Warlock Apprentice

As the woman drew her last breath, the dark energy around her immediately sank into her body to conquer her soul. There was more than enough energy to completely create another clone of the woman’s soul—a darker, filthy one.

In the next second, a pale, ugly undead soul emerged from her corpse and howled. This one was born with such abundant dark power that it looked just like another living individual.

Her howling was also a talent possessed by most undead creatures, which shocked all other souls nearby.

Although Angor only felt a little weird thanks to his special property. The howling only quickened the death of the other women who were hung by the hooks.

The newborn soul lifted her head and quickly rushed toward the only target in the room—Angor—with her sharp claws raised high.

She no longer had any sanity left, and Angor never expected her to actually remember his “favor”. Angor already ordered his image to leave the room, while his real self hid somewhere else.

He planned to draw the spirit away. The woman’s real “killer” was still lying unconscious outside. Angor planned to let them confront each other while he would use the chance to slip away.

Suddenly, a series of golden patterns on the wall started to glow. They rotated around and left the wall to become a circle-shaped trap in the air, which quickly surrounded the woman’s soul and dispelled her.

“Something that... captures souls and teleports them?” Angor examined the runes and figured out their effect.

It made a lot of sense that the Dark Castle had something to move the spirits around. Maybe the runes were used to transfer useless souls to those woods.

Angor sighed silently. Now he knew where the corpses and crying female souls came from.

One man couldn’t possibly use so many dead corpses. He assumed that there were lots of people in Dark Castle who took “blood baths”, which produced so many dead bodies lying around.

Wait... bathing in virgin blood?

Angor remembered a book he saw in Sunders’ library; it was Glorious Legends.

The book recorded all legendary wizards who existed in the southern wizarding region in the past 10,000 years. There was a legendary witch from 3,000 years ago, ‘Bloody Queen’ Mary, who originated from Dark Castle. She was famous for her dissipated lifestyle and her habit of keeping countless young catamites. Also, she loved virgin blood baths, which was said to help her keep her young looks. Later, this method was proved to be quite useless. She simply did those baths to satisfy her personal taste—that she preferred to see beautiful women suffer.

It seemed the twisted custom was passed down in Dark Castle after all these centuries.

Today, people already knew that such baths did nothing more than giving someone a really bad smell. Perhaps her successors believed that they could achieve the same glory as Mary if they copied her ways?

Foolish, considering how Dark Castle was quickly losing its fame. This once renowned organization had zero “truth-finder” wizards today. The highest being was Isabella, who was only a level-2 wizard. Dark Castle would have already been seized by others if it wasn’t under the protection of Fairytown.

Angor shook his head and closed the door behind him.

He saw the ambusher apprentice still sleeping on the floor. He immediately felt disgusted by what she had done, although he wouldn’t do anything reckless yet.

For now, he would not condemn people’s actions using his own moral grounds. There was no such thing as “common moral” in the wizarding world. He had no right to judge Dark Castle.

He prepared to walk around her body and proceed. But on second thought, he approached her again.

He just got a new idea.

...

Venees had a really long dream. After taking enough virgin blood baths, she finally became a legendary witch and conquered countless lands as well as the hearts of men.

Before she was going to enjoy another tumble in the sheet with a gentleman, a grinning figure suddenly appeared in front of her and knocked her out.

Venees opened her eyes again while rubbing her aching neck.

“Goddammit. That Diablo bastard isn’t enough? Another moth to the fire.”

She seemed extremely angry, probably because her sweet dream was interrupted or because she was knocked out twice in succession.

She stood up and looked at the blood under her feet. “Geez. I need to do this again! Or professor’s going to scold me.”

She found a mop from somewhere and worked in the hallway while muttering, “When can I learn that Cleanse spell? This is so tiring.”

Then she checked all the corpses above her. “All dead? How long was I out? Curse you! Whoever you are. All the fresh blood, wasted!”

She pushed a button, and the hot blood in the bathtub all went down the drain. She wiped her body clean, put up a translucent silk dress and went to mop up the hallway.

Thud!

The sound of something knocking on the floor suddenly echoed around.

Venees looked into the hallway and only found more darkness.

“Taira? Larisa?” she called out the names of the other apprentices who lived on the same floor.

No response.

She put her tool down and carried a lamp toward the sound.

At the end of the hallway, she saw someone lying on the floor, completely still.

The man’s tattered garment suggested that he wasn’t from Dark Castle. The organization did allow both genders as their apprentices, but this “real” Dark Castle only had women inside.

She wondered if the man was the previous intruder who attacked her. She moved closer with her machete ready just in case.

Soon, she noticed that the man wasn’t the second intruder, but Diablo, in a bad shape.

“Tsk. He got out of the blood prison? Did he have some kind of item to help?” Venees excitedly searched around Diablo’s body, but she found nothing.

Irritated, she slapped Diablo’s groin area to vent out her discontent, which caused the “fainted Diablo” to moan in pain.

“Good talent... Man, I wish I can have a little taste of you... if only master didn’t give us that order.” Venees chuckled and tied Diablo with a rope. “Now this is some luck. My teacher will reward me for capturing you again.”

With that, Venees dragged Diablo’s body back toward the prison area.

Shortly after she left, Angor’s form emerged from the shadow nearby.

“Shadow is caught? Blood prison?”

Shadow said his mission should be easy. Was he actually defeated by apprentices or... Did something else happen?

Angor decided to follow behind Venees.

...

On the first floor of Dark Castle, a tall, slim woman in a black dress was frowning at a crystal ball in her hand. Occasionally, a pair of black and white butterfly wings would blink behind her back.

The crystal ball was showing Venees’ position. Venees was now dragging Diablo’s body along the hallway.

“She’s actually happy about getting tricked by an illusion... That’s as stupid as that Isabella.” She frowned harder when speaking of Isabella’s name. “She’s such a joke! Instead of following Queen Mary’s glory, she only looks for shortcuts and dirty tricks. And she’s even trying to charm that puppet master! United challenge? My a*s. No wonder Lady Isabelle would leave this place and never come back.”

She looked into her crystal ball again; this time, she was looking at another figure.

“Now this boy just did a fine illusion...”

She had her eyes on Angor all the time; otherwise, she would also be tricked by Diablo’s image. The illusion looked real, but it still had many flaws that could alert keen eyes. If Venees were more careful, she would have easily noticed that “Diablo” had too little blood on his body despite his wounds, which shouldn’t be the case if he had just escaped from the blood prison.

“That illusion... Why does it remind me of Mister Phantom?”