Age of Adepts c1-1513

by Zhen De Lao Lang, 真的老狼

  The battlefield he entered would never have radiant knights fighting in them. The path he walked down would never put him within a large group of spellbreaker knights. As for those determined witcher-knights– as long as they didn't band together in excessively large numbers, they were unable to cause any real harm to Greem.

  The battlefield was chaotic, with numerous opportunistic adepts sneaking into the battles to start a slaughter along with the hordes of clay golems and voodoo beasts rampaging about the enemy lines. Even those radiant knights that wanted to pursue Greem could only chase behind him for a bit before having their attention drawn away by a new enemy and falling into another round of battles.

  Through the sacrifices of a large number of clay golems and voodoo beasts, Greem turned into a predator on the battlefield, fearlessly hunting his prey!

  Chapter 223

  Greem shook his head when he saw Knight Windsor standing at a distance, engulfed in the bright radiance of runic energy. With a single Fire Teleportation, he left the spot.

  A hundred meters away, in an area sparse with trees, a group of a hundred witcher-knights under the lead of two spellbreaker knights were hacking away at a group of wolf-like voodoo beasts.

  All of a sudden a halo of flames exploded amongst their ranks.

  A bright red light flashed before his eyes and as everything in his vision blurred and shook, Greem appeared on the scene.

  Once everything in his vision started to stabilize, Greem straightened his body and looked at the witcher-knights around him still seated high on their magic colts. A wicked grin appeared on his face made of flame and magma.

  A light-red Ring of Fire blasted outwards from his body, instantly covering an area thirty meters around him. All the trees, bushes, vines, and plants in the area started to wither and burn. Even the ground itself became scorched earth.

  Weng. Weng. Weng…

  The sound of snapping bowstrings rang out from runic bows as runic arrow after runic arrow, shrouded in concentrated ice energies, froze the Magma Shield into a bright blue shield of ice. Occasionally, three or four runic arrows would slip through and embed themselves in Greem's thick body of flames, leaving a fleeting blue flash in the sea of bright red flames.

  Greem roared loudly, waving the Fire Lord’s Scepter in his hand continuously. He summoned the terrifying ten-meter tall Fire Deity before tapping the scepter once more and ferociously bombarding the area around him with violent Magma Fireballs.

  The courageous witcher-knights wove about his body, using their ice longswords to leave striking sword cuts on Greem's body and shield every time they passed by. However, the only thing waiting for them was the violent and savage Magma Fireballs and Chain Fireballs.

  Greem had realized that those so-called ‘powerful’ and ‘devastating’ spells had no place on a chaotic and dynamic battlefield. There was no time or space to cast such spells.

  You would lock onto a worthy enemy and start chanting and preparing a powerful spell such as the Fire Core Explosion. However, the moment you were done preparing, you would awkwardly realize that the enemy had long since ran away, or that another wave of enemies had appeared before you, hiding your target from sight.

  Whenever this happened, your only choice would be to waste the powerful spell on some low-level, weak ‘trash’ that wasn't even worth killing. This was intolerable for the adepts! They had to precisely manage every bit of their Spirit consumption at every moment!

  However, a mere elementium fireball, while quickly cast and launched, only had an attacking strength of a mere 30 points. It was hard to deal lethal damage to the enemy through their armor of faith and knights' armor with such a weak attack.

  After some consideration, the swiftly cast yet sufficiently powerful Magma Fireball become the natural choice for Greem's battlefield slaughter!

  The Magma Fireball itself possessed 45 points of fire elementium damage, along with around 15 points of physical damage when the fireball exploded. Moreover, the fireball sent lava splashing in a ten meter radius. With the 30% flame damage increase from his flame mastery, Greem forcefully elevated a simple and crude fire spell to a powerful area-of-effect spell.

  If a witcher-knight was hit directly by a Magma Fireball, his mortality rate was a 100%. Meanwhile, those individuals that were engulfed by the lava splash in the ten meter radius also had a mortality rate of 34%. On the other hand, while much stronger than the witcher-knights, the spellbreaker knights did not dare to engage Greem within the sea of flames either.

  Greem's Flame Fiend Transformation combined with the Ring of Fire was too overpowering. The witcher-knights did not dare to even enter the area covered by the faint red light, choosing to roam around the outside while retaliating with their runic bows.

  Only the two spellbreaker knights, along with four or five fearless witcher-knights, dared to charge to Greem's side and trade blows with him.

  The Magma Shield floating around his body was finally unable to endure the combined attacks of the two spellbreaker knights and exploded into several magma pieces. Greem's body had also sustained a dozen slashes from the witcher-knights.

  Intense flame waves and terrifying lava surged out from the slashes, instantly igniting a witcher-knight stopping by Greem's side. He held his charred face filled with blisters in his hand as he crouched on his magic colt, screaming as he escaped from the battlefield.

  Greem, on the other hand, let out several muffled grunts.

  After all, once he had completed the Flame Fiend Transformation, the flame and lava on his body was equivalent to his blood and flesh. Continuous attacks would cause damage to him even with his now boosted Physique.

  Greem violently ordered the Fire Deity to self-destruct. Taking advantage of the enemies being stunned by the ensuing flame shockwave, he quickly cast a spell and instantly killed a spellbreaker knight with a powerful Fire Core Explosion. He then re-positioned himself in a blast of fire.

  Greem didn't choose the middle of the witcher-knight as the destination of his Fire Teleportation this time. Instead, he appeared in the woods beside a group of three hundred witcher-knights.

  The sudden explosion of his flame halo was still as conspicuous as ever. As a result, the moment Greem appeared, he was instantly greeted by a hail of ice arrows and four or five savage energy blades.

  The Magma Shield Greem had just concentrated around himself once more instantly started to tremble and fall apart.

  Greem grit his teeth and endured this series of attacks as he waved his scepter and summoned another Fire Deity. Then he raised his right hand high above his head and launched a Magma Fireball at the group of witcher-knights.

  The knights, however, were clearly prepared. Another wave of ice arrows and energy blades instantly shredded the Fire Deity to pieces, blasting the Magma Fireball in the air and causing it to explode in a cloud of flames as it did so.

  Greem let out another muffled grunt. The Scroll of Voodoo in his left hand started to flip rapidly before stopping on a page with a Meteor Shower stored within it. Greem hesitated for a moment, as he was still unwilling to waste this powerful instant-cast spell on this group of witcher-knights. He could only wait for the cooldown of Fire Teleportation before moving away once again.

  There wasn't just one or two adepts roaming about like Greem in this chaotic battlefield. Every adept that dared to fight alone had their own unique style of combat, as well as their own unique means of slaughtering enemies.

  The ones that drew Greem's attention the most were Acteon, Marionette, and Hyde.

  After going just a few days without seeing him, Evil Bugs Acteon's abilities had improved significantly.

  There were no longer just ordinary scorpions and flying bugs swarming around him. Thrown into the mix were a group of odd beetles half as tall as a man, with black shells and green wings. The black shells on these beetles were extraordinarily tough. Even the witcher-knights shining runic longswords could not deal any damage to them, only leaving behind a shallow
mark on the shells.

  The knights needed to hack away at the same spot numerous times before they could pierce through the armor and deal lethal damage. On the other hand, this group of strange beetles only needed to from groups of two to three and they could easily tear apart a witcher-knight.

  Even the armor of faith could not stop the beetles' sharp claws from piercing the knights' bodies.

  Greem saw with his own eyes the toughness of these beetles. A black beetle was hit by a spellbreaker knight's violent flame blade. It flipped about in the air several times before regaining its balance, with no damage done to its beetle shell. This clearly demonstrated that the outer shell of the black beetles had even more resistance towards elementium and energy damage compared to physical damage.

  Carcass beetles!

  Who knew that Acteon had actually managed to cultivate a swarm of them.

  Even Greem grimaced when he looked upon the three dozen carcass beetles swarming about Acteon. He started to slowly think about how he would win if he battled with Acteon.

  On another battlefield one and a half kilometers away, the adept known as Marionette had also drawn Greem's attention.

  Marionette's movements were slow and stiff. However, he was still able to remain mobile with his ability of teleporting between trees.

  His style of combat was not as violent and unrestrained as Greem's. Instead, there was an indescribable wickedness and ruthlessness to it.

  He would hide within the trees, waiting for small numbers of witcher-knights to walk by before gaining control over them with his strange puppet strings. After doing so for some time, he would gather a witcher-knight squad of around twenty or thirty men beside him.

  He would then direct this group of puppet knights to attack other witcher-knights. What happened next would be an internal conflict between knights!

  Should the witcher-knights ever pull their punches against the friends they knew so well, against their allies betrayed expressions of pain, they would likely die under the swords of their ‘companions’.

  However, it was obvious that the success rate of Marionette's puppet strings when controlling witcher-knights was not very high. Moreover, the number of puppets he could control was limited. Thus, the battlefields he was involved in were hardly ever as conspicuous as Greem's, with his Flame Fiend Transformation.

  The other person that attracted Greem's attention was the powerful Boss Hyde.

  He looked like a robot with metallic tentacles all over his body. Sharp tentacles gleaming with a metallic sheen danced about everywhere around his body. Every witcher-knight that stepped within twenty meters of him would be pierced by numerous sharp tentacles.

  These sharp tentacles had been enhanced with Spells of Piercing and were not something the knights' armor could defend against.

  They danced in the air, agile and lithe as if they were metallic serpents, launching terrifying piercing attacks from any angle around their enemies. On the other hand, the runic longswords of the witcher-knights, steeped in runic energies, could do absolutely no harm to the tentacles other than sending bright sparks flying everywhere.

  When the enemies surrounding him reached a certain number, countless spinning blades would swarm out from within Adept Hyde's body, forming a scary wall of blades around him. And all Adept Hyde needed to do was to quickly walk through the ranks of the knights with the wall of blades around him.

  With a single charge he could cut through the entire formation, leaving behind him a bloody path filled with severed limbs.

  If he met an enemy he was unable to beat, Adept Hyde would instantly turn into a metallic top, drilling into the ground and escaping into the distance.

  Chapter 224

  Compared to the numerous odd tricks up the adepts' sleeves, the means of fighting available to the knights of this world were way too primitive and crude.

  Even though the spellbreaker knights and the adepts were of the same grade, and weren't too different in terms of their level of strength, they had no methods of restricting and containing the adepts other than a couple of their battle techniques such as their Flame Blades, Explosive Cross Slashes, and Crescent Moon Slashes.

  In comparison, the adepts had confusingly strange spells and unthinkable means of slaughter. Together, these factors allowed the adepts to easily kill a spellbreaker knight with a single wave of attacks.

  The difference in power between beings of a higher plane and beings of a lower plane was immensely huge, even when compared with the same grade!

  With no other choice, the eleven radiant knights could only split up. Each one of them tagged an adept and followed closely behind their target. This effectively stopped the adepts' hunt. Yet at the same time, doing so split up the knight army’s most powerful fighting force.

  Once all of the radiant knights had been lured away, the numerous arrays hidden underneath the battlefield finally activated simultaneously.

  Corrosive acid swamps, wetlands with poison mists, bloodsucking forests filled with vampiric magic vines, quicksand traps… all these terrifying lands of death started to appear one after another, filling up every single piece of land in this stretch of forest.

  The numerous voodoo beasts and ghouls even took advantage of this unique geography that had sprung up to start guerrilla warfare against the witcher-knights. Once a witcher-knight was lured into these areas, there was almost no chance for them to escape alive.

  A radiant knight had charged into a bloodsucking forest to save a dozen-man knight squad and faced the most horrifying nightmare of his life in there.

  Countless bloodsucking magic vines burst out from the ground, wrapping towards him from every direction, their vines gleaming with a metallic sheen. Moreover, dreadful thorns filled the surface of each and every one of those vines, and a horrifying mouth with sharp teeth could be seen at the tips of the vines.

  The radiant knight had to endure immense danger before managing to escape, horribly disheveled by the experience. When he made it out, there were still a few severed vines on his armor. These vines continued to wriggle and move, their sharp wooden thorns scratching against the metal parts. The knight’s magic colt, on the other hand, had been completely covered in a nasty green sap. Wisps of green smoke from corroding flesh rose from its body, letting out a pungent odor.

  The knights' leader Windsor gazed at the battle from a distance and saw with his own eyes how a group of eight witcher-knights had fallen into an acid swamp when chasing after some voodoo beasts. Half of the knights had accidentally fallen in along with their colts, and were completely dissolved into skeletons within a dozen seconds. The rushing ghouls tackled the remaining knights to the ground, starting another round of bloody fighting.

  There were also the forests filled with poisonous mists. A witcher-knight squad walked into the mist, and one could only hear the angered shouts and roars from within, along with the howls of savage beasts. Not one person could see what was happening inside. That squad of witcher-knights never appeared again.

  Several deadly pieces of land were like death traps that ate humans whole. Any witcher-knights that walked into them would not be able to walk away unscathed. Moreover, the traps had split the wide forest into separate and smaller battlefields, causing the witcher-knights to be unable to rally again and launch their massive charge!

  "Sir?" Windsor grimaced at the sight and turned to the Holy Knight Willis.

  "Have them push forward while keeping an eye out for the hazardous areas. No matter what, we must crush the enemy's adept tower! I'll have the dragon knights act in coordination with you.” Willis' mighty figure stood tall on the back of the green dragon Aufreyr as he replied determinedly.

  "Then I'll lead the army at the front. It's up to you here, Sir!"

  Already, after a mere hour's battle, almost six hundred witcher-knights had already fallen in these woods. Their sacrifices had only caused the deaths of around a thousand voodoo beasts and ghouls.

  Those evil adepts, on the other
hand, were like poisonous snakes hiding within their pitch-black holes, waiting silently for the best opportunity to attack. When you finally saw them, it would most likely be their vanishing silhouette after they dealt a killing blow.

  Windsor, who had been commanding the army from the back, was finally unable to hold back his anger when he saw all this. He led the 1500 men in the reserves and charged forward fervently.

  Holy Knight Willis stood behind the army, raising his head and letting out an odd and resonating roar. Three green dragons hiding in the woods behind him took to the skies amidst the roars, carrying the dragon knights on their backs. They unfurled their massive, leathery wings and rapidly glided across the canopy, swooping towards the magic traps on the battlefield.

  Every time they flew over those areas, they would open their mouths wide and let out a massive dragon's breath. The dense green poison dragon's breath would sink into the acid swamps and poisonous mist forests, ravaging the entire area.

  Countless voodoo beasts would run out, screeching in pain, as green poison mist slowly rose from their bodies. They never ran far before the ghastly miasma took their lives. One after another, the voodoo beasts collapsed in the forest, their bodies rapidly rotting and falling apart. It was a horrifying scene to behold.

  The ghouls were undead beings themselves and were therefore immune to poison attacks. They climbed up to the canopy with their agile bodies, jumping from the treetops, trying to grab onto the dragons' bodies and drag them to the ground.

  Most of them were unsuccessful and were blasted away by the violent winds stirred by the green dragons' flight. Even the occasional ghoul that managed to grab ahold of a dragon would be split in half by the dragon knight riding on the back.