Age of Adepts c1-1513

by Zhen De Lao Lang, 真的老狼

  “Iritina.”

  While Greem silently appreciated the magnificent fight between the Fourth Grades and slaughtered the dragonborn, a deafening roar rang out from somewhere nearby.

  Greem turned around and saw a bloody dragon covered with wounds. If it weren’t for his familiar profile and his damaged bright blue scales, Greem would never have been able to recognize the Third Grade thunder dragon.

  Arms roared and charged out of the battlefield. He dove into the collapsed palace and let out a furious roar at the terrifying corpse dragon.

  It was only at this moment that Greem noticed the bloody dragon beneath the corpse dragon’s thick and sharp claw. He couldn’t tell if the dragon was dead or alive. Judging by its slender figure and the strange emerald scales, this should be Third Grade Emerald Dragon Iritina.

  However, at this moment, she no longer possessed any of her former beauty. She looked as terrible as possible!

  Of the two pretty and elegant horns on her head, the left was completely gone, while only half of the right remained. Copious amounts of purple blood were flowing out of her wounds, completely covering her face and body.

  Wounds of various sizes covered her slender body; not a single scale could be seen on these large injuries. In fact, bloody tendons and white bones beneath the flesh were exposed for all to see. Furthermore, a shroud of death energy was still clinging onto the wounds.

  Iritina’s flesh was rotting to the corrosion of death energy at a visible rate, turning green and gray, void of all its former life energy.

  “Let go of Iritina. Hand over my Iritina…” Arms, just as badly wounded, rushed at the Fourth Grade corpse dragon and started roaring in fury.

  The corpse dragon might be severely wounded, but it cared not for the provocations of a Third Grade dragon. It continued to press on the dying Iritina with its heavy claw while raising its head to glare sinisterly at the eager thunder dragon.

  The battle in the sky was still raging on, just as intense as before. However, this corpse dragon had its flying ability taken away from it and couldn’t rejoin the fight above. After some thought, Greem appeared beside Arms with a Fire Teleportation.

  “My lord, according to the agreement signed between Lady Khesuna and me, this emerald dragon is my target. I must trouble you to hand her over. Furthermore, the battle on the ground has not ended yet. Shouldn’t you lend us a helping hand to prevent these dragonborn from interrupting the plan?”

  As the undead mount of Fourth Grade Death Witch Khesuna, the corpse dragon undoubtedly possessed extremely high intelligence. It let out a breath of cold mist in response to the request of an adept of the same faction before speaking, “Little adept, don’t try and fool the great Artest with your little tricks. It’s true that this little Third Grade dragon is yours; here you go. Meanwhile, the small fries over there are your job. Don’t come and bother me.”

  The corpse dragon lifted its claw and tossed the emerald dragon over to Greem and Arms.

  Greem’s face turned pale. He was about to teleport away in the face of the dragon crashing toward him.

  Fortunately, Thunder Dragon Arms had been waiting to the side. He leaped forward and caught Iritina with his thick front limbs and wings. After lightly placing her on the ground, Arms started to deal with the shroud of death energy on Iritina’s body.

  A few careful lightning breaths later, the death energy was gone. However, Arms couldn’t do anything about the death energy that had seeped into her organs.

  The dragons simply had magical resistances and regenerative abilities that were too powerful. That caused most low-grade recovery potions to be useless on them. Only high-grade potions had a chance of working on them.

  Then again, with the nature of the dragons, how could they possibly be carrying healing potions with them everywhere they went?!

  Arms circled the unconscious Iritina several times. He suddenly understood the situation and turned to crouch before Greem, looking at the adept with eyes full of expectations. He looked much more like a begging pug shaking its tail than a Third Grade dragon!

  Cough.

  Love was truly blind!

  Even a Third Grade dragon couldn’t avoid it!

  Greem exclaimed in his mind. He couldn’t deal with Arms’ cute begging. He had no choice but to take out a small vial filled with a jade green liquid and started tossing it in his hand.

  Arms immediately recognized the green liquid brimming with life energy. It was a vial of Moonwater, which was the holy water of the forest elves and possessed powerful healing properties. Iritina was also a forest dragon and could make full use of the Moonwater’s effect.

  Still crouching on the ground, Arms opened his eyes even wider and the wagging of the dragon tail intensified. Still, with the terrifying dust clouds he was setting off, ordinary creatures couldn’t even deal with a fawning dragon like himself.

  “Are you sure you want to treat her right now?” Greem continued tossing the potion about as a gentle, devilish smile appeared on his face, “Are you sure you have the ability to keep her in check if she recovers now? Do you think she can still live if she still insists on saving the Wings of Azure Skies and ends up interfering with the witches’ plan?”

  This series of questions kept Arms on the ground. Tears had welled up in the eyes of the Third Grade thunder dragon, and his tail stopped wagging entirely.

  “Don’t worry. With the Physique of dragons, there is no way she dies from these wounds,” Greem continued speaking, “As long as we can end this battle quickly, we can bring her back to the metal fortress; treating her will be a matter of a single potion! However, before that, shouldn’t you be doing something for me as well?”

  The Third Grade thunder dragon roared softly and instantly got up from the ground. He ignored the heavy wounds on his body and charged wildly into the ranks of the Second Grade dragonborn warriors.

  With a Third Grade thunder dragon as their main force, the pressure on Greem and the others was immediately cut in half.

  Without any threat to their lives, Greem and the others could focus their attention on maximizing their profit from this fight. They had been striking with all they had in their previous engagements out of fear that their attacks weren’t violent enough to stave off the attacks of the Second Grade dragonborn warriors. However, they changed their tune now. They started to carefully protect these Second Grade dragonborn as best as they could.

  One by one, the Second Grade dragonborn warriors collapsed to the ground beneath Thunder Dragon Arms’ reckless strikes and bites, left with broken bodies and shattered limbs. Greem and his group immediately charged forward and knocked these dragonborn out before carefully transferring them to a safer location.

  In just fifteen minutes, Arms and the adepts had managed to deal with thirty-nine Second Grade dragonborn.

  Greem went back and checked on the Third Grade dragonborn leader after the battle concluded. He was surprised to find that he wasn’t dead and thus moved the dragonborn to a safe location as well.

  While they were having fun doing their work here, the Fourth Grades in the sky were already engaged in intense combat.

  However, Greem and the others had no chance of watching the battle unfold with the speed and strength of these powerhouses. These Fourth Grade elites often flew several kilometers in the blink of an eye. They had moved between a dozen different locations of battle since the start of the fight. The entire battlefield spanned hundreds of kilometers.

  Greem had secretly let out a few dozen apprentice-level wind critters. Unfortunately, they either couldn’t catch up with the speed of the Fourth Grades or were crushed to pieces by the shockwaves from the battle.

  That allowed Greem to understand once again that a Fourth Grade battlefield was not one that he could participate in at the moment!

  Greem no longer cared about the result of the battle between the witches and the dragon. He started an immediate excavation of the collapsed Fourth Grade dragon lair after dealing with most
of the dragonborn warriors.

  Several strong stone golems were summoned and made to remove the rubble and collapsed buildings. Bit by bit, they dug toward the depths of the lair. No one knew what benefits Greem had secretly promised the corpse dragon, but it also passionately helped out with the looting.

  Greem could sense the ferocity and wildness of the Death Witches’ assault throughout the digging process. All the magical traps along the way had been activated. Many of the wounds on the Fourth Grade corpse dragon were probably related to this as well.

  It was due to the corpse dragon’s wild and reckless advance that the two witches had been able to charge into Krille’s chambers so quickly. The dragon had clearly been unprepared for battle when they entered.

  With Corpse Dragon Artest leading them at the front, Greem and the others dug their way to the Fourth Grade dragon’s chamber without any mistakes. When all of the dirt and bricks had been moved away, Greem and the other adepts were instantly dazzled by the blinding brilliance.

  The wealth of a Fourth Grade dragon was too shocking!

  Greem might have made a mental estimate in the past. However, after what he had witnessed today, Greem had no choice but to admit that poverty had truly limited his imagination!

  His eyes couldn’t help but water when he saw the sea of gold coins and the countless treasures buried beneath it.

  I’m rich!

  Chapter 808 - A Massive Commotion

  The task of moving a Fourth Grade dragon’s treasure made Greem extremely busy!

  Wings of Azure Skies Krille had already been captured alive. To avoid any unexpected incidents, the two Fourth Grade witches chose not to stay at Tempest Keep at all. They immediately returned to the World of Adepts through the metal fortress with the barely-alive dragon.

  However, before they left, the witches took a trip to the lair. In the blink of an eye, half of the hoard was gone. They had only left half for Greem after seeing how much effort he had put into the mission. Otherwise, Greem wouldn’t even have been able to get a single scrap of the leftovers.

  Of course, Corpse Dragon Artest had also stuffed his stomach full of treasure before the two witches had taken their share. The size of his body made it difficult for him to use any storage equipment. As such, Artest could only use his massive stomach as a temporary storage box.

  These items were his personal spoils from the battle. Even Khesuna couldn’t easily take them away from him, despite being the master.

  Once all these ‘big bosses’ had left with a share of the spoils that satisfied them, the remaining half of the dragon’s hoard fell into Greem’s hands. One couldn’t underestimate the value of the hoard after having so much taken away from it. The number of resources and the variety of treasures in it was still enough for Greem to turn a massive profit.

  The metal fortress was very far away from Tempest Keep. Even a straight-line distance was a horrifying twenty thousand kilometers. Greem and the others didn’t have the strength required to bring all of these spoils back with them without leaving any behind. All the storage rings and belts they had with them had been stuffed full of treasure, but it wasn’t even one-tenth of the whole hoard.

  Greem and the others had no choice but to abandon the less valuable gold coins and magical gemstones and place their focus on the strange and odd artifacts.

  Insisting that things he couldn’t understand had to be valuable artifacts, Greem spent the next two days in the sea of treasure and relied on the Chip’s scanning functions to look for precious items. He was specifically looking for things with powerful energy reactions or those with absolutely none at all.

  How could a Fourth Grade dragon and his refined taste allow for a ‘common’ item to be mixed into his hoard? Even a fool thinking with his toe would know that was impossible. As such, the more ordinary an item in the hoard appeared to be, the more likely it was a rare artifact that exceeded the system of energy ratings.

  In the end, Tempest Keep was not a place that they could stay at for long. The Fourth Grade dragon also had descendants, along with plenty of dragon subordinates. They usually stayed in their own territories and reigned supreme. However, if they heard of an incident occurring to their leader, they would most definitely rush over to investigate the situation.

  According to Greem’s understanding, this Wings of Azure Skies Krille was one of the seven Fourth Grades in the entirety of Lance. He had over two hundred dragon lords beneath him. If all these dragons managed to hurry over in time to surround the adepts in the lair, it would not be a good ending for them!

  After hastily raiding the Fourth Grade dragon’s hoard, Greem and the others silently left Tempest Keep with a dozen dragonborn slaves in tow. No one knew if it had been intentional, but Greem did not take the effort to exterminate all living witnesses near Tempest Keep when he left.

  On the other hand, Arms didn’t even notice this oddity with how careless he tended to be. Instead, he was simply excited at having taken back Iritina and obtaining plenty of treasure.

  It wasn’t until they had returned to the metal fortress that they heard from Gazlowe.

  A massive commotion was rippling throughout Lance!

  Greem had always been reckless in his hunts in Lance. They had raided and hunted down three Second Grade dragons and four First Grade dragons. Yet, the commotion had only been minimal then.

  There was a minimum of two thousand dragons throughout the entirety of Lance. Hardly anyone would care about a small decrease in this number. No high-grade dragon lord would take the effort to travel tens of thousands of kilometers to a rural place just to find evidence and search for a murderer.

  However, when it was a famous Fourth Grade dragon lord who had been attacked in his own lair, it was a completely different matter. This terrifying and shocking incident immediately incited a tremendous riot in Lance. For a period of time, the dragons were riled up. Every one of them emerged from their chambers and their lairs, searching everywhere for the location of the dragonslaying murders.

  Gazlowe’s information revealed that as many as three Fourth Grade dragon lords had already issued warrants and requested their subordinate dragon lords to conduct a thorough investigation of all outsiders in their territories. A report would instantly be made if they found any traces of the dragonslayers.

  The scale of this disturbance was clearly beyond Greem’s expectations. It was very likely to bring tremendous danger to the metal fortress. Even Thunder Dragon Arms became restless after hearing of this news. He carried Iritina on her back, along with all the various treasures he had taken from Krille’s hoard and hurried back to his territory.

  Greem chuckled coldly in his heart when he saw Arms leave in a hurry.

  The dragon would never truly be on Greem’s side if he refused to give up on his identity as a dragon lord. Greem already intended to make this arrogant Third Grade thunder dragon fully submit by making use of this upcoming crisis.

  To avoid being caught by the dragons in a single go, Greem had already held a long discussion with Gazlowe before they’d set out on the expedition to Tempest Keep. The magical machine army stored underground in the metal fortress had already been secretly transferred to a different land.

  If the metal fortress was discovered and sieged by the dragons, Greem, Gazlowe, and the adepts could still tuck their tails and escape. They could continue developing their underground kingdom in a different area. At any rate, the ore veins beneath the Stonetalon Mountains were already at their limits after all these years of mining. They needed to move away anyway.

  Greem had already made his preparations in expectation of a dragon crisis that could befall them at any time.

  Unfortunately, though Greem was fully prepared, Arms was not.

  In all seriousness, he was the one who actively started this war. His purpose had been to exact vengeance for having his lover taken away from him. Yet, despite yelling for revenge all this time, Arms had never truly reflected on the tremendous impact that the death
of a Fourth Grade dragon lord would wreak upon Lance and himself!

  Perhaps, deep in his heart, he had never believed this to be a possible task!

  Things had happened way too fast, leaving him with absolutely no time to think things over.

  Initially, Arms’ mind had been filled with thoughts of resentment and anger at having been humiliated. He had not been able to think of anything else. Later, he had become a mere participant in the event, swept along the currents for the ride with no ability to guide the progression and trajectory of events.

  After the dust had settled, the return of his lover and the immense amounts of treasure he had obtained caused him to be blinded with joy.

  This series of events had destroyed Arms’ ability to think, causing him to walk into the massive pit that Greem had dug for him, step by step.

  Now the oil pan was set, the fire was lit, and the hearth was burning warm. All Greem was waiting for was for Arms, the protagonist, to simply jump into the pain and end it all!

  In the end, Greem was just an outsider. Even if he was defeated, he could abandon the metal fortress and return to where he came from. If Lance was no longer a safe place to be, there was still the World of Adepts to fall back on. On the other hand, it seemed there was nowhere else for Arms to go apart from Lance.

  While Greem happily dealt with the dragon’s hoard in the metal fortress, he also silently waited for the incident to blow up.

  Just as he expected, everything happened in the blink of an eye!

  Firstly, plenty of survivors had been left at Tempest Keep. These survivors described the appearances of the invading enemies. Naturally, outsiders like Greem were foreign and unfamiliar to the dragons. However, the existence of a Third Grade thunder dragon stood out like a sore thumb.

  As dragons themselves, the dragon lords harbored an intense hatred for all traitors!

  With a clue as obvious as a Third Grade thunder dragon, it became much more convenient to investigate the dragonslayers.