in Runecraft. Only wizards who wished to study magic arrays would go for it.

When combined with appropriate materials and an energy source, a passive rune could provide a permanent enchantment. Meanwhile, ordinary magic scrolls only had limited uses. Only advanced magic arrays had persisted effects.

There were actively-triggered enchantments as well, but these were all composite enchantments. They were already considered magic arrays beyond the level of Runecraft.

An active enchantment was created by overlapping multiple runes into a magic array following certain rules, and finally applying the array onto an alchemy item.

For instance, Rune of Sharpen, Volley, and Midas could be fused together to create a magic array with the effect “rain of blades”.

When the magic array was enchanted to an item made from a suitable material, it would grant “rain of blades” effect to the item.

However, magic array enchantment was way too difficult. Even a successful one was a lot weaker compared to synthesis. That was why most alchemists only chose to memorize several low-leveled runes and go for synthesis when they were skilled enough.

…

Now Angor understood why his Sharpen scroll broke apart. An ordinary parchment could not contain a passive rune. What he just created was an advanced technique in Runecraft, a basic element used to create complicated magic arrays.

He was still happy about it though.

At least his rune was a success, which meant he could try to draw more of them. He could go buy a book about Runecraft and some blank scrolls. He would then triumphed in the Sky Tower by dumping scrolls at his opponents for real.

In the next week, Angor read through Enchantment Cyclopaedia: For Starters and practiced with the runes one by one.

With the help of his tablet, he began to draw the runes faster and faster. Also, thanks to the holograms, all of his works were perfectly done. When he felt adept enough, he could even draw the runes on his own without using a hologram.

The Month of Blossom had made its way for the Month of Offering.

Today, Angor took out some materials which included Starfrost Gold, Ice Glue, Earth Fiend Bronze, Steel Wood… and made them into different parts with Thaw spell.

For Earth Fiend Bronze, he shaped it into a crescent blade and applied a Rune of Sharpen on it with the help of his tablet. Next, when the blade was being cooled by Condense, Angor used a utility knife and carved the patterns of sea waves on the edge of the blade.

He was going to paint a picture of vipers as shown on the 3D blueprint. However, he could not keep up Thaw with his almost exhausted mana, so he only carved some random sea waves as his final art design.

The crescent blade displayed a terrifying glimmer when Angor placed it on his lab table.

When he tried to assemble the blade with the other parts, the sharp aura of the blade cut his finger. Blood came out quickly.

His bright-red blood flowed onto the surface of the weapon and dropped to the floor. Not a single trace of blood was left on the blade itself, which always shined like a newly-produced mirror.

“Even the side of the blade was affected by Sharpen. A finished weapon could probably be used as a fine supernatural alchemy weapon,” Angor thought.

He finished assembling the weapon quickly. When he held the weapon in his hand, it could be easily recognized as a… farming sickle, used by working peasants.

The blade had a length of 31.2 centimeters and a width of 13.7 centimeters. The handle made from Steel Wood was 65.1 centimeters long. Overall, the sickle was not big and was a suitable one-handed tool.

The design of the weapon was pretty average. There were simple art patterns on its blade, and its handle was smoothed and polished. However, these were all ordinary stuff.

As for its power…

Angor took the sickle from his lab and walked into the woods along the river.

He swung the sickle at the trunk of a grown maple tree. The trunk which was as thick as an adult was cut in half easily.

Superior sharpness.

He tried again. This time, he injected mana into the sickle, which created a faint aura along the blade. Then he aimed for another maple tree.

The tree snapped nice and clean. However, this time, the cut was not smooth. A number of cracks and barbs could be seen around the cut on the tree. Angor believed that this was the effect of Sharpen rune.

He tested the weapon several times. At one point, a tree broke in half when the sickle did not even connect with it.

“So this is the power of a supernatural weapon!” Angor smiled in satisfaction.

The Rune of Sharpen allowed the weapon to carry a sharp aura on its blade and cut something afar.

Being able to create a supernatural weapon meant Angor had officially become an elementary apprentice alchemist.

And he had only spent one month on it.

Any other alchemists who learned about Angor’s achievement would probably run away in shame.

From the beginning to finally becoming an apprentice alchemist, most people needed many years. There were many complicated steps on the way of learning alchemy, each of which could easily hinder someone’s progress for a year or two.

Angor… well, he was born to break these rules and maybe attract hate from others while at it.

However, he still felt it a pity that he could only follow 3D blueprints he already had. He was yet to create something on his own.

…

Upon returning to his villa, Angor decided to try creating another alchemy weapon before finally going for something he could use when challenging Sky Tower.

He suddenly remembered Nausica. If not for Nausica’s help, when the world’s consciousness descended into the mirror world and brought a terrible gale with it, Angor would have been on the ground as a pile of broken human flesh and became fertilizer for the Tree of Eternity.

Thinking about this, Angor decided to craft an alchemy weapon for Nausica.