Warlock Apprentice

The black coffin was exposed to air. There was no tombstone nor a coffin lid. Angor could clearly observe the skeleton inside.

It looked like someone small. From a quick assumption, the skeleton belonged to someone about 1.2 or 1.3 meters tall. A child, probably.

Next, he glanced at something shining around the skeleton's skull. He saw the object during the last lightning flash.

He reached for it and found a necklace, which was made from a platinum chain and a heart-shaped gem. The gem was polished into a hexadecahedron[1.16-faced entity], which shone brilliantly each time more lightning came.

Angor moved a finger around the gem and found a small trigger.

Click!

Another secret chamber was revealed in the gem.

As he expected, the gem was polished in this way to confuse human sights. The design concealed the fact that the gem was only a thin shell, while more space existed inside.

Many nobles loved such tricks to hide their personal artifacts. However, such charms weren't large enough to keep something valuable. The nobles mostly used this trick to show off small surprises to their friends.

As a nobleman himself, Angor also kept this habit. For example, he hid his hologram tablet in a small space inside a pocket watch.

And such knowledge helped him find something on the gem easily.

The secret chamber held a piece of broken silk. The silk was thin, yet it contained countless finely-crafted needleworks. This was definitely not something accessible to common folks; it meant that the child corpse might come from a noble family.

Angor carefully spread the silk open. It was almost as large as his hand. There was the embroidery of a smiling girl on it. She didn't look quite beautiful, but her smile was gentle and bright.

There was another young figure beside her who held her shoulder, but the part showing the figure's face had broken.

On the girl's raised right hand was a small bird with colorful patterns that looked like the "eye" of a peacock feather.

A line of characters was written at the bottom of the silk.

It was too tiny and poorly-written. Angor waited for several lightning strikes and finally managed to read something from it.

"To… the ninth birthday… sister…"

So the silk was a present given to the little girl by her brother or sister, which probably meant the second figure shown on the picture.

Angor put the silk back into the gem and returned it to the skeleton. The corpse should be the owner of this childish present. However, there was no way to find out why the little princess of a noble clan ended up in this terrible grave in Otherworld.

There was nothing else in the grave that provided any information, but Angor didn't really care. He didn't come here to respect the dead.

He moved around the coffin and headed to the crater blocking the path. He had to somehow move across it if he wanted to leave by the gate.

He didn't cause any more alerts among the souls this time. While walking along the edge of the crater, he began to feel more and more troubled because the flashes of lightning had shown him that there were piles of corpses huddled together down the bottom of the crater.

Skeletons, rotten and rotting bodies, as well as fresh ones.

The half-rotten bodies looked particularly terrible. All the corpses had kept their last moment by dragging each other and reaching toward the outside. The whole sight looked like the painting of a master artist who wished to present how a mass grave looked like.

The painting was made worse by the fact that all the deceased were women, which added a twisted sense to its general theme.

Telling from their appearances, they died at different time frames. The earliest ones only died in recent days, while some died maybe a century ago.

Their corpses all looked clean too. Each of them had one single bloody wound right on their chest. Someone from Dark Castle was probably the culprit.

But why women only? And so many of them?

Also, all the undead spirits meant that these women suffered greatly before their deaths.

Angor looked into the distance and at the Dark Castle again. He was now getting disgusted about this place.

The current owner of Dark Castle, 'Sundown Queen' Isabella, showed a terrible nature by trying to kill him without a reason.

It made a lot of sense that someone like that would commit such slaughter.

"Yes. That madwoman Isabella could totally do something like this."

After passing around the crater, Angor reached the graveyard gate.

The gate was left open. Angor was surprised again when he saw footprints around the gate.

The patterns left by the footprints looked similar to Shadow's boots.

Did Shadow pass through here recently?

As he thought, he suddenly felt something shifting in his pocket again.

Toby's moving?

Angor carefully took out the bird. Toby was now "dream walking" again as it tried to fly away while sleeping.

"There are Soul Orbs nearby?"

But they were still pretty far from Dark Castle. Angor quickly grabbed Toby when the bird almost left him. The undead souls would quickly notice Toby if he wandered far, and Toby was in no condition to protect himself from the undead souls' attacks right now.

Angor kept Toby closer while trying to tell where Toby wanted to go. He frowned when he noticed Toby pointing to the opposite direction of Dark Castle.

Angor landed near the right side of the graveyard while Toby was trying to go left. He didn't remember seeing anything special when he was observing from above the graveyard. There were only more tombstones over there.

He considered and followed Toby's direction.

Toby probably sensed Soul Orbs or at least something that could help repair his soul. They had to check it out.

The left side of the graveyard looked cleaner than the rest. At least there were fewer exposed coffins. Angor still heard women crying, but there were no souls that stayed outside.

Some of the tombstones were blank, while some had names written with blood. The characters had all become blurry after being affected by moisture in the air.

Angor tried to imagine what happened here—Naked women, using their tears of blood, who left their names on their own graves while cursing the names of their killers.

Wait. Could the deceased possibly write on their own tombstones? That would be so horrifying.

Angor shivered a little and kept following Toby's signal until he came to a stop in front a well.

The well looked ordinary. There were no strange smells or anything particular coming from it. Still, it was already a strange thing for a well to exist in the middle of a graveyard. Also, Angor sensed lingering dark magic around the well. Any undead being who approached would get purified by it.

Someone intentionally left it here, that much was obvious.

When standing near the well, Angor could no longer hear women crying, which meant the "purification power" was pretty strong.

Everything suggested that there was some secret down there. Toby was also asking to go down the well.

After careful consideration, Angor jumped inside.

He landed on solid ground again after about two seconds. The well was completely dry, and there were no negative emotions released by undead souls. Therefore, Angor decided to cast Light to see around.

The bottom of the well looked like a cave. There were miniature stalagmites growing on the ground. A dark tunnel sat behind the curtain of pointy stones.

While still in his dreaming state, Toby pointed a wing toward the tunnel.

Angor remained cautious and began going into the cave. He soon heard someone crying again. But compared to the crying of resentment outside, this voice sounded a lot more innocent. It was simple, and it wasn't trying to show any particular emotions.

The cave wasn't big, and Angor reached the end of it soon.

The source of the crying voice was also here—a small girl wearing a yellow overall dress.