The World of Adepts might be superior to Faen, but the magical potions they created were still the sort that stimulated the body and Spirit to hasten regeneration speed. It was entirely unlike moonwater, which could allow anyone to turn the tables after consumption instantly: bursting full magical power, stuffed Spirit, maximum stamina. It would be just that easy to crush the opponent.
Moreover, the magical medicines of the World of Adepts caused serious potion resistances. Drinking multiple vials of the same potions wouldn't have stacked effects either. Their regenerative performance was utterly inferior to moonwater in every aspect. They were like heaven and earth with absolutely no points of comparison.
That was why moonwater was a high-class potion that high-grade adepts fought over, even in the World of Adepts. Moonwater of the same quantity was often eight to ten times the price of magical potions. Still, it was a valuable good with no market among the social circles of high-grade adepts.
The sole cause for this phenomenon was the combination of large amounts of power of faith in the process of creating genuine moonwater. The adepts had almost no faith. Thus, they had no control over the power of faith and could not replicate moonwater in their magical laboratories.
Since they couldn't replicate the substance through magical means, the only method left for adepts to obtain moonwater was to rob the elves. However, those amongst the elves who could own Moonwells and produce large quantities of moonwater were usually large elven settlements.
Deities often protected these settlements!
It didn't matter how powerful of an adept they were. If an adept were to stir up trouble at an elven home ground and invite the fury of the deity behind them, they could easily exterminate the adept and shred their soul to pieces by sending down an avatar through a god messenger. The avatar they sent down might have a considerable power difference compared to the deity themselves depending on the tier level of the faith channel and the individual power of the deity.
Still, a Sixth Grade deity projecting his consciousness upon a Third Grade god messenger could easily butcher multiple Third Grade opponents. It was a simple matter, really. The superior understanding and utilization of energy and technique were more than enough to allow them to fight off numerous enemies and slaughter all who opposed them!
That was why elven settlements protected by deities were all forbidden places for adepts. No one could defend against the god messengers and the fearsome divine magic they could cast.
Divine power was considered a force more potent and superior than magical strength in the power system of the adepts. The only thing that could oppose divine power was the power of laws that the Great Adepts possessed.
That was why Greem and the others were already satisfied at having unexpectedly obtained some moonwater from a small border elven village.
They had managed to fill five whole standard vials with moonwater. Every one of these vials would sell for, at least, the sky-high price of twenty to thirty thousand magical crystals in the World of Adepts. Moreover, even with such a high rate, moonwater could hardly be found on the market. No one would sell off the moonwater they had taken such great pains to obtain.
After all, in moments of crises, a bottle of moonwater like this could save their lives!
No one would complain about their lives being too long!
That was why high-grade adepts would instead stockpile them rather than sell them.
Of course, the value of moonwater was undoubtedly immense to Deserra and the rest. However, for Alice and Greem, the value of that wooden idol seemed to be even greater than the moonwater!
Since they were fortunate enough to come to a plane of faith ruled by gods, it would be a disgrace to their identities as adepts if they didn't do some proper research on this 'power of faith' that was even more powerful than magical power.
Of course, if Greem could go to the holy kingdoms of the elven gods, beg for some divine power crystals, and have them open up their domains for him to have a thorough tour, his research progress would most definitely skyrocket.
Unfortunately, otherworldly non-believers like himself had no fate other than destruction if they were locked onto by the native deities here. That was why Alice and Greem's paths to make contact with divine power were very, very narrow. If one were to be honest, there was almost no way they could come into contact with it.
The wooden idol they had obtained from the nature altar of the elven village might not have sufficient divine power to form a divine halo, but it was nonetheless a treasure in itself.
One could imagine what had happened in the past. The leader of this elven village must have knelt before this idol and prayed religiously, day after day, year after year, communicating with and contacting the God of Moonlight that they believed in through this wooden idol.
This way, after much time had passed spent soaked in the faith toward the God of Moonlight, the wooden idol would transcend its worldly roots and become a genuine divine item, regardless of how ordinary its material and how crude its workmanship.
In-depth research on the idol would not only yield traits of the God of Moonlight's divine power. It would also indirectly reveal the law domains the deity was involved in, along with the strength of their divinity.
That was why Alice immediately sealed the wooden idol with tremendous fate powers upon finding it.
She wasn't foolish enough to research such terrifying subjects in such a dangerous and simple environment.
If the God of Moonlight was to discover a non-believer spying on her authority and powers through a node of faith, she might hurl a divine punishment this way. It was rumored that the God of Moonlight was a Fifth Grade deity. Even though the limits of her power–when projected into the plane–could only go up to Third Grade, that much power was already too much for the First Grade Alice.
All members immediately boarded the flying ship after scouring the village. They then escaped into the distance without hesitation.
Two hours after the ship had left, a squad of elf huntresses riding upon nightsaber leopards charged into the elven village.
What awaited them, apart from the blazing flames, was the shattered remains of the elven treehouses. The elves that lived in the village had been slaughtered, abducted, or had escaped into the surrounding woods. Not a single survivor could be found here.
"Find them. Spread out and find them. We must find a survivor and find out what exactly happened here." The leading huntress let out a pained shout. All the other huntresses immediately spurred their nightsabers and charged into the surrounding forests. They started to search and call with the unique Whispering Wind of the elves.
Soon, some survivors had been gathered before the huntress leader. Amongst them was the junior female druid who knew how to turn into an antelope.
"Cassan, what exactly happened here? Who were you attacked by? Humans or witches? Why are the losses so tremendous? Did you not have scouts around the perimeter?" The huntress leader asked a long chain of questions; she simply had too many of them. The junior druid known as Cassan had no choice but to reply to each and every one of them dejectedly.
In truth, even at this point, Cassan still hadn't figured out how today's events had happened.
She had only followed orders and went to investigate the odd movements in the southern forests with Syd. After running into a group of strange metallic lifeforms that were wildly slaughtering the animals, she stayed behind to keep an eye while Syd went back to the village to report the situation. Then, the strange metallic lifeforms flew away.
By the time she had realized something was off and ran back to the village, the place had been reduced to ruins. Apart from some smoldering piles of flames, she could no longer find a single surviving elf.
The huntress leader questioned another two or three elves, but all of them were dazed and confused. No one had any idea how the enemy had appeared. They had been stunned by the enemy's ferocious firepower at the very start of the battle. They had then
scattered and escaped into the surroundings after receiving the female elf captain's order to run.
Sadly, most of the elves had been beaten and abducted. Only a few of them were fortunate enough to remain hidden and escape calamity.
The huntress leader couldn't help but get upset after failing to obtain any accurate information after questioning several of the survivors.
"Madam, I know how those bad guys arrived."
Just then, a deep and hoarse voice rang out from a side.
The elves turned to look with befuddled expressions, only to find the speaker to be a young girl covered in dust. Her body still had burn marks on it.
The huntress leader had questioned so many of the elves besides her precisely because of her young age. There was no way she would know too much about the situation. However, it was this young girl that brought them their most pleasant surprise.
"I'm Vena. I was talking with Sister Lyfaea in the tree hall when the enemy arrived. Little Mott was still alive then." The little girl remembered her dead friend as she spoke and couldn't help but start crying.
The huntress leader was impatient and anxious, but she didn't press the issue. Instead, she took the girl into her arms and calmed the girl down with gentle words.
"They came from the skies.
"They suddenly crashed down from the clouds. The metal ship completely covered the moon.
"All the metal men jumped off of the ship. They used foreign weapons and killed many of the elves the moment they landed.
"Both Sister Lyfaea and Brother Syd were killed by the metal men. Their metal armors were way too thick, and ordinary elven arrows couldn't pierce them at all. Only Sister Lyfaea's Double Shot could pierce their shells.
"Brother Syd turned into a bear and died along with a metal man. He died a terrible death.
"Before she died, Sister Lyfaea had shouted for everyone to run. I…I turned into a pigeon and escaped. A hole even got shot through my arm by their weapon; this is the weapon they attacked us with."
As she said that, Vena raised her hand. A round, shiny metal bullet the size of a pigeon's egg lay in the middle of her dusty, bloody, and burnt palm.
Chapter 626 Analysis
Just as the elves were sending the information from the village up their command chain, Greem and Alice were facing the wooden idol and discussing their strategy.
The floating ship was now parked above an isolated island one hundred and ten nautical miles away from Garan.
The island wasn't large. It was only one or two square kilometers in size and was filled with black stone. There was barely any soft dirt, let alone plants or animals.
The geography of the island was extremely uneven, and there was really no place where the flying ship could steadily land. Thus, Greem could only have it stop ten meters above the ground, silently resting and making preparations.
They had just fought a battle and captured some elven prisoners, and they had to find a place to put them as soon as possible. After all, they couldn't possibly go around fighting while lugging their prisoners about, could they?
A group of construction machines was sent down from the flying ship. They dug out a small underground prison in a hidden location on the island and then stuffed all the elven prisoners in there.
After offloading their burdens, Greem decided to just go with the flow and announced three days of rest on the island.
There couldn't possibly be any entertainment in such a rural place. Greem was only giving the clan adepts a buffer of time before the next battle so that they could prepare themselves for the multiple fights that were to come. Through the information that Endor had obtained from her interrogations, Greem had gotten a preliminary understanding of all elven villages, towns, and cities in a five hundred kilometer radius of the south shore, as well as the approximate assignment of their military forces.
Once Greem had digested the gains from this raid, the Crimson Clan would launch a large-scale assault against the elven garrison of the south shore in the following one to two months. The targets of the attacks were always chosen randomly. As long as the adepts were not stalled on the battlefield by an elven powerhouse, the elves would have no means to stop them with the high altitude of the flying ship.
With the fifteen thousand kilometers long winding shoreline of the south shore, the elves would have trouble stopping the flying ship from entering at a high altitude in any spot, even if they placed scouts everywhere in the Great Fantasy Forest. The elves wouldn't be able to entirely defend the massive Great Fantasy Forest, even if they sent all of the garrisons from the central mountains out there.
Even Greem would have no ability to deal with such an untraceable enemy if he were the commander of the elves. The only appropriate response was to shrink the line of defense and move most of the citizens of the villages and towns to the well-defended cities.
The only way to minimize unnecessary deaths was by using the mighty wings of the elven army to shield the weak, ordinary elves.
However, if they did so, the people in a few elven cities would endure tremendous stress. Moreover, they would also be giving up the vast Fantasy Forest to these mysterious enemies.
Also, if the elven commander of the south shore could honestly steel their hearts to do so, Greem would simply pat his bottom and run off to another area to cause trouble. When that happened, the other garrisoned locations would be facing the same difficulty and reluctance that the south shore garrison was facing.
Of course, the elves were not rookies like the goblins; they weren't so easily pushed around by the adepts.
If one were to take a look at the internal composition of the elven army, they would realize that there were quite a few military units that posed a significant threat to the flying ship. Looking closely from top to bottom, the most terrifying had to be the Green Dragon Corps.
The flying ship might have serious firepower, but it would be in trouble if it ran into the Green Dragon Corps. It wouldn't take too many dragons. Just three to four Second Grade green dragons would be able to ground the ship.
After all, dragons were the universally acknowledged emperors of aerial battle!
However, with the arrogance and sloth of the dragons, it would cost far too much to have them travel tens of thousands of kilometers from the central mountains to a rural area just to deal with some 'bandits.' The price was so heavy that any elven commander would have to weigh their options carefully.
That was why the odds of running into a legion of dragons were unlikely as long as the flying ship didn't get close to those large elven cities. In fact, if one were to be brutally honest, Greem wouldn't mind mobilizing the clan's immediate dragonslaying squad to achieve the accomplishment of dragonslaying once again if those green dragons dared to stray from their groups.
Disregarding the dragon legions, the greatest threat to the flying ship had to be the aerial units of the elven army.
The aerial units of the elves consisted of the Pegasus Knights, the hippogryph riders, and the large magical beasts, the Chimeras.
Amongst them, the Pegasus Knights were specially selected elves who were good at melee combat riding upon pegasi. They used their rapid speed to charge to the enemy's side and engage in a battle. They used longbows at long-range, throwing spears at mid-range, and elven sabers at melee-range. They were offensive units that excelled in every aspect.
Pegasus Knights with exceptional performance would be selected to ride the rare species of the pegasi– the Silver Pegasus. In doing so, they would advance to become Silver Pegasus Knights. These silver pegasi all possessed some strange racial abilities. Once they established enough rapport with the elven knights, such that their thoughts could be shared, they could even help the knights develop several powerful knight battle techniques.
Sadly, as the pegasi and silver pegasi were only a unique species created by the magical modification of land horses, they were not good at bearing loads. Thus, the knights that rode them couldn't wear excessively heavy
metal armor. Otherwise, they would severely drag down the flight speed of the pegasi.
Consequently, the pegasus knights and silver pegasus knights of the elves mostly wore leather armor. However, many elves that came from noble backgrounds still liked delicate and fancy metal armor. To reduce the weight, they had no choice but to grind the metal armors thin and make hollow some of the parts.
Such an aerial cavalry was truly powerful when used against human armies. It could completely direct the flow of battle. However, they weren't enough against the flying ship!
The mounted firearms all over the Archers might not be powerful individually, but what made them stand out was their sheer number. Once it turned into a barrage of bullets, the elven knights would have trouble charging into the ranks of the magical machines, even if they were each individually much stronger than the Archers.
Moreover, with the thickness of the magical machine's body, ordinary elven sabers, throwing spears, and arrows could hardly damage them. Only those knight battle techniques or archer battle techniques with incredible explosive power had a possibility of actually damaging the magical machines.
That was why individual Archers would have great difficulty defeating an elven knight of the same grade. Most of the time, they would be taken down with precise and targeted maneuvers. However, if ten Archers were pit against ten elven knights, the victors would most definitely be the Archers. In fact, it might even be a one-sided slaughter.
Furthermore, the flying ship still had the even more powerful magic energy cannons on it.
The dense barrage of energy lasers that could reach up to hundreds of points of power was fearsome. No elven knight could endure such a terrifying magical attack.
With the magic energy cannons as the core and the Archers as support, the flying ship would be able to tear a path through the pegasus knights through sheer firepower, even if they were surrounded. If those pegasus knights dared to brave the field of fire and board the ship, then what awaited them would be the defensive magical machines with even thicker shells and the three immensely powerful magical machine warriors.
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