The ability to continuously fight was shocking. At least Greem himself hadn't observed such stamina in other First Grade adepts.
Currently, in Fire Throne, the best at combat had to be Bloody Queen Mary. Her explosiveness in melee was shocking, not to mention her talent for sustained fights. However, her sustainability depended on the availability of large amounts of blood. If the enemy specifically targeted her blood treats, then her prolonged output in fights would fall tremendously.
However, the fire core that Greem had constructed himself resided inside his body. It was like a miniature fire altar, continuously drawing energy from the fire elementium plane. It was challenging to disrupt such a connection through ordinary sealing spells or magic-interference arrays. That almost made it impossible for Greem to run out of fire energy!
Apart from pushing his Spirit to its twenty-point limit, Greem's Strength and Physique had also reached their limits. Nine points of Strength made him capable of flipping over an Iron Rhinoceros with his bare fists. Unfortunately, he had no talent in melee and close conflict. That was why further investing resources and efforts into close quarters combat would only result in an even greater waste.
It was the same for his eleven points of Physique.
A Physique of this level had made him as tough as a wild magical creature. The combination of his life energy and mental will had toughened his skin like the thick hide of a rhinoceros. His magic and physical resistances were just as exceptional. In particular, crossing over the ten point threshold of his Physique had allowed him to obtain the ability to regenerate limbs.
As long as he was alive and had sufficient energy, he would be able to regenerate any lost limbs by consuming energy. This regeneration was a basic ability that all high-grade body refining adepts possessed.
It was the same for his Spirit. When Greem's Spirit passed eleven points, he obtained the ability of Rapid Regeneration. It allowed his Spirit to regenerate at twice the usual rate when over half of it had been exhausted.
After silently completing his self-assessment, Greem casually walked to his biology lab.
He had modified this place into a strange forest that resembled the Black Forest.
The moment he entered, a strange bug that looked remarkably similar to a Rock Scorpion emerged from the thick grass. It climbed up Greem's shoulders and started to brush against his earlobe endearingly.
Greem extended a fiery hand and softly caressed the strange bug's back. The skin was as durable as a cow's hide, yet smooth and oily, making it hard for an ordinary person to exert any force even if they managed to grab the bug. Limbs as sharp as knives grew on each side of the bug's body. There was a bony and segmented scorpion's tail at the rear of its body. The poison stinger at the end of the tail dispersed a black mist that could be clearly seen.
It was the first juvenile bug that Greem had managed to cultivate after several decades. It could rob all 100% of a target lifeform's genetic sequence that related to its innate ability. However, this bug's individual strength was minimal. Even with Greem's painstaking efforts to increase its powers, the bug's combat ability was only barely equal to a beginner apprentice.
Relying on the bug alone to hunt down top-class magical creatures was no more than a childish thought. Its innate ability to rob that of others was exceptionally unfair and genuinely terrifying, but the world was fair in its own way!
The world had given it an unfair ability, yet it had also cursed the bug with a weak body.
All top-class magical creatures would possess terrifying elementium auras. Meager beings like this bug would be crushed to bits by the frightening spiritual aura of intimidation or the elementium vibrations before even getting close.
That was why Greem would first have to capture a dragon and completely restrict its movement before bringing it to the bug if he wanted to obtain the bloodline of dragons. Moreover, he would have to be wary of the dragon sneezing during this process; it might just accidentally kill the bug.
Based on all these factors, the dream of having the bug extract powerful innate abilities was not going to be that easily realized, even if it could be mass-produced– which it currently couldn't be!
The human body's capacity for genetic sequences had a limit. Greem's talents as a fire adept had already taken up most of his capacity. Only a limited amount remained for foreign genes. If he didn't choose wisely, and randomly added lots of useless abilities to his genetic sequence, then it was very likely to cause adverse side-effects. At the very least, his innate abilities would be corrupted. At worst, it might even cause the disintegration of his genetic chain.
That was why he had to avoid 'trash' abilities. Greem needed to choose carefully for himself the most appropriate and perfect innate ability. And this undoubtedly required time and luck!
Greem played with the bug for a little longer until it was feeding time.
Three holes the size of human heads suddenly opened in the ceiling above. A dozen snowrabbits unique to the Black Forest dropped from the openings.
These were wild rabbits with short snow-white fur. Their eyes were black, and their ability to escape with short-distance hops was great.
The previously gentle and peaceful bug suddenly turned savage and cruel. Its sharp limbs pushed against Greem's body as it leaped into the air. Its body was still rolling in midair, but its stinger had already shot into the bushes, accurately hitting a snowrabbit that had just hit the ground.
The snowrabbit had just landed, and it had no time to adjust its position. Its body trembled and fell to the ground, wholly paralyzed and immobilized.
The strange pitter-pattering of bug limbs scratching against the ground rang out. A dozen fellows just like the first bug, but slightly smaller, emerged from the grass. They headed towards the paralyzed snowrabbit. However Bug One managed to reach the snowrabbit before the others. It quickly climbed atop the rabbit and straightened its body, revealing its terrifying claws for all to see.
The dozen other small bugs surrounded the snowrabbit and tried to probe forward. However, they were frightened away by Bug One's ferocious claws each and every time. With no choice left to them, the bugs hesitated for a moment before quickly turning and plunging into the forest to chase after the other snowrabbits.
It was only now that Bug One started to feast in satisfaction!
Greem, who had been silently observing from a distance, was overjoyed to discover that Bug One's strength and speed had increased slightly.
That made him extremely glad.
As all these bugs had been implanted with control runes when they hatched and had been branded with Greem's consciousness, there was no need to worry about them biting back once they got stronger. This brand was the key reason why Greem dared to cultivate them with all he had!
Greem observed the bugs for a little while longer and made sure that no accidents occurred. He then left the biology lab and arrived at his alchemical lab.
Three golem cores and five blinding Second Grade elementium cores neatly laid upon the small platform in the middle of the lab. These were all the elementium cores that he had managed to keep for himself after such a hard and long time working for the Sarubo Clan.
The number of Second Grade elementium cores that Greem should have managed to keep should have been ten. Unfortunately, two of those had been destroyed when he attempted to turn them into golems. Thus, he only had three completed golem cores in his hand, all of which were peak elite-level golem cores!
The other five Second Grade elementium cores were all of the earth attribute. He had specially reserved them as materials for crafting a Second Grade golem.
Before he ascended to Second Grade, his power would limit the attack of his golems to a maximum of one hundred and eighty-five points. It might seem like a sliver away from the two hundred point threshold of Second Grade lifeforms, but it was worlds away.
That was because the two hundred point attack limit was virtually impossible for a First Grade lifeform to break thro
ugh, be it a lifeform of blood and flesh or an elementium one. However, a two hundred point attack was only the fundamental attack power for a Second Grade lifeform. In layman's terms, it would be the lower limit of their attacks.
If they didn't intentionally weaken their attacks, any spell that a Second grade adept casually fired off would be above two hundred points! The legendary Third Grade adepts would easily be able to reach a thousand points, far above the level of a Second Grade adept.
The grade difference between the creatures of the World of Adepts might appear to be a small one; just a single grade's difference. However, that single grade could mean a difference in power of five to ten times. That was why killing an individual beyond one's own grade was something that could only happen under extreme circumstances. In a normal situation, a low-grade being would never be able to beat a high-grade one.
It was the real meaning in the way adept's distinguished between the grades of each lifeform!
Consequently, the golems Greem created could never go beyond the threshold and become true Second Grade lifeforms, even with the help of the Chip. However, once Greem actually advanced, creating Second Grade golems would be something that he would definitely be able to do!
Chapter 487 Rare Runes
After sixty-seven years of grinding, Greem was only one step away from Second Grade.
However, this step felt like the difference between heaven and earth.
If he didn't manage to get past this barrier, his Spirit origin would wither due to the ceremony's backlash. This kind of damage was difficult to recover from when one's potential had been completely excavated.
One could say that First Grade adepts in the World of Adepts were as plentiful as the hairs on a cow's hide. Just casually counting those in the central area of the continent would give you twenty to thirty thousand First Grade adepts. The strength of the three major adept organizations was even further above the center of the continent. If one were to count in this manner, the number of adepts in the World of Adepts exceeded a hundred thousand.
However, among this hundred thousand adepts, no more than two thousand had successfully advanced to Second Grade. And less than three hundred people of these two thousand Second Grade adepts were able to advance to Third Grade. The number of Fourth Grades was even lower, numbering less than fifty individuals.
Why was it that the World of Adepts could still be a dominant player among all the various plane worlds despite such harsh conditions for advancement? It was all because of their constant accumulation over the years.
As long as the adept's knowledge legacy system was complete, and as long as there were sufficient adept resources, then there would always be Fourth Grade adepts. Great Adepts beyond Fourth Grade could also continuously appear. Moreover, with the increase of an adept's power, their lifespan also ballooned at an exponential rate.
As each adept could be of a different race, study different magic, and evolve in different directions, there was no fixed measure of their lifespan. Still, over the years, a system had been created with the human adepts as a model. They had created an approximate range of lifespans.
An ordinary human's lifespan in the World of Adepts was around a hundred and twenty years. A First Grade adept's lifespan was between two and three hundred years. A Second Grade adept's lifespan was between three hundred to five hundred years. A Third Grade adept's was seven to eight hundred years, and a Fourth Grade adept's beyond a thousand years.
That was only a simple calculation with fundamental numerical values. If differences in race and effects of magical energy were taken into account, then the individual values might still undergo sizeable variations.
Take, for example, Mary. She might only be a First Grade adept, but she walked the branch of bloodline adepts that was the Vampire. The vampires were known as a classic race of longevity. They could easily live up to seven or eight hundred years with no problem.
Greem's robotic adept subordinate, Sabrina, belonged to the mechanical lifeform branch of the bloodline adepts. As the corrosion of mechanical constructs on the human body required large amounts of reconciling agent to maintain a balance of bodily functions, robotic adepts often had one-fourth to one-third less lifespan compared to an ordinary adept.
However, they also obtained powerful offensive abilities in exchange; it was a worthy trade!
As for adepts like Greem that played with elementium; they would have to find some way to increase their original body's elementium affinity after advancing to adept-level. Otherwise, long periods of using elementium would inevitably deteriorate their original life force. That was why elementiumizing their body was the only way to avoid elementium corrosion, and why it was a path they certainly had to walk upon.
However, most adepts only took steps to elementiumize their body after advancing to adept. That was why their average lifespan clearly couldn't compare to Greem, who had completed that process when he was still an apprentice.
The advancement from First Grade to Second Grade was truthfully more of a transition from a manipulator of elements to a controller of laws.
A First Grade adept might still mostly be using their talents and magical energy to draw upon wandering elementium to amplify the effects of their spells. However, a Second Grade adept begins to borrow the strength of planar laws to incline the elementium in a target area towards themselves.
The only problem was that a Second Grade adepts could only come into contact with the most superficial of planar laws. They couldn't yet be considered true controllers of laws. Even Third Grade adepts were only slightly better than Second Grades. They too hadn't reached the goal of expert control.
Within the Continent of Adepts, the Fourth Grade adepts were the only group of individuals who could be considered to have truly grasped control over the planar laws.
Fifth Grade adepts, on the other hand, had already jumped out beyond the limits of planar worlds. They understood the laws of the world at a profound level. That was why adepts were only qualified to call themselves principle adepts starting from the Fifth Grade. Below Fifth Grade, all First to Fourth Grade adepts could merely call themselves elementium adepts.
However, with the gradual development and maturation of the World of Adepts, the baseline power of the current Fourth Grade adepts was also slowly increasing. Many adepts had already started to categorize them into the ranks of principle adepts, be it with some external motivations or not.
It was because of the massive difference in strength between each grade that no adept had an absolute guarantee of succeeding when commencing their advancement ceremony. Failing an advancement would only bring about damage to an adept's Spirit origin, causing it to wither. While all of this could be treated and recovered through an extended period of rest, it would still be an unprecedented blow to an adept's psychological state.
Moreover, an adept's lifespan was limited. Even if the road up till then had been entirely smooth, there might not be enough time for the adept to attempt an advance to the next grade repeatedly. The main reason adept clans favored those young adepts so much was that they had the capital to fail and try again!
Consequently, even though Greem had already reached the threshold of advancing to Second Grade, he was still steadily and slowly gathering the necessary resources and knowledge, trying his best to increase the success rate of his advancement. His greatest advantage now was the twenty-eight runes he had brought back from the Knight's Plane. After such a long time of organization and deciphering, they had all been analyzed and cracked.
Among them, the most useful ones to him were the three runes related to fire elementium.
Variant Fire Rune of Explosion!
Rare Fire Rune of Coldflame!
Rare Fire Rune of Poisonfire!
Just as the name implied, the Rune of Explosion could cause explosions. As long as it was an area rich in fire elementium, Greem would only need to sweep past with his Spirit, and all the elementium could explode like fireballs.
&
nbsp; On the other hand, the Coldflame Rune was an incredibly ingenious use of fire energies. When the caster attempted to draw away the heat within the elementium fires, the internal temperature of the flame would drop, even reaching levels of negative one to two hundred Celcius at times.
In such situations, the fire was still fire, yet it could generate a strange effect of freezing and frost.
After several tests, Greem discovered that cold fires had greater magical penetration effects compared to blazing fires. They were more suited for breaking through elementium defenses and energy shields.
The Poisonfire Rune, on the other hand, mixed a trace of foreign energy into the elementium fire. That caused a burning effect in the enemy that resembled poisoning. This type of poison was different from the venom of ordinary creatures, plants, ores, and other natural toxins. It was a type of energy poison.
As long as the target couldn't cut off the energy flow within their body, then they would not be able to stop the energy poison from rapidly spreading throughout them. For those without the means to deal with it, energy poison could be said to be without an antidote!
Greem had etched all these runes into his consciousness core, one after another. This way, even with Greem's rudimentary and vague understanding of the runes, he could still draw upon their powers when he willed. The reason this was possible was all thanks to the Chip.
In all seriousness, the one that had completely figured out the runes was not Greem, but the Chip. Greem was only a capitalist that had stolen the fruits of the Chip's labor.
When it came to the runic knowledge within each and every stroke of these runes, Greem could only read out the information that the Chip had sent to his mind. The real meaning behind these things, and the spiritual inspiration obtained during the process of deciphering them, was intangible and abstract. It was hard to describe them using the crude medium of words.
The inclusion of the three types of fire runes had allowed three different series of fires to appear before Greem: the explosive series, the coldflame series, and the poisonfire series. Each of these flames had considerably expanded Greem's arsenal, both in the number of forms his fire spells could take and the effects they could possess.
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