Age of Adepts c1-1513
Page 164
The Edward dynasty had been thoroughly extinguished!
Chapter 249
Now that everything was completed, it was finally the best part. The part Greem had been looking forward to– the rewards!
He had only risked his life a little in the planar battle earlier, and had already been rewarded with a Flame Fiend Heart that was compatible with his affinity. What kind of rewards awaited him now that he had so successfully completed two missions?
The uncomfortable feeling from witnessing the Bloodline Curse at work was quickly fading away.
For some reason, Greem was becoming excited!
A magic crystal card worth a hundred thousand magic crystals, and one standard adepts' tower. These were Greem's final rewards from this trip to another world.
Such a reward was extremely extravagant.
It was important to note that most adepts received around thirty to fifty thousand magic crystals worth of profit in each planar war they participated in. Yet Lord Sarubo had instantly inflated Greem's reward to one hundred thousand. This was clearly an acknowledgement of his prowess and diligence.
That said, a hundred thousand magic crystals was completely insignificant compared to the reward of the adepts' tower.
This adepts' tower that Great Adept Sarubo had personally promised Greem was completely different from the swampy tower he had lived at in the past.
When all was said and done, the swamp tower was still considered a property of the Sarubo Clan. Adept Anderson was only managing the tower as the adept stationed there. The adepts' tower Greem had been rewarded was going to be Greem's personal territory. It would be owned and managed by him and him alone.
This also meant that from now on, Greem would have a safe space that even the Sarubo Clan cannot enter or take away as they willed. Such an adepts' tower was worth at least two hundred thousand magic crystals back in the World of Adepts.
However, such a reward clearly couldn't be given out in the knights' plane. Greem's new tower had to wait until they returned to the World of Adepts. He would have to pick a suitable location, and then the Sarubo Clan would be responsible for the following cost of materials and construction.
This was obviously one of the methods that the Sarubo Clan used to incentivize and attract talent to stay!
If Greem wanted to get this reward, he had to sign a new contract with Great Adept Sarubo. He was not to leave the Sarubo Clan for another hundred years. Greem thought for a moment and agreed.
After receiving his rewards Greem left Sarubo's room, only to be called over by Adept Fügen. The reason Fügen was in a rush to see Greem was because he needed to ask him about his future plans.
Now that the knights' plane was well in the hands of the clan, the Sarubo Clan's rule would quickly spread throughout the entire world. Many adepts were needed to fill in the power vacuum left after the collapse of the knights' kingdom. At the same time, the adept forces in the two lesser planes as well as the main headquarters couldn't be absent for too long. They needed adepts to return to their stations there.
Thus, Adept Fügen actively asked for Greem's opinion to see which was more preferable for him.
Greem had to ask several questions before he found out that the other adepts in the base had already made their decisions before he came back. He might not care about the other adepts' choices, but there were two people he was concerned about. Mary and Acteon had both chose to stay in the knights' plane!
He couldn't help but feel that their choices were odd.
Then again, after a little thought, it seemed perfectly reasonable!
Both Mary and Acteon were bloodline adepts. The way they increased their powers was vastly different from elementium adepts. In all honesty, both of them walked on a bloody path of slaughter!
As a vampire adept, Mary's growth revolved around large amounts of fresh, high quality blood. This was a scarce resource in the World of Adepts. However, all of those fleeing witcher-knights, spellbreaker knights, and radiant knights here could be her prey. As long as she was diligent, she could obtain massive profits from her time here.
If this was the World of Adepts, the adepts there couldn't possibly allow her to go around hunting and ambushing adepts for their blood.
Similarly, Evil Bugs Acteon needed large amounts of high quality flesh and blood to cultivate even more carcass beetles. Staying in the knights' plane and exterminating the remaining knights was a decent choice for him as well!
As compared to these two 'old friends' that could get stronger and stronger through constant killing, Greem was only an elementium adept– and elementium adepts could not improve in the same way they did.
What was more important and crucial to elementium adepts was their understanding and utilization of the planar laws. All of this required the accumulation of an immense amount of knowledge and technique. There were no shortcuts to be taken. With the help of the chip, Greem could avoid going down the wrong path and being misguided and might also need slightly less time to accumulate knowledge. Still, gathering an immense amount of knowledge was a long and drawn-out process.
Moreover, this knowledge was not readily available in the knights' plane.
After deep consideration, Greem decided to return to the World of Adepts.
After all, that was the adepts’ place of origin. It was much easier to gather knowledge there than anywhere else. As for the resources he needed for his future development? His bulging, full storage belt already had that settled!
Greem had intended to see Mary before he left, to reinforce their relationship. Sadly, there were many internal affairs to be settled in the knights' plane. All of the adepts that had chosen to stay here had already been assigned posts all over the plane. Thus, Greem could only follow the twelve adepts back across the space vortex and return to the clan's pseudo-plane.
Greem once again saw Lord Sarubo's actual body here.
The first thing Lord Sarubo did when he saw everyone was extend a bony hand towards them. He made a slight grabbing motion, and some unusually brilliant fragments had been extracted from everyone's souls.
Greem felt a stinging pain in the depths of his soul, which quickly faded after a while.
Greem couldn't help but be intimidated as he looked at the soul fragments that Great Adept Sarubo had extracted from the adepts. He started communicating with the chip.
"Chip, can you determine what Sarubo extracted from my soul?"
"Beep, inspecting chip data library… bzzzzzt, error detected. Data missing from data library. Warning. Warning. Chip data library has received slight damage. Some data has been lost… "
"Chip, could you be more specific? Which data?"
"Beep, data related to the coordinates of the knights' plane… "
So that's what it was!
Greem finally understood.
The information Great Adept Sarubo had extracted from everyone's souls was the coordinate information of the knights' plane.
Now that the plane had already become the third lesser-plane belonging to the Sarubo Clan, it was also Great Adept Sarubo's personal property. If the coordinates of such a developed material plane was exposed, it could very well attract many schemes and hunters from his enemies.
As a result, the first thing Sarubo did when the clan adepts came out of the knights' plane was wipe away any memories about the plane’s coordinates.
This clearly wasn't the first time that the veteran clan adepts had experienced this sort of thing. They were extremely calm and measured when their memories were taken from them. On the other hand, Greem, Keoghan, and a few other adepts betrayed an expression of fear and doubt. That said, anyone who could still stand here alive had to be sly and scheming. They quickly suppressed and hid their uncertainties.
"Good job in the planar war this time. Your contributions will be noted by the clan. When you go back, all of the rewards that have been promised will be realized. Mm, you may return now!" Great Adept Sarubo's head was still bent low beneath the shad
ow of his hood. Still, his low voice still echoed within everyone's mind.
The adepts bowed in acknowledgement.
They exited the large magic hall, nodded and greeted each other, then left in their own directions.
Greem, Keoghan, Ferrier, and Kiel were clearly headed for the World of Adepts. Thus they walked together and successfully used the long-range teleportation array within the pseudo-plane to return to the adepts' tower at the clan headquarters.
All four of them couldn't help but let out a muffled grunt when they walked out of the teleportation array.
Body Refining Adept Kiel, who had the toughest Physique, only held his head as he fell into a daze for a moment. He quickly recovered. Potions Master Ferrier on the other hand, who had the weakest Physique, had completely fallen to the ground and found it difficult to even get up. Greem and Keoghan also tightly gripped their fists as they silently endured the pain brought about by the backlash from the planar laws.
Their bodies, minds, and souls had all been contaminated with a trace of the other plane’s aura, having stayed in the knights' plane for such a long time. Thus there had to be a period of re-adaption to the World of Adepts.
Harrison, who was stationed in that tower, felt the commotion from the teleportation array. He appeared in the hall almost immediately after the four adepts had arrived. He quickly understood what was happening when he saw the adepts in pain.
Under his orders, seven young apprentice adepts quickly came forth and helped the adepts to their own quarters to rest.
The resilient Kiel waved his hand and pushed aside the two apprentices next to him. He had basically recovered after this short moment's rest. The mastery that body refining adepts had over their bodies was enviable!
Greem's physique was also rather special.
Having completed the elementiumization of his body, there weren't as many flaws now as he had when he was an actual human. Thus he was the second adept to recover after Kiel.
He waved aside the apprentices and silently watched as Keoghan and Ferrier were sent back to their quarters by the apprentices.
The clear and crisp notification of the chip continuously rang out in Greem's mind as waves of planar backlash continued to wrestle with his powerful Spirit in the depths of his soul.
"Detecting penetration of strange energies. Initial analysis suggests that these energies are extremely beneficial to an adepts' Spirit. Requesting instructions from host. Block these energies?"
The shit? Block these energies when they are beneficial to Spirit? Do you think I've got shit for brains?
Greem instructed unhappily, "No need to stop the energies. Continue monitoring!"
"Understood! Continuing monitoring… "
In his mind, the graphs indicating Greem's bodily attributes were rapidly increasing. Every single attribute was shooting up at an amazing rate, and the speed at which they were increasing was accelerating as well.
Finally, when the sudden change in attributes had stopped, Greem managed to see for himself the change.
Name: Greem
Race: Human (half-elementiumized) Male
Class: First Grade Adept
Attributes: Strength 2.6 | Agility 1.1 | Physique 3.7 | Spirit 6.3
Condition: Healthy.
Chapter 250
Plane feedback!
This was plane feedback!
Greem shouted out silently in his heart.
Even though he had yet to fully comprehend the mechanisms and principles of these planar feedbacks, it didn't stop him from reveling in the joy of having his powers increase exponentially.
Countless planar law chains were incessantly merging with certain contents within his mind. All of this was happening at a planar law level that Greem couldn't access with his naked eye or his Spirit. If Greem had advanced to a Fourth Grade adept, he might have realized that all of the contents of his mind that were merging with the laws were runic knowledge that he had brought back from the knights' plane, as well as the resentment of powerful individuals that he had slain.
The planar laws trembled slightly. The ends of the planar chains had completely sunk into Greem's soul. They were slowly merging with the complete set of runic knowledge Greem had just obtained. Even though most of the runic knowledge was similar to the World of Adepts’ widely used system, the part about merging energies was completely new content.
Most of Greem's plane feedback had come from this particular knowledge!
The fact that Greem's base attributes could explode up to two or three times their original value was mostly thanks to this completely new knowledge of merging runic energies.
The other adepts might have been able to obtain varying amounts of knowledge concerning the merging of runic energies, but who could compare with Greem? He had robbed the knights' kingdom treasury of knowledge– the drafting room of Runeforge Camp! The knowledge fragments that the adepts brought back with them from another plane had helped the World of Adepts in completing part of its planar laws. As a result, the planar consciousness had naturally rewarded them with positive feedback!
Of course, Greem got the most out of this process. Even the gains of the other three adepts added together would not compare to half of Greem's.
The resentment of powerful knights that clung onto Greem's body had also provided him feedback from the plane. This sort of resentment couldn't be obtained by just any random acts of killing. One had to slaughter, with his own hands, a powerful individual that had been acknowledged by the plane to gain such resentment.
Having slain mountains of witcher-knights, scores of spellbreaker knights, and even a radiant knight, the amount of resentment that had gathered about Greem was tremendous. All of these resentments had been exchanged for an immense plane feedback.
If one were to look at it from this point of view, the World of Adepts actually encouraged killing beings of other worlds. The cruel, evil, and invasive nature of the adepts had infected the entire planar consciousness as well. This caused the World of Adepts to become a chaotic, evil, and savage planar consciousness towards other worlds!
That said, the adepts possessed a trace of elegance amidst their brutality, as compared to demons of the lower realms. They were calm and measured madmen. It differed from the utter chaos and insanity of the abyssal demons!
However, these planar secrets that occured at the level of the planar laws was not something that Greem could access as he was now. Thus the only thing he could do, apart from passively receiving the plane feedback, was to record every change to his body using the chip. This could be useful for his future research.
…………
The abnormality of the returning Sarubo Clan adepts didn't draw any attention from the outside world.
Of the seven adepts that set off from Feidnan City's adepts' tower, only four had returned. Mary and Acteon had chosen to stay in the knights' plane. Another adept had unfortunately died on the planar battlefield.
Even though the war this time had successfully given the Sarubo Clan complete control over a lesser plane, the headquarters had to endure the consequences of the sudden decrease in their number of adepts.
The reason the Sixth-Grade Great Adept Sarubo had given such extravagant rewards to Greem was to keep him in the clan for a hundred years. This was done in order to ensure that the clan could successfully last through this period of weakness. The Sarubo Adept Clan had to wait for the resources from the knights' plane to be sent back before it could regain or even exceed its previous strength.
Before they were able to do so, they had to keep a grip on powerful new adepts like Greem in order to avoid their weakness from attracting their enemy’s attention!
The Zhentarim Association's Forest Territory. This was a place where countless adept clans stood and survived. The complex geography, along with the complex relationships of the clans, caused this to be an area of intense conflict where battles broke out every so often and tensions never ended. Large-scale adept conflicts had been forbid
den in this area. However, small-scale territory wars and the skirmishes between individual adept clans were not included in this rule.
Big fish eat small fish, and small fish ate shrimps!
If any adept clan showed weakness in its affairs, all of the territory and resource sites it owned would instantly be attacked and conquered by the surrounding adept clans. Every so often, news of wars and battles between clans and clan leaders would spread throughout the entire Zhentarim Association.
Moreover, news of the massive decrease in active adepts in the Sarubo Clan headquarters could not be hidden from the public. This meant that, in the short term, the thirteen worldly territories and nine resources sites belonging to the Sarubo Clan would most likely attract the greed of their enemies.
Some small skirmishes were unavoidable!
Now that Greem had performed so outstandingly in the plane war, and had signed a new adept contract with Lord Sarubo, he could be considered a trustworthy core adept of the clan. Thus, some of the core secrets of the Sarubo Clan were gradually being exposed to him.
The Sarubo Clan. A mid-tier adept clan within the Zhentarim Association. They had seventy-three official First Grade adepts, four Second Grade adepts, and two Third Grade adepts. The number of adepts in even higher grades were not something that Greem could access with his current status.
It was with such a meager force that the Sarubo Clan had to defend their headquarters, while managing three lesser planes and a pseudo-plane that served as a transit hub between these four locations. If the adept forces were split between all of these worlds, there would be a slight shortage in manpower in all of the locations. The number of active forces were not enough.
In recent times the clan had gathered most of its adepts on the newly acquired knights' plane, causing a power vacuum in the other areas. Thus, the most urgent task was to gather the limited manpower they currently had to drive away the greedy enemies looking at them.