Willis' face was one full of pain and struggle when faced with questions of the green dragon clan leader Raistlin, his father.
"But… but father, the invading adepts this time are extremely weak. If we gather all of the dragons in Dragon Valley, we can still chase them out of this plane!"
"Haha… my child, you are too naive! You have spent too much time on this peaceful and warm material plane, so much time that your thought process is confined within the narrow perspective of those pathetic humans. So what if you fight off this wave of adepts? The adept clan invading this time might just be a small force. However, if they fail in their invasion, they would most definitely sell the coordinates of our plane to other forces and organizations. Then an even more powerful adept force will be the one to invade this world.
"We, the dragons, have already dealt with the evil adepts in countless other plane worlds. Their greed and cruelty is rarely seen even amongst the few powerful large planes. If we had sufficient prowess, we could naturally keep them outside of our territory once and for all. But we do not! We are only Green Dragons, an insignificant branch of the Emerald Dragons of the Dragon's Plane
"Even if we mobilize the strength of the entire clan and force a stalemate, it still wouldn't be any good. The breeding and development of a dragon is counted in thousands of years. A new batch of adepts will invade before our new members have even come of age!
"When this world's coordinates were exposed before the evil adepts, its fate had already been determined!"
Willis closed his eyes in agony.
As the offspring of green dragon clan leader Raistlin and a native human girl, Willis had the mixed bloodline of human and dragon. On one hand, he was a citizen of Dragon Valley; on the other, he was the highest authority of all witcher-knights in the human's kingdom and the most reliable right arm of the human king.
Now he came here bearing the trust and faith of the king, yet he could not convince his conservative and stubborn father. The pain he felt in his heart, as someone split between two factions he loved dearly, was indescribable.
"Father, I know you have no attachment or feelings for those humans. However, your son has travelled hundreds of kilometers to ask of you just this one request! Are you willing to let him go back with empty hands? Please, I beg of you, save the humans and the lives on this plane!"
Raistlin was obviously put in a difficult position when confronted with Willis' emotional appeal. He turned around and argued loudly with the two clan elders. The atmosphere was tense.
Finally, Raistlin turned around once more and roared loudly at Willis, "I respect your decision. If you wish to fight for the humans, you may leave. If any dragons in Dragon Valley wish to follow you, I will not stop them. Remember, the doors of Dragon Valley will always be open for you. I'll welcome you back with open arms any time you are tired, my child!
"You can leave now!"
Willis nodded in anguish when he heard his father and clan leader's words, before turning and leaving the meeting hall.
A short moment later, Willis' impassioned war declaration rang out from above the skies of the tall Dragon Cliff.
For a moment, the dragons raised a commotion as they roared in reply.
Half a day later, three green dragons trailed behind Willis as he dashed across the sky
and disappeared at the horizon's edge.
Green Dragon clan leader Raistlin, who had transformed into a human with Ultimate Transfiguration, stood at the large cave entrance of the meeting hall. He gazed at the silhouettes of the disappearing dragons and spoke softly.
"Singe, did we make the right decision?"
Fourth Grade green dragon elder Singe walked to his side. His massive dragon eyes were steeped in age and glowed with the light of wisdom.
"I've tried my best countless times to divine the future. The leader of the invading adepts is a terrifying Sixth Grade Great Adept. It is virtually impossible to defy him with the power of our clan. Even if we tried our very best, the most we could do is delay the fall of this plane by one or two hundred years. Such a result is meaningless for us green dragons!
"Unless you are able to ask for reinforcements from our progenitors–the Emerald Dragons–we cannot do anything by ourselves. We will only be defeated along with this plane.
"I am only referring to the future vision I've seen through the Dragon Altar. This is only the image that has occurred the most among the myriad possible futures. As for what is to be done, that is up to you, the clan leader, to decide! After all, the fates of all forty clan members in the Dragon Valley lie solely on your shoulders!"
Raistlin gazed into the distance, the light in his eyes dimming and growing faint.
…………
It had been thirteen days since the last great battle.
The witcher-knights that retreated from the forest gave their base up, redirecting their army to the outskirts of Blue Hillock City.
The conclusion of this bloody battle also gave relief to the adepts.
They took advantage of this rare resting opportunity and swarmed into the depths of the woods, massacring the animals and creating new voodoo beasts en masse. Some adepts with unique tricks up their sleeves were also sent to Blue Hillock City, relentlessly harassing the knights' base.
Greem took this opportunity to hide in his underground lab, conducting all sorts of research in secret.
Just a few days earlier, the third batch of reinforcements arrived.
This time, only two adepts came.
One male and one female. However, they were two Third Grade Adepts!
Their arrival instantly filled the entire adepts' base with confidence.
The very next day, the construction of the tower resumed again after its lengthy delay.
At this point, a simple illusion barrier was no longer able to hide the existence of the war tower. If the opponent sent out any more dragon knights, they would be able to clearly see the tall tower the moment they entered Greenland Forest.
The two Third Grade adepts stayed in the camp to slowly get used to the change in planar laws, while the remaining adepts were busy with their own things. Greem had also successfully obtained the information he needed from Adept Hyde.
A hitlist.
A list filled with the names of the rune grandmasters on the knights' plane!
Sadly, almost all of the rune grandmasters were located near the capital of the knights' kingdom and were under heavy protection. Thus, if Greem wanted to get his hands on the profound knowledge on merging runic and life energy, there was no avoiding a long trip to the capital!
And with the current situation, it was impractical to leave the adepts' base to go on a trip in the human's world.
At least until the end of the next battle, Greem could not leave the adepts' base.
The battle in the woods last time had caused tremendous damage to the witcher-knights. However, with the fifteen days of rest and recuperation they received, fresh blood from all over the continent had been able to arrive one after another, replenishing the numbers of the army outside Blue Hillock City. The number of witcher-knights had reached a historic five thousand men!
The storm of war started to brew once more over the edge of Greenland Forest.
The higher-ups in the knights used high and extravagant rewards to attract bounty hunters, adventurers, mercenaries, and even rogues and thieves of all kinds. Greenland Forest was almost akin to an exceptionally lively market because of this. Every day, countless small squads of human adventurers wove their way through the woods, playing a game of cat and mouse with the evil adepts and their terrifying voodoo beasts and ghouls.
Even though most of the squads never returned, as they were turned into materials for the adepts to create more voodoo beasts, there were one or two fortunate squads. The knight commanders pieced together the bits and pieces of information they brought back, and finally managed to get a basic understanding of the forest’s interior.
The adepts' tower in pa
rticular was extremely conspicuous and was hard to conceal from the scouts. All the higher-ups were alerted to its existence and it became a thorn in their hearts, a concern that made them lose sleep night after night. If it wasn't for the fact that the powerhouses of the knights' army had yet to arrive, a new battle might have already started.
It was in such a tense situation that Greem excavated an underground palace of his own in a spot three and a half kilometers away from the base.
Using the large number of clay golems and alligator hunters under his command, Greem dug a small underground palace fifteen meters underground, turning it into his personal laboratory and spending every day in there.
There were over twenty rooms in the underground palace, and important magic experiments were being conducted in every one of them.
Four or five glowstones were placed on the dim and wet stone walls of the corridors. They let out a dim light-green radiance, barely enough to make the surrounding area visible.
Greem appeared in the corridor, still engulfed in a thick and heavy robe. After a slight hesitation, he turned and entered the first stone room on the left.
A massive ice pillar was placed on the stone pedestal in the middle of the empty stone room. There was nothing else besides that. However, just this massive ice pillar alone was obviously no common object. Its mere existence caused the temperature of the stone room to drop to a shocking -157°C.
Snow and ice crystals covered the entire room. Even the floorboards, the ceiling, and the walls were entirely covered under a layer of bright blue ice. If these walls hadn't been reinforced and protected by magic arrays, Greem was sure that the chill would spread out of the room, turning the entire underground palace into a world of snow and ice.
The only thing Greem could do in the stone room was stand before the ice pillar and use his own elementium fire to continuously roast the ice pillar. Then he would close his eyes and sense and feel the traces of planar law released from the pillar as the ice melted.
Indeed, this ice pillar was the product left behind in the fight between Second Grade Adept Sir Fügen and the Second Grade Radiant Knight. Sir Fügen had conjured the power of the planar laws to freeze the enemy within to capture him alive. For that reason, the remains of this ice pillar were also a manifestation of planar law of ice fragments.
If Greem hadn't used his fire against it, this force of ice and snow would automatically absorb water elementium from its surroundings to maintain its existence. It would probably be at least one or two months before it would melt on its own. In this period, any living being that dared to touch the pillar would have to endure chill damage as high as thirty degrees.
This was almost as much as the all out attack of an advanced apprentice!
It was clear how powerful Second Grade adepts were. Just a simple spell casually cast would have such terrifying might. Thus, Greem needed to slowly sense the intricacies of the planar law powers within the ice pillar to find the innate difference between First and Second Grade adepts!
Chapter 216
Greem was finally able to melt away a thin layer of ice on the ice pillar after fifteen minutes.
He was doing the burning, but the one performing a detailed analysis of the ice pillar's contents was the chip.
After all, the chip was tens or even hundreds of times better than him at data collection and analysis. Moreover, this was only because the chip had been restricted by the limits of his Spirit. The chip's ability would continue to improve and expand as his Spirit slowly increased.
Thus, Greem gave up on comparing himself with the chip and focused on melting the ice pillar bit by bit. Then he focused on analysing the contents of the ice crystals, the peculiarities of the arrangement of spirit elementium, as well as the forms created by the combination of the spirit elementium with the material elementium.
Greem could feel the existence of spirit elementium everywhere inside the ice pillar.
From his past understanding, material objects were material objects, while elementium were elementium and Spirit was Spirit. All three were distinct units with different forms of existence, different characteristics, and different ways of functioning. However, after the analysis of the ice pillar before him, Greem was shocked to find that his past understanding and distinction of these substances had been shattered.
These three didn't seem to be independent units that could never assimilate or merge!
In Greem's understanding, material objects were visible, tangible objects that existed in the physical world. From anything as small as dirt, firewood, rivers, to something as big as lakes, seas, mountains, or entire continents. These were all parts of the material world, and were objects that could be sensed with human senses. Thus, material objects were the foundation of the material world!
The Earth in his previous life was similar in this regard with the alternate world he was currently in.
On the other hand, elementium was a mysterious substance that was invisible and intangible. It existed everywhere in the entire universe, like a boundlessly vast sea, engulfing the entire multiverse.
From the perspective of the multiverse, all elementium was at a perfect balance. However, if one were to just observe from a limited area, elementium behaved like tides, ebbing and flowing. They varied in quantity and density, never quite the same in different parts of the multiverse.
In truth, the multi-faceted portrayals and features of the material planes had a very direct connection to the density of elementium particles in the area they existed in.
Earth differed entirely from this alternate world in this aspect.
Many mysterious and amazing ancient myths and legends about gods and deities existed back on Earth. Those ancient gods and deities seemed like they were omnipotent, capable of ravaging seas and claiming the skies. However, in the Earth Greem used to live, no one had such amazing ability.
If Greem had remained in the past, he might have only thought of these ancient stories as fantasies and dreams of people in the past. However, he no longer thought so!
It was very likely that Earth in the past was a world filled with elementium energy that allowed the people of that time to possess the chance of overcoming their weak physical bodies to master and manipulate great power. However, with the ebbing of the elementium tide, the elementium energy on Earth started to fade once more. Humans were once again cast back to their mundane selves, forced to abandon arcanology and go back to the path of technology.
Thus elementium, this mysterious substance, was the true reason behind changes in material planes!
But what exactly was elementium?
Normal humans had no way of observing elementium particles with the naked eye. Even if you spent every day soaked in elementium particles, and countless particles entered and exited your body with every breath you took, you still wouldn't have the means to sense and verify their existence.
The only way humans could make contact with elementium particles was through meditation. By doing so, they used their Spirit as a bridge, allowing their tangible physical bodies to contact the intangible elementium particles.
It was precisely because of the existence of elementium particles that Spirit became a source of power!
Normal humans could stare all they wanted or move about all they wanted, but nothing they did would cause a change in the world. Their weak and feeble strength was insufficient to do anything to an entire material world. However, when a Great Adept just stared or stomped even once, the elementium directed by his Spirit would form into a force that could shake and challenge planar laws, change the colors of the sky, and shift the paths of mighty rivers.
In the past, Greem had very clear distinctions for the three, and came up with detailed lines and traits that distinguished each of them. However, when he vaguely sensed the existence of Spirit elementium in the ice pillar, the knowledge construct he had created in the past unavoidably started to fall apart.
He was fortunate that he was able to successfully tr
ansform his body into elementium when he was still an apprentice adept with the help of the Fire Lord’s Scepter. This caused his mastery over fire elementium particles to become even more skillful and practiced, allowing him to ultimately become an adept and rapidly improve into a powerful fire adept.
Many books mentioned the term ‘Spirit elementiumization’ in their discussions of future advancement for adepts. However, none of them mentioned anything on how Spirit elementiumization was supposed to be done. At one point, Greem had suspected that this was the doing of the adept clans. By cutting off access to such knowledge, the clans would be able to use it as a means to attract talent to serve them.
The only way First Grade adepts could hope to improve was to join clans with ancient adept legacies and obtain this missing knowledge from them. Otherwise, the only other path left to them was to waste year after year slowly exploring the endless darkness, trying to find a path forward.
Even though adepts had extremely long lifespans relative to mortals, their lives were still limited when compared to the infinite and endless pursuit of arcane knowledge!
Supposedly, given that Greem had only advanced to an elementium adept, he would probably have to waste the first hundred years on completing and reinforcing the elementiumization of his body. It was only one hundred years later that he would be able to start exploring the issue of the elementiumization of his Spirit. However, he had miraculously completed his body's conversion and was already starting to worry about the elementiumization of Spirit a hundred years early.
Greem would naturally expend all his efforts to explore and research when he got ahold of such a rare chance to examine Spirit elementium.
Greem's compatible attribute was with fire elementium particles, while the compatible attribute of Second Grade Adept Sir Fügen was clearly the mutated ice elementium. The massive difference in both of their attributes caused Greem to clearly feel the backlash of the plane's laws of ice when he extended his Spirit, and probed into the spirit elementium released by the ice pillar after it had been melted.
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