Greem stood proudly at the southwest corner of the plaza. He narrowed his eyes, and blue light shone from within as he silently scanned the extent of distortion near the planar door.
The drifting light ribbons might look intangible and harmless, but the Chip’s data on them was glowing with a blinding red light.
One thousand one hundred and seventeen points!
These drifting light ribbons that looked like beautiful pieces of silk actually contained terrifying spatial rifts. They could instantly cut a person to pieces if they were ever to make contact. Even if you had magical defenses protecting you, the light ribbons had enough shocking cutting power to sever a person in half through all the shields. It would leave your upper body in a planar space, and your lower body in another, different planar space.
Without a way to defend against spatial severing, even a Second Grade adept was destined to die if they ran into these light ribbons.
In contrast, those areas of gravity disruption appeared to be so much more harmless!
The closer it was to the planar door, the more severe the distortions.
Traversing the planar door under such terrifying conditions was not possible for ordinary apprentice adepts.
“The Death Witches have already set off!” Alice, who was standing beside Greem, reminded him softly.
Greem’s eyes turned when he heard this, and he quickly found the group of Death Witches.
Two Third Grade Death Witches had arrived in front of the planar door. Greem didn’t know what method they used, but the subtly trembling light door started to stabilize and calm down.
The abnormalities near the planar door were immediately cut in half.
Large numbers of intermediate and high-grade undead gathered together under the orders of the Death Witches and shambled through the light door during this rare period of calmness.
Greem instantly recognized ironhide zombies, blackblood zombies, poison zombies, undead mages, skeletons, undead warriors, and dark knights amongst their ranks. Moreover, he could see terrifying liches riding on towering skeletal dragons in the middle of this undead army. They were dressed in magical robes and held short bone staffs in their hands.
Greem could occasionally see terrifying Third and Fourth Grade existences within their group. High-grade undead like these could quickly become Undead Lords in a skeletal plane. Yet here, they were only servants and casters subordinate to the Death Witches, albeit with slightly higher standing than the ordinary undead.
The undead were filthy and numerous. Their vile and twisted forms were an ugly sight to behold. However, their numbers were shocking. They were continually being teleported over, yet there was still no end to their numbers even after an hour.
Greem could vaguely hear shouting coming from the other side of the light door with his hearing.
It seems that the people on the other side were well-prepared!
If that were the case, then the vanguard forces would have to endure the most ferocious brunt of the enemy’s attacks.
No wonder the Death Witches had the undead walk at the very front. They were being used as cannon fodder to wear down the enemies on the other side!
Aooooo!
A shocking roar reverberated throughout the land. Death Witch Leader Khesuna appeared on the Fourth Grade Corpse Dragon Artest.
The appearance of the corpse dragon instantly introduced chaos to the orderly ranks of the undead army.
All the undead fearfully moved to each side, making way for this massive corpse dragon covered in rotting grey flesh and iron-green scales.
Artest strode toward the door with heavy footsteps, letting out a deafening roar at the high-grade undead around him as he did so. All the undead that he stared at shivered uncontrollably and stepped backward as if they couldn’t endure the dragon’s ferocious aura.
The corpse dragon disappeared behind the door with Khesuna on his back. A few high-grade Death Witches quickly followed after and entered the other plane.
It was only now that the undead once more became quiet and resumed their march into the portal.
The march of the undead took five hours in total.
It was the Dark Witches’ turn now.
The Dark Witches had also sent over a thousand fighters, including pure shadow creatures like shadow hounds, shadow warriors, and shadow assassins. Furthermore, quite a few of them were half-shadow creatures with twisted forms. Greem saw the characteristics of planar creatures on these half-shadow beings, along with the unique, sinister aura and ferocity of shadow creatures.
The shadow creatures were of various grades as well. There were Third and Fourth Grade existences, as well as weaklings that were barely First Grade.
Still, compared to Greem’s magical machine army, they were already extremely powerful!
Chapter 816 - First Battle
The magical machine army fighting under the banner of the Fate Witches was the fourth group to enter the planar door.
As many goblins in the group were only at apprentice level and below, the Crimson adepts had no choice but to apply magical defenses on them ahead of time. The goblins were also made to drink defensive potions to maximize their chances of survival.
However, twelve goblins were still crushed to pieces by the distorted planar powers during the process of crossing the door.
The sensation of crossing a planar door was a bizarre one. Greem himself felt like it had only been an instant, but the Chip recorded a lengthy seventeen seconds of blank memory. Greem had clearly been in a certain strange state of spatial transition during those seventeen seconds. His mind had not been able to break through the confines of time to allow him to experience the entire process.
Greem had a feeling that he might even be able to affect the teleportation process if he could maintain Spirit activity while under this state of spatial transition.
Unfortunately, Alice’s spatial talent had been completely converted into a talent for fate. Otherwise, he might have been able to learn something from her.
Still daydreaming and wondering about the possibilities, Greem opened his eyes and was immediately stunned by the bloody and savage battlefield before him.
The portal was located in a desolate plain. There was only dried and cracked earth around them, along with pebbles and rocks of various sizes. At the moment, several hundreds of thousands of living beings and monsters were crowded around the portal, bathing every inch of the land with their blood or that of their enemies.
The first ten thousand undead to swarm through the portal were now crowded around the portal and using their bloated and ugly bodies to stall the enemies. Fighting to the death against these unholy beings were a group of otherworldly orcs of towering stature and bulging muscles.
They had large bodies, giant mouths, fangs that protruded from their lips, large eyes, and explosive muscles. Their skin was a light green and had large pores in it. Their veins were thick as serpents, and they wore crude animal hides and chestplates on their bodies. Almost every inch of their exposed skin was covered in indigo tattoos.
Their weapons were still extremely primitive.
They were either thick stone bats, giant spiked bats, or terrifyingly huge metal axes and warhammers. Judging by these weapons, these orcs did not excel at smelting metal. The weapons they used were far too primitive and crude. There weren’t any of the blinding and chilling gleams that the human weapons tended to have, nor were there any delicate patterns resulting from the forging process.
However, these crude weapons still demonstrated intimidating might in the hands of these orcs and their barbaric strength!
They had no magic or supernatural powers to speak of. They were relying purely on their strong bodies and terrifying strength to battle against this army of undead, shadow creatures, and spirits. However, every time they unleashed their deafening battlecries, a mighty bloodline power would ripple from the elaborate tattoos on their bodies. This power would significantly enhance their strength, speed, physiq
ue, regeneration, and magical resistance.
Greem stood before the portal and narrowed his eyes as he silently assessed this sprawling, chaotic, and bloody battlefield.
With the help of the Chip’s powerful sight, Greem could perfectly include everything within three and a half kilometers in his senses. When his attention shifted to a certain area, the Chip would be able to rapidly magnify a panoramic image of that area and project it before his eyes.
Greem could see that the orc army wasn’t the primitive native tribe he had imagined them to be. They were a powerful race with proper means of war and a coherent division of combat tasks.
At the moment, the ones standing at the very front and battling against the witches’ army were the green-skinned orcs he had seen earlier. They were wild and barbaric warriors that were relying purely on their strength and adrenaline to fight against equally terrifying enemies.
Behind the green-skin orcs, Greem saw harpies with human faces and eagle bodies. He also saw spear-throwing gnolls, centaur warriors, orc shamans with tribalistic tattoos all over their faces, war mammoths the size of hills, and terrifying cyclopes who could throw giant two-meter-wide boulders across hundreds of meters.
It wasn’t a group of primitive locals with no intelligence. No, they were an actual orc army!
Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be too many of them.
At least, there wasn’t yet enough of them to cause any trouble for the witches’ army.
The vanguard witches had risked their lives and buried a locating stone here at the very start of the battle. The stone provided the witches of the World of Adepts with the coordinates for teleportation. The nearby orc tribes quickly gathered by the divine decree of the beast gods, and they charged at the witches under the lead of the orc leaders.
It was fortunate that the reinforcements from the planar door arrived very quickly. The undead army that swarmed out of the portal instantly clashed with the orc warriors charging at them. The orc troops continued to gather upon this battlefield while the portal kept spitting out countless strange creatures to wreak destruction upon the land.
Initially, the orcs had still been able to contain the witches’ forces near the portal. However, as more and more creatures emerged from the entrance with increasing power, the orcs were slowly pushed back.
Even with all the orcs risking life and limb to assault the enemy forces, there was no stopping the constant swarm of troops from the portal.
On the ground, orcs were battling with undead and shadow creatures.
In the skies, translucent spirits and wraiths fought against the harpies.
Several sharp wooden spears descended on the tide of undead like raindrops in a downpour, while massive boulders crashed into their ranks and left bloody splotches behind them wherever they rolled.
On the whole, the weapons and defenses of the orc army were still too crude and simple. They could not compare to the powerful voodoo beasts that the enemy witches had spent so much effort creating. If it weren’t for how crowded the defensive line was, this army of thirty thousand orcs would not have been able to hold back the voodoo beasts at all.
Since they had already arrived at this battlefield, they could not just remain as listless spectators on the side.
Greem nodded at Gru, and the split-off brain piloted its three-meter tall mechanical body toward the battlefield. Behind Gru, rows of fearsome metallic machines raised their magic energy guns and marched forward along with Gru, firing as they advanced.
One had to admit that the voodoo beasts that the witches had made were all extremely powerful individually. All of them possessed terrifying might in combat. However, on a battlefield, they either crowded together and limited their own mobility or rampaged about the area, knocking down their own allies. The ranks of the voodoo beasts were chaotic and disorderly, with no praiseworthy acts of cooperation at all.
Meanwhile, the magical machine army that Gru led was starkly different from the witches’ soldiers. The few hundred magical machines moved as one. Their formation was strict and tight. The magic energy rifles in their hands might not have immense individual power, but they would always choose to focus their firepower on a single area whenever they shot.
Even the orc Skullsplitters, who had resilient bodies, were incinerated when shot by so many energy beams. Their muscular bodies were riddled with holes in an instant.
A single volley was capable of exterminating all orcs in an area of one hundred square meters.
It was through such constant advances that the formation of orc Skullsplitter squads within range of the magical machines started to fall apart.
It also indirectly created a path forward for the voodoo beasts.
The undead tide swarmed forward in front of the magical machines, filling up the gaps created in the orc army. It thoroughly flushed all of the orcs’ efforts to contain the witches down the drain.
The eye-catching performance of the magical machine army instantly caught the attention of many powerful witches.
They were either hovering in the skies or sitting on the backs of their magical pets, but all of them were assessing these inconspicuous machines with expressions of shock and surprise.
The witches here might not be proficient in the techniques of creating metallic golems, but they did have some degree of understanding as to how it was done. Compared to the more convenient and simple voodoo beasts, the creation and assembly of metal golems were far more tedious and difficult. It also demanded a surprising amount of metallic ores.
Consequently, most witches here did not forge metal golems, simply because they believed that they were not as cost-efficient as their own undead and shadow creatures. Metal golems were pretty decent when placed in a tower and used as stationary guards. However, when bringing them into actual combat, even losing one of them was enough to induce heartache. Repairing these metal golems was a complicated task as well.
After all, they couldn’t possibly bring along the technicians and logistics groups responsible for golem parts every time they brought the golems out for battle, could they?
It was due to such reasons that the witches had given up on using metal golems as a fighting force on expeditions. However, this didn’t mean that metal golems were not powerful!
Metal golems were loyal, powerful, robust, and had surprisingly strong defenses. Even more valuable was their ability never to feel fatigue. As long as there was a sufficient supply of magical crystals, they would become machines of perpetual motion, continually fighting until the moment they came apart.
This magical machine army under the banner of the Fate Witches was almost wholly made up of First Grade metal golems.
Yet, the combat prowess they were displaying was superior to the disorderly voodoo beast army. They appeared to be much easier to use.
The powerful witches also clearly saw the strange metal giant marching at the front of the magical machines. That machine was an even stranger existence. As it walked forward, blue energy beams shot out of its large metal body.
Magical machines hit by this beam immediately became charged with energy. The frequency of their rifle shots and the intensity of their attacks had increased to some extent.
Hmm? That appeared to some sort of strange energy source that could remotely provide energy to the entire magical machine army.
The curious witches couldn’t help but secretly extend their Spirits toward the machine.
Unfortunately, a crystalline forcefield radiated around the machine and blocked the Spirits of the witches.
Eh? That was even stranger. It seemed it was not just an energy source machine, but a metal lifeform as well.
The witches couldn’t help but become even more intrigued!
Chapter 817 - Bloody Battlefield
The war raged on!
Unlike skirmishes of three to five hundred fighters, a battlefield of tens or hundreds of thousands of combatants was exceptionally brutal and bloody.
It didn't matter how
individually powerful you were. You had to maintain a low-profile on a battlefield as chaotic and intense as this one as long as you weren't invincible yet. You could not catch the attention of the enemy.
Otherwise…
Greem personally witnessed an undead knight shrouded in a chilling aura of death ravage the battlefield unchallenged upon his towering skeletal mount with his Third Grade prowess.
Numerous Orc Skullsplitters shivered before the sight of his mighty mount, and countless more orc powerhouses were split in two by the knight's gleaming, two-meter-long sword. The Halo of Fear followed the knight wherever he went, causing all orcs to flee in terror.
For a moment, the undead knight's ferocious might was unstoppable. No one dared to test its blinding edge.
However, the knight quickly caught the eye of a few equally powerful opponents in the ranks of the orc army.
Wuuuuuuu!
Fierce winds howled in the air, and a few giant rocks the size of millstones smashed toward the knight, creating sonic booms as they hurtled across the sky.
The Third Grade death knight courageously sliced three of the rocks to pieces but was hit by the final one. His bones snapped, and his armor dented as he was blown away to land amid the undead.
His skeletal mount had also been crushed to bits and scattered across the earth.
The death knight got up from the ground with much difficulty. Though most of his bones had been broken and cracked, the soul fire deep in his skull was still unharmed. Just as he attempted to absorb the surrounding death energies to repair his broken body, the earth around him started to tremble violently.
The Third Grade death knight struggled as he lifted his head. The blood red soul fire deep in his empty eye sockets abruptly shrank into a cross-shaped gleam as he watched on with terror. A war mammoth had smashed through the undead crowd and was charging toward him with earthshaking steps.
The beast's body was as large as a small hill, its trunk was as agile as a python, and its slender tusks were as sharp as battering rams. Even more terrifying were those giant feet that were as thick as pillars of stone and as large as carriages. They were moving toward him with unstoppable momentum.
Age of Adepts c1-1513 Page 505