Age of Adepts c1-1513

by Zhen De Lao Lang, 真的老狼

  The arrows, dense like a swarm of locusts, poured from the sky. Many fire arrows were mixed within the barrage. Even though they had the wooden boards to block the arrows, there were still people continuously succumbing to arrows that slipped through the gaps. Sparks of flame danced on the wooden boards, quickly spreading across the dry wood.

  Finally, the advancing army was attacked by the defending apprentice adepts.

  Three smoking magic fireballs and two light green acid balls arced downward from above the walls, landing right in the vanguard of the advancing troops.

  The suddenly exploding fireball instantly engulfed an area ten meters in circumference, quickly turning all of the warriors within into human torches. They tossed aside the weapons in their hands and frantically ran about.

  Green acid mist exploded in the areas where the acid balls landed. Every single warrior that was caught in the mist started to let out agonizing and haunting cries. The exposed flesh of a human warrior who had been directly hit sizzled as it quickly melted away. In just the blink of an eye he had been reduced to a pile of charred bones.

  Most of the other warriors had only been splashed with some acid on their armor and clothes. These kinds of attacks were not as lethal as fireballs, as long as they were able to amputate the body parts that were being corroded by acid.

  The warriors in the vanguard started to hesitate in the face of these horrifying spells. Even the speed at which they were advancing slowed considerably.

  Behind the formation, the commander of the barrier troops started to shout at the soldiers.

  Under his urging, the warriors let out a yell and pressed on with their crude defensive tools.

  The sieging army hadn't taken another twenty steps before the second wave of spells fell upon them.

  However, at the same time the wave of attacks blasted at the soldiers, five blazing fireballs rose from the advancing army and shot towards the city walls.

  Spells had been cast form the enemy ranks!

  Above the walls.

  A Sarubo advanced-apprentice had just tossed a magic fireball, yet already he saw five intimidating fireballs rapidly closing in on him.

  "Quick, cover me!"

  The advanced apprentice rapidly retreated backwards while casting all his defensive spells on himself. Around him, five or six castle guards quickly covered the apprentice adept behind them with their large shields.

  Dong. Dong. Dong…

  The five fireballs exploded almost simultaneously, and their might was undeniable. The serious damage formed by the stacked attack was not something that could be stopped by mere metal shields.

  A violent and ferocious ring of fire exploded on the walls, instantly ripping everything within ten meters to shreds before reducing them to ashes.

  The seven guards that had covered the advanced apprentice died instantly. Even their bodies had been blown into several pieces and completely disfigured. Only the advanced apprentice had managed to escape from the area covered by the fireballs, his face full of soot and smoke.

  This fortunate apprentice quickly hid in the crowd while taking out blood stopper ointments and healing potions to treat himself.

  Bastards! Those Mikayne apprentices were playing dirty!

  The Sarubo apprentices were immediately enraged. With no regard for their Spirits, magic fireballs were relentlessly thrown towards the areas that the enemy apprentices were hiding at. The opponent didn't let up either. They erected colourful defensive barriers around themselves and counter-attacked as they moved around dodging the enemy spells.

  For a moment exploding fireballs were everywhere, both below and above the castle walls!

  Greem stood silently in an opulent bedroom on the third floor of the castle. He had pushed aside the curtains and was gazing at the battlefield in the distance. He couldn't help but frown.

  This was unexpected!

  Not unexpectedly strong, but unexpectedly weak!

  Having experienced the brutality and terror of a plane war, Greem couldn't help but feel the intensity of battle and the spells in the World of Adepts were far less cruel and bloody when compared to a plane war.

  More significantly, the actual difference was reflected in the deathly determination and wills of the combatants!

  On a planar battlefield, there was no escape except for death. Someone had to die. Once a battle was lost, not only did the soldier have to lose his life, even the land they lived in became a lesser plane that submitted to all the wills and whims of the conquering plane. It was because of this that plane natives were often extremely courageous and valiant in battle. They wouldn't stop until they died.

  In comparison, the battlefield before him was so loose and feeble that it felt like the actors involved were playing house.

  The soldiers on each side must have known that they were not the main characters on the battlefield. Thus each and every one of them was acting excessively conservative and defensive. There were almost a 1500 men in total above and below the city walls, yet the most intense battle and most casualties were only because of those ten apprentice adepts.

  Ever since the start of the battle, more than half of the hundred casualties were victims of the adepts traded blows. The actual deaths from the soldiers’ bows took up less than thirty percent of total deaths.

  "What a boring game!" Greem let go of the curtain and mumbled in dissatisfaction.

  He returned to a wooden table and continued toying with the Second Grade Molten Giant’s crystal core. Meanwhile, the chip in his mind was processing large amounts of data at a high speed.

  The runic knowledge he had gained from the Runeforge drafting room was certainly complete and detailed. Greem was finally able to further explore the deeper secrets of merging energies with this knowledge.

  Of course, these runes were knowledge from another plane. More research and investigation was needed to transplant and shift them to the World of Adepts for practical use. Thus, Greem had been continuously calculating and deducing the formation of these runes ever since he came back to the World of Adepts.

  After excluding the one hundred and twenty-two basic runes, and twenty-three variations of runes that already existed in the World of Adepts, only twenty-eight out of the one hundred and seventy-three runes obtained from the knights' plane were completely new runes that had never before appeared in the World of Adepts. Thus, if Greem wanted to use the runic knowledge he had obtained in the World of Adepts, there was only one thing he could do. He had to slowly discover and find out the possible variations and functions of these twenty-eight runes in this world.

  For the past few days, all he had been thinking about were all of these strange runes. With the high-speed operation of his chip, new rune variations of those runes were produced for use in the World of Adepts. Greem had to then test and use these runes on several levels and aspects to determine whether the types of runes he had created could replace those otherworldly runes.

  This was undoubtedly a process that took up a massive amount of time!

  Greem had already met once with the goblin Snorlax since his return.

  He passed over most of the useless resources for Snorlax to trade away, and collected the elementium cores that Snorlax had gathered in the meantime. Only fifty-six of the ninety-eight elementium cores gathered were suitable for modification into golems. Thirty Four of these were pseudo-adept level, while twenty-one of them could make advanced-apprentice-level golems. What was most exciting for Greem was the existence of an adept-level poison core within the pile of crystal cores.

  Greem's golem army had been completely exhausted in the other world’s battlefield. He desperately needed to replenish his arsenal. Currently he had no other useable golems with him, apart from the Fire Lord. This weakened his combat strength by more than thirty percent.

  Yet at the same time, the clan’s crisi had sent him running around everywhere. He just hadn’t had the time to rebuild his golem army. This was very much a cause of annoyance for Greem.r />
  Before he left, Greem had used his newly gained status to exchange for an adept-level meditation technique from the Feidnan adept tower. Just this exchange alone had cost him twenty thousand magic crystals and seven clan contribution points. It was easy to imagine how expensive his was. After that brutal fight of life and death in the other plane, Greem had only received a hundred thousand magic crystals and twenty contribution points!

  That said, given the effect of his meditations, this price was well worth it.

  His previously unbudging Spirit had finally started to change. This was undoubtedly a great motivator for Greem. As long as he persisted in his meditations, there was a chance of raising his Spirit to 20 points!

  And raising Spirit to 20 points was one of the fundamental conditions for advancing to Second Grade.

  According to the chip's estimates, if Greem wanted to raise his Spirit from the current 6.3 to 20, with no external help besides daily meditations, the shortest amount of time he would need would still be a hundred and seventy-one years. Moreover, this was after the chip had finished optimizing modifications to the meditation technique.

  Those ordinary adepts who had neither knowledge or resources would be occupied with collecting these things, even while they engaged in their meditations and research. If they wanted to rely on meditation to reach the 20 point Spirit limit, it would take them at least three hundred years.

  For example, Adept Anderson had already advanced to First Grade for almost three hundred years. Yet his Spirit was only at a measly 9 points. That was a massive distance from 20 points. Perhaps this was the main reason he had chosen to take such a huge risk to try and advance using the blood ceremony!

  If Anderson hadn't attempted this, with what little powers he had he would most likely have been one of the first to die in the plane war!

  Just as Greem was drawing and repeatedly outlining strange green runes in the air, the sound of light footsteps rang out from outside his room. A maid's voice was promptly heard.

  "Sir Greem, Sir Adept Keoghan asks you for a meeting!"

  "Is the battle about to start?"

  "Indeed! Sir Keoghan wants to you to be prepared!"

  "Understood!"

  Greem waved away this newly constructed and unstable rune and assessed the equipment he was wearing. Once he was sure he was done preparing, he opened the door and strode outwards.

  Chapter 253

  This pathetic excuse of a war, that more resembled a game and warm-up, finally ended when the adepts strode onto the battlefield.

  The attacking and defending parties were still fighting dispassionately in front of the castle.

  Even though warriors were dying under the barrage of arrows and bolts every minute, soldiers fell from their siege ladders, and shouts echoed throughout the battlefield, the center of the conflict always revolved around the apprentice adepts.

  As the fight started to escalate in intensity, a Sarubo pseudo-adept suddenly turned into a massive Beholder. It dragged two or three strange tentacles behind its body. Floating three meters into the air, it charged down the wall and slaughtered everything in its way.

  The blinding lightning shooting out of its strange narrow pupils clearly had some sort of unique paralyzing effect. Every single person that tried to close in on the monster would start shaking intensely when they were engulfed in the brutal electricity. Then they could only looked on as their flesh and bones were carbonized in the heat.

  Moreover, all types of projectile attacks would be stopped by a semi translucent forcefield. Nothing could do damage to the Beholder.

  Just like this, a single transformed pseudo-adept had thrown the attacking army into chaos.

  With no other option left to them, a body refining pseudo-adept of the Mikayne Clan yelled and rushed to confront the Beholder.

  The two engaged in a great battle before the castle gates.

  This lit a fuse, and soon the remaining apprentices and pseudo-adepts quickly joined the fray.

  The center of the conflict started to continuously expand outwards, eventually forcing the ordinary soldiers on both sides to put off their own battles to avoid stray spells.

  Seeing that the apprentices on his own side were not gaining any ground, Viscount Tras waved his hand angrily. The three-hundred heavy infantry that had been standing at attention started to march forward.

  They formed a long wall of steel and iron, cooperating with the apprentices on their side and repeatedly denying their opponents the space to maneuver. Moreover, all of the powerful spells the apprentices hurled at them were absorbed by the tough magic-resistant shields they wielded. None of the spells did any significant elementium damage.

  Even an Explosive Fireball that a pseudo-adept had fired from under the cover of his ally had only managed to blow away three of the heavy infantry when it landed. After a short period of rest to recover from the impact, three of these people stood up once again and quickly returned to the formation.

  An Explosive Fireball that could deal 40 points of damage had only killed two ordinary warriors?

  This was unacceptable!

  As the warriors of steel started to close in, countless terrifying alchemical arrows started shooting out from their ranks. These explosive arrows exploded on contact and were extremely expensive. Each of them cost a hundred and twenty gold coins. Each individual arrow could deal nearly 11 to 15 points of damage.

  In small numbers, these arrows couldn't do much to the advanced apprentices and pseudo-adepts, who all possessed some form of defensive spell. However, should the arrows rain down like a torrential storm, even the Sarubo pseudo-adepts would have to start shifting about to dodge the attacks.

  Still, these bulky soldiers wrapped in armor like steel cans weren't the only guys they had to deal with. The enemy apprentices were still there. As the warriors of steel continued to pile on the pressure, the Sarubo apprentices quickly found themselves at an obvious disadvantage. Defeat was imminent!

  Honestly, if it hadn't been for the clan adepts looking on coldly from behind, this group of death-fearing fellows would likely have already retreated to the safety of the castle. However now they could only grit their teeth and weather the storm, trying their best to stall the enemy. Otherwise who knew what their punishments might be?

  …………

  Greem quickly reached the castle walls and stood silently by Keoghan's side.

  The nobles who gathered around Keoghan bowed and greeted him, but Greem didn't respond.

  "How is it?" A wicked smile appeared on Keoghan's face, "What do you think of the battle right now?"

  "It's nothing more than a child's game!" Two crimson sparks lit up deep within Greem's black eyes.

  "That bastard Tras is really willing to spend. He's even got those explosive arrows for standard equipment. And just like that, he's already thrown away thirty to forty thousand gold coins… " Viscount Donald complained with a hateful expression.

  The two adepts ignored his words and continued to gaze at the enemy's base.

  "When the battle starts, they will try and go for you as the rookie. That will be where they try and win this battle! You should be careful!" Adept Keoghan gave a kind reminder.

  Having experienced a plane war, and without much conflict of interests between the two of them, Greem and Keoghan had become much closer.

  "I'm only worried they don't show up!" Greem gave a chilling smile, "Oh, right. There's no punishment for killing enemy adepts in such a battlefield, right?"

  "Punishment?" Keoghan laughed out loud, "We of the Sarubo Clan have far more connections in this area than those fools!"

  As they conversed, a Sarubo advanced apprentice’s defensive spell was blasted to pieces by three explosive arrows. Just as he fumbled about to erect another defensive barrier, an acid arrow flew over and embedded itself in his right leg.

  Pop!

  The acid arrow exploded, covering his entire body in sizzling acid. Even his face wasn't spared.

  "Aaaaa
ah…… "

  The advanced apprentice screamed painfully and frantically ran backwards, all while downing as many potions as he could.

  A few of the enemy’s advanced apprentices saw the opportunity before them. Their eyes lit up in excitement and they quickly chased after the Sarubo apprentice.

  The Sarubo apprentice adepts were retreating as they fought. Their formation was pushed to the brink of breaking.

  "It's about our turn now!" Adept Keoghan nodded at Greem before black smoke shrouded his body and lifted him to the skies.

  Even though the enemy apprentices were at an immense advantage, some of their attention was still placed on the adepts standing on the castle walls. The moment they saw those adepts move, they quickly started retreating without hesitation! Even though a juicy prey was right by their jaws!

  Keoghan's body was engulfed in the thick black smoke as he silently floated onto the battlefield.

  At the same time, the sound of a terrifying flame explosion boomed as Greem's tall body appeared beside one of the Sarubo apprentices.

  When they heard the explosion, the apprentices anxiously gripped their staffs and scrolls tightly . They were ready to deal with anything that came at them. It wasn’t until they saw that the figure in question was Adept Greem that they let out a sigh of relief and bowed to greet him.

  "Take this. Go back and recuperate!" Greem casually threw out a bottle of Potion of Life.

  The advanced apprentice that had been covered in acid frantically caught the potion and bowed in gratitude. The blast of acid earlier had not only claimed one of his legs, but had also disfigured him. He might be able to make his skin go back to normal with the potions he carried, but he would have to find some other way to regrow his right leg.

  That said, now that he had this bottle of high quality Potion of Life, he wouldn't need to call in favors to fix his leg!

  As the apprentices hurriedly stumbled back to the castle walls, Greem and Keoghan slowly marched towards the enemy camp. One in the air, one on the ground.

  The three hundred magic-resistant heavy infantry standing in their way had never been considered a threat.